These are simply the best
posters available! You will be thrilled with the image quality, vivid colors,
fine paper, and unique subjects.
This beautiful reproduction poster
has been re-mastered from a late 1930s Pan Am airlines poster advertising
their historic Clipper service to the Pacific Isles.
The vibrant
colors and detail of this classic image have been painstakingly brought back to
life to preserve a great piece of history.
The high-resolution image is printed on heavy archival photo
paper, on a large-format, professional giclée process printer. The poster is
shipped in a rigid cardboard tube, and is ready for framing.
The 13"x19" format is an excellent
image size that looks great as a stand-alone piece of art, or grouped as a visual statement. These posters require no cutting, trimming, or custom
framing, and a wide variety of these frames are readily
available at your local craft or hobby retailer, and online.
A great vintage print for your home, shop, or
business!
HISTORY – PAN AM SPANS THE PACIFIC
Creating a transpacific route
presented great challenges. Pan Am had to survey the world's longest oceanic
air route, build air bases and hotels on remote Pacific islands, and find an
aircraft company to design and build flying boats big and powerful enough to
carry heavy payloads across the longest landless air route in the world.
Pan Am's plans for a northern
Pacific air route that hugged the continental coasts fell through. The company
chose a central Pacific route through Hawaii.
Captain Edwin Musick, Pan Am's
famous chief pilot, led four survey flights across the Pacific in 1935 to plan
the route. Meanwhile, a steamship delivered equipment, supplies, and crews to
build bases and hotels on the islands along the way.
In 1936, Dorothy
Kilgallen from Girl
Around the World reported; "Five
years ago, there were neither the ships, nor the bases, nor the trained pilots
and navigators and ground men. And now here it was, Pan American Airways service
to the Orient."
Pan Am's route hopscotched from San
Francisco to China by way of islands belonging to the United States. Back then
it took a week to fly that far. Today it takes about 10 hours.
The aircraft Pan Am needed didn't
exist, so it contacted aircraft manufacturers and settled on the Glenn L.
Martin Company of Baltimore to design and build them. The company produced the
three largest air transports of their time: The Martin M-130 clippers.
She was a beauty... Practically every
comfort of a modern hotel was provided. If the progress of the previous few
years continued, airplanes would have swimming pools before long. Four powerful
engines gave it the power of a locomotive, enough speed to reach Hawaii in less
than 20 hours, and enough range to have hundreds of miles to spare.
On November 22, 1935, Ed Musick
eased the China Clipper up from San Francisco Bay, flew beneath the
not-yet-finished cross-bay bridge, and headed west through the Golden Gate. For
Hawaii, the dawn of a new era was 21 hours away.
Tens of thousands watched below, and
millions listened on the radio, as the China Clipper overflew the rising towers
of the Golden Gate Bridge and headed for Hawaii.
At the end of its six-day,
8,210-mile trip, the China Clipper reached Manila, where a quarter-million
Filipinos and a flotilla of boats greeted it.
A year after it began transpacific
service, Pan Am flew the first scheduled passenger flight. It offered for sale
seven tickets for the October 21, 1936, flight on the Hawaii Clipper. Over
1,000 people applied for them.
The 60-hour flight on the Hawaii
Clipper from San Francisco to Manila took six days with four overnight stops.
The long flight to Hawaii was the only overnight hop.