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Though clippers were requisitioned for military use during the war because they were the only aircraft at first capable of hauling heavy loads across such vast distances, ads played down the military aspects of Pan Am’s role, stressing instead a support role or how important commercial aviation skills would be after the war. The advertising would have undoubtedly been quite different if the government had not placed restrictions on what Pan Am could tell about its involvement in the war effort. Pan Am and other airlines protested these restrictions when other sensitive industries were not subject to restrictions. If secret missions flown by clippers to “Destination X” and involvements had been more known, the quasi-military aspects would have been fertile advertising material.
Clipper product spinoffs abounded. The June, 1936, issue of Boy’s Life advertised the Stuart-Warner “Clipper” Bike Speedometer. This gauge came complete with a small clipper image painted on its face. A bike could really fly with one of these. Given similar advertising in the adult or family magazines at the time, young boys also aspired to eating the cereal (Kellogg’s Corn Flakes) eaten by clipper personnel. As the war progressed and more sacrifices were required on the home front, the Kellogg Company stressed more the “little guy,” the man who may not be a hero but gets the job done. Joe Wuller, chief of Pan Am’s clipper beaching crew at Miami, was featured in magazines such as Life and Better Homes & Gardens as “Nursemaid to a 20-Ton Clipper.” They also serve who beach and eat—corn flakes, that is.
Youth could also hope someday to wear the watch (a Gruen) worn by clipper crews. Such ads as this, that could raise the hopes of the young yet be directed at the adult consumer, were more prone to a different kind of hero model, usually captains on dangerous missions. The R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, for instance, ran a series of “They’ve Got What It Takes” full-page backcover ads in Life promoting Camels cigarettes. These employed comic book art and narrative format. One ad told the story of Capt. Joseph H. Hart, who flew his clipper twelve times across the Atlantic in 13 days, 15 hours, carrying vital war material. Another in successive frames told the story of Capt. Charles Sharkey, a pilot for Pan Am’s Chinese subsidiary airline. Sharkey flew his unarmed cargo plane through dangerous terrain with Japanese fighters always trying to intercept him. This ad appeared in October of 1944 long after the C.N.A.C., the Pan Am subsidiary, had been destroyed by the Japanese and some of its pilots absorbed into the Flying Tigers. Again, clippers and clipper crews experienced “time warps” in the literature of the time. Past time was not important; patriotism was.
Not all the magazine advertising and clipper presentation was directed at boys. Drawings of the clipper and updates on its most recent achievements were dutifully reported in Latrobe Carroll’s regular “In Step with the Times” section of The American Girl. In speaking to young girls, Carroll was amazing in his candor about the clipper. He gave it credit as a technological marvel, but warned his readers in the April, 1939, issue that if the clipper could so easily span the Pacific and the Atlantic, then the Atlantic could no longer serve as a barrier isolating us from events in Europe. Soon the planes of unfriendly powers might also reach the United States (34). Comforting thoughts for his young audience!
A series of ads for Woodbury Facial Soap presented wartime role models to young women and girls. Vera Dawes Covell appeared in Life as the only “lady flight-watcher in the U.S.A.” She controlled clipper landings and takeoffs at La Guardia. The ad stated, “She Keeps ‘Em Flying and Keeps Her Beauty ‘On the Beam’” (83). As she stood with clipper in background, the reader was reminded how women had to fill important positions vacated by men. More would be needed as the war went on. A Dubarry Beauty Preparations ad shows this clearly in the August 7, 1943, issue of Life. The ad stated that “Clipper Angel” Miss Yolanda Floripe served in what was “a man’s job before the war” (69). This passenger service representative supported the idea that a girl could be beautiful and skilled at the same time.
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