January 1936

"Jungle Clipper - Pan Am's Fairchild F-91"

by Eric Hobson 

Off for the "jungle run" up the Amazon from the mattress of snow on the factory field at Hagerstown, Maryland, the first fleet Fairchild amphibian to be delivered to the Pan American Airways System is in Miami. Eastern Division PilotH. E. Gray was of the wheel with Co-Pilot-Operator A. O.
Fisher. Vice-President Schwebel of the Fairchild Aviation Corp. and Radio Engineer Broke were passengers. The 750 horsepower in the single Hornet motor makes the highly streamlined little "Clipper" one of the fastest amphibians in the world. Its capacity is eight passengers in a de luxe and spacious cabin and 1,000 pounds of mail and cargo. It is equipped with automatic carburetion, special wing flaps and other advanced devices. (Pan American Air Ways, Vol. 7, No. 1 (January 1936), p. 2.)

Heads turned as 1936’s first new aircraft delivery landed at Dinner Key, Pan American Airway System’s (PAA) Miami base. The Fairchild F-91, flown in by Harold Gray, looked nothing like other PAA aircraft: a generous response was “unusual.”

PAA knew by early 1934 the Sikorsky S-38 -- serving its east-west Panama- Trinidad route, and Panair do Brasil and China National Aviation Company (CNAC) 1,000-mile inland Amazon and Yangtze River routes -- was antiquated.

Only Fairchild Aircraft, owned by Pan Am Board Member, Sherman Fairchild, responded to PAA’s call for a replacement aircraft with its tailored F-91 (1).

Whether Pan Am ordered 4 or 9 units is debated. However: early in F-91 development, the FAA required six-plus-passenger commercial aircraft to have two-plus engines, limiting the Fairchild to PAA’s subsidiaries.

Sources confirm two Pan Am purchases -- NC14744, delivered 1936; NC14745, delivered 1937 -- although Pan Am president, Juan Trippe, may have used NC15952 as an executive aircraft.

Panair do Brasil’s two F-91 “Jungle Clippers” flew the 1,000-mile Belem-Manaus route for years. According to Davies, PP-PAP (NC14744) sank at Santerém, Brazil, May 8, 1939, was salvaged and repaired, then flew the route another three years.

Footnote:

(1) Sikorsky did not bid to replace its own S-38. It had contracts for the S-35 “Baby Clipper” to serve PAA’s existing and planned Caribbean/Eastern South American Coastal routes, along with other private, commercial, and military sales

Sources: