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First Commercial Mail Transport Flight was 81 Years Ago Today (4/6)
I received the following in an e-mail at work. If it perhaps drifts a
bit off-topic at points, I hope I still have a few get-out-of-thread- drift-jail-free cards left At first I was thinking of trimming it down to just contain the section on the flight; but then I thought some might find it interesting Regards, Jon ==== CUT HERE ==== Communication and transportation have been and continue to be interrelated in many ways. For centuries, communication across geographic distances was dependent on transportation. For the past 232 years, the U.S. Postal Service has been a major entity in the relationship of communication and transportation. Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston in 1706. In 1753, he was appointed joint deputy postmaster-general of North America. On July 26, 1775, the Second Continental Congress agreed that a postmaster general be appointed for the United Colonies...and that a line of posts be appointed under the direction of the Postmaster general, from Falmouth in New England to Savannah in Georgia, with as many cross posts as he shall think fit. Benjamin Franklin was the first Postmaster General (1775-76). The Post Office Department in Franklin's time was responsible for facilitating communication (in those days predominantly between Congress and the army) by moving mail by land and by sea. Its dependence on transportation capabilities and constraints motivated it to become a driving force behind improving roads and other transportation infrastructure. Jump ahead to the end of World War I when the United States had fleets of former military airplanes as well as many ex-GI pilots looking for work. In May 1918, the U.S. Post Office established the first overnight airmail route between New York City and Washington, D.C. using government-owned aircraft piloted by government employees. Airmail service was expanded to Chicago in 1920, and the Post Office was discussing transcontinental airmail service that would operate in much the same way as the old Pony Express worked - a series of short hops across the country. By the mid-1920s, the government decided to transfer airmail service to the private sector with competitive bids. There were five winners of the initial contracts. Eighty-one years ago today, on April 6, 1926, the first official commercial mail transport flight occurred, piloted by Franklin Rose of Boise-based Varney Airlines. Rose took off from the campus of Boise State College to great fanfare from a crowd of over a thousand cheering people, including a U.S. Senator and the Governor of Idaho, on his way to Elko, Nevada, some 200+ miles south. Unfortunately, Rose's Swallow airplane crashed on that first flight over the uncharted and barren high desert. (In fact, within the first three years of airmail service, 19 of the Post Office's original 40 pilots had died in crashes. There were no radios and few beacons on the ground to light the way, and almost all airmail flights were made at night, thus increasing the risk associated with what was already a dangerous job.) As he traveled south on April 6, 1926, Franklin Rose noticed dark clouds coming in from the west and tried to miss them but they closed in too fast. Buffeting winds, sheets of blinding rain and flashes of lightning forced Rose below the clouds but the engine sputtered and cut out. The plane's wheels caught in the sagebrush and caused the plane to nose over. He was miles from civilization. Unhurt, except for a few bruises, Rose gathered up what he could carry and headed out. Soon two cowboys rode up. They accused Rose of being a Prohibition agent sent to spy on them, and they abandoned him. Rose had to walk out of the desert on his own. Two days later, he found a ranch house with a telephone and called Elko and told them that he was fine. (Walter Varney's Varney Airlines, based in Boise, Idaho, was the main root of what became United Airlines. Varney Speed Lines, his other company, based in El Paso, Texas, became Continental Airlines. It is said that Varney's lucrative Post Office contract provided significant financial strength for those developments. ) The United States Postal Service web site states that "America's present Postal Service descends in an unbroken line from the system Franklin planned and placed in operation. History rightfully accords him major credit for establishing the basis of the system that has well served the growing and changing needs of the American people." Benjamin Franklin would undoubtedly be impressed with the progress made by the U.S. Postal Service and the continuing relationships between transportation and communication. But that isn't the end of the ongoing story. The day came when communication's dependence on transportation took an abrupt turn. Forty-two years ago today, April 6, 1965, when Intelsat I (nicknamed "Early Bird" for the proverb "The early bird catches the worm") the first commercial communications satellite was launched into synchronous orbit. Early Bird was the first satellite to provide direct and nearly instantaneous contact between Europe and North America, handling telephone, facsimile, and television transmissions. It validated the concept that instantaneous world-wide communication was possible, another step in the progression that continues to this day. ==== CUT HERE ==== |
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First Commercial Mail Transport Flight was 81 Years Ago Today (4/6)
Eighty-one years ago today, on April 6, 1926, the first official
commercial mail transport flight occurred I don't believe this date is accurate, since the first transcontinental air mail flight went through Iowa City fully 5 years before this, in February 1921. See: http://www.alexisparkinn.com/knight_flyer.htm and http://www.alexisparkinn.com/the_iowa_city_airport.htm -- Jay Honeck Iowa City, IA Pathfinder N56993 www.AlexisParkInn.com "Your Aviation Destination" |
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First Commercial Mail Transport Flight was 81 Years Ago Today (4/6)
"Jay Honeck" wrote in message ups.com... I don't believe this date is accurate, since the first transcontinental air mail flight went through Iowa City fully 5 years before this, in February 1921. See: http://www.alexisparkinn.com/knight_flyer.htm and http://www.alexisparkinn.com/the_iowa_city_airport.htm First COMMERCIAL mail flight, Knight was a damn government employee. |
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First Commercial Mail Transport Flight was 81 Years Ago Today (4/6)
First COMMERCIAL mail flight, Knight was a damn government employee.
Ah, good point. I failed to catch the distinction. -- Jay Honeck Iowa City, IA Pathfinder N56993 www.AlexisParkInn.com "Your Aviation Destination" |
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First Commercial Mail Transport Flight was 81 Years Ago Today (4/6)
On 6 Apr 2007 08:31:15 -0700, "Jon" wrote
in .com: Eighty-one years ago today, on April 6, 1926, the first official commercial mail transport flight occurred, piloted by Franklin Rose of Boise-based Varney Airlines. http://www.airmailpioneers.org/history/milestone3.html FLIGHT INTO HISTORY EARLE OVINGTON WAS FIRST September 23, 1911, dawned gray and cold. Despite the chilly air and metallic skies, 10,000 spectators thronged to Long Island’s Garden City Estates for the big international aviation meet. ... Did Ovington sign up for the Garden City competition hoping to become the country’s first airmail pilot? The answer may never be known, but it is known that when the organizers of the meet asked for a pilot to carry the mail that day Ovington stepped forward. It mattered not to him that the airmail experiment offered no remuneration. Perhaps, he saw immortality winging his way. His wife, Adelaide, remembered that when he heard that Gov. Woodruff was looking for someone to carry the mail, he asked, "Is this the first time it has ever been carried in America?" U.S. Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock had long considered aeoplanes a prime vehicle for transporting mail. As early as November 1910 he approved a ship-to-shore airmail experiment, but bad weather squelched one attempt and a broken propeller crushed a second effort. Not one to give up, when Hitchcock learned of the forthcoming trials at Garden City, he convinced organizers to include an experimental mail trial. ... |
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First Commercial Mail Transport Flight was 81 Years Ago Today(4/6)
Jay Honeck wrote:
Eighty-one years ago today, on April 6, 1926, the first official commercial mail transport flight occurred I don't believe this date is accurate, since the first transcontinental air mail flight went through Iowa City fully 5 years before this, in February 1921. Did you read his article...he's talking about the COMMERCIAL (non-government) carriage of the air. He even mentions the federal mail flights. The VERY FIRST air mail flight departed from Washington DC in 1918 (they were using Army planes now that the great war was over). It departed from a field in DC which is now use as a polo field. The plane was heading off towards Baltimore with a bag of mail but was forced down by weather and the mail went on by surface. |
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First Commercial Mail Transport Flight was 81 Years Ago Today (4/6)
"Ron Natalie" wrote in message ... The VERY FIRST air mail flight departed from Washington DC in 1918 (they were using Army planes now that the great war was over). It departed from a field in DC which is now use as a polo field. The plane was heading off towards Baltimore with a bag of mail but was forced down by weather and the mail went on by surface. That was not the VERY FIRST air mail flight. On September 9th, 1911, 23 pounds of mail was flown from London to Windsor in a Bleriot monoplane. Nineteen more flights were made in the following two weeks. |
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