Pan Americans Pacific Pioneers

John Leslie was Pan American Airways Division Engineer when the Pacific was crossed in 1935 by the "China CLipper." Juan Trippe, Pan Am's visionary aviator and founder, credited Leslie with developing the engineering techniques that made possible the historic transoceanic flight.Visit Pan Am Historical Foundation - www.panam.org (under the Shop tab,) or www.panamsquietpioneer.com for more information about this book.During WWII Leslie ran Pan Am's Atlantic Division whose flying boats played crucial roles. Leslie commanded the flight that took Roosevelt to Africa to meet Churchill, the first time a US president flew.The author uses hundreds of photos, documents, letters, memoirs and memorabilia to tell Leslie's story. It is a remarkable view of the early days of transoceanic aviation.

An account of Pan Ams Nisei stewardess program (1955&–1972), through which the airline hired Japanese American (and later other Asian and Asian American) stewardesses, ostensibly for their Asian-language skills.

OA tribute to the legacy of one of the world's great airlines and the men and women who for six decades were the soul of the company. Baldwin and Kriendler have created a compelling book which captures much of the joy, adventure and spirit which was Pan Am.ONEdward S. Trippe, Chairman, Pan Am Historical Foundation.

From the award-winning author of American Canopy, a dazzling account of the world’s longest road, the Pan-American Highway, and the epic quest to link North and South America, a dramatic story of commerce, technology, politics, and the divergent fates of the Americas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Pan-American Highway, monument to a century’s worth of diplomacy and investment, education and engineering, scandal and sweat, is the longest road in the world, passable everywhere save the mythic Darien Gap that straddles Panama and Colombia. The highway’s history, however, has long remained a mystery, a story scattered among government archives, private papers, and fading memories. In contrast to the Panama Canal and its vast literature, the Pan-American Highway—the United States’ other great twentieth-century hemispheric infrastructure project—has become an orphan of the past, effectively erased from the story of the “American Century.” The Longest Line on the Map uncovers this incredible tale for the first time and weaves it into a tapestry that fascinates, informs, and delights. Rutkow’s narrative forces the reader to take seriously the question: Why couldn’t the Americas have become a single region that “is” and not two near irreconcilable halves that “are”? Whether you’re fascinated by the history of the Americas, or you’ve dreamed of driving around the globe, or you simply love world records and the stories behind them, The Longest Line on the Map is a riveting narrative, a lost epic of hemispheric scale.

In 1966, Pan American Airways reached the zenith of its wealth & influence. Its pilots were lords of the sky; Skygods. Under aviation pioneer Juan Trippe's autocratic control, Pan Am bought jet airliners before its competitors & made record profits. It was the first U.S. airline to order the supersonic transport; it accepted reservations for the first service to the Moon. Then Pan American Airways fell to earth. In Skygods, Robert Gandt, a Pan Am pilot for 26 years, gives an inside account of the great airline's unprecedented demise. He interviewed hundreds of former Pan Am airmen & executives. He reveals how Pan Am's captains, in Navy-style uniforms, once commanded their ships like petty tyrants. They were the best & brightest in airline industry, but there were disturbing stories of captains who allowed stewardesses to land their aircraft, flew them at the wrong altitude & in the wrong direction & who tragically disappeared, often without a trace. All was not well either in the Pan Am Building, the massive landmark in New York where a succession of impulsive & short-sighted CEOs combined to preside over the demise of a great airline. Pan An bought a domestic airline it did not need; bought aircraft it did not need & operated half-empty planes on low-density routes. It sold the entire Pacific network for a bargain price & sold precious assets to meet its payrolls. And then came the Lockerbie tragedy. This is a fascinating account of what can go wrong with a pillar of strength of the U.S. industry, when its leaders lose their sense of direction & when their star employees-the Skygods-discover that they are mere mortals.

Pan Am at War chronicles the airline?s historic role in advancing aviation and serving America?s national interest before and during World War II. From its inception, Pan American Airways operated as the ?wings of democracy,? spanning six continents and placing the country at the leading edge of international aviation. At the same time, it was clandestinely helping to fight America?s wars. Utilizing government documents, declassified Freedom of Information Act material, and company documents, the authors have uncovered stories of Pan Am?s stunning role as an instrument of American might: The airline?s role in building air bases in Latin America and countering Axis interests that threatened the Panama Canal Creating transatlantic and trans-Africa supply lines for sending Lend-Lease equipment to Britain Cooperation with Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese nationalist government to pioneer the dangerous ?Hump? route over the Himalayas The dangerous seventeen-thousand-mile journey that took President Roosevelt to the high-stakes Casablanca Conference with Winston Churchill The daring flight that delivered uranium for the atomic bomb. Filled with larger-than-life characters, and revelations of the vision and technology it took to dominate the skies, Pan Am at War provides a gripping unknown history of the American Century.