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Show Our Air Mail Observes Its 25th Birthday , r-ry - - : . ' ur- ( 1 . f ! THEN This DeHaviland was built for the First World war, became a mail plane when the post office department started the first coast-to-coast airway in 1920. Equipped with a 400-horsepower Liberty motor, it carried its pilot and up to 400 pounds of mail at a cruising speed of around 100 miles an hour. It was an open cockpit job as was the ancient Model T in the background! ' NOW This United Air Lines Mainliner, with its two 1,200-horsepower Pratt and Whitney Wasp engines carries two pilots, a stewardess, up to 21 passengers, baggage, and approximately 2,000 pounds of mail and express ex-press at a cruising speed of 200 miles an hour. It flies coast-to-coast overnight. Transport on the Chicago-New York section and Boeing Air Transport on the Chicago-San Francisco section sec-tion took over operation of the nation's na-tion's first coast-to-coast airline, the pioneer mid-continent route. Build Special Planes. Having won their new air mail contracts, the newly formed air mail lines tackled the job with determination determi-nation and energy. United's predecessor, prede-cessor, Boeing Air Transport, for example, ex-ample, built an entire fleet of 25 By ELMO SCOTT WATSON Released by Western Newspaper Union. YOU lived on the Atlantic seaboard and you wanted to send a letter to a friend out on the Pacific coast. So you put a two-cent stamp on it, dropped it in the mail and about a week later your friend was reading what you had written. That was back in 1918. Today you put a six-cent (airmail) stamp on your letter let-ter and the next day the postman post-man hands it to your friend. And that, in brief, is the modern version of Aladdin and his magic carpet which has become such a commonplace common-place that we accept it as a matter of course and never give it more than a passing thought. But Uncle Sam thinks we shouldn't take it so casually. So this month, even while he's busy fighting a global war, he's putting on special ceremonies ceremo-nies to honor the 25th anniversary ol regular air mail service and he's signed up a number of pioneer air mail pilots, army and navy aviation leaders and others prominent in aviation avi-ation development, to help him in this nation-wide celebration. It all began back in May, 1918, when a group ol World War I pilots, sitting in the open cockpits ol Liberty-powered DeHavilands, began flying the first scheduled air mail service between New York and Washington. Today, as the nation observes the 25th anniversary ol that event, air transportation is accomplishing accom-plishing a job which, even two years ago, would have seemed impossible , to its most enthusiastic advocates. The 218-mile air route between New , York and Washington, which in two decades and a hall has developed into respectable proportions as a passenger - mail - express network within the continental United States, and to foreign -lands, suddenly has become a vast system ol scheduled and unscheduled lines sprawling all over the lace ol the globe. Ol course, there were demonstrations demonstra-tions of the possibilities of delivery by air even before the 1918 New York to Washington venture, such as that of Pilot Earl E. Orvington in carrying letters between Mineola and Long Island, N. Y., away back in 1911. But 1918 is now recognized as the real "birthday" ol air mail. For it was in that year that the post office department inaugurated the service in co-operation with the war department which supplied planes and pilots. President Woodrow Wilson was on hand with a large crowd which saw the start ol the service from Washington's Wash-ington's Potomac park on May 15, 1918. So successful was the experiment experi-ment that the post office department began making plans for transcontinental transconti-nental air mail service. It was logical log-ical that it should project this route in the air over the mid-continent pathway which had been used by the early explorers on foot, the covered wagon, the Pony Express, the stage coach and the first transcontinental railroad. The Chicago-Cleveland leg of the . route was opened May 15, 1919; the Cleveland-New York section a month and a hall later, on July 1; the Chicago-Omaha on May 15, 1920; and the Omaha-San Francisco on September Sep-tember 8, 1920. Thus, in a little over two years air mail began winging Its way from coast to coast. True, it had to depend part of the way on the railroad, for the mail was carried car-ried by plane only in daytime and then transferred to trains at night. But, even so, it cut down the travel time for letters to approximately three days. Looking at this plane-railroad arrangement, ar-rangement, air mail pioneers said: "We can't let air mail grow up with one foot on the ground!" So a group of volunteer post office pilots determined de-termined to prove the effectiveness of all-air schedules from the Atlantic Atlan-tic to the Pacific. On February 22 and 23, 1921, they celebrated George Washington's birthday by making the first through day and night flight from San Francisco to New York. That paved the way for the lighting of the transcontinental airway which made night flights of mail planes possible and by July 1, 1924, regular day and night service had been in-' in-' augurated. ' A milestone in air mail history was the transfer of operations from the post office department to private pri-vate companies in 1926 and 1927. Having proved the practicability of scheduled air mail service, the post office department began turning over routes to private contractors on open, competitive bidding. Predecessor Prede-cessor companies of the present-day United Air Lines National Air ; ; h I J 4 THEN E. Hamilton Lee was one of the original post office department depart-ment pilots on the New York-Washington air mail route. port service was established, also T.A.T. soon inaugurated its coast-to-coast rail-air trips. Among the air mail companies were several no longer in existence, including such companies of the past as Clifford Ball, Inc., Stout Air Services, Serv-ices, Universal Air Lines, Interstate Airlines, Gulf Air Lines, Maddux Air Lines and Standard Airlines. Most of these companies became parts ol larger group systems. The start was made in the grouping of routes and companies which resulted in American Amer-ican Airlines, TWA, Eastern and other present major companies. Pan American got its start as the world's greatest overseas operator by flying from Miami to San Juan, Nassau and Havana. One of the greatest technical developments de-velopments was the adaptation of radio to airplane use. "Father" of this far-reaching project was the late Throp Hiscock of United Air Lines, who insisted that two-way radiotelephone radio-telephone communication between planes and ground stations could be effected. Through his efforts, installations in-stallations ol two-way radio-telephone equipment proceeded on a large scale in 1929. Pilots and ground stations were linked by voice communication to the everlasting benefit of all scheduled air transportation. trans-portation. Other aids were summoned to add to the efficiency and reliability ol mail-passenger-express schedules. Weather reporting services were improved, im-proved, the radio range came along with its provision of an "aerial highway," high-way," planes themselves became more efficient. The Boeing 80s, after aft-er five years of meritorious service, gave way to the Boeing 247s of United Unit-ed Air Lines, first all-metal, low-wing, low-wing, twin-engined transports in the country. These 10-passengcr, three-mile-a-minute planes revolutionized air transportation, introducing new factors of speed, comfort and all-around all-around efficiency. Travel time from coast-to-coast was cut to 19 'k hours. Coast-to-Coast Overnight. Then came the Douglas DC-2 the speedy Lockheeds and later Douglas Doug-las DC-3s and the Lockheed Lodestars Lode-stars again to spell big gains in speed, comfort and efficiency. , By the mid-1930s, air mail had be- come a habit with a large part of the American public. Business and industry had come to rely on its speed. Air mail poundage had increased in-creased year by year, even as air mail rates had gone down. As against the 217,000 pounds carried in 192G, 7,400,000 pounds were carried in 1934. Air mail pound miles performed per-formed by the nation's airlines rose from 6,280,000,000 in 1931 to 22,293,-000,000 22,293,-000,000 in 1941. Meanwhile, air mail postage had dropped from 10 cents for one-half ounce or fraction thereof there-of in 1927 to a flat six cents per ounce for the transportation of a letter let-ter from any place to any place in the United States. Starting from the keystone of air mail, there has been built under private pri-vate enterprise in this country the world's greatest nir transport system. sys-tem. And that's one of the reasons why Uncle Sam looks back so proudly proud-ly over his air mail's epic achievement achieve-ment in the relatively short time of a quarter of a century! I-; yi y:- - ' ' f ' i v 'I 1 i t" .A ' r ' y y NOW Capt. E. Hamilton Lee is dean of all air mail pilots with a record of 3,500,000 miles of flying. He now Dies the San Francisco-Los Angeles section of United's Pacific Coast airway sometimes accompanied accom-panied by his son, Robert E. Lee, who is a United co-pilot. special mail planes in just 150 days to handle the San Francisco-Chicago operation. In these days ol mass airplane production, that doesn't sound so startling, but it was a genuine genu-ine achievement 16 years ago. Developments on old "U. S. Air Mail No. 1" between New York and the Pacific coast were rapid. The sturdy single-engined mail-two passenger pas-senger Boeing 40s which began the service were replaced by 12-p;issen-gcr tri-motorcd Boeing 80s. On the Chicago-New York route of National Air Transport, tri-motorcd Fords made their appearance. Through connections of the two companies, multi-motored coast-to-coast trans- - . ' yrJ 'v. y . ' ' ' (" .""'.- , ' ..' 'l ' 1 - ..,aiJ. i- i .... . .1..,. .."k . --.-J ,. . .,. - ,'J J3,WiO TO.Nr) OF AIR MAII Ii Is CKtiinalird that tlm roininerelal aliiliir or Hie United (States will carry 10,000,000 pounds of air mall during 104.1. Hero's a part of It being loaded Into a oohU cohnI Mainliner. |