on scheduled 5-day runs, leaving every Monday for ports of call at Truk, Ponape, and to Majuro, the end of the line some 1,800 miles away. At each island they would remain overnight.

Water landings were made at Ponape, while air strips were used on Truk and Majuro. Return flights were made on
Fridays. Scheduled flights were also made to Saipan, Yap, Koror, and occasionally a few of the smaller islands.
 Transocean was respected for its on-time schedules, under the direction of station managers such as Jesse Morrison, George Winter, and Dick Laskelle, as well as for the fine aircraft maintenance provided by mechanics Gordon Lincheid, Paul McDougal, Carl Barefield, Gene Weaver, and others. Barefield and Weaver were commended by Trust Territory officials for heroic service beyond the call of duty when they dived under water in a shark infested area to repair the landing gear of one of the flying boats.

 

The incident occurred when Captain Gil Thomas radioed that his inbound flight from Yap to Guam was having nose gear trouble and would have to make a landing in Apra Harbor instead of the Naval Air Station.

 

The 2 men raced to the harbor, stopping only long enough to buy swim trunks and rent skin diving suits and equipment. They were alongside the plane as soon as it skimmed to a stop in the water. One stood guard against sharks and barracuda while the other worked under water on the landing gear. Repairs were completed in 45 minutes, and the flight proceeded to the air station, arriving less than one hour late.

 

Mercy flights were undertaken in emergencies to such outermost islands as Tinian, Rota, Ulithi, Anguar, Peleliu, Kwajalein and Ebeye to transport ill or injured natives to a hospital. Transocean once flew milk to the babies of Koror when supplies ran short; another time, they carried medicine to subdue an epidemic of an upper respiratory ailment among the natives on the island of Ulithi.
 

When a typhoon made the seas too rough for fishing and destroyed the crops planted by the natives of the tiny island of Kili, about 100 miles south of Majuro, a ship tried unsuccessfully for 5 days to put food ashore before Transocean was called upon. Captain Don Kosteff and his crew fed the people of Kili by rigging a dump chute in the tail of a PBY-5A and jettisoning more than 1,700 pounds of food to the beach through the tunnel hatch.
 

Leprosy was prevalent at the time among the natives on some of the Trust Territory islands, and a leprosarium at Tinian had been set up for their care. TAL transported afflicted natives there for treatment. Often, the authorities had to search for them for they would hide in the bush because they believed that they would have to stay in the hospital for years away from their families. Their confidence was restored once they were made to understand that the disease often could be arrested and that they could fly back home again if the treatment was effective.
 

This South Pacific paradise was sometimes marred by crime. At times, Transocean became involved. Once 2 crew
members from a Pacific Micronesian Lines' ship had a fight, and one knifed the other to death. Transocean was called
upon to return the body to Manila after first transporting it to Guam for embalming. Another call to Transocean came when a mentally deranged young man of 20 on Ulithi, found a gun and killed 2 people, one of whom was a member of the constabulary.
 

The boy had very long hair and wore only a loin cloth when he was captured. When TAL's PBY crew arrived he was tied to a tree and jabbering incoherently. Then he was led by the police to the flying boat, legs hobbled with a rope and his wrists handcuffed to his guard. The Transocean crew flew him to Guam where he remained under observation in a hospital for several weeks. When his doctors finally decided that the case was hopeless, they recommended that he be returned by TAL to Yap until the mental hospital at Saipan was completed and he could be committed.
 

Grateful natives often showed their appreciation of Transocean's services by giving feasts in honor of the crews with such exotic dishes as tiny fried bananas, French fried breadfruit, lobster, tropical fruits, and fresh coconut milk to drink. One native of Angar, an island in the Ponape group, showed his appreciation in a most unusual way. He led a Transocean flight crew to an armed 500-pound bomb, a war remnant hidden in the jungle just a few feet from where Transocean's planes parked for the night.
 

Lonely families employed by the Trust Territory government on the outlying islands also were recipients of the kindness of Transocean. In December of each year, flight crews would chip in to buy Christmas presents and fly Santa Claus to deliver them to the children of each of the 6 district centers.
 

Something unusual happened at the loading dock area of Truk Lagoon one day while Transocean's dispatcher, Stu
Jones, was on the island. A large crowd of locals, government officials, kids, and dogs were gathered around a group of natives who had just arrived by outrigger canoe. Jones asked the government man what was going on, and was told that the well-built and tall (for that region) natives had come all the way from Kapingamarangi (Kah-peengah-mar-an gee) atoll-about 200 miles-for the sole purpose of buying a few cartons of cigarettes. They apparently gave the journey about as much thought as anyone stateside would give to jumping into the family car for a trip to the corner store.

 

As the men moved about the dock area, the Trukese would part ranks and fall back as if in deference to their stature and powerful physiques. To Jones, the men from Kapingamarangi looked mean and tough.

The Trust Territory official asked one of the men about the object that was stuck in the waistband of his lava-lava
(wrap-around skirt). The native produced what he called Kapingi, brass knucks, a deadly device made of a certain tree bark, wrapped in strands of wire and fibers and imbedded with a murderous row of sharks teeth in just the right place.

When asked why they carried such weapons, the native answered, "Because we are such peaceful people." This seemed puzzling to the government man, and he asked what seemed to him a logical question, "Why, then, if you're so peaceful, do you carry such terrible weapons?" The native patiently replied, "That's what makes us so peaceful!"
When one of the aging PBY-5As Transocean had leased from the Navy began showing its age after flying thousands of miles in the service of the natives of the Pacific islands, the aircraft was sold by the Navy as surplus to the Thorne
Engineering Company of Los Angeles, California.

The amphibian was being ferried from Guam to Los Angeles by Captain Clark Dixon, copilot Chris Angelos, navigator Bob Edgerly, and engineer Russell Varner when one of its 2 engines conked out just after it passed the point of no return on the Honolulu-Oakland leg of the trip.

 Dixon radioed Oakland that he had insufficient fuel to reach the mainland. A U.S. Coast Guard flying boat was dispatched and soon met the PBY and shepherded it to the freighter Harry Culbreath Victory en route from Pusan, Korea, to the Gulf of Mexico. The veteran flying boat put down safely alongside the freighter, despite 9-foot swells, and the crew stepped one by one into the ship's power launch without even getting their feet wet.
 

The freighter's crew then swung the crippled PBY onto its deck with a crane and continued its journey to the mainland. Cynically, the freighter company later claimed salvage rights and was said to have instituted a lawsuit against the U.S. government.