VII
I Join the Air Mail
I went by rail to St. Louis and took an OX-5 Standard out for a barnstorming trip in Illinois, Missouri and Iowa. The Post Office Department had just advertised a number of contract air mail routes for bid, one of which was between St. Louis and Chicago by way of Springfield, IL. I decided to barnstorm around the country until it was determined which bidder would be assigned the contract. The Robertson Aircraft Corp. had placed a bid and offered me the position of chief pilot if they were successful in getting the contract.
After returning from Iowa I flew on several flying circus dates and made a few short cross country flights to nearby cities.
On June second, while testing a commercial plane built at Lambert Field, I was forced to make a second emergency jump. I had flown the ship for a few minutes the previous week and on this occasion was testing it for various maneuvers. I had completed everything except tailspins, but when I attempted a right spin the plane refused even to start, so after a second attempt with the same result I gave that up and tried one to the left. The ship fell in easily and, when I reversed the controls after a half turn, came out at once. I then put it into a second left spin and held the controls in a spinning position during two complete turns. When I reversed them they had no apparent effect and using the engine was of no assistance. After trying for fifteen hundred feet to bring the ship out of the spin, I rolled over the right side of the cockpit and, since I had jumped only about three hundred and fifty feet above the ground, I pulled the rip cord as soon as the stabilizer had passed. The chute opened quickly but while it was functioning, I had fallen faster than the spinning ship. On its next revolution the plane was headed directly towards the chute. How close it passed will never be known, for the risers leading up from my harness were twisted and swung me around as the ship passed. However, less than twenty-five feet intervened between the wing and my parachute.
I watched the plane crash in a grain field and turned my attention to landing. A strong wind was drifting me towards a row of high tension poles and it was necessary to partially collapse the chute in order to hasten the descent and land before striking the wires. I landed rather solidly in a potato patch and was dragged several feet and over a road before several men arrived and collapsed the chute. In addition to the strong wind and rough air, collapsing or “cutting” the chute so close to the ground had caused a very rapid descent, and my shoulder had been dislocated in landing.
In July I went on two weeks active duty at Richards Field, Missouri, where I instructed on Jennies and DH-4’s. In August I flew a Curtiss Oriole to Nevada, Missouri, to carry passengers during the Missouri National Guard encampment.
While at Nevada I received a proposition to fly in a circus in Colorado and, as there was no immediate prospect of starting work on the mail route, I accepted and when the encampment ended I flew the Oriole back to St. Louis and took a train west.
On arriving at the field a few miles east of Denver, I discovered the plane I was to fly to be the same Lincoln Standard that Lynch and I had flown to Montana three years before. We did a little barnstorming along the eastern slope of the Rockies preliminary to the start of our flying circus. We had contracted to exhibit before a number of fairs in Colorado and there was nothing barred in the exhibitions. We put on everything the committee was willing to pay for. At the smaller places we used only one plane, but at the more important exhibitions two were required.
We flew to the town where a fair was taking place about one day before we were to exhibit. In that way everything was in readiness for the circus and the next morning there was no delay in our performance.
We started with wing-walking. The performer would climb out of the cockpit and walk along the entering edge of the wing to the outer bay strut, where he climbed up onto the top wing, and stood on his head as we passed the grandstand. After finishing his stunts on the wing he would go to the landing gear and from there to the center section, where he sat while the plane looped and did Jenny Immelmans. From the center section he went to the tail and then, unless it was an unusual occasion, the wing-walking exhibition was over.
After wing-walking came the breakaway. This was accomplished by fastening a cable to the landing gear. The performer went out to the wing tip, fastened his harness to the loose end of the cable and to all appearances fell off the wing. No one on the ground could see the cable and a breakaway always produced quite a sensation. Iron loops were clamped along the cable for use in climbing back up.
One of our feature attractions was the plane change. A rope ladder was attached to the wing of a plane and as one ship flew past the grandstand with the performer standing near the tip of the top wing, a second plane with the ladder attached, passed over the first, so that the ladder was in easy reach of the performer. We usually made two fake attempts to effect the change and actually counted on the third for success. In this way the feat looked more difficult.
A parachute was attached to the opposite wing from the rope ladder. After the plane change was completed, the performer jumped off with the chute and the show was over.
In the evening we made a night fireworks flight. A series of candles, which when lighted emitted a trail of fire for several hundred feet behind the ship, was attached to each wing. After these candles had burned out, two magnesium flares started burning, lighting up the country below well enough to read a book very clearly. The display was set off by an electric battery in the cockpit.
When the plane reached an altitude of two or three thousand feet, a number of bombs were dropped to attract attention; then the switch was thrown in to start the trails and colored lights, and the ship looped and shunted around the comet-like trail of fire.
Our greatest difficulty in night flying lay in lighting the landing fields from which to operate. Sometimes a number of cars were on the field and I landed and took off across the beams of their headlights. Under such conditions the ground was well illuminated and landing very simple. On other occasions there would not be more than one car available and in one instance, on a dark night, I took off and landed by the light of a pocket flashlight which one of the men flashed constantly while I was in the air, to enable me to keep track of the landing field.
At one town in Colorado, we were booked for a fireworks exhibition to be given between darkness and midnight. We had been barnstorming during the day and on our way to this town we ran short of lubricating oil. By the time we had replenished our supply it was too late to get in before dark, and I had never landed at that town before. The owner of the plane, however, was sure that he could easily locate the landing field, even in darkness. He had been there many times and he knew that the field was “right next to the golf links.”
We arrived over the town and after circling a few times, I throttled the motor and shouted “Where’s the field?”
The reply was immediate and full of confidence, “Right next the golf links.”
“Well, where are the golf links?”
“I don’t know!”
I was up against another of the very amusing but equally serious incidents in barnstorming life. We were over strange territory on a dark night and with a rapidly diminishing fuel supply. It was imperative to land within a very few minutes, yet it was not possible to tell one field from another, and even the line fences were not visible.
I flew around until the outline of a strawstack appeared in the field below us. This field was outlined on one side by the lighter color of the pasture adjoining it and a number of trees were discernible along the end. There was no way of telling whether it contained posts or ditches, but we had no alternative, and I landed beside the strawstack in the center.
A hasty examination of the field showed it to be suitable for night flying and we hailed the first car passing for a ride into the town. We had difficulty in locating our fireworks and, as the stores were all closed, still more time was lost before we obtained the bailwire, nails and boards used in building the framework for the flares and candles and attaching it to the plane.
It was nearly midnight when the ship was at last ready for the display. Only one car remained on the field. We ran this machine out beside the strawstack and placed it in a position to show up on one side of the stack, in addition to throwing most of its light on the field. I was about to take off when the headlights on the car became so dim that they were entirely useless. One of the men had a pocket flashlight and I took off while he threw its beam on the strawstack.
It was eleven-forty when I left the ground and eleven-fifty-seven when the last flare had burned out. Our contract had been fulfilled with three minutes to spare.
I located the field by the flashing of the spotlight and levelled off and landed by its beam.
Brussels, Belgium—With Crown Prince Leopold during the official reception
London, England—With H.R.H. the Prince of Wales and Lord Lonsdale (left) in the royal box at the Derby Ball
If the position of a light is known and the field is fairly level, it is not necessary to see the ground, but a plane can be stalled in and landed on the darkest night. Pilots often bring their ships down when only the outline of a field is visible. For this reason it is imperative that no obstructions such as farm machinery, or live stock, be allowed to remain on a landing field at night.
Locating a strange flying field by its position in relation to an equally strange golf course, is just one of the many instances in a pilot’s life where comedy goes hand in hand with the most serious situations.
In one instance, the story is told of a young pilot who had just learned to fly. He was taking the owner of his plane for a short flight and was demonstrating the various maneuvers he had learned. Finally he put the machine into a spin, but after several turns, discovered that he was not able to come out, and after trying vainly in every way he could remember hearing of from his instructor, he leaned forward in the cockpit and tensely informed his passenger that they were about to crash. Not realizing the seriousness of the situation, the owner replied, “What the ⸻ do you care, it’s not your ship!”
It was usually the case that a person inexperienced in the art of flying became quite disturbed over some trivial thing that was of little importance, yet was perfectly at home and enjoying life tremendously at a time when the pilot was straining every effort to avoid disaster.
People would argue indefinitely, trying to persuade one of us to overload the plane past its danger point by carrying more than two passengers at a time from a small field, and it was of no consequence to them whether the plane cleared the nearest trees by a safe margin, or stalled over the uppermost branches by inches. Explanations on our part were next to useless.
If we refused to overload the ship someone cited an example where a plane had carried several passengers at one time and it made no difference what kind of a machine it was, or how large an airport it was operating from. The fact that it carried more passengers than we did indicated that it was operated by a better pilot, and that our plane was not as safe to ride in.
We could struggle along close to the ground trying to get a little altitude and our passengers would have the time of their lives, waving at the people below, but let the motor start to miss, although the plane might be several thousand feet high, with several large fields in sight, and they would glance nervously back at the pilot wishing that they had never considered taking a ride in an airplane.
The International Air Races were to be held, that year, at New York during the first part of October and, since our fair contracts were over by the last of September, we decided to enter in the “On to New York” competition, which was for civilian planes only, and was decided by points given for distance, speed, number of passengers carried, and the size of the engine used.
We had our motor overhauled at Denver and expected to fly from there to San Francisco for the start. Some of the repair parts for the engine were delayed and we were several days late in leaving Denver. Even then it was only through night work and leaving a number of things undone that we got away. A fifty-gallon center section gasoline tank had been installed which, in addition to the regular fuselage tank, gave us a capacity of one hundred and seven gallons.
We installed the engine one night and idled it for several hours before daybreak in order to work in the bearings; then we took off for San Francisco.
Our first stop was at Rawlins, Wyoming, where the highest field on the transcontinental air mail route is located. We refilled at Rawlins and made Evanston that night.
At Evanston we were starting the engine preparatory to taxiing over and tying down for the night, when our carburetor caught fire. In the haste to get started we had neither put a fire screen on the intake, nor a drain pipe down from the bowl. The engine was covered with oil and the gasoline overflowing from the bowl carried the flames down around it. Soon the entire nose of the ship was ablaze and although we shovelled earth over the motor, it appeared that the wings would soon catch fire. If the fabric began to burn, the ship was gone. I had just finished removing all loose equipment from the cockpit when a small hand extinguisher arrived and with its aid the fire was soon put out.
All of the ignition wire insulation was burned off but otherwise very little damage had been done.
We were delayed twenty-four hours rewiring the engine and cleaning out the dirt shovelled on in the attempt to put out the fire.
After Rawlins we stopped at Salt Lake City, and from there we flew over the Great Salt Lake Desert to Battle Mountain, Nevada, where we spent the night.
We took off from Battle Mountain with full gas tanks and after following the passes until part of the fuel was consumed, and the load correspondingly lightened, we passed over the Sierra Nevada Range at eight thousand five hundred feet, and landed at Oakland, California. The same evening, without refilling, we flew over San Francisco Bay to Crissey Field.
The following day we took off from Crissey Field on the start of our race to New York. One of the rules of the contest was that each plane should carry a log with the starting point and number of passengers carried attested to by two witnesses. By the time we had made out the log and serviced our plane, it was afternoon and darkness overtook us at Lovelocks, Nevada.
The next night was spent in Rawlins, Wyoming, after a stop at Salt Lake City for fuel.
We arrived in Rawlins with a valve blowing badly and were delayed a day in pulling the bank and grinding in another valve.
We were far behind our schedule due to the late start from Denver; the delay at Evanston, and again at Rawlins; but without further trouble we would still be able to reach New York on time. Another valve began blowing, however, soon after leaving Rawlins, and when we took off from our next stop at Sidney, Nebraska, the motor had lost a number of revolutions.
We flew to Lincoln from Sidney and after taking the short remaining time into consideration, we decided to abandon the race and start barnstorming.
We overhauled the engine at Lincoln and worked over towards St. Louis, where we arrived about the end of October.
At St. Louis we decided to tie up for the winter and I began instructing students for the Robertson Aircraft Corporation on OX-5 Standards. The Corporation had been awarded the air mail contract but actual operation was not to start until the next spring, so during the winter months I spent my time instructing and test flying in their commercial service.
For the first time in my flying career I was to be in one plane longer than a few months, so in November, 1925, I enlisted in the 110th Observation Squadron of the 35th Division Missouri National Guard, and was commissioned a First Lieutenant soon afterward.
The squadron was stationed on Lambert Field. Every Sunday was spent in flying. We had a number of JN training planes and one TW-3 which was the commanding officer’s personal ship.
The organization was composed mainly of pilots who had flown during the war, but after the Armistice had gone back to civilian life. Their only method of keeping in training was by flying National Guard planes in their spare moments and attending camp two weeks each year.
Two nights and one day each week were devoted to military service by these officers and the enlisted men under them. Their pay was small and most of them lost more from neglect of their business than they received for their military services. The remuneration was hardly considered. However they joined the Guard for two reasons: first, because of the opportunity it offered to keep in flying training, and second, because they considered it a patriotic duty to keep fit for immediate service in case of National emergency.
Appropriations were not large and often insufficient but, although at times it required part of the squadron’s pay checks, the ships were kept in the air.
The National Guard squadrons offer an excellent opportunity for young men to get a start in aviation. Instruction is given each week, covering practically every branch of military aeronautics, and practical flying experience is obtained both in the air and on the ground under actual operating conditions. Each year a few members of the squadron are sent to the army schools at San Antonio for flying training, and upon returning these men take their places in the commissioned personnel of the organization.
The inauguration of our Air Mail service was to take place on April fifteenth, and as spring drew near we were kept busy making preliminary preparations. The De Havilands were to be completed and tested; a ground organization built up; the terminal airports decided upon and facilities for taking on and discharging the mail arranged for; in addition to the untold detail arrangements which go to make up the organization of a successful airline.
Contract air mail routes are located by the Post Office Department and are so arranged that the mail service can be improved by use of air transportation over other means of communication.
The route is opened for bid and the contract awarded to the lowest bidder who is responsible and in a position successfully to carry on operations.
The contractor can bid any amount up to three dollars per pound of mail and is paid by the pound for the actual amount carried over his route.
Our route, between St. Louis and Chicago was operated on a schedule which saved one business day over train service to New York. A letter mailed in St. Louis before three-thirty p.m. was rushed to Lambert Field by a fast mail truck, transferred to the plane which was waiting with engine turning over, landed on the Air Mail field at Maywood, Illinois at seven-fifteen, transferred to one of the Chicago–New York overnight planes, retransferred at Cleveland, Ohio, and was in the Post Office in New York in time for the first morning delivery.
An answer could be mailed at New York in the evening and be delivered in St. Louis before noon on the following day. If sent through the ordinary mail it would not arrive until one day later.
The advantages of air transportation are most apparent over long distances. The air mail flies from New York to San Francisco in thirty-six hours, whereas a train requires nearly four days to make the same trip.
The United States, through the efforts of the Post Office and the Department of Commerce, is being covered with a network of air mail routes, and it is only a matter of the public using this service before nearly every city in the country will be served by airlines.