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Romancing the Clipper: America's Technological Coming of Age in Children's Literature - Page 1

China Clipper:  the name alone conjures up intrigue, romance, exotic adventure.  In 1935 the China Clipper four-engined flying boat flew its first transpacific flight.  Since it was the only airplane capable of flying the oceans with a payload, foreign spies sought to obtain plans for the various Sikorsky, Martin, and Boeing clipper designs.  Within ten years of Lindbergh’s 1927 Atlantic solo, clippers already flew regular service to China.  That Lindbergh was a consultant for Pan American Airways’ clippers was no secret.  In 1939 clippers also bridged the Atlantic.  While the United States stood between the Depression and World War II, the clipper opened a window to the rest of the world and to the nation.  None of the flying boats used from the 1930s to mid-1940s survive, yet clippermania enjoys a revival.

When Hallmark Cards designed its new line of international stationery, the tablet covers depicted a clipper rather than a modern jumbo jet.  When Harrison ford as Indiana Jones in the “Raiders” series had to catch a fast plane across the Atlantic, he caught a Hollywood clipper.  When the Manley Hodgson “Ghurka collection” of upscale leather luggage recently previewed, the China Clipper was featured on the logo created by popular poster artist Monty Dulack.  As it did a half century ago, the clipper serves as a romantic icon in the face of a perceived loss of national prestige, a need to face new international realities, and a belief that free enterprise technology can accomplish what governments cannot.  As the United States again grapples with whether or not it is number one, with the economic power of Japan and Germany, and with Golden Arches and Pepsi diplomacy, the clipper marks where imagination, popular culture, power, and technology all meet.

The China Clipper first appeared when a public coming out of the great depression could accept a symbol of wealth if it produced a dream of a better future, adventure, or the exotic.  The clipper fulfilled all these needs; consequently, children in the 1930s and 1040s found it hard not to bum into images of the clipper seaplanes.  Even abroad, foreigners may not have known the U.S. embassy location, the President’s name, Mickey Mouse, or Coca-Cola yet, but they did know the clipper that carried the flag.  It became the symbol of the United States breaking out of its isolationism and spreading capitalism.  The giant flying boat not only pioneered an aerial passage to China but also opened a passage from prewar to postwar concerns and values for the nation’s youth.  Overall, the plane represented a rite of passage for the entire nation, particularly for youth.

Clipper images abounded at the time.  Its most famous pilot, Edwin Musick, made the cover of Time twice.  The plane was featured at least three times on the cover of The Literary Digest, and twice on the cover of Life.  MovieTone news, radio, and newspapers headlined its accomplishments.  “Clipper” became a popular name for horses in children’s stories, for various products directed at children, and for the youthful helper of Sky King in early television’s Sky King.  Clippers were mentioned in many of the big movies of the time ranging from comedies such as The Philadelphia Story, to the darker Casablanca whose heroine departed to meet the clipper at Lisbon, to musicals such as Flying Down to Rio which brought Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers together for the first time.
 
Above all, clippers carried the flag.  Pan American Airways became a quasi-branch of the U.S. State Department.  The clipper stood for the best that free enterprise could offer—with the familiar winged globe symbol on the fuselage of each clipper an updated sign of manifest destiny for the world.  As Marylin Bender and Selig Altschul said with the title of their book, the clipper was The Chosen Instrument.

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