Stranded in the Sky:
The Untold Story of Pan Am Luxury Airliners Trapped on the Day of Infamy
Philip Jett
Turner Publishing Company
Copyright 2023 by the author

In the late 1930s, the epitome of luxury travel was aboard one of Pan American’s “clippers”. These huge seaplanes crossed the oceans while passengers enjoyed all the accommodations and amenities one would expect from a four star hotel. Within the space and weight requirements, of course. A single round trip ticket across the Pacific might cost you the equivalent of $40,000 today. So only celebrities, government officials, wealthy businessmen, and the occasional Pan American employee would benefit. It was still much faster than travel by sea. The airline maintained their own network of dedicated hotels on islands across the oceans to allow for refueling, maintenance, and overnight R&R for flights longer than the planes’ abilities.

“Overnight to Hawaii” – 1940 Pan American Clipper promotional film:

In the early hours of December 6/7, 1941, the Hong Kong Clipper was in Kowloon Harbor in it’s namesake territory, waiting to begin its regular shuttle flight to Manila. The Pacific Clipper had already departed Honolulu, heading for Auckland, New Zealand, via stops in Canton Island (in what is now Kiribati), Fiji, and New Calendonia. The Anzac Clipper was ready to leave San Francisco for its journey to Singapore, stopping at Honolulu, Midway Atoll, Wake Island, Guam, and Manila. The Philippine Clipper was already along that route, heading for Wake Island….

Jett has done an incredible job, not just piecing together and weaving into the narrative the accounts of the Japanese attacks on December 7, but collecting documents and interviews with the families of the crew and passengers on those four flights. If there is a “main character”, it’s Frank “Mac” McKenzie, the engineer who supervised the construction and maintenance of Pan American’s facilities in the Pacific. He was on the Philippine Clipper, heading to Manila to take charge of the building of a new facility in Cavite Harbor.

I have to admit I’ve read a LOT about World War II and like to consider myself rather knowledgeable on it, but this story is one I’ve never even come across a reference to before!

Chapters alternate from one plane to another, interspersed with chapters on the Japanese preparations for the attack on Pearl Harbor. That keeps the tension mounting; you know what’s coming – you want to know what happens to the planes and their crew and passengers. The interviews, reports, and descriptions Jett has collected provide an eyewitness account of the attacks on Wake Island and Hong Kong from the civilian point of view. (The Japanese attack was much more than just a raid on Pearl Harbor….)

It might have been nice for Jett to spend a little more time on how the crew, passengers, and planes got back to safety. One of the planes did, after all, make an epic journey from the south Pacific to India, Africa, South America, the Caribbean, and then back to New York – the longest trip (at the time) for a commercial aircraft.

The war put an end to the era of the Pan American Clippers. Innovations in aircraft design for the military made it out into commercial aircraft. New planes would be faster and capable of flying over greater distances without needing refueling. And they could carry more passengers. The old “flying boats” wouldn’t make it out of the decade. The next great era of luxury air travel would have to wait for the introduction of jet aircraft….