Pan American Good Will Flight

History & service

The mission of the Pan American Good Will Flight of 1926-1927 was to take messages of friendship from the United States to the governments and people of Central and South America, promote U.S. commercial aviation and forge aerial navigation routes through the Americas.

The Air Corps' leadership selected the 10 Pan American flyers from a pool of volunteers. Each man had to be a skilled pilot and an expert mechanic because there were very few airfields or repair facilities along the route. The Pan American aircrews chose as their motto, "No Work, No Ride."

The Pan American flyers flew Loening OA-1A amphibians, which had features of both a landplane and seaplane by combining the fuselage and hull into a single structure. To allow the propeller to clear the hull, their specially modified Liberty engines were mounted upside down. The OA-1A had a wood interior structure with an aluminum-covered fuselage and fabric-covered wings.

Between 1924 and 1926, the Army ordered 45 OA-1s primarily for use in the Hawaiian and Philippine Islands and regions with numerous lakes and large rivers. The San Francisco was the only aircraft to complete the journey without an interruption from mechanical breakdown.

Before the Pan American flight, several Air Corps officers traveled ahead to pre-position 50,000 gallons of aviation fuel and 5,000 gallons of oil along the route. They also coordinated official good will events in each country.

On Dec. 21, 1926, the five Pan American aircraft took off from Kelly Field, Texas, to begin their journey. The Good Will Flight progressed relatively slowly. In each country, the flyers stayed for a few days to attend ceremonies in their honor. Although there were instances where the local populations did not greet them warmly, their reception by officials in each country was usually enthusiastic.

After a ceremony in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the flyers left for an overnight stay at a flying field in nearby Palomar. As the aircraft prepared for landing, Lt. Benton went out on the wing to lower the landing gear by hand (the Detroit's landing gear had been damaged and could not be hand-cranked down by the pilot). To increase his freedom of movement, Benton chose not to wear a bulky parachute.

As the formation descended to 1,500 feet, the Detroit accidentally drifted into the New York. The aircraft locked together and spun out of control. Maj. Dargue and Lt. Whitehead parachuted to safety. Rather than use his own parachute, Capt. Woolsley chose to stay with the helpless Lt. Benton, and they both perished when the Detroit hit the ground.

The Pan American Flyers arrived at Bolling Field, Washington, D.C., on May 2, 1927, at the opening of the Pan American Air Commission Conference. President Calvin Coolidge, Cabinet members, diplomats from Central and Latin America, and a cheering crowd greeted them upon their return. For their achievement, President Coolidge awarded each Pan American flyer with citations for the Distinguished Flying Cross, which Congress had only recently created on July 2, 1926.

Details that tell the story

Conducted in 1926–1927 · Used five Loening amphibian aircraft · Visited countries across Latin America · Combined diplomacy, navigation, maintenance, and public demonstration

A new invention becomes a public world

Before airplanes became routine transport, public demonstrations helped establish what they could do. Exhibition flights, races, and crossings placed fragile machines before crowds, officials, and potential customers. The audience saw courage and spectacle. Behind the spectacle were less visible questions about reliable engines, controllable wings, suitable landing grounds, and how to recover when the weather changed.

Different configurations competed at the same time. Some designers placed the propeller behind the pilot; others put it at the front. Biplanes used bracing to make light structures sufficiently rigid. Monoplanes reduced some of that external framework but posed their own structural and handling problems. Balloons and dirigibles remained part of the same aviation world, offering capabilities that early airplanes could not simply replace.

The famous firsts matter, but so does the period immediately after them. Flight schools, licensed manufacture, military trials, mechanics, and spare parts carried an invention outward. An aircraft could influence aviation through the pilots trained on it or the designs adapted from it, even after its own performance became outdated. The machines in Washington and Dayton preserve different points along that process. Their differences show how quickly an experimental achievement became an international industry, and how many people had to turn a remarkable flight into a repeatable service.