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| Sikorsky S-42 Flying Boat, Pan American Airlines |
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length: 13 3/4"
wingspan: 22 1/2"
scale: 1/60
Includes desk stand.
The Sikorsky S-42 was an 1930s American commercial flying boat designed and built by Sikorsky to meet a 1931 requirement from Pan American for a long-range transatlantic flying boat.
Based on the earlier Sikorsky S-40 that flew in 1931, Igor Sikorsky and Charles Lindbergh, working at the time as a Pan American Airways consultant, laid out plans for a new, larger flying boat. During the S-40's inaugural flight on November 19, 1931, the two visionaries began preliminary sketches on the back of a menu in the S-40's lounge.
Pan Am's president, Juan Trippe, had a similar vision of an aircraft able to span oceans. The new design provided for an increased lifting capacity to carry enough fuel for a 2,500 mile nonstop flight against a 30 mph (48 km/h) wind, at a cruising speed far in excess of the average operating speed of any flying boat at that time. Pan Am was also courted by Glenn Martin but Sikorsky's S-42 was delivered first, as the Martin M-130 was still almost a year away from completion.
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