Musick was born on August 13, 1894, in
St. Louis, Missouri, where his father ran a hardware store. The family moved to California when Musick was 9, and he first took flight during boyhood experiments. In 1938, he and his wife (the former Cleo Livingston) He then accepted a commission as a 2nd Lieutenant in the
Marine Flying Corps on August 28, 1918, at Miami, Florida. In October 1927, Musick joined Pan American as it was just starting their operations. Musick was promoted to chief pilot for Pan American's Caribbean Division in 1930. one of the test flights was a non-stop flight of . The first survey flight from Alameda to Honolulu, landing at 10:21 am
Pacific Standard Time on April 17, 1935, took 18 hours, 21 minutes, breaking a record held jointly by six Navy aircraft; the aircraft, named
Pan American Clipper, carried a consignment of 10,000 letters, the first shipment of
airmail to Hawaii. Flight time was extended by half an hour as the aircraft circled over Honolulu upon arrival, to the delight of onlookers. Musick commanded a six-man crew, which included navigator
Fred Noonan. The second survey flight departed Honolulu for
Midway Atoll on June 15, 1935; the flight returned to Alameda on June 22. Later survey flights pushed the route to
Wake Island, returning to Alameda on August 28, and
Guam, returning on October 24. The Guam round-trip flight was commanded by R. O. D. Sullivan, Musick's first officer for the April flight. Musick also commanded the first commercial trans-Pacific flight, carrying mail to the Philippines; the
Martin M-130 China Clipper departed from Alameda on November 21, 1935, and landed in
Manila on November 29, 6 days, 7 hours, and 40 minutes later, logging nearly 60 hours of flight time. The aircraft flew the trans-Pacific route surveyed in the four earlier flights, with stops in Honolulu, Midway, Wake, and Guam. Compared to the first survey flight, the initial leg to Honolulu was slowed by strong headwinds and arrived after 21 hours, 13 minutes of flight time.
China Clipper returned to Alameda on December 6. He was also responsible for surveying a route to
New Zealand and
Australia in 1937 via Hawaii,
Kingman Reef, and American Samoa. The S-42B
Pan American Clipper II had arrived in Honolulu for that flight on March 18, 1937, with one of the four engines stopped due to an oil leak, Upon his arrival in Auckland on March 29, the famously terse Musick responded to the crowd of 30,000 who had turned out to greet the flight with the brief statement "We are glad to be here." On December 29, 1937, Musick, aboard the
Samoan Clipper, made the
first flight from
New Zealand to the United States, an experimental and survey flight to Hawaii and then to San Francisco. Because of his exploits with Pan American, Musick was one of the best known pilots of the 1930s, making the
cover of Time magazine on December 2, 1935. He received the
Harmon Trophy in 1936 to recognize the first commercial flight of
China Clipper. Approximately 38 minutes after take-off on January 11, 1938, the aircraft reported an engine oil leak and Musick turned back toward Pago Pago after securing that engine. Once the aircraft had missed its planned return time, a search was launched for the aircraft; floating debris surrounded by an oil slick was found approximately 12 hours later, Debris was limited to charred pieces of the aircraft and its equipment; a Pan American Airways officer's jacket, later identified as belonging to the radio officer, was also recovered. on
Kanton Island After the crash, Pan Am abandoned plans for a base at Pago Pago and instead built a refueling station at
Kanton Island, one of the
Phoenix Islands in
Kiribati, completing construction in July 1939. The alternate route was enabled by the arrival of the
Boeing 314 Clippers, which had a longer range than the prior S-42 and M-130 Clippers. ==Legacy==