Airmail

Well, I had gotten everything accomplished that I could here, um, sending emails out and doing stuff, and then our friend Rocky, he had this cool, um, letter for me for my airplane collection.

And it, it was, you know when airmail used to be sent they would stamp it, like, it w- it would say 747 Air Mail, um, to-

I remember they ha-

... wherever

Alicia Beth Moore, 1979, contemporary glam rock singer of hits like Get the Party Started, Try, and Give Me a Reason.

Your memorable events for September 8, 1920, the first US Air Mail service begins from New York City to San Francisco.

1930, Richard Gurley Drew invents Scotch Tape.

1930, the comic strip Blondie makes its first appearance.

in all we spent about a week repairing the plane and when it was ready to fly once more i tested it with an irving parachute borrowed from one of the officers of the station that was the first service type of chute i had ever worn and i experienced the unique feeling of not caring particularly whether the ship held together during the tests or not i put that canoe through manoeuvres which i would never have dreamed of doing with it before yet with the confidence of absolute safety the advent of the service parachute was a tremendous step forward in the advance of aviation it gave the test pilot a safe means of escape in most cases when all else had failed it permitted formations to fly closer in comparative safety and in short allowed fliers to learn more about their planes than ever before all this contributed to the ever-increasing knowledge of practical flying which makes possible the safety of present air commerce the airplane parachute has developed with the rapidity of the planes themselves for years descents with chutes were made from balloons but the first jump from a plane was by captain berry at st louis missouri in nineteen twelve his parachute was a comparatively crude affair and of no use in an emergency Ten years later, service-type parachutes had been perfected, which were strong enough to stand any strain the weight of a man's body falling through the air could place on them, no matter how many thousand feet he fell before releasing the parachute from its pack.

And today, 15 years after Captain Berry made the first jump from an airplane, every Army and Air Mail pilot is required to wear a parachute.

The test flight over, we lashed a five-gallon can of gasoline on each wing and followed along the Gulf of Mexico to Pascagoula, Mississippi.

There was a small crack halfway down the back of the canoe's gasoline tank, and when the gas no longer oozed out through the crack, we knew that the tank was half empty.

That night we gave a farewell dinner in San Antonio and for the last time assembled together.

The next day we departed from Kelly.

End of Section 6 section seven of we by charles lindbergh this librivox recording is in the public domain chapter seven i join the air i went by rail to st louis and took an o x five standard out for a barnstorming trip in illinois missouri and iowa the post office department had just advertised a number of contract air mail routes for bid one of which was between st louis and chicago by way of springfield illinois i decided to barnstorm around the country until it was determined which better would be assigned the contract the robertson aircraft corporation had placed a bid and offered me the position of chief pilot if they were successful in getting the contract after returning from iowa i flew on several flying circus dates and made a few short cross-country flights to near-by cities on june second while testing a commercial plane built at lambert field i was forced to make a second emergency jump i had flown this ship for a few minutes the previous week and on this occasion was testing it for various maneuvers i had completed everything except hail-spins but when i attempted a right spin the plane refused even to start so after a second attempt with the same result i gave that up and tried one to the left the ship fell in easily and when i reversed the controls after a half turn came out at once i then put it into a second left spin and held the controls in a spinning position during two complete turns when i reversed them they had no apparent effect and using the engine was of no assistance after trying for fifteen hundred feet to bring the ship out of the spin i rolled over the right side of the cockpit and since i had jumped only about three hundred and fifty feet above the ground i pulled the ripcord as soon as the stabilizer had passed the chute opened quickly but while it was functioning i had fallen faster than the spinning ship on its next revolution the plane was headed directly towards the chute how close it passed will never be known for the risers leading up from my harness were twisted and swung me around as the ship passed however less than twenty-five feet intervened between the wing and my parachute i watched the plane crash in a grain field and turned my attention to landing a strong wind was drifting me towards a row of high-tension poles and it was necessary to partially collapse the chute in order to hasten the descent and land before striking the wires i landed rather solidly in a potato patch and was dragged several feet and over a road before several men arrived and collapsed the chute in addition to the strong wind and rough air collapsing or cutting the chute so close to the ground had caused a very rapid descent and my shoulder had been dislocated in landing in july i went on two weeks active duty at richardsfield miss where i instructed on jennys and d h fours in august i flew a curtis oriole to nevada miss to carry passengers during the missouri national guard encampment while at nevada i received a proposition to fly in a circus in colorado and as there was no immediate prospect of starting work on the mail route i accepted and when the encampment ended i flew the oriole back to st louis and took a train west on arriving at the field a few miles east of denver i discovered the plane i was to fly to be the same lincoln standard that lynch and i had flown to montana three years before we did a little barnstorming along the eastern slope of the rockies preliminary to the start of our flying circus we had contracted to exhibit before a number of fairs in colorado and there was nothing barred in the exhibitions we put on everything the committee was willing to pay for at the smaller places we used only one plane but at the more important exhibitions two were required we flew to the town where a fair was taking place about one day before we were to exhibit in that way everything was in readiness for the circus and the next morning there was no delay in our performance we started with wing walking the performer would climb out of the cockpit and walk along the entering edge of the wing to the outer bay strut where he climbed up on to the top wing and stood on his head as we passed the grandstand after finishing his stunts on the wing he would go to the landing gear and from there to the centre section where he sat while the plane looped and did jenny from the centre section he went to the tail and then unless it was an unusual occasion the wing walking exhibition was over after wing walking came the breakaway this was accomplished by fastening a cable to the landing gear the performer went out to the wing tip fastened his harness to the loose end of the cable and to all appearances fell off the wing no one on the ground could see the cable and a breakaway always produced quite a sensation iron loops were clamped along the cable for use in climbing back up one of our feature attractions was the plane change a rope ladder was attached to the wing of a plane and as one ship flew past the grandstand with the performer standing near the tip of the top wing a second plane with the ladder attached passed over the first so that the ladder was in easy reach of the performer we usually made two fake attempts to effect a change and actually counted on the third for success in this way the feat looked more difficult a parachute was attached to the opposite wing from the rope ladder after the plane change was completed the performer jumped off with the chute and the show was over in the evening we made a night fireworks flight a series of candles which when lighted emitted a trail of fire for several hundred feet behind the ship was attached to each wing after these candles had burned out two magnesium flares started burning lighting up the country below well enough to read a book very clearly the display was set off by an electric battery in the cockpit when the plane reached an altitude of two or three thousand feet a number of bombs were dropped to attract attention then the switch was thrown in to start the trails and colored lights and the ship looped and shunted around the comet-like trail of fire our greatest difficulty in night flying lay in lighting the landing fields from which to operate sometimes a number of cars were on the field and i landed and took off across the beams of their headlights under such conditions the ground was well illuminated and landing very simple on other occasions there would not be more than one car available and in one instance on a dark night i took off and landed by the light of a pocket flashlight which one of the men flashed constantly while i was in the air to enable me to keep track of the landing field at one town in colorado we were booked for a firework exhibition to be given between darkness and midnight we had been barnstorming during the day and on our way to this town we ran short of lubricating oil by the time we had replenished our supply it was too late to get in before dark and i had never landed at that town before the owner of the plane however was sure that he could easily locate the landing field even in darkness he had been there many times and he knew that the field was right next to the golf links we arrived over the town and after circling a few times i throttled the motor and shouted where's the field the reply was immediate and full of confidence right next the golf links well where are the golf links i don't know i was up against another of the very amusing but equally serious incidents in barnstorming life we were over strange territory on a dark night and with a rapidly diminishing fuel supply it was imperative to land within a very few minutes yet it was not possible to tell one field from another and even the line fences were not visible i flew around until the outline of a straw stack appeared in the field below us this field was outlined on one side by the lighter color of the pasture adjoining it and a number of trees were discernible along the end there was no way of telling whether it contained posts or ditches but we had no alternative and i landed beside the straw stack in the center a hasty examination of the field showed it to be suitable for night flying and we hailed the first car passing for a ride into the town we had difficulty in locating our fireworks and as the stores were all closed still more time was lost before we obtained the bail wire nails and boards used in building the framework for the flares and candles and attaching it to the plane It was nearly midnight when the ship was at last ready for the display.

Only one car remained on the field.