Word: scadta
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...years ago the State Department became alarmed by Nazi shenanigans in Colombia. Controlled and operated by avowed anti-U. S. Germans, powerful, 20-year-old Scadta airline had mapped and charted the Panama Canal, had placed an airfield but 150 miles away, could well use its heavy Junkers as troop transports, bombers. Last year Colombia responded gracefully (if belatedly) to U. S. pressure by nationalizing Scadta (now Avianca) and giving 64% control to Pan American.* But the Nazi shadow still fell on the canal...
...jittery U. S., Sedta is as sinister as her late sister Scadta. Recently she has sought (unsuccessfully) to extend service to 1) Colombia, 2) the Galápagos Islands,† which, though sparsely inhabited and commercially impotent, are located strategically near the Panama Canal, 3) the jungles of eastern Ecuador, from which she could easily connect with Lufthansa-owned Condor's penetration line in western Brazil. Her Junkers JU52s (used as troop transports in Belgium, The Netherlands) could fly from Ecuador to the Canal Zone in four hours or less...
...would be before the policy of Pan-American solidarity got its first real test. From Barranquilla, Colombia, where she had been anchored since the war began, sailed the German freighter Helgoland without the formality of clearance papers. Aboard were six German aviators and 14 mechanics of the defunct Scadta Airline. Colombian Army airplanes took to the skies above the Caribbean, located the Helgoland plowing eastward in the direction of Martinique, reported her position to a U. S. neutrality patrol squadron steaming southward under sealed orders...
...most part, however, official reactions were more coolheaded, if no less decisive. In Colombia, the Government-owned airline, Avianca (formed by the merger of Colombia's Saco Co. and the German Scadta System), fired all its German employes, arranged with Pan American Airways for U. S. pilots and instructors. Ecuador took steps to get rid of the Italian military mission which has been training her Army for 15 years. Argentina hastily sent her fleet of efficient river gunboats to patrol the river frontiers of Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil, rushed frontier guards into Entre Rios Province, where a Nazi plot...
...crew's stay appeared extended indefinitely, though Madam Secretary of Labor Perkins said she was "cooperating in every way" to send them home. Chances are they will be sent in batches to Central and South American ports, whence many an able-bodied Nazi (including twelve pilots of Scadta Airlines in Colombia) has been successfully smuggled past Britain's Pacific patrols. Lest any of the Columbus' men jump the gun, their shore-leave privilege was discontinued last week...