Lonnie Ortega Aviation Art

Print Size 8½" x 11" ----- Unlimited print edition

The Martin M-130 was a commercial flying boat designed and built in 1935 by the Glenn L. Martin Company in Baltimore, Maryland, for Pan American Airways. Three were built: the China Clipper, the Philippine Clipper and the Hawaii Clipper. All three had crashed by 1945. A similar flying boat design called the Martin 156 and named Russian Clipper, was built for the Soviet Union; it had a larger wing (giving it greater range) and twin vertical stabilizers.

Martin named them the Martin Ocean Transports, but to the public they were the "China Clippers", a name that became a generic term for Pan Am's large flying boats - including, retroactively, the smaller Sikorsky S-42 (first flown in 1931) and larger Boeing 314 (first flown in 1938).

All three were eventually lost; the first in 1938 disappeared on a flight over the Pacific, then in 1943 one flew into a California mountainside in poor weather, and finally in 1945 the last broke up on landing in Trinidad and Tobago. In their time, they blazed some of the longest airline routes of the time and also served as transports during World War II. One helped evacuate about 40 civilians prior to the Battle of Wake Island at the start of World War II.