Part 1

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.

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.”

“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.

“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.

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.