China Clipper - Robert Gandt

Hardcover: 214 pages
Publisher: US Naval Institute Press (August 1991)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0870212095
ISBN-13: 978-0870212093
Product Dimensions: 6.25 x 9.25 x 1 inch
Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds

A history of the flying boats, their builders and operators, with an emphasis on the most famous - Pan American's Pacific flyers.

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Cockpit of China Clipper. Ed Musick sits on the left. Only in publicity photos did pilots wear their uniform caps in the cockpit.

The China Clipper over the unfinished Golden Gate Bridge, 1935.

As a new copilot for Pan Am in the mid-sixties, I flew with captains who had commanded the great flying boats. They were living artifacts from one of aviation's most glamorous eras. And as I became enthralled with this era of history, I made a promise: Someday I would write about the age of the great flying boats.

China Clipper was published in 1991 by the Naval Institute Press. It traces the development of the commercial flying boat, from the ponderous craft of Glenn Curtiss and Igor Sikorsky and Claudius Dornier, to the magnificent Boeing B-314 and the Latecoere 600. The age of the commercial ocean-going flying boats was brief, only sixteen years. But the great boats, like the steam locomotive and the airship and the fast clipper ships, were vehicles with charisma - and the power to capture our imaginations.

Flying boats, as the name implied, were hybrid craft, neither fish nor fowl, born of the notion that since two-thirds of the planet was covered by water, then it made sense to use all that flatness to take off and alight aeroplanes. It was always a flawed scheme. "Neither grand pianos nor airplanes belong in salt water," someone quipped back in the heyday of the flying boat. But there they were anyway, like dinosaurs on main street. There was something magic about the hybrid craft that stirred the souls of men like Glenn Martin and Igor Sikorsky and Howard Hughes. They spent fortunes constructing these majestic vessels that were anachronisms even before they flew.

China Clipper chronicles the genius and folly of these men. And it details the machines themselves, with voluminous photographs, appendices with specifications, line drawings, and source notes for each chapter.

WHAT THEY'RE SAYING ABOUT
CHINA CLIPPER:

"Robert Gandt covers all the players with an agreeable eye for detail. Now even Pan Am is gone. Gandt's book is a worthy memorial to the airline at the time of its glory."
-- Air & Space

"A very opportune book is Robert Gandt's China Clipper, for it appears when many giant airlines, at other times thought of as invulnerable behemoths of industry, are dying. China Clipper is an eminently interesting and pleasant book, for there are no villains, just heroines: the planes themselves."
-- Associated Press

"Even the most casual student of aviation knows about the great four-engined Sikorsky and Boeing flying boats that pioneered airline service across the Atlantic and Pacific - but there most of us run dry. This is a much richer vein of knowledge, and Gandt explores it profitably."
-- Air Classics

"We learn of the idiosyncratic genius of designers such as Glenn L. Martin and Igor Sikorsky... China Clipper is worth reading."
-- The Northern Mariner

China Clipper, great book! Enjoyed the read and the footnotes. That had to have been a time. Out here at Oakland airport there's a Sunderland, I beleive solent, at the Western Aerospace Museum. Rumor has it it was once operated by the Dollar Shipping lines between Honolulu and Tahiti. There were originally two of them derelict at the airport. Howard Hughes lived in one. Then they were towed over to Richmond and I think one was featured in an Indian Jones flix. The survivor in the musum is something. The interior though worn reflects a time when flying was something special -- when people dined instead of ate -- when a suit and tie was expected. Could I be getting old? Regards, Dave Case
Dave Case       Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Bob, Read your latest book on the airplane between PA and Utah - and then missed some skiing because I continued to read until I was done. Another good read. Keep writing! I was looking for your mailing address to send you an American Legion baseball story in which I think you might find a good, saleable screen play. Story is simply about buiding a ball field in a tight Pa German town that hates spending money. Detractors and nay sayers antagonize and impede the "lets get it done" group, who prevail and build the stadium in time for a truly storybook, true, ending that works. Could not find your mailing address in my Clipper Pioneer file - maybe it is in the Berlin file; or you could e-mail it to me. Dennnis
Dennis E. Greulich       Wednesday, February 07, 2007

From a near neignbor in Summer Trees and former submarine officer (1st guided missile boat in SubLant), a Bravo Zulu on some really superb writing about the USN, some of the very best yet, capturing the real Navy flavor. Your non-fiction is also great and most informative -- as a kid in Honolulu I saw Capt Ed Musick land the first China Clipper there and met him. What a thrill. It's also an awful lot of fun seeing you all flying such tight formations out of Spruce Creek. My wife, likewise a real fan of your writings, and I would love to share a few tales with you and your wife one day. Have done some USCG Auxiliary flying out of Spruce Creek myself. Keep up the great writing and beautiful flying!
Joe Morrison       Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Mr. Gandt, I've recently purchased the collection of a Clipper pilot by the name of Theron Griffin and I'd like to do some research about this gentleman. I have his log books from his China Clipper flights to South America, Asia, Hawaii and Australia, plus I have dozens of boxes of things from his estate. I'd greatly appreciate any help you can provide on this pilot. Thanks, Ray Holt
Ray Holt       Sunday, November 05, 2006

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	Copyright © 2008-1998 Robert L. Gandt. All rights reserved.