This silent compilation of footage shows Capt. Ed Musick, a pioneer pilot for Pan Am Airlines who was one of the most famous pilots of the 1930s. He was tragically killed in an accident while surveying a route for Pan Am in 1938. It’s likely that this reel was part of a tribute to Musick, but the lack of a soundtrack means we’ll likely never know.
This reel includes shots of Pan Am’s Sikorsky S-42 flying boats. Pan Am Clipper NR-823M is shown at :59, flying over San Francisco Bay. At 1:53, a Martin M-130 flying boat China Clipper is seen at anchor. Musick boards. At 2:27 is rare footage inside the M-130 including shots of the sleeping arrangement. At 3:13 China Clipper takes off. At 3:29 mail is loaded on the China Clipper. At 3:45 Philippine Clipper is shown. At 4:19 the aircraft is shown over Alcatraz.
Edwin Charles Musick (August 13, 1894 – January 11, 1938 in Pago Pago, American Samoa) was Chief Pilot for Pan American World Airways and pioneered many of Pan Am’s transoceanic routes including the famous route across the Pacific Ocean on the China Clipper. Musick served as a flight instructor in WWI, and founded a flying school. In October 1927, he joined Pan American as it was just starting operations. He made the company’s inaugural mail flight to Havana, Cuba from Key West, Florida, on October 28 of that year. Musick was promoted to chief pilot for Pan American’s Caribbean Division in 1930. In 1934, Musick was chosen to make the trial flights for the new Sikorsky S-42 flying boat. During these stringent test flights, Musick collected 10 world records for seaplanes; one of the test flights was a non-stop flight of 1,250 miles (2,010 km). He was chosen to pilot the first two trans-Pacific survey routes for Pan American in 1935, laid out by Pan Am executives Juan Trippe, André Priester, and Charles Lindbergh, and the first commercial trans-Pacific flight, carrying mail to the Philippines. Musick and his crew of six died in the crash of the Sikorsky S-42 Samoan Clipper (ex-Pan American Clipper II) on January 11, 1938 near Pago Pago, American Samoa, on a cargo and survey flight returning from Auckland, New Zealand. (Interesting bit of trivia: among Musick’s crew in 1935 was navigator Ed Noonan, who later flew with and disappeared with Amelia Earhart).
The Martin M-130 was a commercial flying boat designed and built in 1935 by the Glenn L. Martin Company in Baltimore, Maryland, for Pan American Airways. Three were built: the China Clipper, the Philippine Clipper and the Hawaii Clipper. All three had crashed by 1945.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
