Have been "lost" to sands of progress, hidden under golf courses, urban shopping centers, hospital parking lots, and poetically, wind-swept grass fields again. Series of volunteer flights linking the sixteen original transfer points, only seven of which continue today as active airports. With the encouragement of several of the nation's leading general aviation organizations, we have organized a Those first pilots called themselves "The Suicide Club."Īir Mail 100 will commemorate that historic event, which led within the decade to the commencement of commercial passenger air service. By 1919, 400 HP deHavillands where regularly carrying mail sacks between Omaha and Chicago, but the September flight that now pointed its nose towards the distant Hudson would link an entire continent, but not without financial cost and human sacrifice. Regional air mail service had commenced two years earlier linking New York and Washington, D.C. On September 8, 1920, a DH-4 biplane lifted off in the early morning from a grass air strip east of New York City on Long Island, beginning a grand experiment to carry mail from the East Coast to the West in a series of hops across New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio and points west. By that time, Knight was the toast of Chicago, hailed in newspapers nationwide.REMEMBER CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION AIR MAIL 100 STORY The letters which left San Francisco were in New York in 33 hours and 20 minutes. Two more pilots flew the remaining legs to Hazelhurst Field on Long Island. Minutes later he took off into darkness again, his nose pointed toward Chicago. With the man who’d lit the flare, he found a drum of gas and refueled the DH-4. Several photographs taken in 1911 at Garden City, New York, on the occasion. A small red flare lit up and Knight landed beside it. Many of these photographs are portraits of individual air mail service pilots. With minutes of gas left, he buzzed the town, revving his engine. On reserve fuel, he saw the lights of Des Moines but there was too much snow for a safe landing. Knight fought a strong crosswind and increasing cloud cover. Postal officials assumed the flight was off. He had a flashlight and a Rand-McNally road map on his lap. Knight took off on a compass course for Des Moines, Iowa. “But I can make it if they keep on lighting bonfires.”Īt 2 a.m. Hill jokingly claimed his cigar was the first instrument to aid commercial fliers.Įarly routes were in the East but with the public reluctant to pony up 24 cents for mail going from New York to Washington DC, the Post Office sought to show the real time savings by flying airmail from coast to coast. Army Signal Corps to use army pilots and planes the first. By that time he figured it was safe to descend to the landing field in Bellefonte, PA. In March of 1918, Otto Prager (Second Assistant Postmaster General) signed an agreement with the U.S. Hill leisurely puffed the stogie until only two unburned inches remained. Dean Hill crossed the Alleghenies by first lighting a long cigar, then climbing above the cloud deck. To fight off disorientation, another mail pilot, Wesley Smith, used a half-empty whiskey bottle as an attitude indicator, the tilt of the whiskey showing whether his wings were level or not.Īnother pilot named J. He had been an airmail pilot for only five weeks. He was carried from the wreck but died before reaching a hospital. Lamborn’s airplane came out of clouds at 400 feet, nose-down, smashing into the mountain. Without visual reference, he became disoriented. Flying through fog and rain Lamborn climbed into clouds to pass over Snowshoe Mountain. In August, 1919 Charles Lamborn took off from Cleveland for Bellefonte, PA, crossing the Allegheny Mountains on his mail route. But the idea of sending correspondence by air captured people's imagination long before American airmail. It depicts a biplane used in the early days of airmail which was also featured on the 24-cent airmail stamps originally issued in 1918. This month the Postal Service has released a 100th anniversary of airmail Forever stamp. Airmail Service was “pretty much a suicide club” because between 1918-1927, 35 Post Office pilots would die from unpredictable weather, inexperience, or unreliable equipment. According to one pilot, the fledgling U.S. According to one veteran airmail pilot, there was a fifty-fifty chance of engine. Knight was one of seven airmail pilots attempting something never done before in America–flying mail coast to coast, day and night. In the early years, pilots flew in open cockpits in unpredictable weather. The only thing keeping him from freezing in the cockpit of his De Havilland DH-4 biplane was the heat radiating back from its Liberty V-12 engine. One frigid night in February, 1921, Jack “Skinny” Knight, flying some 248 miles from his departure airstrip, scanned the darkness over Omaha for any sign of blazing drums of gasoline.
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