BOEING CLIPPER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 July 1938, Page 9

BOEING CLIPPER

SEVERAL SUCCESSFUL TESTS. MAY COME TO NEW ZEALAND. The first of a fleet of six mighty ocean clippers which the Boeing Aircraft Company is manufacturing for Pan American Airways was launched recently. In her first flight, she took off from Seattle and alighted on Lake Washington for her tests. The pilot, Mr E. T. Allen, has been for several weeks familiarising himself with her. He is confident that she will live up to the builders’ expectations, and prove herself capable of cruising across the Atlantic or Pacific at 150 miles an hour, carrying up to 74 passengers, a crew of eight or ten and airmail and express.

Writing in the “Vancouver Daily Province,” Aubrey F. Roberts says: “The largest aeroplane in the world — the 72-passenger Boeing Clipper with the circular staircase —wanted to fly, but the test pilot would not let her. “Journalists who followed the clipper’s tests in a speeding United States coastguard cutter at Seattle on Sunday were amazed at the ease with which the 41-ton flying-boat rose to her ‘step’ to take the air. “We had an excellent view of the clipper in action but every time the huge craft was ready to fly, Mr Allen eased up the throttles. A day of taxiing up and down Puget Sound ended late in the afternoon with a damaged sponson—the short, stubby sea wing. “A submerged log is believed to have been responsible, but Boeing officials are checking the possibility that a gasoline dump valve had been opened in error. “Repairs will take several days, so the test flight which attracted aviation writers from the New York Times, New York Herald-Tribune, and other leading newspapers, was postponed. “ ‘She would have taken to the air by herself,’ the test pilot told us afterward, ‘but we have so many details to record that we must take our time.’ “Vancouver has a special interest in the success of the Boeing Clipper because it may inaugurate a new and speedier service to New Zealand and Australia this summer. “Although it has been dubbed the ‘Atlantic Clipper,’ this mammoth fly-ing-boat may not be assigned to the Atlantic but to the Pacific service. “Pan American Airways, which has six of the boats being built in Seattle, has decided that two of them will go to the Atlantic and four to the Pacific. “The huge boats will cut the transpacific flying time from six days to three, and will bring New Zealand within three days of San Francisco.” The craft is equipped with four powerful motors, each producing as much horse-power as a modern locomotive, and, still more important, each readily accessible for any necessary repairs while-actually in flight. The ship proper, exclusive of the wings, is a real sea-going vessel. It has two decks, the flight deck above and passenger accommodation below. There are sleeping quarters for 40 passengers during night flights. Separate rooms include six standard passenger compartments, one de luxe compartment, a combination dining salon and lounge with seats, for 14, and a galley that can also do duty as a cockjail bar.