Word: clippers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Eight days later he took off again. With no lights, no ship-to-shore radio, no forewarning signals of arrivals, Captain Ford took the Clipper westward 31,500 miles through twelve countries to New York. The Army's G-2 considered the course secret enough to forbid the crew's talking about it last week on their arrival. Probable route was New Caledonia, Australia, the Dutch East Indies, Ceylon, the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Aden, Arabia, Africa, the South Atlantic, and up from South America...
...beginning, the Clipper passed within several hundred miles of an area where Japanese were operating; but nothing happened. Chief danger was from the British and Dutch patrols. At an unidentified port, the Clipper faced destruction at the hands of the Dutch. As Ford was bringing the giant ship in to land, a fighter suddenly appeared on his tail. Ford heard the conversation between the pilot and the ground control officer...
Pilot: "You'd better send up some help." (Four more planes appeared around the Clipper.) "What...
Captain Ford, not knowing the radio frequency for sending, could not break into this interesting conversation. He gingerly brought the Clipper in on its straight course and landed safely. But this was not the roughest part of the trip. The crew of the Clipper had the worst time on its last hop. Coming up from South America the weather was so bad that most of them were airsick for the first time in their lives...
Most of the navigation was done by the Clipper's own charts and navigation handbooks. Though it was an "emergency operation," chances are that a new Pan-American route will evolve from the Clipper's long voyage home. This week Pan American had already established a new and secret route to China, taking one week...