M-130

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The Martin M-130 was a quad-engined commercial flying boat designed and produced in 1935 by the Glenn L. Martin Company in Baltimore, Maryland, for Pan American Airways. Intended to fly transpacific flights, three airframes were built: the China Clipper, the Philippine Clipper and the Hawaii Clipper. A similar flying boat design called the Martin 156 and named Russian Clipper, was later built for the Soviet Union; it had a larger wing (giving it greater range) and twin vertical stabilizers. Martin named them the Martin Ocean Transports, but to the public they were the "China Clippers", a name that became a generic term for Pan Am's large flying boats - including, retroactively, the smaller Sikorsky S-42 (first flown in 1931) and larger Boeing 314 (first flown in 1938). All three aircraft were lost while in service. Hawaii Clipper disappeared in 1938 on a flight over the Pacific, Philippine Clipper flew into a mountain in poor conditions in 1943, and finally in 1945 China Clipper broke up during landing at Trinidad and Tobago. In their time, they blazed trails as one of the first aircraft types to operate transpacific routes (some of the longest airline routes at the time) and also served as transports during World War II.