Browning chief. [volume] (Browning, Mont.) 1941-1953, 1943-05-28
Our Air Mail Observes Its 18th Birthday
By ELMO SCOTT WATSON

YOU lived on the Atlantic sea-
L board 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 1913.
Today you put a six-cent (air-
maiD stamp on yCur letter and
the next day the postman hands
it to your friend.
And that, in brief, is the mod
ern version of Aladdin and his
magic carpet which has become
such commonplace that we
accept it as 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 global
war, he's putting on special ceremo-
MES to honor the 25th anniversary of
regular air mail service and he's
signed up number of pioneer air
mail pilots, army and navy aviation
leaders and others prominent in avi-
alton development, to help him in
this nationwide celebration.
1t all began back in May, 1918,
when group of World War pilots,
sitting in the open cockpits of Lib
erty-powered DeHavilands, began
flying the first scheduled air mail
service between New York and
Washington. Today, as the nation
observes the 25th anniversary of that
event, air transportation is accom-
plishing 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 half has developed
into respectable proportions as a
passenger mail express network
within the continental United States,
and to foreign lands, suddenly has
become vast system of scheduled
and unscheduled lines sprawling all
over the face of the globe.
OF course, there were demonstra-
tons 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" of air mail.
For it was in that year that the post
office department inaugurated the
service in cooperation with the war
department which supplied planes
and pilots.
President Woodrow Wilson was on
hand with large crowd which saw
the start of the service from Wash
ington's Potomac park on May Is,
1918. So successful was the expert
ment that the post office department
began making plans for transconti-
mental air mail service. 1t was 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 Is, 1919; the
Cleveland-New York section month
and half later, on July /; the
Chicago-Omaha on May Is, 1920; and
the Omaha-San Francisco on Sep
TENDER 8, 1920. Thus, in 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 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 ar
rangement, air mail pioneers said:
"We can't let air mail grow up with
one foot on the ground!" So group
of volunteer post office pilots de-
termined to prove the effectiveness
of Affair schedules from the Allan
tic to the Pacific. On February %
and %, 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 l, 1924, regular
day and night service had been in
augurated.
A milestone in air mail history
was the transfer of operations from
the post office department to 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. Prede-
cessor companies of the present-day
United Air Lines - National Air
Transport on the Chicago-New York