PAN AM - 1932

By Eric Hobson

SEPTEMBER

“Rising to Allay Brazil’s Yeast Panic”

Photo: Operations Manager H. W. Toomey Shakes Hands with President of Standard Brands Co. of Brazil, as 1475 Pound Shipment of Yeast Arrives in Rio. “Pan American Air Ways”, October 15, 1932.

Tension was rising, but not the pão (bread), as political unrest blocked Fleishmann Yeast Company from delivering Sao Paulo-produced yeast to clients throughout Brazil. No bread or beer was cause for concern.

"Pan American Air Ways" reported that Fleishmann executives in Hoboken, New Jersey, called across the Hudson River to Pan American Airways corporate offices and “appealed to Pan American to help them make good on their motto, ‘Fleischmann Never Fails’."

“A Commodore plane was immediately provided, and … 1,415 pounds of yeast in 67 packages was imported from the United States … to meet the emergency … the largest shipment ever to enter Brazil by air.”

From Rio, Pan Am and Pan Am do Brasil delivered yeast to cities down Brazil’s coast, from where yeast moved inland. “Pan American Air Ways” readers learned that “Standard Brands Company has utilized the air express … to make other shipments of yeast throughout the system, and particularly to Curityba, capital of the southern state of Parana.”

This bit of corporate name-dropping signaled a new phase of corporate legitimacy for PAA. Standard Brands Co., a holding company, belonged to industrialist John Pierpont Morgan, Jr. who established Standard Brands in 1929 to house five food companies: Fleishmann’s Yeast, Royal Baking Powder, Co., E.W. Gillett, Ltd. (Baking Bowder & extracts), Chase & Sanborn Coffee, Co., and Widlar Food Products, Co. (pickles, condiments, tea, coffee, dressings).

PAA’s international freight market share rose going forward as did Brazilians’ pão. Each company saw that air freight worked and were encouraged to use it, establishing express air freight as a business essential for multinational companies.

“Happy Anniversaries”

Map: "Consult This Map For Fastest Way to All Points in Latin America," "Pan American Air Ways," Vol. 3, No. 4, October 15, 1932.

Mid September 1932’s many anniversary celebrations reflected Pan American Airway’s rapid expansion since its first flight in 1927.

In Lima, Peru, US Ambassador Fred Dearing, joined Pan American Grace Airways (PANAGRA) officials, and Peruvian Governmental leaders and influential business men for a luncheon, Tuesday, September 13 to celebrate the fourth anniversary of airline’s first flight over Peru.

In Havana, Cuba, two days later (Thursday, September 15), on the fourth anniversary of airmail service from Miami, Postmaster General, J.J. Montalvo dictated an official cable thanking the US Post Office Department to which he added, “My congratulations must also be received by the Pan American Airways, for the splendid bravery in undertaking what four years ago was considered a risky commercial enterprise and for the efficiency shown in both air mail and passenger service on its line.”

Four thousand miles south of Havana that same Thursday at Pan Am’s Brazilian Division (Panair do Brasil) base in Rio de Janeiro, telegrams flew to and from the division’s twenty-one airports congratulating each unit for the group’s collective effort on the second anniversary of Pan Am’s activity there. Division Manager, George Rihl’s message included the up-beat claim that everyone’s effort has made “our Company `standard of Air Transport in Brazil.’”

Meanwhile, as reported by "Pan American Air Ways," 1,650 miles south of Rio, Airlene, resident mouser and mascot at the Buenos Aires hanger joined in the celebration: she “selected a motor compartment of a Commodore as a nest for seven kittens.” Each kitten was purrfect.

Source:
"Pan American Air Ways," Vol. 3, No. 4, October 15, 1932.

“Down, But Not Out”

 Photo compilation: Pan American Sikorsky S-40 at Miami (PAHF/Strong Family Film) /
Don Singer from"Pan American Air Ways," September 1936 p. 9. (University of Miami Special Collections.)

Pan American Air Ways reported crowds of curious and adventurous visitors flocking to Dinner Key on Sunday afternoons in 1932 hoping for a $3.00 thirty-minute sight-seeing flight over Miami on the Pan American’s newest aircraft, the Sikorsky S-40 American Clipper & Caribbean Clipper.

Many of these visitors missed out, however, on Dinner Key’s center of gravity, Don Singer, the official airport tour guide, because he had landed at a Miami hospital.

What exactly did these day-visitors miss?

In his memoir, early Pan Am pilot Maurice (Captain Lodi) Lodeesen recounts Don Singer’s Dinner Key tour in mid-spiel:

“ `Ladies and gentlemen! cried [Don] Singer, our Dinner Key airport guide, his rotund figure breathing reflected glory. `Here is the American Clipper, largest commercial aircraft in the world. Forty passengers can be seated in the cabin which is wider by two feet than a regular Pullman railroad car. The ship is powered…’ ”(“Captain Lodi Speaking: Saying Goodbye to an Era”/Paladwr Press, 2004 p. 43).

Nurses tending to Don during his hospital stay experienced Singer’s larger-than-life personality and his full-bore Pan Am fervor.

“A real Pan American man may be down sometimes but he is never out of service,” noted a Pan American Air Ways’s reporter, adding that “Flat on his back in a hospital in Miami, genial and buxom Don Singer, official guide at Dinner Key, sold two nurses trips to Havana. We don’t know what else he sold them – at any rate he has proved himself so far to be Miami’s best horizontal salesman.” (Pan American Air Ways, October, 1933, p. 20)

“Pan Am’s First Hijacking”

Photo courtesy of Panairdobrasil on Flickr showing “Porto Alegre” in NYRBA do Brasil livery before Pan Am acquisition in 1930, subsequently renaming the airline Panair do Brasil.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/panairdobrasil/7649434252

Forty years before airplane hijackings were 1970’s nightly news fodder, Pan American Airways experienced its first on Sunday, September 25, 1932. As was the case going forward, regional politics, blind idealism, and technical naivety defined this incident.

Rio’s airfield was quiet as three men made their way to the Panair do Brasil maintenance facility. Brandishing pistols, the intruders forced an on-duty mechanic to start a Sikorsky S-38B (NC-113M / Brazil registration P-BDAD) engines, an eight-passenger amphibian gained in Pan Am’s 1930 New York Rio Buenos Aires Airlines (NYRBA) acquisition.

These three supporters of the São Paulo-centered Constitutionalist Revolution -- just one of the early-1930s coup d’états attempts that defined Brazilian political theater -- were guided by fervor, not by good judgment. None of the three could fly.

Somehow, the “Porto Alegre” left the ground that Sunday and political commentators agreed that a miracle allowed the “Porto Alegre” Sikorsky to take to the air.

That successful takeoff fueled rumors that the mechanic flew the stolen aircraft: some suggested he collaborated with the short-lived military uprising that defined this turbulent chapter in Brazil’s always-a-roil political history.
Dreams of revolutionary glory were fleeting, however.

The Sikorsky crashed into the São João de Meriti neighborhood four miles west of the runway killing everyone on board. After a tragic loss of life and with extensive damage to the aircraft, Pan Am disassembled NC113M.

Photo courtesy of Panairdobrasil on Flickr showing “Porto Alegre” in NYRBA do Brasil livery before Pan Am acquisition in 1930, subsequently renaming the airline Panair do Brasil.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/panairdobrasil/7649434252

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