Tales of the Air Mail Pilots
Date: 2022-02-24T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Air pilots; Air mail service -- United States

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Title: Tales of the Air Mail Pilots

Author: Burt M. McConnell

Release date: February 24, 2022 [eBook #67493]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: The S. S. McClure Company, 1925

Credits: Roger Frank and Sue Clark

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES OF THE AIR MAIL PILOTS ***

Tales of the Air Mail Pilots

By Burt M. McConnell

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.

The highest beacon light in the world guides air mail pilots as they fly at night across Sherman Hill in the Rockies.

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.”

Pilot Lester F. Bishop

“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.

“The facts of the case are these: I ran into a blizzard one January day. The wind was dead against me, and I soon found that I couldn’t buck it, even though my ship would make two miles a minute. I tried it for half an hour, and made a little progress, but snow was falling so heavily that I could scarcely see a hundred yards ahead. I flew and flew and flew, trying to get around the storm, but it was impossible without going too far off the route. Then I tried to climb over it, and got to 18,000 feet, or about three and one-half miles, which is the ‘ceiling’ or limit of a De Haviland.

“By this time I was rather dizzy and exhausted. It was then that I lost consciousness and went into the tail spin. Recovering, at a point about a mile and a half above the ground, I managed to ‘come out of it,’ as they say, by bringing the machine to an even keel. But I was feeling so wobbly by this time that the plane almost immediately fell into another spin. I have no recollection whatever of what I did; probably I worked the controls instinctively. There was no banking indicator on my plane, so it was almost impossible, with snow swirling all around and my view of everything shut out by the blizzard, for me to tell when I was flying on the level. As I say, my memory is hazy about that second spin; all I know is that in some miraculous fashion I came out of it—only to fall into another! My hands and feet worked the controls automatically, I guess, as I swirled like a falling leaf toward the earth. The fall was a dizzy one, I can tell you.

Pilot Robert H. Ellis

“By good luck, rather than because of any effort of mine, I came out of my third tail spin. I can’t recall going into the fourth—and last—spin, but I dimly remember bringing the ship to a flat spiral about a hundred feet from the ground. Then I struck a tree, and the machine went crashing to the ground. I was unconscious for five hours, but was warmly dressed, so that freezing was not added to my list of injuries. These, in fact, were slight; merely a few cuts and bruises. If I hadn’t carried snowshoes in the cockpit, however, I probably would have perished, then and there. We all carry snowshoes, emergency rations, and a rifle, now. And our machines are equipped with banking indicators to show when they are on an even keel.”

At Reno, my next stop on the transcontinental Air Mail route, I learned of the untimely end, only a few weeks before, of Pilot Blanchfield. For ten years he had been a flier, first with the Royal Flying Corps during the war. Then he came to the United States, applied for citizenship, and entered the Air Mail Service. In those ten years he had flown approximately 300,000 miles, or more than twelve times around the earth.

Ninety-six inspections before each flight!

In flying over the crest of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, between Reno and Elko, Nevada, Blanchfield found the atmosphere in the neighborhood of the “hump” far more violent and dangerous than the disturbance in the air caused by anti-aircraft shells during the war. Besides experiencing several hazardous journeys under these conditions, during his comparatively brief career with the Air Mail, this pilot, on one occasion, was caught by a “twister” or tornado such as they have in Nebraska. But it was during an almost unheard of succession of gales, blizzards, and cold weather in November, 1922, that Blanchfield experienced what was perhaps his most exciting adventure.

The thermometer was 60° below at Elko one day when he persuaded the field manager to permit him to carry the mail to Reno, 235 miles away. Blinding sheets of snow, carried on the wings of an eighty-mile gale, were driven against the hangar as Blanchfield gave the signal for his machine to be wheeled out into the open. Steering directly into the howling wind and snow, the pilot was completely hidden from view within half a minute. The shrieking winds soon drowned the steady roar of his motor.

It is the custom, west of Cheyenne, for every railroad telegraph operator to report to the nearest Air Mail field the passage overhead of an airplane. Half an hour went by, yet no report came to either the Reno or Elko field. An hour passed, and still no tidings came. Meanwhile the storm had increased in intensity. A foot of snow had fallen.

At the end of two hours an alarm was sent along every telegraph wire within fifty miles of the transcontinental route. When three hours had passed without a report of Blanchfield’s whereabouts, and three feet of snow covered the landscape, it was generally believed that he had been forced down by the hurricane somewhere on the Great Salt Desert.

Finally, when the pilot was more than an hour overdue at the Reno field, the anxious little group in the hangar there heard the faint purr of a Liberty engine. Rushing to the hundred-foot door, they opened it in the face of the raging blizzard. The blinding snow shut out the view of everything more than fifty yards away, but they were positive they heard the steady, low drone of a motor. Then it ceased, and the watchers were about to turn back into the warm hangar when straight toward them, out of the furious storm, a plane came plunging through the drifts. Eagerly grasping the wings, they helped to steer it through the doorway.

Once safely inside, with the door closed behind them, they looked toward the cockpit, expecting to see Blanchfield’s grinning countenance. What they saw, however, was a huge snowman. The pilot himself could not be seen for the snow that covered him and almost filled the cockpit. He seemed frozen in his seat, with one hand clutching the control stick, and his frosted feet resting upon the steering gear. For more than three and a half hours this fearless pilot, sitting in this cramped position, with a violent storm swirling about him, had battled for his life. For the greater part of the 235 miles the ship had been almost beyond his control. The cold was the worst he had ever experienced. At times his powerful De Haviland had been unable to advance a single foot. His attempts to maneuver the plane out of the storm area were unavailing; the blizzard, it seemed, covered the entire State of Nevada. Certainly this was one of Blanchfield’s very narrowest escapes from death.

On another occasion, while en route from Elko to Reno, he ran into another eighty-mile-an-hour gale. As usual, a snowstorm was in progress. Unable to see more than fifty yards in any direction, the pilot might fly into the shoulder of a mountain or be swept by a ‘down draft’ into a rocky canyon. For all he knew, he might be twenty miles off his course. To stay longer in the air was to court disaster. With commendable wisdom, therefore, Blanchfield flew at an altitude of a hundred feet until he came to a comparatively level spot covered with sagebrush. There, in the argot of the Air Mail Service, he “sat down.”

Trudging through the snow, now two feet deep, in ever widening circles, Blanchfield, after five hours of walking, finally stumbled upon a little shack built in the side of a hill. At his knock the door opened a trifle, and the black, beady eyes of a patriarchal old Indian met his. But at the sight of this grotesque, snow-covered figure, with its goggles and helmet, the wrinkled old redskin slammed the door. He had never before seen a pilot in flying accoutrement, and he was taking no chances. With the fury of the gale almost drowning out his voice, Blanchfield tried for half an hour to persuade the wily old Indian to open the door.

Firmly grasping his rifle, the aborigine eventually unlocked the door, and stepped backward before the pilot’s advance, meanwhile motioning him with the barrel toward a primitive fireplace. Divesting himself of his entire flying outfit, Blanchfield stood before the Indian, an ordinary white man such as he had seen in the hills, and not some sort of devil. But the pilot’s command of the Indian and sign languages was inadequate, and the Indian was hard to convince. Didn’t this wizened old redskin see these “sky-devils” flying over the desert almost every day? Their throbbing motors must be filled with ‘bad medicine,’ for they flew through the air faster than the birds. No; he would stand there with his rifle until this stranger from another world warmed and fed himself, then he would send him forth. Fortunately for the pilot, an old prospector who knew the Indian happened along at this juncture, and explained the situation in pidgin English.

Blanchfield now visualized the two of them helping him “turn over” his ten-foot propeller, ordinarily a task for three men. The storm had abated somewhat, and the three set forth, Blanchfield explaining his predicament as they went along. But when the Indian came within a hundred yards of the stranded ship, he stopped, and would go no farther. Nor would the grizzled prospector. ‘Sky devil no good’ was all the old redskin would say. So it fell to Blanchfield’s lot to turn over the propeller himself. Plowing through the snow, now almost two feet deep, with his heavy balloon-tired wheels, the pilot finally succeeded in urging his “bus” into the air, and arrived at the Reno field late that afternoon.

In May, 1922, Pilot Huking left San Francisco for Reno one day with the usual cargo of mail. A battle with the elements began almost as soon as the wheels of his machine left the ground, but this time it was not snow. It was fog, thick enough to tie up harbor shipping. When his ship, after a gallant climb of several thousand feet, finally poked her nose above the clouds, Huking was lost. But he started in the general direction of Reno, guided only by his compass. When more than three miles in the air, the mist began to thicken. To add to his discomfort, this soon turned to rain. Still he drove onward toward the “hump,” looking meanwhile for an opening. He dared not fly lower, for at any moment the sharp pinnacle of a mountain might rear itself abruptly into the clouds, too late for him to turn either to the right or left.

Huking was in a quandary. He felt certain that he was somewhere in the vicinity of the Reno field. But a dive through the blanket of dark clouds that lay over the mountains, in the hope of finding clear weather at a lower level, probably would result in death. There he was, lost in the darkness, miles above the earth, with only a dense mist on every side. After flying about in circles for more than an hour, looking in vain for an opening, the engine began to sputter and finally stopped completely. Huking instinctively turned his ship’s nose downward, and glided through the dense clouds at an angle so flat that it barely maintained the momentum of the airplane. After what seemed hours, the pilot found, upon emerging from the mist, that the ground was only three hundred feet below. To his consternation, however, it was covered with trees, some of which were more than one hundred feet high!

Almost before he was aware of what was happening, one of the wings of the machine came in contact with a tree-top and was snapped off. Slewed around by the impact and without this supporting wing, the plane dived downward and crashed through the limbs of the surrounding trees, breaking into a thousand pieces.

From a point half a mile away, the noise of the falling plane was plainly heard by some wood cutters. Hurrying through the fog and mist, they found Huking, covered with blood, walking about the wreck.

“I couldn’t keep her up with only one wing,” he was repeating.

As they drew near, the pilot, who had had a very narrow escape from death, suddenly collapsed. They carried his unconscious form to the nearest doctor—three miles away—and Huking spent the next ten days in bed. But at the end of that time he was back on the job, carrying the mail between Reno and San Francisco, across the “hump” and the “hell hole” or Verdi, Nevada, which has been the scene of more than half a dozen near-tragedies.

To return to Pilot Vance, who in December, 1923, was caught in a snowstorm between Reno and San Francisco: The flakes, large and fluffy like the breast feathers of a Canada goose, floated lazily to earth, entirely cutting off his view of the country below. Flying by compass and resorting to the tactics taught him by experience, Vance endeavored to climb above the storm. At 13,000 feet—two and a half miles—the tempest still was raging. Snow was falling thicker than ever. Vance realized that it would be pitch dark before he could reach Reno. With the chances ten to one that he would become lost in the snowstorm, and realizing that his gasoline supply was running low, Vance decided to come down.

Gliding earthward at a sharp angle until he was within a few hundred feet of the ground, the pilot discovered that he was in the vicinity of the Last Chance mine. Picking out as a landing place what he thought was a patch of low brush, the pilot steered his ship in that direction. As he flew low over this area, Vance congratulated himself on having such a level spot on which to land.

Pilot Claire K. Vance

Skimming along the tops of the brush at sixty miles an hour, the ordinary landing speed of a De Haviland, Vance’s wheels finally touched the tips of the brush, cutting down the momentum of the big machine. Then, as Vance settled lower and lower, the plane was tripped like a roped steer. Brought up short in this way, the ship, with the heavy engine in the forward part of the fuselage, now turned on its back, and unceremoniously dumped Vance out on his head.

The pilot, entirely unhurt, found that he had landed in a big patch of manzanita brush, six feet high and heavy in proportion. Here he was, almost sixty miles from the nearest town—and the nights are cold along the Nevada-California line.

After learning that his landing gear, upper wings, and propeller had been damaged and that he could not hope to cut a path to freedom in the darkness, Vance decided to build a fire and camp near the machine. When he finally got the fire started, the pilot had only two matches left. This one fact indicates the close escape he had from freezing to death in the blizzard, or worst still, of becoming lost while fighting his way out of the manzanita brush in the darkness.

A less resourceful aviator might have wandered about until he died of exhaustion.

Vance lay awake all night feeding the fire with manzanita brush. He had landed about half a mile from the edge of the brush nearest the mine, instead of in the center of the patch. With the first ray of dawn Vance struck off toward the nearest edge of the brush, and within an hour had covered the half mile that separated him from freedom. At the mine, the surprised superintendent loaned him two mules, one to ride and the other to carry the 350 pounds of mail. One of the miners volunteered to ride out with him to bring back the mules. It was eighteen miles from the Last Chance mine to Michigan Bluff. This was covered on mule-back. There Vance caught a stage to Colfax, California—forty miles—where he put his mail aboard the eastbound Limited.

There are five radio systems to keep track on the air mail pilots as they wing swiftly from one edge of the United States to the other.

Returning from San Francisco, I stopped at Salt Lake, where Ellis and Bishop were stationed. Theirs is a story stranger than fiction, and it exemplifies the best traditions of the Air Mail Service.

Late in October, 1923, Bishop, one of the oldest pilots, in point of service, was caught in a blizzard forty-five miles south of Rock Springs, Wyoming, and forced down twenty-five miles from the nearest point of civilization and communication. The sky above the Sierra Nevada Mountains was thick and overcast, with the wind blowing at forty miles an hour. The thermometer registered 18°. Snow of the dry and powdery sort was falling heavily. Bishop could see less than a hundred yards, and could make no headway whatever against this typical Utah blizzard.

Concluding that it would be best to land on the route between Rock Springs and Salt Lake City, with which he was familiar, rather than to try to find his way through the storm, Bishop finally “sat down” on a comparatively smooth and—at that time—bare plateau, known as Bridger’s Bench. He landed without accident, and for approximately an hour kept his motor turning over slowly, in the hope that the storm would subside. By that time at least a foot of snow had fallen. Realizing that he must get out of his predicament immediately, if he expected to get out at all, Bishop began charging backward and forward with his powerful machine, in an attempt to clear a runway with the “backwash” from the propeller. For an hour he sent his plane at full speed over the top of the plateau, backward and forward for two hundred yards at a time, in an effort to clear a path ten feet wide. But each time he had finished digging a runway long enough, and turned around, the snow had drifted in, and the process had to be repeated all over again.

An alarm is sent out by telegraph and radio whenever a plane is missing. Often a man’s life has been saved by this information.

At the end of two hours snow covered the plateau to a depth of two feet. It now became more and more difficult to charge with his machine up and down the runway; but Bishop carried on. Perhaps the wind would cease, so that he could shovel a runway two hundred yards long and ten feet wide. Finally, however, after he had tried unsuccessfully for three hours to extricate his machine from the drifts; when snow had fallen to a depth of three feet and the powerful Liberty motor could not force the plane through the snow, Bishop climbed stiffly out of the cockpit, shook himself free of snow, drained off the water from the radiator, covered up the mail in the cockpit, and started walking in the general direction of the nearest settlement—Lyman, Wyoming.

Bishop was familiar with the country, having flown over it dozens of times, yet, being a careful and methodical pilot, he took the compass from the machine. He had no emergency rations. He had neither snowshoes nor rifle. He saw no game. There was no shelter within twenty miles that he knew of. If worst came to worst, however, he could still return to his machine and start a fire with his batteries and some gasoline.

The pilot was strongly tempted to lay aside his heavy fur-lined flying suit, but, as it seemed likely that he might have to use it for a blanket that night, he threw the legs of the suit over his shoulders, strapped them there in order to walk more freely, and floundered forth into the snow, now three feet deep.

Soon Bishop was wallowing in drifts higher than his waist. For hours he continued on, overheated by his exertions, and rapidly growing weaker with each stride. There was nothing from which to make snowshoes for his feet, even if he had had the tools and the time before darkness fell. The storm still howled about his ears and shut off the view ahead. But with his compass he kept a course toward a farmhouse which he knew nestled at the foot of a mountain some twenty miles to the westward.

For more than six hours Bishop, who was born on an Iowa farm and is sturdily built, staggered wearily along through the snowdrifts, traveling in that time about ten miles. At this critical juncture, half way between the ship, where he could at least have built a fire, and the farmhouse where he was sure to find warmth, food, and shelter, Bishop realized that his fast waning strength was not equal to the task of reaching the one or retreating to the other. He was becoming drowsy by this time, but he struggled onward, still carrying his heavy flying suit, for it seemed certain that he would be compelled to spend the night in the open. No one could possibly have seen him land, and certainly he, a mere speck against the spotless white, could not be discerned from the farmhouse, even with the aid of glasses. Besides, no one would expect even an Air Mail pilot to venture out in such a blizzard.

The field flood-light—a powerful searchlight—makes the landing field lighter than at noontime.

By resting at frequent intervals, this husky Iowan accomplished two more miles in as many hours. But now, after an eight-hour battle with the elements, the pilot had arrived at the stage where he was absolutely exhausted and almost in despair. How simple a solution of the problem, he thought, merely to lie down and go to sleep. Just then, however, he heard above the whistling of the wind the familiar drone of a Liberty motor. Glancing up, and almost unwilling to believe his eyes, the weary flier saw a plane directly above him. A miracle had happened. One of the boys, Bishop concluded, had learned by wireless that he was missing, and was now in search of him. The “shipwrecked” pilot frantically waved his heavy flying suit, but, despite his efforts, the plane passed a thousand feet above him, flying eastward, without even a signal. Within a few minutes it was out of sight.

Bishop now gave up hope. Was he to die almost within sight of a haven? By this time it had stopped snowing, but a moderate gale still howled out of the southwest. Bishop sat down to rest and think things over. He was now on a “hogback,” perfectly level and almost free of snow. As he sat there, another miracle happened; a miracle to stir one’s blood. It was this: Bob Ellis, Bishop’s companion, flying from Salt Lake City to Rock Springs, had seen his machine on the ground, but had noticed that the engine was running. Ellis, anxious to keep to the schedule, and believing Bishop was not in difficulty, continued on. But soon after his arrival at Rock Springs, Salt Lake reported by wireless that Bishop was missing. Ellis thereupon asked permission of the Division Superintendent to retrace his flight to the spot where he had seen Bishop’s plane on the ground. This was a splendid thing for Ellis to do. He was weary from his four-hour flight. The wind was still blowing at forty miles an hour. Nevertheless, this fearless pilot waited only long enough for a ship to be fueled.

Taking along a mechanic in case of accident to his own motor, and food and coffee for Bishop, Ellis set out in the face of the gale to find among a thousand hills a stalled machine and its helpless pilot.

When I remarked to Ellis, a few weeks ago, in a conversation at Salt Lake City, that this was a “mighty fine thing” for him to do, he replied: “Oh, that’s nothing; Bishop or any other pilot would do the same thing for me. We realize that any one of us may get into a jam at any time. And then it’s up to his fellow pilots to get him out of it.” This is the code of those who go down to the sea in ships.

After a flight of less than an hour, Ellis and his mechanic sighted Bishop’s machine, half buried in the snow; a dead thing. There was no sign of Bishop. Moreover, his trail had been blotted out by the drifting snow. Ellis, flying low and in wide circles about the stalled machine, asked himself what he would do in similar circumstances. Immediately he concluded that he would make for the farmhouse, twenty miles away. With an Air Mail pilot, to decide is to act and within fifteen minutes, Ellis, flying a hundred feet above the snow, had “picked up” a floundering figure half way between the stalled machine and the farmhouse. Settling gradually, in order not to break the undercarriage of his plane and thus leave all three at the mercy of the blizzard, Ellis and his mechanic landed near their exhausted comrade.

After a meal and some hot coffee, Bishop was able to “sit in” at a council of war. Ellis’s machine, they agreed, could carry the three of them, provided it could get into the air. But ground conditions were so unfavorable—the drifts were so deep—that this seemed impossible. It was then agreed that they would “taxi” the machine to a clear spot six miles to the westward, from which to take off.

For four miles, with each mile rapidly eating up their fuel supply, they churned their way through the powdery drifts, with Bishop huddled in the cockpit and the mechanic, comparatively fresh and warmly clothed, clinging to a precarious position on one of the wings. Finally, Ellis, realizing that his gasoline supply was becoming dangerously reduced, suggested that Bishop, with the aid of the mechanic, try to reach the farmhouse, now some four miles distant, while he flew back to Hock Springs to report Bishop’s safety—and get more gasoline. This they attempted, but Ellis, watching Bishop’s faltering footsteps from the air, realized that his exhausted comrade would be unable to accomplish the four miles. Swooping downward, Ellis again landed near the struggling pair, helped them to climb aboard, and swore that he would get the ship off the ground with the three of them on board, or “bust her up.”

Finding a ridge comparatively free from snow, Ellis, with his motor racing at full speed, and his plane reeling drunkenly amid the entangling sagebrush and snowdrifts, succeeded, after swaying and dipping for two hundred yards, in getting into the air. Little by little, an inch at a time, then a foot, with his propeller racing faster than it had ever gone before, Ellis finally climbed twenty-five feet into the air. By facing directly into the wind, the pilot utilized its velocity to attain an altitude of a thousand feet. Then he turned, and with the wind at his back, he flew with his passengers to Hock Springs—and safety—in half an hour.

Within a week Bishop’s machine had been recovered entirely whole, flown back to the field, and the pilot himself had recuperated. But he freely admitted to me in Salt Lake recently that if Ellis had not shown exceptional courage and excellent flying judgment, he, Bishop, would have perished almost within sight of aid.

These are tales of Bishop, Ellis, Blanchfield, Boonstra, Huking, and Vance.

Meager reports of other experiences are filed away, usually on single sheets of paper, in the office of the Superintendent of the Air Mail Service. For, with an Air Mail pilot, modesty amounts to an obsession. Those with whom I am acquainted would be the first to deny that flying is a dangerous game. Haven’t they been flying “crates” and “coffins” for ten years? Nevertheless, every day these pilots take grave risks, and in time of storm they undergo hazards comparable only to those which aviators at the front underwent during the war. For the pilot, once in the air, has nothing between the earth and himself but his Liberty motor.

It is over this sort of country—wooded and treacherous—that the Air Mail pilots fly.

What sort of men are these sky-riders? They are a quiet, modest, efficient, hardy, intrepid, expert, and likeable group of young men. Many of them are in the Army Air Service Reserve. Most of them received their training before or during the war. They fly every day in the year, in darkness and fog, through snow, hail, “twisters,” lightning, sleet, and rain. The dangers of flying they accept as a matter of course. Even forced landings such as I have described, in a rocky and uninhabited country, are smilingly accepted as part of the day’s work. They fly at great altitudes, barely skimming the backbone of the continent. On every side they see only dense forests, turbulent streams, jagged peaks, and precipitous canyon walls. Yet they continue on, day after day, year after year.

These pathfinders of the West have reduced the United States, in terms of transportation, to one-fourth its size. One can appreciate the value of the service they render only if he realizes that the prosperity of the United States depends mainly on doing business with ourselves on a bigger scale, and that business is carried on chiefly by correspondence. And no branch of the Post Office Department takes greater pride than the Air Mail Service in the motto from Herodotus that is carved above the portal of the New York Post Office:

“Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the July 1925 issue of McClure’s Magazine. The cover image was created by the transcriber and placed in the public domain.

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Table of Contents

- Tales of the Air Mail Pilots

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