The Sikorsky S-40 Amphibion; A new giant for the Pan American fleet

     Following almost immediately on the close of the World War, certain European nations, foreseeing the possibilities which aerial transport offered in binding more closely together the far-flung units of their colonial empires, encouraged the establishment of experimental airlines between certain strategic points, lending their assistance to private enterprise in the form of substantial subsidies. Today, England, France, Germany, and Holland have either surveyed, or put into actual operation, direct air connections to practically all of their outlying possessions. During the early 1920s progress in the United States lagged behind that abroad due largely to the unwillingness of the government to support operations by granting direct subsidies. Since 1927, however, development has been rapid, and in 1931 the American controlled airways, both in the United States and in Central and South America, are second to
none.
     By processes of merger and consolidation a number of independent airway systems are now in existence in various parts of the world, each having been shaped to meet the several needs of the nation controlling it. Here and there, where geographical conditions permit, these lines make contact, permitting passengers and goods to be transferred from one system to another, but, more often than not, they are widely separated by natural barriers of ocean or mountain range over which regular flying operations have hitherto been considered impractical. It is only natural, therefore, that the various networks, having worked out their individual problems, should turn to the greater one of interconnection, and the establishment of world-wide trade routes of the
air.
     One of the most important, and at the same time, one of the most difficult interconnecting routes is that between Europe and North America. With a view toward the establishment of mail and passenger schedules over the Atlantic, Pan American 
. . . . . .