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Show 20 Years of Air Mail X National Air Mail Week, May ,15 to 21, celebrates the twentieth 'anniversary of scheduled air mail I service in the United States, which ;has developed from a few- thousand thou-sand air letters in. 1918 to 760,-; 760,-; 000,000 in 1937. Pictured above is the plane which pioneered air .'mail and the modern airliner of today. ' The single-engined mail plane of 20 years ago was a war-time I ship converted to carry a few j hundred pounds of mail. The pilot sat in an open cockpit with few aids to navigation. The plane Cruised around 90 miles an hour and flew only during the daytime. , Air mail time coast-to-coast in 1920 was 78 hours 30 minutes. United Air Lines today flies Douglas Doug-las Mainliners over the same Main Line mid-continent airway pioneered pio-neered by the Post Office from New York and Chicago to the Pacific Coast. In addition to large mail and express compartments, compart-ments, the Mainliner carries 21.1 passengers in lounge chairs or twelve in large berths on over- j night trips. It is powered with two 14-cylinder Wasp engines and 1 cruises at 205 miles an hour. It ! flies coast-to-coast in 15 hours 30. ! minutes. |