An idea in search of a proving ground

In the late 1920s, Hugo C. Leuteritz was convinced that radio could do something aviation had never yet been able to do reliably: provide an aircraft with a means of determining its position and bearing when visual navigation was impossible.

A radio engineer with RCA and an experienced ham operator, Brooklyn-born Leuteritz had already experimented with the idea when he met Juan Trippe of the newly formed Pan American Airways in 1927. Trippe gave him something RCA and the other airlines had not: an opportunity to experiment.

At Pan Am’s Key West airport in the summer of 1928, Leuteritz began developing lightweight airborne equipment and a practical direction-finding system for the airline’s Key West-Havana route. The conditions were challenging: he had to find frequencies that could cut through the heavy tropical static characteristic of the region. Equipment had to be improvised, and the airline’s pilots were initially resistant to the idea of taking direction from someone on the ground.

Loss in the Gulf

Then came August 15, 1928. The Pan Am Fokker General Machado, returning from Havana to Key West, lost its way in deteriorating weather. Leuteritz was aboard, testing his radio equipment. After more than two hours, the aircraft was still nowhere near Key West. Eventually, running out of fuel, the crew was forced to ditch in the Gulf of Mexico — 300 miles off-course. It landed next to a Standard Oil tanker, the Ligionier, where sailors brought the survivors aboard and took them back to Tampa. Three crew members, including Leuteritz, who was seriously injured, and one passenger survived. The second passenger, Ageton, was lost.

The widely publicized incident demonstrated both the limitations of existing navigation and the potential importance of radio. Though the crash was subsequently found to be accidental, a Department of Commerce investigation subsequently recommended a radio beacon at Key West.

System is improved

Leuteritz continued his experiments. He developed lightweight sets and loop antennas and devised a system by which the ground station could determine an aircraft’s bearing and relay corrections to the pilot. By September, the basic technical problems had been solved well enough for Juan Trippe to offer Leuteritz a permanent position, reporting directly to him, as Pan Am’s chief communications engineer.

Radio navigation becomes standard equipment for industry

What began as an experiment pioneered by Pan Am became an industry standard — radio navigation systems were eventually adopted by the entire aviation industry, the forerunner of today’s sophisticated electronic navigation systems.

In addition to pioneering radio communications, Pan Am was the first airline to employ dedicated Flight Radio Operators (FRO’s) and to manufacture its own direction-finding equipment. The airline established PAMSCO — Pan American Supply Company — at 300 Valencia Avenue, in Coral Gables, where radio and direction-finding equipment was manufactured and modified for use throughout the entire Pan Am system. PAMSCO remained in operation until 1946.