Transport: Clipper Crash

No such recurrent crackups as beset Overland Airlines (see above) have marred the bright record of seagoing Pan American Airways. In seven years of flying-boat service from Florida to South America, Pan American, up to last week, had seriously injured no passenger. Safe as a church seemed the 19-ton Clippers which have flown the run for two years. Yachts with wings, they had plenty of water to land on in case of trouble. Last week something happened to a southbound Clipper before it left the harbor of Trinidad’s Port-of-Spain.

Just before dawn broke over the Caribbean, Captain Wallace Culbertson gunned his four motors for the takeoff. Skimming along at 50 m. p. h. he spied a small launch directly in his path. Although he swerved, a wing pontoon grazed the launch and the big plane skidded in a wild half-circle. The fragile hull split open and water poured in. Twenty-two desperate men & women scrambled to escape by hatchways and portholes. When the Clipper sank up to the overhead wing, two passengers and a steward were trapped, drowned.

Among those pulled to safety in the Pan American rescue launch were onetime Actress Claiborne Foster (Mrs. Maxwell Rice) and famed Pianist-Conductor Jose Iturbi, bound on a South American tour. In the melee someone trod violently on the musician’s wrist. He announced sadly that he would not be able to play for several months.