A history of the boats, their builders and operators, with an emphasis on the most famous Pan American's Pacific flyers.

When the China Clipper shattered aviation records on its maiden six-day flight from California to the Orient in 1935, the flying boat became an instant celebrity. This lively history by Robert Gandt traces the development of the great flying boats as both a triumph of technology and a stirring human drama. He examines the political, military, and economic forces that drove its development and explains the aeronautical advances that made the aircraft possible. To fully document the story he includes interviews with flying boat pioneers and a dynamic collection of photographs, charts, and cutaway illustrations.

recaptures the history of flying boats with detail, data and accurracy. Gandt's insight is remarkable on the mover and shakers of this era, how the history unfolded, the politics and why. You learn who were the visionaries and who were the luddites. How the barriers to aviation, flight and design were overcome. And you learn about airplanes that you didn't know existed (such as the Latecoere 631) and what happened to them. This book is not solely about the Martin M-130, the China Cliiper, but all significant aircraft of that era, their designers and why and how they were designed. It is another Gandt book you can't put down and while Gandt paints a vivid picture, the book is well illustrated (including the mammoth Latecoere 631). One thing I did figure out was the actual China Clipper a Martin M-130 must have been so named a model M-130 for its wingspan of 130 feet as a later model an M-156 (called the Russian Clipper) had a wingspan of 156 feet.
its future was eclipsed when the German-built Condor made it over the Atlantic flying from Berlin, Germany to the USA with fuel to spare and made a hard surface landing.