Clara Adams Papers

Clara Adams was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on December 3, 1884. She was married to George Lincoln Adams. Her father’s mother was Augusta von Hindenburg (maiden), a distant relative of Paul von Hindenburg, President of Germany. Her cousin was Colonel Arthur C. Goebel, winner of the Dole Prize in 1927. She attended the Conservatory of Music in Leipzig, Germany, where her father Walter Grabau was a professor of music. Her mother lived next door to Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in Baden-Baden.

Her aviation connection began in March of 1914, where she flew in a Thomas flying boat with pilot Captain Walter E. Johnson at Lake Eustis, Florida. In February of 1917, Adams flew 1,000 feet at San Antonio, Texas, with pilot Lieutenant Marjorie Stinson of the Aviation Corps of the United States Army.

In 1924, a letter of introduction from Paul von Hindenburg led to a visit and friendship between Adams and Dr. Hugo Eckener as well as his associate, Dr. Ludwig Duerr. Adams and Dr. Eckener were guest passengers on a test flight of the ZR-3, later known as United States Navy dirigible Los Angeles. While in Friedrichshafen, Germany, home of the Zeppelins, Adams met Dr. Claude Dornier who designed and built the flying boat Do X.

In October of 1928, Adams purchased the first ticket for a female passenger to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. Adams was the only woman who flew from the United States to Germany on the Graf Zeppelin (LZ-127) on its pioneer round trip originating in Germany. The flight lasted 71 hours. Adams visited with President Hoover in April of 1930 to obtain credentials in order to fly on British dirigible R-101 from England to the United States. Unfortunately, the airship crashed in France before the flight.

Adams was the only paying woman to fly on the Dornier Do X from Rio de Janeiro to New York in 1931. To meet the flight, she flew from the U.S. to Rio de Janeiro on Pan American Airways. In May of 1936, Adams was one of eleven women on board the maiden flight of the Hindenburg (LZ-129) from Germany to the United States. In the same year, she flew on the inaugural commercial passenger flight of Pan American's China Clipper across the Pacific Ocean. The 8,200 mile flight from San Francisco to Manila took six days with stops at Honolulu, Midway, Wake Island and Guam. She also flew on the first scheduled passenger flight of Pan American’s Hawaii Clipper to Hawaii. Adams also flew on the first round trip flight of the Bermuda Clipper from New York to Bermuda in 1937.

From June 18th to July 15th, 1939, Adams set a new passenger record for round-the-world flight by regular airlines at sixteen days and nineteen hours with a distance of 24,609 miles covered. She first flew from New York to Marseille in the Dixie Clipper- the first commercial transatlantic clipper flight. She then continued on to Leipzig, Athens, Basra, Jodhpur, Rangoon, Bangkok, Manila, Guam, Wake, Honolulu, San Francisco, and New York.

Adams flew on the inaugural coast to coast flight from New York to Los Angeles on Transcontinental and Western Air Stratoliner in fourteen hours and eight minutes in July of 1940. In September of the same year, Adams flew 8,000 miles on the passenger flight on a Boeing 314 flying boat from San Francisco to New Zealand with overnight stops in Hawaii, Canton Island, and New Caledonia.

To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the first passenger flight across the Pacific in 1966, Adams joined five of the original passengers and officers on a celebratory flight.

In 1968, Adams was one of fifty honored guests at the Explorers Club dinner tribute to the aviation industry.

Clara Adams died on February 10, 1971.