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Flying the Air Mail ca. 1923
An early Post Office documentary on Air Mail.
The First Day of Airmail, 1918
President Wilson was on hand for the inaugural ceremonies.
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RedditFog and more fog. That’s what veteran pilot Max Miller encountered in September 1918 during the test flight to establish an airmail route between New York and Chicago. “I came down to see where I was and get my bearings, and the first thing I knew I hit the top of a tree,” Miller later told Flying Magazine. “That sure gave me a good scare. I hustled back up again into the fog, determined to get plenty of altitude and keep on going as long as my gas held out.”
Just one month earlier, assistant postmaster general Otto Praeger had announced that the Postal Service would extend the existing airmail route (which linked New York and Washington, D.C.) on to Chicago; refueling stops would include Lock Haven, Pennsylvania; Cleveland, Ohio; and Bryan, Ohio.
Pilots Eddie Gardner and Max Miller were selected to survey the proposed route in a two-airplane test flight; Miller would fly a Standard with a 150-horsepower Hispano-Suiza engine. Gardner, accompanied by a mechanic, would pilot a Curtiss R-4 with a 400-horsepower Liberty engine. The men, close friends, turned the test flight into a competition; as each made a refueling stop, he’d telephone superintendent Benjamin Lipsner to find out the location of the other.
Praeger was beside himself with excitement over the history-making route. He telegraphed Lipsner (who had traveled ahead by train) in Chicago, saying, “Hundred percent today[.] If we make it successfully tomorrow let us not grow chesty.”
On September 5, 1918, the morning of the historic test flight, Miller departed Belmont Park in New York at 7:08. He waited for Gardner, but Gardner’s tailskid had struck the ground during takeoff, snapping off one side. As Gardner awaited repairs, Miller slowly circled the field. “Around and around he flew,” reported the New York Times, “keeping well up from the ground. Finally he signaled that he would wait no longer and straightened out on his course. Those below gave a cheer and waved their hands and hats as the first Chicago mail left New York.” Flying through fog for two hours, Miller finally landed in a Pennsylvania field to ask directions, arriving a little later at Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, where he stopped to fix his leaky radiator, a problem that would plague him throughout the trip.
Gardner’s broken tailskid took too long to fix, so he switched to a second airplane and took off at 8:50 a.m. Hindered by a storm, he barely made it to Wilkes-Barre, 80 miles short of Lock Haven. But when he discovered that Miller had already come and gone, Gardner scrambled back into his airplane. After several more stops, he made it to Lock Haven at 2:16 p.m.
A notorious perfectionist, Praeger was upset at the morning’s disorderly start, and fired off a telegram to Lipsner: “Miller got away seven naught eight Gardner broke TXL [tail] skid have asked Conner for written report on entire fiasco.”
Miller was forced to land on a Pennsylvania pasture because of an overheated engine, but a gun-toting farmer chased him back into the air. After stopping twice more (and receiving much friendlier receptions) he made it to Cambridge, Ohio, where he learned that Gardner was still grounded in Lock Haven due to bad weather.
Comments
How wonderful to find this story. It is the story that goes with the collage of 9 pictures that adorn my home office wall. My wife had the old pictures matted and framed when we moved into our present home. They had been in my parent's attic for years. The pictures are of the first airmail plane arriving in Lock Haven, PA. Pilot Max Miller is greeted by my great uncle, Paul Brosius, the post master of Lock Haven. In two pictures, the pilot and my uncle are seen to confer over maps. One picture is a crowd of well wishers standing in front of the wings of the plane. Another shows the plane in flight. There is one of a mechanic fueling the plane with my uncle talking to Miller. Two show the plane with the crowd swarming around. One picture shows a marker laid down in the grass with smoke in the distance. Thank you so much for the story that goes with the pictures and family history I see every day. Having obtained my private pilot certificate within the last 2 years, I value subscribing to air and space magazine. I never thought you would be doing a story that hit so close to home.
Posted by Carl Jenkins on March 25,2009 | 03:37PM