Clipper, October 4, 1945

              Victory Dance	Climit WAR SERVICE RACKED WITH DRAMA;
Huge Success	OUR WARTIME ROIE NOW DISCIOSED
By Rita Shields and Terry DiSalvio
A highly successful Victory Dance inaugurated the Fall season at the Clipper Club on Saturday evening, September 22. The club, recently decorated by a group of club members, provided a spectacular background for the many PAAers and their friends who supported the affair.
George Harris of Accounting was at his regular job of ticket-taking. He’s been doing the job so long now he seems like the unofficial host, and his greetings and wisecracks start the evening off well. Richard Steffens, of the Engine Shop, “made” with some fancy rhumba and samba steps, the envy of many a boy on the floor. Fran Morris of Steno pool danced dreamily with Bill Goodby of Navigation. Bob Knapp and his wife were welcomed back after their absence from NBA. Carl Marshall and Doug Mitchell were seen — but very attentive to the attractive dates they had invited.
The game room was taken over by the B-23 Modification Crew who proved to be in fine voice. Jack Rolf of that outfit led the singing. His henchmen included “Shorty” Patterson, Jim Hurley, Sal Rocobonni, Charlie Hack, Rudy Bulbin, John Budd and his wife, Steve Bianchi, Americo Lombardi, Hank Anholser and Lou Forrler, who squired Rena Quinones. Richa’d Gonsalves, known as “Caesar” distinguished himself vocally to the swooning accompaniment of the gals.
Jane Hughes, recently transferred to A-0 Navigation, was concentrating — but hard — on her date, who shall be nameless. Don Collins was on hand with Betty O’Brien. Phil Langford of Purchasing came out for the party and Phyllis and Peter Keehan, former PAAers were back to enjoy the fun.
Stores was well represented by Edna Schien-bach, Jean Keenan, Helene McCafferty, Kay Lynch, Rose Sircusano, and Ann Barbara. Alyce Bradford, blonde eyeful who formerly graced the Mailroom and is now back at school, foreswore her studies to attend the dance with Ken Ratke. Slim Modin was observed observing the mad gyrations of the jive generation. Jean Foley was there with A1 Beaudoin and it was hard to decide whether they or Pat Sullivan and George Meleshko were more engrossed in each other. Adele Schringer arrived with Pfc. Tom Brauer who was in on leave. Jean Burke swinging and singing with Joe Jacob, down from Connecticut.
Other twosomes we saw having a wonderful time were Helen Hausli and Jack Rolf; Terry DiSalvio and Ricky Gonsalves; Audrey Dunn and Paul Duncan; Georgette Parro and an unidentified Army Captain; Margie Doyle and “Shorty” Patterson, and Marian Long and Kevin Winker.
Half an hour after word of the Jap attack at Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941, a coded flash of the one-word-and-one-letter message “Plan A” informed the Clipper crews of PAA and the 25,000 men and women of the company that they were at war. Now with the first land Clipper service to Europe scheduled, and with the lifting of security restrictions, details of Pan American’s war service on the Atlantic can be told.
During the course of World War II, Pan American has made more than 15,000 ocean crossings. Of these, 9,500 have been complete crossings of the Atlantic, and a large proportion of them have been made with big C-54 land airplanes of the general type that are scheduled for use on the new transatlantic service.
It was our Dixie Clipper that carried President Roosevelt safely to and from the historic Casablanca conference. During the North African campaign in 1942, we rushed a shipment of tank parts and ammunition to General Montgomery’s Eighth Army, just before the battle of El Alamein, which marked the first major defeat .of German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. This was only one of many hundreds of similar high priority rush cargo jobs.
To get the generals, the technicians, and the ammunition and blood plasma through to the battlefronts, flight crews sometimes stayed on the job 40 hours without rest. Some crossed the Atlantic four times in four days. One crossed twelve times in 13 days.
For the growing emergency, the United States, in Pan American, had at its command the only world-wide air transport system. The company’s big trans-ocean Clippers (there were 11 of them when the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor) at first were about the only aircraft capable of carrying a large load of men and supplies over an ocean.
Of these, six were Boeings. These were the largest in the world, and immediately were given some tremendous tasks to perform. Even without the menace of submarine warfare to surface shipping, these huge aircraft would have been of the utmost importance in movement of admirals, experts and must-cargo. But, the U-boats ravaging surface travel, our Clippers became a life line over the Atlantic. In the commercial war with the Axis that preceded Pearl Harbor, the Clippers were of the greatest strategic value to the Allies. Three Boeings were made available to the British who are still using them.
The war in Europe immediately upset all transatlantic air traffic calculations. Mail carried multiplied about ten times over expectations to an average of about 3,000 pounds per crossing. The weight rose until a load of 13,620 pounds (about half a million letters) was , carried on one trip. In six months of 1940,
80.000	refugees crowded into Lisbon seeking transportation overseas. Diplomats, generals and the leaders of the United Nations had to dash abroad hastily. War correspondents for press and radio, photographers and government officials all got in line for the first available space.
In their first three years, the Clippers carried 18,647 passengers across the Atlantic. On trans-Atlantic routes alone they had flown 3,161,959 miles without incident. Passenger miles added up to 51,227,449.
World Wide Operations
But the activities of Pan American’s Atlantic Division flight crews and Clippers, instead of being limited to the Atlantic, covered the entire world. The men would report for a flight having no idea where they were going. _They would leave with sealed orders, on a flight that might take them 10,000 or
20.000	miles. It might involve new weather conditions, difficult landing and take-off problems in ports about which they knew nothing. At Natal, the Clippers had to take off and land in a river, too winding and narrow for comfort. They took off time and again with gross weights up to 87,000 pounds. At one port in Africa, they faced a menace in a flock of sunken ships with their masts and rigging sticking up every-which-way. At Calcutta, India, they had a river containing dead animals and debris. At Lake Victoria in the interior of Africa, the big super-Clippers had to land and take off at 4,000 foot altitude. Until the first one tried it no one could know for sure how these big new giant flying boats would react to such conditions.
At Fishermen’s Lake, the men who flew and maintained the Clippers set up a base of operations in disease-ridden country, against hazards they could not know until they faced them. To repair a hole in one of the Clipper’s hulls they improvised a diver’s helmet with a big can, and got the giant out with its high-priority war cargo.
Often the Clippers were fired upon. On one trip going into Natal, a rocket or shell zoomed right between the inboard and outboard engines of a Clipper commanded by Captain Charles Titus. To some it seemed to have gone between the propeller and leading edge. They kept going, reported it, and next day heard a German submarine had been spotted and sunk in that vicinity.
Following Pearl Harbor, the war job of Pan American’s Atlantic Division alone up to the middle of May, 1945 included transportation of about 61,000 vital war passengers in flights of more than 7,400,000 miles. In addition, Atlantic Division Clippers carried
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