PAN AM’S WAR
The history of Pan American World Airways’ involvement in the Vietnam War began decades before the last Boeing Jumbo 747 departed Saigon’s Tan Son Nhut airport on April 24, 1975, as the city was about to fall to communist forces. It began in the 1930s during the events leading to World War II.
After several meetings with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Juan Trippe, Pan Am’s president, allowed the company’s aircraft and operations to become America’s outreach to the world, “showing the flag” to establish a global presence that countered Axis aggressions. During World War II, New York-based Pan Am and other airlines provided major support to the war effort, especially at the outset when the government’s capability was limited. Besides operating regular passenger service, Pan Am turned its fleet of giant Clipper flying boats over to the government for high-value military and civilian passengers. Transports carried critical military equipment and supplied outposts. The airline touted itself as the government’s “chosen instrument” and “the second line of defense.”
With the end of World War II, the government began selling surplus aircraft believing planes in such vast numbers were no longer needed. Scrapyards were filled with discarded military equipment. Suddenly, on June 24, 1948, the need for aircraft changed dramatically when the Soviets imposed a blockade of the road, rail and canal routes into the Western Allies’ sectors of Berlin. The only option was to supply the inhabitants with life-sustaining food and coal by air. From June 24 until the blockade was lifted on Sept. 30, 1949, Allied planes—including those of Pan Am and other commercial carriers—flew 278,228 flights into blockaded Berlin, losing 25 aircraft and 101 lives from accidents during the Berlin Airlift.
When the Korean War erupted nine months after the end of the Berlin Blockade, President Harry S. Truman’s administration recognized that a formal pact had to be secured to employ civilian
