Like many people in the “before time,” I had my share of difficult airplane trips.
I waited for hours in Reagan National Airport one June Friday when summer thunderstorms delayed all the flights to Boston. I once spent the better part of frustrating snowy winter day at Logan Airport trying, unsuccessfully, to get to a funeral in New York. And I’ve waited for many hours at the RDU airport when flights to Boston were delayed. (I’ve also rushed to RDU when were told that a flight that had been significantly delayed was now back on schedule).
But none of my airplane misadventures holds a candle to the flight that Jack Knight, one of the nation’s first airmail pilots, made on February 22 and 23, 1921. In honor of that flight – and all the times any of us have had difficult flights – today’s #stampoftheday is a 6-cent airmail stamp, issued in December 1918, that would have been used to pay for a one ounce letter on Knight’s historic journey.
Regular airmail service had started in May 1918 when the U.S Post Office used Curtiss biplanes (such as the one shown on the stamp) to provide service between Washington, D.C. and New York City. Two years later, the Post Office launched a hybrid transcontinental airmail in which mail was carried by planes during the day and by trains at night. If weather cooperated, it took at least 72 hours to move mail between New York City and San Francisco, only 36 hours less than the all-rail trip.
Congress and Warren G. Harding, who was going to take office in March 1921, weren’t impressed and were thinking of cutting subsidies for the service. Second Assistant Postmaster General Otto Praeger, who was overseeing the new airmail system, decided that a round-the-clock, all-air relay of mail from New York to San Francisco in the worst weather of the year would prove that airmail was better than surface mail. But this meant flying at night and even airmail pilots “doubted that you could keep an airplane right side up in the dark,” Ernest Allison, who was one of those pilots, was quoted as saying in an article by his daughter in Airmail Pioneer News.
Concerns about safety were realistic. By early 1921, less than three years after regular airmail service had started, 17 of the pilots had died in crashes traced to mechanical or weather-related causes. The problem was that they literally flew by the seat of their pants. Although they had an altimeter, an airspeed indicator, a tachometer and a water temperature and fuel pressure gauge and a magnetic compass, which was thrown off by everything metal on the plane, they mainly flew by following roads, rivers, rail lines, and other landmarks they could see from their planes.
To improve the service, and to prepare for the transcontinental flights, Praeger began having the post office collect the notes airmail pilots had made of their journeys and combine them with information from local post offices to create the Transcontinental Air Mail Pilot’s Log. Praeger also suggested that postal workers set bonfires along the route. Despite such planning, many were dubious. The New York Sun, for example, editorialized that the flight was “homicidal insanity.”
After extensive planning, the flights westward began at 6:00 a.m. on February 22, a date chosen not only because the weather was likely to be bad but also because it was George Washington’s birthday, which was a national holiday. Two planes, each carrying about 16,000 letters, left Hazlehurst Field on Long Island, outside of New York City and two planes, also carrying also carrying about 16,000 letters, departed Marina Field in San Francisco. “Plenty of people were on hand to wish us clear skies and good luck that day,” Allison, who took off from Long Island told his daughter. “As it turned out we certainly needed luck and plenty of it.”
Allison and the other west-bound pilot quickly ran into snow, wind and a cotton-like fog. Allison made it to Cleveland where another pilot took the mail onto Chicago where a third pilot took the mail but was forced by snow, fog and ice. Ice on the other plane’s wings and wires forced its pilot to end his flight in Du Bois, PA.
The two east-bound planes made it to Reno where replacement pilots began the next leg to Salt Lake City. However, one crashed and died. The other plane continued on to Cheyenne and then, in the evening, to North Platte, Nebraska where Knight (and a crowd of onlookers) was waiting. After a three-hour wait to fix the plane’s ignition, Knight took off, guided in part by bonfires lit by residents of five towns along the route. “Squinting down at them through drifting snow swirls, I felt as though many friends were sending me up signals of bon voyage,” he is quoted as saying in Allison’s article.
When he arrived in Omaha at 1:10 am, Knight was greeted by a large crowd and the bad news that because of bad weather, there was no one to fly the plane to Chicago. Although he had never flown the route and was exhausted, Knight volunteered, to go on. After poring over maps, drinking coffee and stuffing newspaper in his coat to keep warm, he took off for Iowa City, where he was to refuel. “I was flying over territory absolutely strange,” he’s quoted as saying in Allison’s article. “I knew nothing of the land markings, even if they had been visible.” To keep awake he supposedly gripped the control stick between his knees and slapped at his face, body and arms. Sometimes he also stuck his head over the side where the cold wind would help keep him awake.
There were no bonfires or beacons marking the Iowa City airfield because the ground crew had gone home, assuming the flight had been canceled. Somehow, Knight found the field and buzzed it until the night watchman heard his airplane and lit a flare. After refueling, Knight took off and arrived in Chicago at 8:40 am. The mailbags were quickly loaded onto a plane bound for Cleveland and then to New York. In total, it took 33 hours and 20 minutes for the mail to move from San Francisco to New York, less than half the time as the air/rail combination had taken.
Newspapers hailed Knight as the “hero who saved the airmail.” And Harding and Congress agreed to provide increased funding that for airmail that not only allowed for more planes and pilots but also began to light airmail routes and create navigational aids. As Allison told his daughter, “We realized if we could make it go, it could amount to something.”
If I ever fly again, I’ll probably be delayed somewhere. When I do, I’ll try to remember that trials of Jack Knight and not feel too bad about what I’m going through.
Be safe, stay well, fight for justice, and work for peace.