The Long Way Home-The Pacific Clipper.m4v

A civilian airliner, cut off from home by the outbreak of World War II, makes a dash for freedom...

December 7, 1941. The Pacific Clipper, Queen of Pan American Airways fleet of flying boats is 6 days out of San Francisco, bound for Auckland, New Zealand. Captain Robert Ford receives a coded message: Japanese attack Pearl Harbor...Implement War Plan A...Proceed to Auckland, NZ...Maintain radio silence...Wait for instructions...Your aircraft is a strategic resource-it must not fall into enemy hands under any circumstances

Pan American Airways bases all across the Pacific were captured. Returning to the US west coast by the Pacific Clipper did not seem possible. A week of waiting, then another coded message:

DEC 14, 1941: Do not return to Hawaii. Do not return to US west coast...Strip aircraft of all markings and identification...proceed west...maintain radio silence...deliver aircraft to Marine Terminal, LaGuardia, NY. Good luck,

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Long Way Home
• Pacific Clipper
• Boeing 314
• Ed Dover
• Captain Robert Ford
• WWII
• Pan American Airways
• Pan Am
• Flying boat
• Clipper 18606
• John D. Steers
• Congo
• Darwin
• Trincomalee
• Karachi
• Bahrain
• Khartoum
• Kinshasa
• Leopoldville
• Natal
• Pearl Harbor
• India
• Africa
• Mecca
• Canton
• Fiji
• Noumea
• Auckland
• Gladstone
• Australia
• Surabaya
• Bali
• Ceylon
• Sri Lanka
• Brazil
• Brasil
• Port-of-Spain
• Port o' Spain
• circumnavigation
• Nile
• Sudan
• Juan Trippe
• NC18601
• NC18602
• NC18603
• NC18604
• NC18605
• NC18606
• NC18609

[LieutenantLoughead]

The video is very well done, but quite a bit of history was left out -- what happened to the aircraft when the US Government took it over?

[DavidHill2007]

This is only the taster reel to raise interest in a proposed one-hour long documentary. This doesn't tell everything that happened.

[spiritofattack]

As a 5-year-old boy, I saw the Pan Am Clipper arrive in Manila, Philippines, in 1939. The Wake Island base was built as a refueling stop for the Pan Am Clipper, and was attacked by the Japanese returning form Pearl Harbor. This aircraft is a real part of American history. I had never heard of this flight from New Zealand to New York!

[DavidHill2007]

I grew up in the Philippines-that's how I knew about Pan Am's flying boats.

[dodiho1965]

this gives me a good old warm and fuzzy feeling for what we used to be-the leading nation of all the world.....these folks weren't pansies,were they?

[Blogengezer]

Only one reason the USA was the greatest nation the world has ever witnessed.. A time of unequaled Freedom, Innovation and Creativity..

[wingcobda]

@WALTERBROADDUS No sense of history in the late 1940s> I guess we were too bust looking to the future.

[WALTERBROADDUS]

@givemetoast Sadly no.

[givemetoast]

Does anyone know if any Boeing 314s still exist?

[katyu16]

I think this has the makings of a damn good feature film !!

[katyu16]

I can only tell you that it was a complete PRIVILEDGE watching this.!!

Thank you for uploading this !!

[nedmarc]

there is an excellent book by Ed Dover which details the entire journey

[93MANIAC]

It was sadley  seriously damaged in and storm and salvaged for parts in the late 1940s and that is just a shama aplane like that belongs in a museum not in and scrap yard

[excarman]

even today the boeing clipper is still a beautiful and remarkable aircraft flown by an exprienced and inovative thinking crew