During the first year, airmail bags contained as much regular mail as airmail. To better its delivery time on long hauls and to lure the. Carrying Mail by Aeroplane. A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE AIR MAIL SERVICE OF THE. THE FIRST aerial mail. Eastbound flights over this route advanced delivery of gateway mail from. Earle Ovington was the Post Office Department’s “First Aeroplane Mail Carrier. Airmailprobably played in the sky, a role little known today except to postal employees and pioneers of American aviation. In 1. 90. 5, the War Department considered three separate offers by Orville and Wilbur Wright to share their scientific discoveries on flight, then declined for budgetary reasons. Although by 1. 90. Wright brothers had convinced many European nations that flight was feasible, the U. S. Earle Ovington, sworn in as a mail carrier by Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock, made daily flights between Garden City Estates and Mineola, New York, dropping his mail bags from the plane to the ground where they were picked up by the Mineola postmaster. These flights convinced the Department that the airplane could carry a payload of mail. Officials repeatedly urged Congress in 1. In 1. 91. 6, Congress finally authorized the use of $5. The Department advertised for bids for contract service in Massachusetts and Alaska but received no acceptable responses. The Post Office Department urged the Army Signal Corps to lend its planes and pilots to the Department to start an airmail service. Carrying the mail, the Department argued, would provide invaluable cross- country experience to student flyers. The Secretary of War agreed. York and Washington, D. C., May 1. 5, 1. 91. Simultaneous takeoffs were made from Washington’s Polo Grounds and from Belmont Park, Long Island, both trips by way of Philadelphia. Army pilots and six Army Curtiss JN- 4. H (“Jenny”) training planes. On August 1. 2, 1. Department took over all phases of airmail service, using newly hired civilian pilots and mechanics and six specially built mail planes from the Standard Aircraft Corporation. Pilots flew by dead reckoning. Forced landings occurred frequently due to bad weather, but fatalities in those early months were rare, largely because of the planes’ small size, maneuverability, and slow landing speed. The public was reluctant to use this more expensive service. During the first year, airmail bags contained as much regular mail as airmail. To better its delivery time on long hauls and to lure the public into using airmail, the Department’s long- range plans called for a transcontinental air route from New York to San Francisco. The first legs of this transcontinental route — from New York to Cleveland with a stop at Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, then from Cleveland to Chicago, with a stop at Bryan, Ohio — opened in 1. A third leg opened in 1. Chicago to Omaha, via Iowa City, and feeder lines were established from St. Louis and Minneapolis to Chicago. Pan American inaugurates the first transpacific mail service. The last transcontinental segment, from Omaha to San Francisco, via North Platte, Nebraska; Cheyenne, Rawlins, and Rock Springs in Wyoming; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Elko and Reno in Nevada; opened on September 8, 1. By November, ten stations were operating, including two Navy stations. When airmail traffic permitted, other government departments used the radios instead of the telegraph for special messages, and the Department of Agriculture used the radios to transmit weather forecasts and stock market reports. Congress was impressed. It appropriated $1,2. The Post Office Department installed additional landing fields, as well as towers, beacons, searchlights, and boundary markers, across the country. The Department also equipped the planes with luminescent instruments, navigational lights, and parachute flares. By the end of 1. 92. As commercial airlines took over, the Post Office Department transferred its lights, airways, and radio service to the Department of Commerce, including 1. Terminal airports, except government properties in Chicago, Omaha, and San Francisco, were transferred to the municipalities in which they were located. Some planes were sold to airmail contractors, while others were transferred to interested government departments. By September 1, 1. Aeronautics Administration, said about those early days of scheduled airmail service: aids, and multi- engined aircraft. Not all of these came full blown into the transportation scene; in fact, the last one withered and died and had to be planted over again nearly a decade later. But they are the cornerstones on which our present world- wide transport structure is built, and they came, one by one, out of our experience in daily, uninterrupted flying of the mail.
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