Pan American Airways Photos
Robert S. "Bob" Winter

Avionics Engineering HGR-17, Kennedy Airport, New York

Bob Winter in Pan Am Mechanics Uniform, Miami, FL

Robert S. Winter, II worked for Pan American Airways from 1940 in Miami, Florida unti his retirement in 1980 at Kennedy Airport. A career that spanned forty years. His specialty was electronics. especially instrumentation. These photo were in his collections.

For a wonderful collection of photos of: Pan Am and Miami Airport Photos

Summary of Bob Winter's Career

Bob Winter attended Muskegon Senior High School in Muskegon, Michigan, 1931-1934. He was active on school magazin, Editor of the magazine during his senior year. He was Class Valedictorian.

Bob Winter earned a B. S. at Olivet College. Michigan. There he majored in physics and mathematics. At Olivet, he worked in the dining hall and kitchen and was a grader for physics classes. He next attended University of Iowa for one year working towards a Master's degree in physics (1938-1939). He was a Lab Instructor at Iowa. He then completed a course at Massachusetts Radio School (1939-1940), obtaining commercial radiotelephone first class and radio-telegraph second class licenses. The school was located at 18 Boylston St., Boston.

Click her for a copy of his demanding final exam: Mass Radio School Final Exam

He joined Pan American in Miami. Florida, July 23, 1940, and spent six years in radio maintenance including the positions of Radio Inspector snd Foreman of the Radio Shop.

On October 27, 1940, Robert Winter married Lois Lincoln Brown, his fiancé from Massachusetts. They were married in the Plymouth Congregational Church in Coconut Grove, Florida.

In l947 he joined the Engineering Department as Technical Writer, preparing maintenance procedures, and after one year in this capacity was assigned to the Engineering, Instrument and Electrical section as a Service Engineer. In 1960, he was appointed Supervisor of the Instrument and Electrical group and in 1964 was made Supervisor, Avionics Engineering. In this capacity, Mr. Winter was responsible for auto flight control, instrument and electronics engineering for Pan Am’s Miami Base.

1940-1946 Communications Department, PAA, Miami - Radio Mechanic, Radio Mechanic First Class, Radio Inspector, Radio Shop Foreman, Dinner Key Asst, Radio Shop Forman, PAF; assisted in office or Aircraft Radio Maintenance Supervisor.

1946-1947 Maintenance Procedure: Station, PAA, Miami

1947-1953 Senior Areo Engieer, Instrument. & Electrianl Section

July 1953 - April 1954. - Staff Engineer, Component. Service Engineering Section

April 1954 - December 1959 - Staff Engineer, Specialist Engineer, Instrument & Electrial Design Section

Business Experience,

Sept. 1957 -April. 1959

Represented the Engineering Department on the Jet Provisioning Team, attending provisioning/training sessions at the following vendors: Jack & Heintz; Minneapolis-Honeywell; Carrier; and Westinghouse. Attended a two week factory training course
on the DC-8 electrical system in September, 1959.

Jan. 1960 - March, 1961

Supervisor, I.&E. Group in Jet Aircraft Service Engineering Section, Attended training courses on KIFIS system at Kollsman
factory, and SP-30 autopilot at Sperry during 1960. Member All Weather Maintenance Committee, 1963-1964.

March 1964-Aug 1968

Supervisor, Avionics Engineering, PAA, Miami.

Attended three day Sperry Digital Computer Courses at Miami.
Attended two week B727 Electronics Course at Boeing factory in 1965.
Took PAA B727 General Familiarization Course (12 hours) in 1966.
Served as Supt. Component Engineering (Acting) from November 15, 1965 until January 28, 1966

Sept 1968-Dec 1968 Supervisor Avionics Service Engineering, PAA, JFK, Member of B747 Avionics Maintainability Working Group

Jan 1969-Dec 1970 Superintendent Avionics Service Engineerin PAA, JFK. Attendxed four day B747 Familiarization Course given by PAA Jan 1969.

SOCIAL & BUSINESS ACTIVITIES:

Member FAA Management Club (NAP)
Member Plymouth Congregational Church

HOBBIES

House Modifications and Classical Music

Since 1960, Mr. Winter took an active part in the engineering or flight testing of the following projects requiring STC approval:

Cockpit Voice Recorder Instsllstion - DC6B

Dual Doppler Navigation System - DC-8

Low Range Radio Altimeter System - DC-8, B707
Clear Air mrbulence Detection System Evaluation
Litton Inertial Navigation System Evaluation
EMCO Autopilot Monitoring System - B707

In his 1970 position of Assistant Avionics Engineering Manager, Mr. Winter was primarily concerned with service engineering for the avionics systems on the B747 aircraft. In connection with these duties he had received classroom training both at the Boeing factory and in-house at Pan Am. He was a Pan American representative on the B747 Avionics Working Group which prepared the avionics maintenance program for FAA Maintenance Review Board approval.

In 1977, Bob Winter was promoted to Supervisor of Avionics Engineering. He had previously served temporarily in this position a number times.

 

Pan Am Album


Acknowledgement: Dick Rew, a retired United Airline pilot and tennis buddy provide the identification of some of the planes here and all of the instruments in the photos.

Robert and Lois Lincoln Winter Wedding Photo, Octover 27, 1940, Coconut Grove, Florida. In front of the Plymouth Congregational Church.

Robert Winter paycheck stubb. His monthly salary was $125. Date January 31, 1941. By 1980, he was making $32,000/year.

Robert Winter by the tail of PAA Boeing 307 Stratoliner NC19910 "Clipper Comet".


In 1937 Pan American ordered only three of these Boeing 307s, at a cost of $315,000 each. They were the first airliners with pressurized cabins. The B307 flew at 220 mph, had a range of 1250 miles. The maiden flight from Miami to Barranquilla, Colombia set a record of six hours and made history as the first inter-continental overwater landplane service. The Boeing 307 had to use the longer runways at Miami Municipal Airport until the runways at 36th Street Airport were lengthened. 

Eleanor Roosevelt christened the first B307 with a bottle of water garnered from all the world's Seven Seas. The first Boeing 307 flew December 31, 1938.

1942 - a terminal for Pan American and Eastern Air Lines at the 36th Street Airport on Pan American Field

Pan American B-307 Stratoliner NC19902 "Clipper Rainbow"

From the Florida State Archives: "Pan Am's sturdy Boeing 307 Stratoclippers, the first airliners with pressurized cabins, made their maiden flight on July 4, 1940 and were retired from active service in 1947. The Boeings carried half a million passengers more than 10,000,000 miles in Latin America without an accident. The maiden flight, from Miami to Barranquilla, Colombia, set a record of six hours and made history as the first inter-continental overwater landplane service. The Boeing 307s had a gross weight of 45,000 pounds, four Wright Cyclone engines, 1100 horsepower each; a wing span of 107 feet; an overall length of 74 feet; and a cruising speed of about 200 miles per hour." 

Pan Am Airline Ticket
Bob Winter Pan Am Ticket

Pan Am Airline Ticket

First 707 in Boeing Factory

After the Air Force agreed to let Boeing build commercial jets based on the prototype 367-80, already the basis for the KC-135 military tanker, airlines began to order the 707, the commercial transport variant of the Dash 80. The 707 and the KC-135 had many features in common. Both were visually distinct, with a stinger antenna pointing forward from the top of their vertical fin. The 707's width and 100-foot length made it the largest passenger cabin in the air at the time. Placement of its more than 100 windows allowed airlines to rearrange seats. Location of passenger doors on the left side, at the front and at the rear of the cabin, became standard for subsequent Boeing jets. The exteriors of the 707 and its competitor, the DC-8, were almost identical, but the 707 wing had more sweepback, so it could fly about 20 mph faster.

Test Flights

W. W. McClintock, photo at right, lived directly behind Robert and Lois Winter. The McClintocks were great friends, a friendship which continues into the next generation.

28 October 1957: The first production Boeing 707 "Stratoliner", jet-powered commercial airliner, serial number 17586 (Line Number 1), was rolled out at the Boeing aircraft assembly plant at Renton, Washington. The Model 707 was developed from the earlier Model 367–80, the “Dash Eighty,” prototype for an air-refueling tanker which would become the KC-135 Stratotanker.

17586 was a Model 707-121. The new airliner had been sold to Pan American World Airways, the launch customer, as part of an order for twenty 707s in October 1955. The Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) assigned N708PA as its registration mark.

The 707-121 had a maximum speed is 540 knots (1,000 kilometers per hour). Its range was 2,800 nautical miles (5,186 kilometers).

The Boeing 707 was in production from 1958 to 1979. 1,010 were built. Production of military variants continued until 1994.

Boeing 707
Boeing 307 N19912.
Boeing 307, N19912
Cockpit Boeing 307 Note the two throttle levers with gray knobs. To their left are white speed brake levers. Speedbrakes are fuselage mounted panels which, when selected by the pilot, extend into the airstream to produce drag. Speedbrakes may be used during the final approach to touchdown as well as after landing. The black wheels on each side of the console are for trim adjustment. Above speedbrake knobs is a floating compass. At the bottom of the panel at the left is the Automatic Pilot lever, currently off.

Cockpit. Tw throttle levers with gray knob. Two white knob leavers are speedbrakes. Floating compass is seen just above the white knobs.

 

Electrical Panel 727
Electrical equipment below the florr of aircraft. The black area lower right tis the access opening.
Electrical equipment below the florr of aircraft. The black area lower left tis the access opening.
Electrical equipment below the florr of aircraft.
Maintenance Annunciator. Maybe test equipment.
Cockpit. Hanging we see ear phones and microphone to right. The white hose is oxygen hose. The white rope if for the cockpit crew to climb down in an emergency.

Cockpit. Hanging we see ear phones and microphone to right. The oxygen mask is also in the stack with phones. The cover is no over the emergency rope. Above the yoke we see the white lever for opening the window in an emergency.

Cockpit 727 Trijet. Note the three throttle levers with white knobs. To their left is a speed brake lever. Speedbrakes are fuselage mounted panels which, when selected by the pilot, extend into the airstream to produce drag. Speedbrakes may be used during the final approach to touchdown as well as after landing. The black wheels on each side of the console are for trim adjustment.

All fixed-wing aircraft must have a system to allow the pilot to determine the airspeed, and maintain that airspeed with a minimum of control force and mental concentration. Elevator trim frees the pilot from exerting constant force on the pitch controls. Instead, the pilot adjusts a longitudinal trim control (often in the form of a wheel) to cancel out control forces for a given airspeed and weight distribution. Typically, when this trim control (wheel or lever) is rotated or moved forward, the nose pitches down; conversely, if the trim control is moved back, the tail becomes "heavy", and the nose pitches up.

At right are typical trim tabs on ailerons, rudder and elevator. Aileron and rudder trim tabs are not very common on light training aircraft.

Overhead panel.
Panel in cockpit.
Overhead circuit breakers.
More electrical panels
More electrical panesl

Robert Winter emerging from a car, London the car is an English Humber. This was a meeting that occured in April 25-May 1, 1966. The purpose of the meeting was to investigate and observed automatic tester at BCAC & Hawker–Siddeley Mfg. Co. He received an advance of $225. In November of that year, he also traveled to Berlin on business.

Bob Winter signing in for a meeting. His badge says PAA Vistor

Pan Am Meeting. Left to Right: Robert Winter, Klein Mitchell, ?, ?, ?.

Note: Fellow in the middle is in picture below, seated left end.

May 18, 1970. New York Times. "The promotion of two main tenance ‐ engineering specialists to staff vice presidents has been announced by Pan American World Airways. They are Klein Mitchell and Norman S. Smith."

Mitchell was the PAA representative a Boeing before his appointment as Asst. Manager of Miami maintenance base in 1960.

Klein Edward Mitchell, Bob Winter's boss. Klein and his wife Betty Ann were longtimeafriends of Bob and Lois Winter. Klein was born 8/4/1920 in Rochester, MN and died May 31, 2003 in Cary, NC.
Pan Am Employees. Robert Winter at right end of front row.

Letter nofifying Robert Winter of his award as winner of the Management Club Travel Award.

Here we see the fallout of the Joseph McCarthy Hearing which occured in 1954.
Required Security Document
Required Security Document
Klein Mitchell Report on B-707 aircraft
Klein Mitchell Report on B-707 aircraft-2
Klein Mitchell Report on B-707 aircraft-3
Required Security Document
Bob Winter report on proving flight of N735 While 735 was the aircraft ID, apparently this was a B-737 aircraft.
Bob Winter report on proving flight of N735

7/23/1980.  Made for Robert Winter when he retired from Pan American in 1980;  Now hangs in Nancy's family room.

Symbols and Letters: R. S. Winter Pan Am Logo. Baggage Ticket: Miami to New York City; Pan Am Symbol, maybe Maintainance

DAS likely Digital Avionics Systems; CO-ORD: likely O'Hare Chicago though no evidence on the web of the CO-ORD abbreviation: 7/23/40 First Date Employed, 7/23/80 Retirement Date. 97450?; A. E. Authorization for Engineering or Avionics Engineer

AVN.ENGR: Avionics Engineer

Robert Winter at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA. Behind him is a plane he worked on while at Pan Am.

Flying south from Brownsville, to the mountainous regions of Mexico, Central America, and South America was to journey into lands with a full range of terrain. Pan Am's routes led to coastal cities near or at sea level, but also to places like Mexico City and Bogota, situated many thousands of feet up.

On a commercial aircraft carrying passengers into and across high mountains, it would be a real advantage to operate an aircraft that had a pressurized cabin. Flying above 10,000 feet for very long was tough on passengers and crew in an airplane like a DC-3, which was rugged, but unpressurized.

When Boeing decided to make a pressurized commercial airliner built around the wing structure of it's proven military aircraft, the Boeing B-17 bomber, two airlines signed up as customers: TWA and Pan Am. The technology for turbocharging the engines to operate at high altitudes was well understood, but the engineering around the pressurization of the cabin was something new for commercial transports.

As with the advent of practical instrument flight techniques, Brownsville would be the nexus for Pan Am's introduction of this new technology. With a range of 1,250 miles, the new Boeing B-307, dubbed the "Stratoliner," was not capable of spanning oceans, but would work well in flights to and from South America.

In February 1940, Boeing's famed test pilot Eddie Allen and Pan Am's Francis Jacobs flew the airline's first B-307 down to Brownsville. In May, the plane was put into service from there to Mexico City. Unfortunately, the takeoff performance at Mexico City's 7,700 foot-high airport was underwhelming. After a quick trip back up north to Washington DC, where the aircraft was christened Clipper Flying Cloud, she was returned to Brownsville, where the fully loaded plane broke through the asphalt tarmac.

It wasn't long before the "Stratoliner" (and her two sister ships that Pan Am purchased) was sent off to Miami, where they were based until World War Two ended all airline business as usual, and like all of Pan Am's other aircraft, they were drafted for war work. From Udvar-Hazy website.

First flown in late 1938, the Boeing 307 was the first airliner with a pressurized fuselage. It could carry 33 passengers in great comfort and cruise at 6,096 meters (20,000 feet), while maintaining a cabin pressure of 2,438 meters (8,000 feet). This enabled the Stratoliner to fly above most bad weather, thereby providing a faster and smoother ride.

The Stratoliner incorporated the wings, tail, and engines of the Boeing B-17C bomber. The wide fuselage was fitted with sleeper berths and reclining seats. Ten Stratoliners were built. The prototype was lost in an accident, but five were delivered to TWA and three were purchased by Pan American Airways. TWA owner Howard Hughes purchased a heavily modified version for his personal use. The airplane displayed here was flown by Pan American as the Clipper Flying Cloud. Boeing restored it in 2001.

Robert Winter's granddaughter, Beth Oakes and greatgranddaughter, Emily Buck with his Clipper Flying Cloud.
Dinner Program honoring PAA 1928 First Passenger Flight from Key West to Havana, Cuba.
Dinner Program honoring PAA 1928 First Passenger Flight from Key West to Havana, Cuba. Dinner date likely 6/28/1985
Menu for dinner honoring PAA 1928 First Passenger Flight from Key West to Havanna, Cuba.
Drink Menu
Cold Collation
Robert Winter's granddaughter, Beth Oakes and greatgranddaughter, Emily Buck with his Clipper Flying Cloud.