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[[images: top left corner image of map between US & England with leaving and arrival times]] 

[Left column]
THURSDAY, JULY 6, 1939
THE FREMONT GAZETTE

[TITLE] W.J. Eck Is First Clipper Passenter [/Title]
When the Dixie Clipper took off from Long Island for points in far distant Europe last Wednesday, the Number One passenger was W.J. Eck.  Mr. Eck is a brother of Mrs. E. E. Edwards of Cedar and within the past three years the Gazette has carried several accounts of the travels of Mr. Eck. The last one appeared under the heading, "To the Arctic and the Baltic."

In the June 28 Ottumwa Courier, we read:
"For the first paying passengers today the fare was $373 one way or $675 for the round trip. Some of them had applied for passage as much as eight years ago, when this June day was no more than a glimmering hope.
"Chosen stricty on a seniority basis, the No. 1 passenger was W.J. Eck, of Washington, D.C., assistant to the vice president of the Southern railway. He applied in 1931, and had headed the list since the humorist Will Rogers, who was first, was killed in 1935.
"More than 600 persons have applied for reservations this summer, while more than 300 sought places on the first place."

[Second column] 
NEW YORK
HERALD TRIBUNE,
THURSDAY, JUNE 29
[Title] Dixie Clipper Is 3d in Fleet of 6 Ocean Planes [/Title]
[Sub-title] 2 Others in Atlantic Service, 2 in Pacific, and Last is UndergoingTests at Plant [/sub-title]
The Dixie Clipper, which took off from Port Washington, L. I., yesterday on the first commercial passenger flight of an airplane to Europe, is the third of six forty-one-ton flying boats designed and built specially for the trans-oceanic routes of Pan American Airways.  Two of these ships, the Yankee and Atlantic Clippers, are now in the trans-Atlantic service, while two others, as yet unnamed, are doing duty in the Pacific Service.  The last of the fleet is now undergoing tests at the Boeing plant and will soon be delivered to Pan American.
Pan American plans to operate two flights weekly to Europe from Port Washington, one over . the southern route followed by the Dixie Clipper, carrying passengers and mail, and one over the northern route, which will carry only mail until the company receives a permit from the Civil Aeronautics Authority to carry passengers on that route.  Planes flying the southern route will leave 1 p.m. Wednesdays, and those flying north will leave Saturdays at 8:30 a.m.
These planes, the largest commercial or military aircraft in the world, are technically known as Boeing 314 flying boats.  The first was completed at the Boeing Aircraft Company plant in Seattle in May, 1938.  After exhaustive flight and mechanical tests and minor structural changes, the plane was turned over to Pan American.  It received the Civil Aeronautics Authority approved type certificate.

[[Third column, first line cut off]]
27 1/2 feet in overall height, and have a wing span of 152 feet, nearly half the length of a city block.  They have eighteen separate rooms, not counting the four engine rooms, which are reached by companion-ways through the wings leading to the engine nacelles.
The ships weigh 82,500 pounds fully loaded, and can accommodate seventy-four passengers on short hops and forty on overnight flights where the daytime accommodations are transformed into sleeping quarters, in addition to regular crews of eleven. The ships have a cargo capacity of more than 10,000 pounds of mail and express. On long flights these capacities are reduced by the necessity of carrying a large quantity of gasoline.
Power for the giant boats is supplied by four Wright Cyclone twin-row radial 1,500 horsepower, air-cooled engines, which with the planes' gasoline capacity of 4,200 gallons, give the ships a maximum cruising range of 4,275 miles and a top speed of 190 miles an hour.
These engines, equipped with fourteen-foot Hamilton-Standard three-bladed automatic pitch adjusting propellers, have sufficient reserve power to enable the planes to cruise with only two operating. They were manufactured by the Wright Aeronautical Corporation, a division of the Curtiss Wright Corporation, which made the famous NC flying boats for the United States Navy, one of which, the NC-4, made the first trans-Atlantic flight in 1919. Wright engines were also used by Col. Charles A. Lindbergh in his Spirit of St. Louis, in Howard Hughes' twin-motored Lockheed, which circled the world in three days and nineteen hours, and in the nine-year-old Curtiss Robin crate which carried Douglas Corrigan to Ireland instead of California.
Passengers board the ship by a gangplank that leads to the broad upper surface of one of the hydrostabilizers, which is actually a 1,500 gallon fuel reservoir but serves for passengers as a loading deck. The passenger deck is gained by a side door which opens on three steps descending to the dining salon and recreation center, the largest room in the ship except for the control room on the upper deck.
The salon has a gay color scheme, with rich terra cotta carpeting and walls of beige.  Double windows on either side have modern Venetian-type blinds, as do the windows of all other passenger compartments in the ship.  There are five dining tables of polished black walnut and upholstered armchairs for the fourteen persons who may dine in the room at one time.
Arched doorways at either end of the central lounge lead to passenger compartments fore and aft.  There are five standard compartments, each with accommodations for ten persons, a four-passenger compartment and a "bridal suite" which occupies the aft-most section of the deck.  Each compartment has soundproof walls and each berth is equipped with an outside window, individual ventilator, reading light, steward's call button, clothes rack and hangers. 

[Furthest right hand side - black and white image of a white male in a suit, with headphones on, twisting a knob on the ceiling. Caption: "The Clipper's Radio Officer can take bearings on any surface station."]
[Directly underneath the above picture is a black and white photo of plane propellers (x2) and a person in uniform cleaning the propeller]