At 8:04 am on 3 August 1945 Pan American World Airways Flight 216 (NC 15066) departed Port of Spain, Trinidad bound for Fort de France, Martinique. It crashed on landing at the hydrobase due to weather and pilot error. Sadly this was the fourth crash of a Sikorsky S-43 operated by Pan Am. Within 10 minutes the Sikorsky S-43 sank. It rests at a depth of 89 to 98 feet. (Three days later the United States would drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.)
The Sikorsky S-43 Baby Clipper was a twin-engine amphibious aircraft manufactured in the United States by Sikorsky Aircraft. It was a smaller version of the S-42. Pan Americans World Airways founder and president, Juan Terry Trippe, commissioned Sikorsky to design the S-43 in 1934. Pan Am used the aircraft on flights to Cuba and within Latin America.