This week the 42½-ton California Clipper sat down on the dirty, boat-infested waters of Singapore Harbor, thus completed the first scheduled Pan American Airways trip from San Francisco to Singapore. To U.S. shippers and businessmen this meant that travel time to Singapore had been cut from 25 days by steamer to six. But to diplomats it meant that the U.S., Britain and The Netherlands had formed a united front against further Japanese airline penetration in the area.
Japanese penetration dates from 1937, when a Pan Am affiliate had to quit its Shanghai-Hong Kong feeder line because Japanese bombs made Shanghai unhealthy. A year later, using Douglas and Lockheed planes made in Japan with the help of U.S. technicians, Japan started a vast airways network with Kyushu Island as main roost for transports.
Now planes of Japanese-controlled Dia Nippon Airways regularly take off in four directions. To the northwest they go to Dairen, Mukden and Hsinking in Manchukuo; to the south they reach the tiny islands of Palau, 500 miles closer to the U.S. than the Philippines, continue on to Portuguese Timor in the East Indies; to the west they roar to Shanghai, other Chinese cities; to the southwest they fly over Formosa to Canton, then over French Indo-China to Bangkok in pro-Japanese Thailand. The eastern and western arms of their airlines form a giant horseshoe around the Philippines (see map). To gain these far-flung routes Japan used fat subsidies, even bullets. They shot down at least two defenseless, passenger-carrying planes of competing China National Aviation Co.
But no smart Japanese pilot would shoot down a Pan Am plane. Japanese external airline expansion probably has come to a temporary end. At Singapore, Pan Am will hook up with Dutch-owned KLM airliners flying to The Netherland East Indies and Australia, British flying boats leaving Singapore for northern and western points.
Gold & silver, banknotes, securities and precious stones can now fly on U.S. planes all the way from San Francisco to Singapore for $2.38 a pound v. 14¢ for parcel post. Passengers can make the trip (semimonthly flights alternate with the trip to Hong Kong) for $825 ($485 minimum by steamer). But the new 1,500-mile Manila-Singapore hop is not likely to be self-supporting for some time. In Manila everyone regards it as an extension of the U.S. diplomatic arm—right to the heart of Britain's Far Eastern trouble zone.