HAWAII CLIPPER: Pan Am Clipper---Hijacked!---by Japanese Navy Officers, 1938

*hawaiiclipper.com*	Site of Fix on the Rising Sun and of the ultimate MIA's of Pan Am's trans-Pacific flying boat, Hawaii Clipper---victims of the still-undisclosed 1938 hijacking, by renegade officers of the Japanese Navy
HOME PAGE HI-JACK PAGE SOURCE PAGE PAGE CONTENTS The Hi-jacking > Chart < The Hi-jacking Notes The "Katz Memo" Memo Richter Credit Notes (on Katz) Engines - SPECIAL INTEREST Hi-jack Sequence Katz's "Abstract" - [BACK] [TOP] [NEXT] - - - - - - - - - - - [BACK] [TOP] [NEXT] - - - - - - - - - - [BACK] [TOP] [NEXT] - - - - - - - - - - - [BACK] [TOP] [NEXT] - --------------> Katz's "Abstract" ---------------> - [BACK] [TOP] [NEXT] - - - - - - - [BACK] [TOP] [NEXT] - - - - - - - - - - - [BACK] [TOP] [NEXT] - - - - - [BACK] [TOP] [NEXT]	-*THE HI-JACKING: AN OVERVIEW FROM FIX ON THE RISING SUN-* The computer-generated chart provides an overview of the hi-jacking, as it does in the book, Fix on the Rising Sun. In brief, the sequence of significant events is, as follows: At 6:09am, after a delayed, and unusually long, take-off at Guam, the Clipper headed for Cavite on the direct route, but at a lower speed than usual. An hour later, the two hi-jackers appeared, only to find the Clipper too far off schedule to match their critical time-table. To salvage their plans, they had to rely on the Clipper's navigator, to plot a new route to fit a revised time-table (a decision that would allow the word to get out). At 10:00am, on a new schedule, the Clipper left the route to Cavite and turned to the southwest, still "in sync" with the original time-table, but exactly one half-hour behind. At 12:00pm, at the first of her five last positions, she turned east-southeast, en route to Ulithi Atoll, a protectorate of Japan. Panay relieved Sumay of radio communication duties and Makati began taking RDF bearings, trusted to confirm the Clipper courses. At 2:11pm, after flying easterly courses toward Ulithi Atoll, while reporting westerly courses toward Cavite, the hi-jackers ended all radio communications and prepared to land at Ulithi, to take on a Japanese flight crew, before proceeding on to Truk Atoll. The key to the hi-jacking was a weakness in PAA's standard RDF monitor sequence: Only the nearest RDF station was required to take scheduled bearings on a Clipper, and so, because each false position, on the reported course to Cavite, was plotted to lie on the same Makati RDF bearing as its "mirrored" true position, en route to Ulithi, Makati's RDF, alone, could not distinguish between false and true, of paired positions. The key to getting the word out was the altering of position data, creating "pointers" to Palau, Truk and Saipan, which defined a navigational "fix" on the Japanese hi-jackers. Davis set up single-digit substitutions for a few key positions, then quietly passed them on to McCarty, who altered the hi-jacker-approved positions, as he transmitted them. Such a plan would have been difficult to devise, without any advance preparation, but reports indicate that the Clipper crews had considered the possibility of a hi-jacking. Of course, there is far more to this hi-jacking than the overview provides, all of it well covered in the book, Fix on the Rising Sun, and supported with a full series of charts, such as the overview chart, above. Many obvious questions are addressed, head on, with some surprising and not-so-obvious answers, such as the question, "Why would Japanese hi-jackers permit McCarty, the Pan American Flight Radio Officer, to send radio-telegraph messages during, what had to be (to succeed) a very secret mission?" The answer is that the hi-jackers didn't just permit McCarty to send messages. They had to have insisted upon it: McCarty, like all radio-telegraph operators, had his own personal "swing," or style, when sending by telegraph key. Had anyone but McCarty transmitted from the Clipper, then Edouard Fernandez, an experienced radio operator at PAA's Panay station, would have known, from the unfamiliar "swing," that someone had replaced McCarty. Having McCarty at the key was a probably a calculated risk, but replacing him would, most certainly, have exposed the hi-jacking and placed even the hi-jackers in danger. If the hi-jacking had been exposed, and if the hi-jackers had then failed to destroy Hawaii Clipper, in flight, there is good reason to believe that an armed Japanese H6K flying boat, airborne nearby, was to shoot it down with gunfire. But the hi-jacking did succeed, and, although cloaked in silence, it was not forgotten: THE "KATZ MEMO" The "Katz Memo," an internal Pan American memo, is sufficiently self-explanatory that it needs little introduction. Although the author of Fix on the Rising Sun was aware of its existence, during the long research period, it was never examined for possible use in the book, as it was not "contemporary" evidence. That is, it was not evidence dating to the period that extended from early 1937, through the hi-jacking and beyond, to 1939. However, because recent disinformation activities have denigrated the "contemporary" evidence, the "Katz Memo" is introduced, here, for its undeniably corroborative value. The reproduction is a scan of a copy, prepared by the Richter Library, June 25, 2001. Reproduction is, by permission, from the Pan American Word Airways, Inc. Collection, Archives and Special Collections, University of Miami, and, under copyright law, no other reproduction or dissemination of these materials is allowed without the consent of the University of Miami. NOTES: ON THE "KATZ MEMO" 1. Mr. Katz had not been previously aware of the hi-jacking. Although it is not known how long he had been employed by Pan American, it is apparent that this was a story that was not bandied about, indiscriminately, among senior officials, at Pan American. 2. Mr. Katz (or Mr. Trippe) had the year wrong. It should be "in 1938," not "in 1937." 3. The "Navy Department," to which Mr. Katz referred, was, certainly, the person of Admiral John Henry Towers, one of the Navy's first aviators (1911), who had served as Admiral Nimitz's deputy during the war, then retired to Pan American after a brief tour of duty (succeeding Nimitz) as CINCPAC (Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet). Admiral Towers, who was poorly identified, perhaps deliberately, in Richard Daley's 1980 book about Pan American, had accompanied Nimitz to Japan for the surrender ceremony. It was there that a few senior American officers were reportedly privileged to inspect Hawaii Clipper, painted as a Japanese flying boat. One of these American officers, MacArthur's chief of staff, Lt. General Dick Sutherland, informed the widow of one of the passengers, after the war, that "the engines of Hawaii Clipper" had been recovered in Japan. [Just why he did this is a most interesting sidelight, and is covered in the book, Fix on the Rising Sun.] Towers, on the other hand, having all the files of Pan American within his grasp, was able to go farther. He was able to compare serial numbers, recorded from the magnetos of Hawaii Clipper's engines, with an unusual number, cast into the magnetos of an almost identical Japanese engine. One number, from one of the Clipper's engines, matched the cast number on the Japanese engines, as Towers is reported to have learned---and to have informed PAA president Trippe. 4. The "Japanese fighter aircraft," to which Mr. Katz referred, was the famous Rei-sen fighter, the Zero, or Zeke, as we knew it, which used the curiously numbered engines. One might imagine that this connection could be checked out today, but there isn't one A6M2 engine left, wrecked, rotted or restored, whose magneto hasn't been removed. 5. The comment, that such a "skyjacking" (and its association with the kick-ass Zero) "would be an event which influenced the course of World War II," was---perceptive.

hawaiiclipper.com

Site of Fix on the Rising Sun and of the ultimate MIA's of Pan Am's trans-Pacific flying boat, Hawaii
Clipper---victims of the still-undisclosed 1938 hijacking, by renegade officers of the Japanese Navy

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Notes (on Katz)
Engines
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SPECIAL INTEREST
Hi-jack Sequence
Katz's "Abstract"
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-THE HI-JACKING: AN OVERVIEW FROM FIX ON THE RISING SUN-

The computer-generated chart provides an overview of the hi-jacking, as it does in the book, Fix on the Rising Sun. In brief, the sequence of significant events is, as follows:

At 6:09am, after a delayed, and unusually long, take-off at Guam, the Clipper headed for Cavite on the direct route, but at a lower speed than usual. An hour later, the two hi-jackers appeared, only to find the Clipper too far off schedule to match their critical time-table. To salvage their plans, they had to rely on the Clipper's navigator, to plot a new route to fit a revised time-table (a decision that would allow the word to get out). At 10:00am, on a new schedule, the Clipper left the route to Cavite and turned to the southwest, still "in sync" with the original time-table, but exactly one half-hour behind. At 12:00pm, at the first of her five last positions, she turned east-southeast, en route to Ulithi Atoll, a protectorate of Japan. Panay relieved Sumay of radio communication duties and Makati began taking RDF bearings, trusted to confirm the Clipper courses. At 2:11pm, after flying easterly courses toward Ulithi Atoll, while reporting westerly courses toward Cavite, the hi-jackers ended all radio communications and prepared to land at Ulithi, to take on a Japanese flight crew, before proceeding on to Truk Atoll.

The key to the hi-jacking was a weakness in PAA's standard RDF monitor sequence: Only the nearest RDF station was required to take scheduled bearings on a Clipper, and so, because each false position, on the reported course to Cavite, was plotted to lie on the same Makati RDF bearing as its "mirrored" true position, en route to Ulithi, Makati's RDF, alone, could not distinguish between false and true, of paired positions. The key to getting the word out was the altering of position data, creating "pointers" to Palau, Truk and Saipan, which defined a navigational "fix" on the Japanese hi-jackers. Davis set up single-digit substitutions for a few key positions, then quietly passed them on to McCarty, who altered the hi-jacker-approved positions, as he transmitted them. Such a plan would have been difficult to devise, without any advance preparation, but reports indicate that the Clipper crews had considered the possibility of a hi-jacking.

Of course, there is far more to this hi-jacking than the overview provides, all of it well covered in the book, Fix on the Rising Sun, and supported with a full series of charts, such as the overview chart, above. Many obvious questions are addressed, head on, with some surprising and not-so-obvious answers, such as the question, "Why would Japanese hi-jackers permit McCarty, the Pan American Flight Radio Officer, to send radio-telegraph messages during, what had to be (to succeed) a very secret mission?"

The answer is that the hi-jackers didn't just permit McCarty to send messages. They had to have insisted upon it: McCarty, like all radio-telegraph operators, had his own personal "swing," or style, when sending by telegraph key. Had anyone but McCarty transmitted from the Clipper, then Edouard Fernandez, an experienced radio operator at PAA's Panay station, would have known, from the unfamiliar "swing," that someone had replaced McCarty. Having McCarty at the key was a probably a calculated risk, but replacing him would, most certainly, have exposed the hi-jacking and placed even the hi-jackers in danger. If the hi-jacking had been exposed, and if the hi-jackers had then failed to destroy Hawaii Clipper, in flight, there is good reason to believe that an armed Japanese H6K flying boat, airborne nearby, was to shoot it down with gunfire. But the hi-jacking did succeed, and, although cloaked in silence, it was not forgotten:

THE "KATZ MEMO"

The "Katz Memo," an internal Pan American memo, is sufficiently self-explanatory that it needs little introduction. Although the author of Fix on the Rising Sun was aware of its existence, during the long research period, it was never examined for possible use in the book, as it was not "contemporary" evidence. That is, it was not evidence dating to the period that extended from early 1937, through the hi-jacking and beyond, to 1939. However, because recent disinformation activities have denigrated the "contemporary" evidence, the "Katz Memo" is introduced, here, for its undeniably corroborative value. The reproduction is a scan of a copy, prepared by the Richter Library, June 25, 2001.

Reproduction is, by permission, from the Pan American Word Airways, Inc. Collection, Archives and Special Collections, University of Miami,
and, under copyright law, no other reproduction or dissemination of these materials is allowed without the consent of the University of Miami.

NOTES: ON THE "KATZ MEMO"

1. Mr. Katz had not been previously aware of the hi-jacking. Although it is not known how long he had been employed by Pan American, it is apparent that this was a story that was not bandied about, indiscriminately, among senior officials, at Pan American.

2. Mr. Katz (or Mr. Trippe) had the year wrong. It should be "in 1938," not "in 1937."

3. The "Navy Department," to which Mr. Katz referred, was, certainly, the person of Admiral John Henry Towers, one of the Navy's first aviators (1911), who had served as Admiral Nimitz's deputy during the war, then retired to Pan American after a brief tour of duty (succeeding Nimitz) as CINCPAC (Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet). Admiral Towers, who was poorly identified, perhaps deliberately, in Richard Daley's 1980 book about Pan American, had accompanied Nimitz to Japan for the surrender ceremony. It was there that a few senior American officers were reportedly privileged to inspect Hawaii Clipper, painted as a Japanese flying boat. One of these American officers, MacArthur's chief of staff, Lt. General Dick Sutherland, informed the widow of one of the passengers, after the war, that "the engines of Hawaii Clipper" had been recovered in Japan. [Just why he did this is a most interesting sidelight, and is covered in the book, Fix on the Rising Sun.] Towers, on the other hand, having all the files of Pan American within his grasp, was able to go farther. He was able to compare serial numbers, recorded from the magnetos of Hawaii Clipper's engines, with an unusual number, cast into the magnetos of an almost identical Japanese engine. One number, from one of the Clipper's engines, matched the cast number on the Japanese engines, as Towers is reported to have learned---and to have informed PAA president Trippe.

4. The "Japanese fighter aircraft," to which Mr. Katz referred, was the famous Rei-sen fighter, the Zero, or Zeke, as we knew it, which used the curiously numbered engines. One might imagine that this connection could be checked out today, but there isn't one A6M2 engine left, wrecked, rotted or restored, whose magneto hasn't been removed.

5. The comment, that such a "skyjacking" (and its association with the kick-ass Zero) "would be an event which influenced the course of World War II," was---perceptive.