Pangborn, Herndon, and Miss Veedol — the first nonstop flight across the Pacific, and the man who climbed out on the wing to save it

On October 9, 1931, Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon Jr. completed the first nonstop flight across the Pacific Ocean, flying a red Bellanca named Miss Veedol roughly 5,500 miles from a beach in northern Japan to an apple field in Wenatchee, Washington. The flight took about 41 hours—and it nearly ended in disaster when Pangborn was forced to climb out onto the wing in flight, over open ocean, to clear jammed landing-gear struts with his bare hands.

Why the Pacific Was Aviation’s Last Great Barrier

By 1931, the Atlantic was old news. Charles Lindbergh had flown it solo in 1927, and within a few years dozens of aviators had crossed it one way or another. The press had moved on.

The Pacific was a different animal. No one had flown it nonstop from Japan to the North American mainland. The route meant nearly 5,000 miles of open water with no place to divert and no chance of rescue. If the single engine quit, you went into the sea—and that was the end.

To spur the attempt, the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun offered a $25,000 prize to the first crew to make the crossing nonstop. In Depression-era dollars, that was a life-changing fortune.

The Two Men Behind the Flight

The crew was a study in contrasts. Hugh Herndon Jr. came from wealth—Standard Oil money—and could afford the airplane, but he wasn’t the pilot the trip demanded.

Clyde Pangborn was. Known as “Upside-Down Pangborn,” he had come up through 1920s barnstorming with the Gates Flying Circus, logging roughly 1,000 hours of stunt flying: wing walking, midair plane changes, the whole dangerous repertoire performed over county fairs. Crucially, Pangborn had spent much of his career outside the cockpit as often as inside it—a detail that would later save both men’s lives.

Their aircraft was a Bellanca Skyrocket, a single-engine, high-wing, long-range monoplane named Miss Veedol after a motor oil brand that helped fund the venture. Built to haul an enormous fuel load, it was essentially a flying gas tank.

Stranded in Japan and Down to One Chance

The Pacific crossing wasn’t even the original plan. Pangborn and Herndon had been chasing a round-the-world speed record that collapsed under bad weather and bad luck, leaving them stuck in Japan, low on cash and high on frustration.

Worse, amid the military tensions of 1931, the two Americans were arrested on suspicion of spying after taking photographs they shouldn’t have. They were held, fined, and watched closely.

The only way out of the mess was the one thing no one had done: fly the Pacific nonstop. Japanese authorities granted them permission for exactly one takeoff. There would be no second attempt.

Pangborn’s Gamble: Dropping the Landing Gear

Studying the overloaded airplane, Pangborn fixed on its fixed landing gear—big wheels hanging in the slipstream the entire crossing, costing him speed and fuel he couldn’t spare.

So he rigged the main gear to release after takeoff. Once committed over the water, he would drop the wheels into the ocean to cut drag and extend range, then belly-land on grass at the far end. He even fitted small stubs to the fuselage to protect the airframe during the landing.

It was pure barnstormer thinking—an aviator looking at his machine as both mechanic and gambler.

How the Wing-Walking Saved the Flight

On October 7, 1931, Miss Veedol lifted off a sand beach at Sabishiro, in northern Japan, rolling down a wooden ramp built to get the fuel-laden airplane—carrying roughly 4,500 pounds of gasoline—into the air. The wheels barely cleared the dunes.

Pangborn climbed out over the ocean and pulled the release. The main gear fell away—but two steel bracing struts stayed jammed against the belly. He knew instantly what that meant: come in for a belly landing with those rods hanging down, and they’d dig in, flip the airplane, and kill them both.

So somewhere over the Pacific, Pangborn handed the controls to Herndon, opened the cockpit, and climbed out onto the wing strut in flight. Hanging on in a roughly 100-mph slipstream over open ocean, he wrenched the steel rods loose by hand—then climbed back and did it again on the other side. The decade of wing-walking he’d done for paying crowds turned out to be the skill that saved the flight.

A Stalled Engine and 41 Hours in the Air

The danger wasn’t over. Switching fuel tanks during the long night, the engine quit on a tank change and wouldn’t restart. The airplane began descending toward the water before Pangborn worked the problem, nursed the engine back to life, and climbed away—after losing a great deal of altitude in the dark.

In all, they flew more than 40 hours with no autopilot and no real sleep—two men, a compass, and a single engine over the emptiest place on Earth.

The Belly Landing at Wenatchee

They made landfall over Washington State. The original destination had been Boise, but weather and fuel pushed Pangborn to a friendlier spot he knew well: Wenatchee, in central Washington’s apple country, where he had relatives.

On the morning of October 9, 1931, he brought Miss Veedol down onto Fancher Field—with no landing gear, exactly as planned—greasing the red Bellanca onto her belly and sliding her to a stop largely intact. It was a deliberate, controlled crash landing capping the first nonstop flight across the Pacific: about 41 hours and 5,500 miles, accomplished for the first time in history.

Why the Record Was Nearly Forgotten

In raw distance, the achievement was larger than Lindbergh’s Atlantic crossing—yet the world barely noticed. The Great Depression left no appetite for parades, and the Pacific never captured public imagination the way the Atlantic had four years earlier. The newspapers gave it a day or two and moved on.

There was also friction over the $25,000 prize, which the men split amid squabbling, and the lingering bad taste of the spying arrest. The flight never became the legend it deserved to be.

Pangborn kept flying, later ferrying bombers across the Atlantic for the Air Transport Command during World War II in his fifties. He died in 1958, largely unknown to the pilots who followed him.

But Wenatchee never forgot. A memorial stands there today, and the town later formed a sister-city bond with Misawa, Japan, near the flight’s origin. Together the two communities built a flying reproduction of Miss Veedol—the two ends of an impossible crossing tied together by one airplane and two stubborn men.

Key Takeaways

• Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon Jr. made the first nonstop transpacific flight (Japan to the U.S. mainland) on October 7–9, 1931, in the Bellanca Miss Veedol.
• The flight covered roughly 5,500 miles in about 41 hours, with the gear deliberately jettisoned to extend range.
• When two gear struts jammed, Pangborn climbed out onto the wing in flight and removed them by hand—putting his barnstorming wing-walking skills to lifesaving use.
• He landed gear-up at Wenatchee, Washington, completing a record that, in distance, exceeded Lindbergh’s 1927 Atlantic crossing.
• Despite the achievement, Depression-era timing and a prize dispute kept the flight from earning the lasting fame it deserved.