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This fun broadside promotes one of the landmark achievements in American aviation: the inauguration of regular trans-Pacific airmail service by Pan American Airways. Printed in October 1937, a year after the extension of Pan Am’s route from Manila to Hong Kong, the poster heralds the full realization of U.S. transoceanic airmail connectivity, transforming what had been an experimental enterprise into a fixed part of global infrastructure.
Dominating the sheet is a bold halftone photograph of the China Clipper, the Martin M-130 flying boat whose silhouette became synonymous with intercontinental flight. Shown soaring above San Francisco Bay, the Clipper appears against a backdrop of the city’s waterfront and piers. Beneath the image, a timetable outlines the weekly service: Wednesday departures from San Francisco, Tuesday returns, with stopovers in Honolulu, Guam, Manila, and Macao. Delivery times and postage rates are listed for each leg, beginning at 20¢ for a one-day trip to Honolulu and climbing to 70¢ for the full seven-day route to Hong Kong.
Decorative repeated airplane symbols frame the top and bottom of the poster, reinforcing its message of aerial speed and regularity. More than promotional ephemera, the poster embodies a moment of geopolitical ambition: through its new aerial corridors, the United States was projecting commercial, military, and cultural power across the Pacific, even as tensions in East Asia were beginning to intensify.
![San Francisco Water Front prior to April 1851 [ Earliest Surviving Photographic Image of San Francisco ]](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/92168.jpg)
