Fall 2024
Our “Pacific Lindbergh”
Washington State University holds the mementos from pioneering aviator Clyde Pangborn, who made the first nonstop trans-Pacific flight. » More ...
Aviation history
Fall 2024
Witness to flight history
Otto Ross, 98, says he’s one of the few people left who witnessed Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon’s 1931 achievement of the first nonstop, trans-Pacific flight.
No one really knew where Pangborn and Herndon would land after they took off from Japan; they didn’t have a radio on the plane to save on weight.
“Mrs. Pangborn (Clyde’s mother) and his brother (Percy), who was a jeweler in Wenatchee, were convinced he was going to land in Wenatchee,” Ross (’49 Hort.) says. “It was just electrifying that something like this would happen.”
Ross says Charles Lindbergh’s flight across the Atlantic got so much press, but … » More …
Fall 2024
Derring-do and an aviation first
WSU’s Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections houses correspondence, business and financial records, photographs, printed material and other records belonging to Clyde Pangborn, donated by his brother Percy Pangborn in 1962. The collection is extensive and most of it must be viewed at the holdings but some of it can be examined at WSU Libraries Digital Collections.
Here is a video of former WSU archivist Mary Avery discussing the Pangborn Papers—originally from KWSU-TV’s Mosaic series in 1967—now available on WSU Libraries’ Films YouTube channel:
Here is a slideshow of some of … » More …