Guam - Disappearance of Pan Am Hawaii Clipper Flight 229, enroute Guam to Manila, 28 July 1938

[Richard]

Bumping this thread up. Was the disappearance of the Pan Am Hawaii Clipper an act of sabotage, a hi-jacking, or due to other factors?

 

[MelmothTheLost]

A potential reason for hi jacking the Hawaii Clipper would be to prevent the fortune in gold certificates being transported by Watson Choy to China to assist in China's war effort against the occupying Japanese forces which had invaded in 1937.

How would the Japanese authorities know that Choy was to be a passenger on the flight, and if they did how would they know he was carrying the certificates? Was this publicised before or after the flight went missing?

TBH this whole conspiracy thing seems far less likely than sudden mechanical failure of the plane or pilot error, especially as these were still the very early days of transoceanic flights.

 

[bettyboop]

Thank You, @Richard, for another fascinating thread! My personal opinion is a lightning strike, but the hijacking theory is intriguing. @MelmothTheLost , I believe it was previously posted upthread that it was published before the flight that Watson Choy was carrying the certificates. I'm off to double check. edit--I checked and it wasn't clear whether it was known before or after the flight about the certificates, perhaps @Richard could clear this up, and tell us what they think happened to the Hawaii Clipper!!

 

[MelmothTheLost]

Thank You, @Richard, for another fascinating thread! My personal opinion is a lightning strike, but the hijacking theory is intriguing. @MelmothTheLost , I believe it was previously posted upthread that it was published before the flight that Watson Choy was carrying the certificates. I'm off to double check. edit--I checked and it wasn't clear whether it was known before or after the flight about the certificates, perhaps @Richard could clear this up, and tell us what they think happened to the Hawaii Clipper!!

See, I don't understand how the Japanese could have "hijacked" the plane. When we talk of hijacking we mean a passenger taking over the plane and demanding its diversion to a different destination, but there were no passengers on it who were Japanese or likely to be an agent for them. All of the passengers were known, even prominent, individuals so one would have to posit a stowaway who emerged during the flight, which in turn would mean that additional weight would have to have gone unnoticed.

An alternative would be for Japanese fighter planes to intercept the clipper and force it down in Japanese controlled territory. Is there any evidence for similar events?

 

[jetsfanjohn]

Bumping this thread up. Was the disappearance of the Pan Am Hawaii Clipper an act of sabotage, a hi-jacking, or due to other factors?

Engine failure or crashed in bad weather would be my best guess.

 

[MelmothTheLost]

Could US gold certificate currency on board the aircraft have been a reason for the plane being hijacked by Japanese agents?


1935 US Gold Certificate Fifty Dollar Bill

How would this have worked in practice? The wording on the certificate reads "Redeemable in gold on demand at the United States Treasury or in gold or lawful money at any Federal Reserve Bank". Could these certificates have realistically been redeemed and the gold they represented obtained without them being returned and submitted to the US government or a very similar body?

 

[MelmothTheLost]

Engine failure or crashed in bad weather would be my best guess.

The radioed flight reports in post #7 above give no indication of bad weather during the flight so that seems unlikely. Since the plane had 4 engines, would failure of one or even two of them have been able to bring it down?

 

[Richard]

The radioed flight reports in post #7 above give no indication of bad weather during the flight so that seems unlikely. Since the plane had 4 engines, would failure of one or even two of them have been able to bring it down?

Standard procedure (then and now) in any type of emergency is to send out a "May Day" radio message with the following information: Plane call sign, Position, at Time, True Heading, True Air Speed, Altitude, type of aircraft, souls on board, nature of emergency.

After the Clipper's last routine message report, nothing further was heard from them.

While it is hard to draw conclusions from a lack of information, a number of different possible scenarios could explain the sudden radio silence and disappearance of the aircraft, crew, and passengers.

Electrical power for the radios is supplied by generators run by the engines. An engine fire or failure might cause loss of power to the radios. However, with four engines, there likely would have been duplicated electrical circuitry available.

Sudden structural damage like loss of a wing or tail might also account for immediate loss of communications. But no debris was found following search and rescue operations to support such a theory.

The Clipper was designed to take off and land on water. An engine failure or other flight emergency could have allowed time to perform an emergency water landing at sea. But again, no emergency message was sent and no trace of the plane or any wreckage was found.

The possibility of a hijacking can not be dismissed out of hand. Guam (point of take off) was and is a US territory, but it was completely surrounded by other islands occupied by the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy. Japanese Military headquarters was on Saipan just to the north of Guam.

Japan was not yet at war with America in 1938, but she was at war with China since 7 July 1937. The Kempeitai secret Military police certainly had informants and agents on Guam, Hawaii, and in the US.

Although there might not have been known or proven incidents of hijacking or sabotage by the Japanese military or agents prior to this, there were many sabotage incidents j7st before and after 7 December 1941.

 

[MelmothTheLost]

Although there might not have been known or proven incidents of hijacking or sabotage by the Japanese military or agents prior to this, there were many sabotage incidents j7st before and after 7 December 1941.

Thanks for a very comprehensive response, which I've clipped purely for brevity. I must admit that I don't know much about WWII in the Pacific and Japan's build up of aggression. I read that Japan was trying to exclude other countries' shipping from the South Seas territories they held in the late 1930s, so I suppose it's possible that they might also have harassed aircraft flying over them as well. Is it out of the question that a Japanese fighter could have shot the clipper down? It might account for something happening too quickly for a mayday to be sent.

 

[MelmothTheLost]

Thanks for a very comprehensive response, which I've clipped purely for brevity. I must admit that I don't know much about WWII in the Pacific and Japan's build up of aggression. I read that Japan was trying to exclude other countries' shipping from the South Seas territories they held in the late 1930s, so I suppose it's possible that they might also have harassed aircraft flying over them as well. Is it out of the question that a Japanese fighter could have shot the clipper down? It might account for something happening too quickly for a mayday to be sent.

Another thing which has been not exactly bothering me about this whole gold certificates thing but, well, I dunno but ....

Choy's business interests were in NY and NJ on the East Coast, so would it maybe make more sense, and be safer, to cross the Atlantic and then use one of the European air services to reach SE Asia? The UK, France and the Netherlands all had reliable air passenger services by then serving their colonies, so Choy could have entered Nationalist China via British India or French Indo-China. Instead he chose to cross the US and then take a much more risky transoceanic trip passing over potentially hostile Japanese-held territory.

The European services tended to fly overland and cross much smaller bodies of water such as the Med or the Bay of Bengal than the US's clipper services did.

 

[MelmothTheLost]

Another thing which has been not exactly bothering me about this whole gold certificates thing but, well, I dunno but ....

Choy's business interests were in NY and NJ on the East Coast, so would it maybe make more sense, and be safer, to cross the Atlantic and then use one of the European air services to reach SE Asia? The UK, France and the Netherlands all had reliable air passenger services by then serving their colonies, so Choy could have entered Nationalist China via British India or French Indo-China. Instead he chose to cross the US and then take a much more risky transoceanic trip passing over potentially hostile Japanese-held territory.

The European services tended to fly overland and cross much smaller bodies of water such as the Med or the Bay of Bengal than the US's clipper services did.

Back to the gold certificates: if the wording I quoted in an earlier post says what I think it says (but I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong), Choy acquired the certificates and then carried them half way around the world intending to hand them over to someone who would then have had to travel back to the US to actually cash them in. Does this make sense? Surely it would have been more effective for him to use cash to buy weapons or other supplies and have them shipped direct to the Chinese via the Atlantic and Indian Oceans - if indeed they could not simply have been bought in Asia?

 

[Richard]

By flying from the US mainland to China over the PanAm Pacific route, Watson Choy would have been almost entirely within US territorial jurisdiction and security. His flight route would have made stops at Hawaii, Wake, Guam, and Manila, Philippines - all US territories.

 

[MelmothTheLost]

By flying from the US mainland to China over the PanAm Pacific route, Watson Choy would have been almost entirely within US territorial jurisdiction and security. His flight route would have made stops at Hawaii, Wake, Guam, and Manila, Philippines - all US territories.

Indeed, but almost the entire route was either over long stretches of open ocean with very limited options for dealing with an emergency or over potentially hostile Japanese-held territory. Of course a seaplane can if necessary put down on water but there's a big difference between putting down in or close to a sheltered harbour and having to put down on the potentially choppy or rough open ocean 1,000 miles from help.

 

[Richard]

Indeed, but almost the entire route was either over long stretches of open ocean with very limited options for dealing with an emergency or over potentially hostile Japanese-held territory. Of course a seaplane can if necessary put down on water but there's a big difference between putting down in or close to a sheltered harbour and having to put down on the potentially choppy or rough open ocean 1,000 miles from help.

True. This is a factor to consider. If the Clipper had some sort of mechanical malfunction or emergency, whether seeking a close alternate site or going for an ocean landing, one of the first steps would have been to send an emergency message. If there was time for any type of landing, there would have been time to send a message.

If, however, this was an organized hijacking, the hijackers could have prevented any further communications from the plane. They would have had to rely on the pilots making a controlled landing at a suitable seaplane base. The Imperial Japanese Navy had a number of such bases, the closest one near the Clipper's route was at Palau. Other seaplane bases were located at Saipan, Truk, Ponape, and other islands further south.