Tales of the Air Mail Pilots

Nowhere else in the world has such a determined and successful effort been made to carry the mails by airplane as in the United States. Not since the Armistice have aviators in any part of the globe experienced such thrilling and terrifying adventures as Uncle Sam’s aerial postmen.

Two years ago I flew as a passenger from New York to Chicago, over the Alleghanies, with “Slim” Lewis and Wesley Smith, two of the Air Mail’s best pilots, at the controls. But nothing happened, except that, after some eight hours of rather monotonous flying, we arrived at Chicago after dark, could not locate the Air Mail flying field, and were compelled to land on the prairie west of the city. This was nothing more than an incident; only the pilot who flies day after day, week after week, in all sorts of weather, is fortunate—or unfortunate—enough to experience real adventures.

A few weeks ago I journeyed over the entire Air Mail route, from New York to San Francisco. I traveled by train this time, and stopped at every flying field of consequence in search of stories of adventure. And I marveled that these quiet, smooth-faced, unassuming, well-dressed young men, most of whom are married and drive their own cars, could have passed safely through the experiences which I shall relate. Yet there they stood before me.

In order to understand how these mishaps came about, it is necessary to familiarize oneself with the duties of the pilots and the purpose of the Air Mail Service. Every day, whatever the weather, two sturdy airplanes, loaded with mail, climb into the air above their respective flying fields near New York and San Francisco, and start across the continent. At the next landing field—there are thirteen of them between the two oceans—pilots and machines are changed, just as the crew and locomotive of the Limited are changed at each division point.

When night comes, these pilots pick up their beacons as sailors do, for no longer do lighthouses belong only on capes and reefs. They are strung along the plains from Cleveland to Cheyenne, making a Great White Way a thousand miles from the sea.

Along this route—the longest regularly operated airway in the world—I traveled until I reached Salt Lake City. There, while in the act of signing the hotel register, I heard a familiar sound—the drone of a Liberty motor. Directly over the center of the city appeared a De Haviland plane, speeding eastward at the rate of two miles a minute, or twice as fast as our fastest passenger trains.

“That’s Ellis, on his way to Rock Springs,” my host volunteered.

Salt Lake City is probably the most difficult spot along the entire transcontinental route for the pilot to get out of. The city is situated on a plain 4,200 feet above sea level, almost entirely surrounded by mountains. To the eastward, between Salt Lake and Rock Springs, Wyoming, is the country God forgot.

Circling above the flying field to gain altitude, Ellis steered a course over Immigration Canyon, down which Brigham Young and his weary followers came in 1847. Ten minutes from the field, he cleared Red Butte, 7,000 feet above sea level and 2,800 above the field. Ten minutes later he topped another ridge 9,000 feet above sea level. Thirty minutes in all of steady climbing found him over Porcupine Ridge, at an elevation of almost 10,000 feet. Then came the Bad Lands of Utah and Wyoming, an unpopulated series of barren, chaotic, and inhospitable ridges. Forced landings in the Bad Lands have been responsible for so many near-tragedies that an emergency kit—rifle, snowshoes, food, cooking apparatus, and tools—now forms a part of each pilot’s equipment.

That part of the transcontinental Air Mail route lying between Cheyenne and the California-Nevada line has had more than its share of mishaps and adventures. It was between Cheyenne and Rock Springs that Pilot Boonstra swooped down to a boulder-strewn spot one morning to pick up Chandler, whose machine had been put out of business by a broken connecting-rod. It was near the top of White Mountain, twelve miles from the Rock Springs Air Mail field, that Pilot Ellis and his sturdy plane were hurled by a “down-draft” into the steep, snow-covered side, like an arrow shot into a tree. Between Salt Lake City and Rock Springs have occurred half a dozen “forced landings” which came near resulting in disasters. It was in the Sierra Nevada Mountains that Pilot Huking, flying in a thick fog, crashed into the top of a tree and fell with his machine a hundred feet to the ground. Huking spent the next ten days in bed, but at the end of that time was back on the job.

It was near the California-Nevada line, sixty miles from the nearest town, that Pilot Vance was forced down by a blizzard at nightfall, and unceremoniously dumped out on his head when his machine tipped over on its nose. He had landed in a patch of manzanita brush, higher than he could reach, and there he was forced to stay until daylight came. Blanchfield, another pilot, was caught in the grip of a “twister” peculiar to the Nevada desert, on one occasion, and also had a narrow escape from death when his plane broke out in flames as he landed at the Elko Air Mail field. Once, with the thermometer at 60° below zero, he made a flight of 235 miles through blinding sheets of snow to deliver the mail. When Blanchfield finally landed at Reno, looking more like a huge snowman than a human being, the cockpit of his machine was almost full of snow and the pilot himself seemed to be frozen to his seat. On still another occasion, while flying in a blizzard, Blanchfield was forced to land on the snow-covered desert. After a five-hour search, the pilot came upon the shack of a wrinkled old Indian, who shoved a rifle in this “sky-devil’s” face and refused point-blank to help him crank the motor of his machine.

In the Utah-Wyoming Bad Lands, between Salt Lake City and Rock Springs, occurred the forced landing of Pilot Bishop, which would have terminated fatally had it not been for the exceptional bravery and good flying judgment of Ellis. It was in this section of the country that Boonstra fell into the deadly tail-spin while three and a half miles in the air, and came hurtling to earth. It isn’t often that an aviator goes into a tail-spin and lives to tell the tale. Yet I found that Boonstra was not only alive, but was stationed at Rock Springs. To Rock Springs, therefore, I hastened for my first tale of adventure.

The wireless equipment at the flying field sputtered as our flivver drew up to the shack.

“What’s up?” I inquired innocently.

“There’s been a big explosion in the coal mine at Kemmerer, eighty miles from here,” replied the Field Manager. “It’s up to me to find a ship and a pilot. They call on us for everything and we help when we can. They want us to send a doctor and a gas expert by airplane right away.”

As I stared to the eastward at the “saddle,” silhouetted against the cloudless blue sky, a black speck, which seemed at a distance of ten miles no larger than a dragonfly, sailed serenely above the depression in the ridge. This was Boonstra. Within a few minutes the pilot had landed in a cloud of dust and taxied his machine up to the hanger where we were duly introduced.

“Boonstra,” I began, “I understand that you’ve had more than your share of close shaves?”

“Well,” he replied, hesitatingly, “Maybe I have. But those things are all in the day’s work.”

“You don’t have a forced landing in the Rocky Mountains or a tail-spin from 18,000 feet every day, do you?”

“No-o.”

“I wish you’d tell me about the difficulties under which the mail is carried, in winter and summer. You see, the American people have no way of knowing just what you pilots are up against. The weather, for instance.”

“Well, it does get pretty bad. Take the day that came near being my last on earth. I left Salt Lake for this field at 7.30 in the morning. A full-sized blizzard was blowing, and the thermometer was below zero. I was flying low under the clouds, clearing mountain peaks by about two hundred feet, when I came to Porcupine Ridge. Suddenly, without any apparent reason, the machine settled. I guess I must have run into one of those winds that flow down the side of a mountain like a waterfall. Anyway, before I could attempt a right or left turn, or even throttle the motor, the machine dropped to a sloping ridge, the landing gear collapsed, and the wrecked craft slid on its fuselage almost to the top of the boulder-strewn ridge before it came to a stop.

“Here I was, thirty-five miles north of Salt Lake and eighty miles to the eastward. I was twelve miles from a telephone, and thirty miles from a railroad. The only house I had ever seen from the air was six miles distant. The ridge on which I stood was almost 10,000 feet high and almost inaccessible. I couldn’t see fifty feet in that storm, so I stripped the compass from the wreck. With my traveling bag in one hand and a pair of trousers wrapped about the other to help support my weight on the snow, and with bits of clothing wrapped about my feet to act as snowshoes, I started on my journey toward civilization.

“Soon I was floundering in snow up to my waist. I stumbled along all that day, all that night, and at daybreak came to the edge of the woods. The going was slow and tiresome. Frequent stops for rest were necessary. During these times I could feel my feet getting numb. But I carried a map of the country in my head, and knew there was a barn about three miles ahead. I struggled toward it all that day, while the blizzard raged and blotted out everything at times. By noon I was progressing at a snail’s pace; my leg muscles almost refused to function. About three o’clock I came close enough to the barn to see that there was no house, but it was clear now, and I could see one about three-quarters of a mile farther on. During all this time I was very weak, for I had eaten nothing in almost thirty-six hours.

“At dusk I came to the house, and they took me in, rubbed my frost-bitten feet with snow, and filled me with warm food and hot coffee. After struggling through snowdrifts for thirty-six hours without food or drink, you can imagine that I was pretty tired. I was. I hit that bed so hard that I slept almost twenty hours. I didn’t wake up until far into the next afternoon.

“The report from Rock Springs that I was missing pretty well disrupted the Air Mail Service for two days; for sixteen planes from the Rock Springs and Salt Lake fields suspended flying to look for me. Finally, my machine was located from the air by Bishop, of Salt Lake City. There was no telephone at the ranch; no way whatever of advising the searchers that I was safe. But, at the end of my nap, I was able to get on a horse and ride with my Good Samaritan ten miles to the nearest telephone. At that place some rescue parties, equipped with horses and bobsleds, met us and took us to Salt Lake, where we arrived the evening of the following Tuesday. The plane was recovered about ten days later.”

“What about your tail spin?”

“That,” replied the pilot, “is something that I don’t care to remember. It isn’t very often, you know, that a man who goes into a tail spin lives to tell of the experience. I don’t know to this day what caused me to fall into that spin, unless it was the condition of the weather and the loss of flying speed.