For a few years, this pioneering mail service captured the public imagination like the earlier Pony Express, and offered fast luxury travel like the later Concorde.

In 1927, wetlands on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay were filled to form an airport with an east–west runway, three hangars, an administration building, and a yacht harbor.

[3] Pilot of the initial airmail flight, Ed Musick, died two years later when Sikorsky S-42 Samoan Clipper exploded over Samoa in January, 1938.

Pacific Clipper was in Auckland, New Zealand at the time of the attack, and its crew opted to return to the United States westbound rather than retrace its normal route.

Clippers flew between California and Hawaii and to Australia via Canton Island, Fiji, Nouméa, and New Zealand while the Western Pacific was controlled by Japan.

[2] Philippine Clipper crashed southwest of Ukiah, California, while carrying Pacific Fleet Submarine Force commander Robert English and his senior staff from Pearl Harbor to San Francisco during a January 1943 storm.

[7] Honolulu Clipper, the first of twelve Boeing 314s built, was still flying for the Navy in November 1945 when it successfully landed 650 miles east of Oahu after losing power in two engines.