Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Nov 22, 1935: The China Clipper inaugurates the first commercial transpacific air service, connecting Alameda, California with Manila. China Clipper (NC14716) was the first of three Glenn L. Martin M-130 four-engine flying boats (Philippine Clipper and Hawaii Clipper) built at a cost of $417,000 for Pan American Airways and was one of the largest airplanes of its time.

On November 29, the airplane reached its destination, Manila, after traveling via Honolulu, Midway Island, Wake Island, and Sumay, Guam, and delivered over 110,000 pieces of mail. The crew for this flight included Edwin C. Musick as pilot and Fred Noonan as navigator.

It was the famous China Clipper, bound for a 59-hour flight to Manila.

The Pan American Airways flight that took off on Nov. 22, 1935, was the first regularly scheduled flight across the oceans of the world. It was hailed in The Chronicle as the beginning of "a giant new age," and the Martin 130 seaplane named China Clipper was called "the greatest airplane ever built in America."

Twenty-five thousand people saw the Clipper take off, "spreading proudly her silver wings against the setting sun, flashing proudly 150 years of Yankee tradition," as the paper called it.

The first flight was rich in symbolism: The plane was so heavily loaded that the pilot, Capt. Edwin Musick, was forced to fly under the cables of the unfinished Bay Bridge, then gained altitude along the San Francisco waterfront and over the Golden Gate.

One week and four stops later, the China Clipper was in Manila. It was the beginning of a new era: The voyage would have taken 15 to 16 days by fast steamship. It was a pioneering flight - for various reasons, mostly political, it was four years before a commercial flight crossed the Atlantic.

"It was an audacious gamble and a great leap forward," said John Hill, an assistant director at San Francisco International Airport and curator of a new China Clipper exhibit at SFO. "Every airplane that crosses the ocean even now is flying in the wake of the China Clipper."

The China Clipper and its intrepid crew became instant heroes after the first flight, in the Depression year of 1935. "Clippermania" swept the land - there were China Clipper postage stamps, toys, gifts and souvenirs, Clipper labels on farm produce, a brew called Clipper beer. Not long after the first flight, Musick, the skipper of the China Clipper, made the cover of Time magazine.

The next year, the movie "China Clipper" came out, starring Pat O'Brien as an airline executive and Humphrey Bogart as a steely-eyed pilot. Although there were two other identical Martin flying boats, the China Clipper was first and the one to remember.

The main problem was the first leg: 2,400 miles from San Francisco Bay to Honolulu. The planes had to have sufficient range to make Hawaii, and the crews had to have the navigation skills to make the trip and find the islands. Pan Am crews were trained in celestial navigation, dead reckoning and in radio direction finding systems.

The first flight carried no passengers-only the mail, more than 110,000 letters. There was a radio broadcast message from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who proclaimed himself "an air-minded sailor" and wished the flight good luck.

At 3:20 p.m., Postmaster General James Farley told the pilot: "Captain Musick, you have your sailing orders. Cast off and depart for Manila forthwith."

The plane taxied down the bay, turned into the wind and took off. It was 3:47 p.m.

The first stop was Honolulu, 21 hours later. The plane stayed overnight in Honolulu, then made other overnight stops at Midway, then Wake Island, then Guam. The China Clipper finally landed in Manila on Nov. 29 as thousands cheered.

After picking up the U.S.-bound mail, the China Clipper returned to Alameda on Dec. 6.

In 1936, the Clipper began carrying passengers. The service was first class and legendary, with fine food served on fine china. A one-way ticket to Manila, including overnight stays at Pan Am hotels in Honolulu, Midway, Wake and Guam, cost $950 -the equivalent of $14,650 in current dollars [$22,142 in 2025].

In 1939, the planes began flying out of Clipper Lagoon between Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island on San Francisco Bay.

The original Martin seaplanes ultimately were replaced with much larger and luxurious Boeing B319 flying boats, which could carry 74 passengers, compared with only 18 for the Martins.

The seaplanes flew until World War II, logged 2.4 million miles, and carried 3,500 passengers and 750,000 pounds of mail and air freight. When postwar service resumed, aviation advances had ended the era of flying boats.

China Clipper's flight made history

On January 22, 2024, Emmanuel Calairo, Chairperson of the National Historical Commission in the presence of MaryKay Carlson, the US Ambassador to the Philippines and Commodore Marco Tronqued, unveiled a historical marker at the Manila Yacht Club, honoring the arrival of China Clipper to the Philippines in 1935.




The Triple Clipper tragedy::

The China Clipper remained in Pan Am service until January 8, 1945, when it was destroyed in a crash in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. Flight 161 had started at Miami bound for Leopoldville in the Belgian Congo, making its first stop to refuel at Puerto Rico before flying on to Port-of-Spain. After one missed approach, on the second approach to land it came down too low and hit the water at a high speed and nose-down a mile-and-a-quarter short of its intended landing area. The impact broke the hull in two which quickly flooded and sank. Twenty-three passengers and crew were killed; there were seven survivors including Captain C.A. Goyette, Pilot-in-Command for the flight, and Captain L.W. Cramer, First Officer, who was flying the plane from the left seat when it crashed. The Aviation Safety Network

Timmy Rides The China Clipper

In 1985, Pan Am resurrected the "China Clipper" aircraft name onto its new Boeing 747-212B registered N723PA, which was named "China Clipper II" to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the China Clipper Flight. On November 22, 1985, the China Clipper II began its flight across the Pacific to retrace the original route of the first China Clipper Flight. The flight departed from San Francisco and made several stop flight following the original China Clipper flight route, such as Honolulu, Wake Island, Guam and all the way to Manila with its final destination to Bali, which was a new route that was not included in the original itinerary. Pan Am also made several advertisements and television commercials to promote the new China Clipper II plane which shows the original China Clipper Martin M-130 plane and also the new China Clipper II Boeing 747-212B aircraft and was aired in several countries as part of Pan Am promotion to commemorate China Clipper 50th Anniversary Flight.

Hawaii Clipper Pan Am Flight 229 disappeared over the Pacific Ocean sometime after departing Guam on July 28, 1938 with six passengers and nine crew. According to the website Hunt for the Lost Clipper the plane & bodies have never been found.

Hawaii Clipper: The Final Film


Philippine Clipper Pan Am Flight V-1104 crashed on the morning of January 21, 1943, in southwest of Ukiah, Northern California.

"The wind was blowing so hard it blew over trees ... The plane was flying very low. It had its lights on and came right over my house and disappeared in the storm to the north."
— Mrs. Charles Wallach, Civil Defense aircraft spotter

The 10 passengers on board were all U.S. naval officers from Pearl Harbor. Among them was Rear Admiral Robert H. English, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Submarine Fleet, the submarine component of the United States Pacific Fleet. Rear Admiral English planned to visit submarine support facilities at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard bordering San Pablo Bay, and was accompanied by three of his senior staff officers. Another passenger was Lieutenant Edna Morrow, a Navy nurse diagnosed with terminal cancer who was on her way home to die. Also on board was Captain Robert Holmes Smith, formerly in command of the USS Sperry (AS-12) submarine tender, and recently promoted to Commander of Squadron 2, Pacific Submarine Fleet.

On Jan 11, 1938, Capt. Edwin C. Musick and his crew of six died in the crash of the Sikorsky S-42 Samoan Clipper (ex-Pan American Clipper II) near Pago Pago, American Samoa, on a cargo and survey flight returning from Auckland, New Zealand. Charred plane debris was found but the bodies were never recovered.

Incidentally, 1935 was the year of the first "canned" beer sold in the USA by Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company releasing “Krueger’s Finest Beer & “Cream Ale” in a new "steel" can format. Cans disappeared at the start of WWII and reappeared in 1947. Aluminum cans didn't come about until 1958 and would have been sooner, but America was fighting a big war.




Big hat-tip to Earl Warren and Lee Rankin, the MVPs of the first completely fake "presidential blue-ribbon panel" of the post-WWII era, who provided a clear, compelling road map for every politicized fake investigation to follow, from Iran-Contra to 9/11 to Charlie Kirk to whatever comes next.




Nov 22, 1963: Capt George Morrison took command of the Essex-class aircraft carrier USS Bon Homme Richard (CV-31), flagship of the First Fleet's Fifth Carrier Division in the Pacific, based at San Diego. His first act as the new skipper was to announce the death of President John F. Kennedy.



They had to publish on this DAY!


Daily Emotions


Nov 22, 1989: Elmer Sherwin, a Vegas enigma hit a $4.6 million Megabucks jackpot on opening day of the Mirage in Las Vegas. Upon winning he dreamed to "hit again". Fast forward to 2005 and he did!...at age 92 in The Cannery for $21.1 million!!!

According to one estimate, based on the number of stops and the number of stops corresponding to a jackpot symbol on each reel, the probability of winning the ‘Megabucks’ progressive jackpot is 1 in 49.8 million spins. Nevertheless, the late Elmer Sherwin, who died in 2007 at the age of 93, defied astronomical odds – in the order of trillions to one – to win the jackpot not once, but twice, at two different Las Vegas casinos, sixteen years apart.

Sherwin was already a 76-year-old retiree when, on November 22, 1989, he lined up the Megabucks symbols for the first time at The Mirage on the Las Vegas Strip, which had only opened to the public earlier that day, and collected $4.65 million for his $3 stake. According to a spokesman for The Mirage, Sherwin played for about an hour-and-a-half and invested about $100 before winning what was, at the time, claimed to be the largest jackpot ever won on a slot machine in Las Vegas.

Evidently not entirely satisfied with winning the progressive jackpot once, Sherwin continued to pursue what he later called his ‘life’s dream’ of a second Megabucks win for the next sixteen years. The stars, or at least the Megabucks symbols, aligned for a second time at the Cannery Casino in Downtown Las Vegas on September 16, 2005, and Sherwin collected a further $21.1 million. By now aged 92, Sherwin donated much of his winnings to charitable causes, including to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Elmer Sherwin

Nov 22, 1995: Martin Scorsese's CASINO premiered. The 1995 flick, filmed largely in Las Vegas, earned Sharon Stone a Golden Globe for Best Actress. At the time it had the most f-bombs spoken in a major motion picture with 422. It's now ninth on the f-in list.




Movie material? WTF???


NY Post