REMEMBERING

CLIPPER ENDEAVOR

Photo: Pan Am Historical Foundation / John Johnson Collection.

It was a bright and sunny Good Friday in San Juan Puerto Rico on April 11, 1952. At the city’s Isla Grande Airport, Pan American World Airways’ Clipper Endeavor, a DC-4 with a total of 20,835 hours flown to date, stood ready for its next flight, a 1,600 mile flight to New York’s Idlewild (now JFK) Airport. The seven-year-old aircraft would never add another flight hour to its record.

On Wednesday, October 23, at 9pm ET, the Discovery Channel presents the newest episode of “Expedition Unknown” (Season 14, Episode 3). It is also streaming on MAX and Discovery Plus. The show has taken viewers all over the world on missions of discovery and exploration. https://www.discovery.com/shows/expedition-unknown/episodes/search-for-pan-ams-clipper

This episode follows host Josh Gates and Air-Sea Heritage Foundation’s Russ Mathews in their underwater hunt for Pan Am’s long lost Clipper Endeavor in the waters off San Juan, Puerto Rico. Russ has been intimately engaged in all sorts of exploration for ships and planes lost to time below the ocean’s surface. Most notable might be his ongoing hunt (2019-2024) for Pan American Airways’ Samoan Clipper, lost in a fiery crash off Pago Pago in American Samoa in January, 1938*

At 12:11 pm, its four engines roaring at take-off power, N88899 left the runway and headed north. Onboard were 64 passengers and five crew, under the command of veteran Capt. John C. Burn. Capt. Burn was no stranger to overwater flights, having flown for Pan Am for over ten years. In fact, he was First Officer onboard the Yankee Clipper when the flying boat arrived in Lisbon on February 22, 1943. That proved to be Yankee Clipper’s final flight, as it crashed into the Tagus River during its landing approach. Burn was one of the few survivors.

John Burn might well have had flashbacks to that fateful day when almost immediately after takeoff, Clipper Endeavor’s #3 engine gave a loud shudder and lost power. Burn turned the plane back towards Isla Grande for an emergency landing when the #4 engine quit as well. Now the plane, still at a low altitude, had lost both engines on the right wing. Clipper Endeavor was becoming unflyable. Capt.Burn put out an emergency distress call, and prepared to ditch.

The conditions below were not optimal for a water landing. What had been a gentle breeze had freshened to a 15-knot wind, which whipped up the sea surface. When the DC-4 came down on the water, the tail section broke off, and plane began to sink.

Onboard the plane, the cabin crew tried to calm the terrified 64 passengers. Although the Clipper was equipped with life rafts and personal floatation for all aboard, most of the passengers remained glued to their seats, more afraid of facing the reality of their situation than the momentary mirage of safety offered by remaining in the plane’s cabin. It would prove a fatal mistake for 52 of them.

On shore, eleven miles to the south, the US Coast Guard had swung into action within six minutes of Capt. Burn’s distress call. A Consolidated PBY was launched right away, with another pulled out of maintenance soon after, to head out to the disaster. The buoy tender “Bramble” was also quickly on its way.

Despite the quick action by Capt. Burn and his crew to launch life rafts, and do what they could to get the passengers into their life vests, most refused to leave the rapidly sinking airplane, and went down with it. Of the 69 souls onboard, only 17 survived.

The disaster had long-lasting repercussions. Rules for commercial flights over water were put in place to make sure that in future, passengers would receive definitive safety instructions from flight crews so that there would be minimal confusion in case of emergencies such as befell the Endeavor. And in San Juan, for years afterward, there were tales told about a terrible plane crash when all the survivors were eaten by sharks.

*Russ Matthews has played a pivotal role in the ongoing search for the Samoan Clipper as the President and Co-founder of the Air/Sea Heritage Foundation. Matthews led the 2019 expedition, and was involved in the most recent exploration in September 2024 of the waters of American Samoa, to locate, identify, and document the wreckage of the Pan American Airways Sikorsky S-42B flying boat that crashed in 1938 near Pago Pago with Ed Musick piloting. Read more about the search for the Samoan Clipper