“Upside down pang” they called Clyde Pangborn and with good reason. This leading American barnstormer in an age of aerial derring-do specialised in slow-rolling his aircraft onto its back and flying inverted, to the amazement and joy of the crowds. He also excelled in leaping from one machine to another – either from a ground vehicle to an aircraft or from one plane to another in flight. In 1931, accompanied by his copilot Hugh Herndon Jr, he became the first pilot to cross the Pacific non-stop.

Born in Bridgeport, Washington, on October 28, 1894, Clyde Edward Pangborn learned to fly with the United States Army during World War I. He was appointed flight instructor and did not see active service. But while teaching numerous young cadets to fly the Curtiss JN-4 Jenny biplane, he himself learned to remain upside down for extended periods. When the war ended, he found himself without a job like many military pilots. And like many of them he turned to stunt flying to make a living. The Gates Flying Circus of which he was a co-owner along with Ivan Gates, performed all over the US and overseas making Pangborn famous for switching planes in mid-air. Once, when stuntwoman Rosalie Gordon was doing a parachute jump, she became entangled in the landing gear of Pangborn’s plane, and he played a prominent part in rescuing her. Despite his many daredevil feats he never at any time caused an injury to another person and was himself involved in a mishap just once. It happened in 1920 on a beach in California when he leapt off a racing car to grab a rope ladder dangling from a lowflying aircraft. Although he caught the rope, he lost his grip and fell, resulting in three dislocated vertebrae and some bruises. However, when barnstorming began to lose its attraction for the crowds, Pangborn turned to record setting.

At the end of July 1931, Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon took off from New York’s Roosevelt Field in their Bellanca Skyrocket named Miss Veedol with the intention of breaking the around-the-world speed record of eight days, 15 hours and 51 minutes, set by Wiley Post and navigator Harold Gatty just a month earlier. They were well on track to do so till Khabarovsk in Siberia, when they got trapped in a terrible rainstorm. As they somehow put their plane down it slid off the runway and became hopelessly bogged down in the mud. This put them well behind schedule. Further trouble awaited them when they landed in Tokyo. Since their flight clearances were apparently not valid, they were charged with making an illegal flight and placed under house arrest. It did not help that while trying to properly document their flight, they had taken aerial photographs and since Japan was at war with China, the Japanese took a dim view when some of the aerial photos turned out to be of military areas. The two hapless Americans were also charged with espionage and detained for seven weeks. When they were finally released they were fined $1,000 and their aroundthe-world dream was shattered. They were given just one chance to fly out and warned that if they returned, they would be rearrested.

So the pair decided to try and win the $50,000 prize offered by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper for the first nonstop flight across the Pacific. On October 2, 1931, they finally took off from a nearby beach. They carried starvation rations, no radio, no survival gear and no seat cushion. Pangborn had cleverly modified the aircraft by removing the bolts holding the landing gear to the fuselage and replacing them with clips and springs attached to a cable. After take-off, by pulling the cable, the whole undercarriage would fall off. It was the only way they knew to reduce weight and coax a few hundred extra flight miles out of Miss Veedol. Otherwise, despite the dangerous amount of fuel they had taken on board, they would not be able to make it to their destination. But how could they land? Pangborn had attached steel skids to the belly and was confident he could put the Bellanca down safely on reaching the US. Still, the aircraft was 3,400 pounds over its maximum permissible weight and just about reached its take-off speed of 150 kmph with around 100 metres of beach left. For a couple of minutes it was touch-and-go as the aircraft flirted perilously with the waves, close to stalling into the sea.

Three hours after take-off, Pangborn pulled his cable. Most of the landing gear fell off, but two struts were left dangling, making belly-landing a hazardous prospect. No problem for Upside Down Pang! Despite the freezing cold at that altitude, he crawled barefoot onto the wing and freed both struts. The lightened Miss Veedol could now climb to 14,000 feet and benefit from a strong tail wind. They had another narrow escape when Herndon forgot to pump fuel and the engine quit due to fuel starvation. In the absence on an inflight restarting system, Pang had to dive down to try and restart. The engine roared back to life only at 1,400 feet. Then they continued to fly to the US. And after spending 41 hours and 13 minutes airborne, they came in for landing on a rough strip cut out of sagebrush near East Wenatchee in Washington state. As the plane floated just above the ground Pangborn turned off the fuel and engine to avert a fire, then put it down. It skidded along the airstrip and came to a stop with minor damage to the left wingtip. Thus ended an epic adventure for which they were awarded the Harmon Trophy. When Clyde Pangborn died on March 29, 1958, he had flown over 24,000 hours.