Flying the Beam: Navigating the Early US Airmail Airways, 1917-1941

By Henry R. Lehrer

With air travel a regular part of daily life in North America, we tend to take the infrastructure that makes it possible for granted. However, the systems, regulations, and technologies of civil aviation are in fact the product of decades of experimentation and political negotiation, much of it connected to the development of the airmail as the first commercially sustainable use of airplanes. From the lighted airways of the 1920s through the radio navigation system in place by the time of World War II, this book explores the conceptualization and ultimate construction of the initial US airways systems.The daring exploits of the earliest airmail pilots are well documented, but the underlying story of just how brick-and-mortar construction, radio research and improvement, chart and map preparation, and other less glamorous aspects of aviation contributed to the system we have today has been understudied. Flying the Beam traces the development of aeronautical navigation of the US airmail airways from 1917 to 1941. Chronologically organized, the book draws on period documents, pilot memoirs, and firsthand investigation of surviving material remains in the landscape to trace the development of the system. The author shows how visual cross-country navigation, only possible in good weather, was developed into all-weather "blind flying." The daytime techniques of "following railroads and rivers" were supplemented by a series of lighted beacons (later replaced by radio towers) crisscrossing the country to allow nighttime transit of long-distance routes, such as the one between New York and San Francisco. Although today's airway system extends far beyond the continental US and is based on digital technologies, the way pilots navigate from place to place basically uses the same infrastructure and procedures that were pioneered almost a century earlier. While navigational electronics have changed greatly over the years, actually "flying the beam" has changed very little.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Purdue University Press
• Release date: Jul 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781612493398

Book preview

Preface

The topic of this book is a very personal and passionate one for me since I spent the bulk of my life living under or near the aerial pathway originally designated as the first Transcontinental Airway. Geographically speaking, the original track for the airway is virtually the same as today’s US Airway Victor 6, and topographically defined by US Highway 6 and Interstate Highway I80; in earlier years, the same airspace was designated Green 3. My home today is located just below what would have been the route taken by the early airmail pilots.

The Transcontinental Airway stretched almost three thousand miles from New York City through Cleveland, Chicago, Omaha, Salt Lake City, Reno, and terminated in San Francisco. The route, when completed in the 1920s, was the longest lighted aerial pathway in the world. Over the years, I have visited many of the sites of former airmail airports, lighted beacon positions, and radio range locations on this route. I also taught many individuals to fly at airports that were once original stops along the route. In another time in another city much further west, my daily commute to work took me past the original location of an airmail field on the same route. These seemingly subliminal reminders of the story I am about to tell have had a compelling and truly captivating effect on me for a very long time.

Today, the US air transportation system is approaching the century mark, and travel by air has become a part of our daily lives. However, few people realize that a major catalyst in the amazing growth of the US commercial aviation industry was the establishment of the US Airmail system and its associated infrastructure. Following World War I, many thought there was little practical purpose for the airplane, and any newfangled idea for its use was foolish and doomed for failure. Nevertheless, in response to the airmail system’s need for better and faster airplanes, more airports, and a reliable all-weather navigation scheme, a mode of conveyance like none other came into being.¹

Currently, the airplane and its associated uses are truly technological marvels. People can travel quickly, easily, and safely from one side of the country to the other while goods and products appropriate for air shipment can arrive at one’s door often overnight. Commercial aviation has become an engine for economic growth, employment, and contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP) of the US. The Air Transport Association of America (today known as Airlines for America), a trade organization made up of the US airlines, reported that in 2009, the certificated US air carriers generated over $1.2 trillion in economic activity and almost 1.1 million jobs. In addition, Airlines for America continues to champion the development of a strong commercial aviation infrastructure as the silver threads that sew the world together.²

The significant economic impact of commercial aviation in general, and the importance of airmail service in particular, is not a new phenomenon. The Air Transport Association of America (ATA), formed in 1936 in Chicago, has always played an important role in tracking the industry’s fiscal health. A 1937 report by ATA President Edgar S. Gorrell stated that:

In ten brief years, the growth of air transportation in adaptability and popular usefulness has been almost unbelievable. It is conservative to say that the airways will, at no distant date, take a substantial place among the world’s principal lanes of transport and travel. Any medium that reduces the element of time in travel and communications, will eventually assume a commanding role in the affairs of man.³

Gorrell’s assertions were not without credibility. The ATA’s first annual report in 1937, Little Known Facts, stated that domestic airmail carried from fiscal years 1927–37 was increasing by 50 percent each year. Predictions were that soon air transportation will be carrying mail at the rate of 25 million lbs. per year. In addition, the same report noted that in the previous five years, revenues from passenger service by these same mail-carrying, contractor airlines had increased rapidly. Visionaries even thought that at some point, passenger travel revenues might exceed the income for the government’s airmail subsidies.⁴

Others already have chronicled the daring exploits of the early airmail pilots. However, the underlying story of just how brick-and-mortar construction, radio research and improvement, aeronautical navigation, chart and map preparation, and similar but less glamorous aspects of aviation appears only in widely scattered papers and essays. Weaving them together into a cohesive and accurate story is a primary focus of this document.

Flying the Beam describes the aspects surrounding the development of aeronautical navigation of the US Airmail airways from 1917 to 1941. Chronologically organized, the book draws on period documents, pilot memoirs, and firsthand investigation of surviving material remains in the landscape to trace the development of the system. Between these years, visual cross-country navigation, only possible in good weather, was developed into all-weather blind flying, permitting the US Post Office Department to boast, Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night, nor the winds of change, nor a nation challenged, will stay us from the swift completion of our appointed rounds.

Major sources of reference materials are the National Air and Space Museum (NASM); the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan; the Western Reserve Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum in Cleveland; the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute Library; the HathiTrust Digital Library; and the Purdue University Libraries. The National Archives, the National Geodetic Survey, and the NASM also provided graphic illustrations.

While there are many people to thank for their individual contributions, particular recognition goes to Charles Watkinson, my staunch literary friend and editor; Katherine Purple, whose wonderful literary eye took a rough manuscript and polished it very nicely; Steven J. Wolff for his amazing bibliographic support; Howard Ace Campbell, whose engineering drawings and original documents added so much to my research; Penny Collins for her marvelous graphics work; and Carlee Renee for her preliminary proofreading and delightful literary comments. Above all, I must acknowledge that my father was undoubtedly the person who recognized as well as encouraged my earliest interest in aviation; however, it is with regret that he was not able to see the finished products of his nurturing. Finally, this book would not have been even remotely possible without the unwavering support and encouragement of my wife, Lynne. She is my rock.

Although a detailed explanation of the navigation systems discussed does require some aeronautical and mathematical knowledge, such material will be well within the grasp of the layman. Additionally, there are numerous other topics interwoven throughout this story, such as the emergence of the US airline system as an oligopolistic industry, government involvement in regulating the private transportation sector, and the advancement of communication and navigation technology. The synopsis of each of these additional facets includes significant bibliographical referencing.

To capture the true intent of the extremely varied pieces of literature that were included in this book, it was necessary at times to adopt a few usage conventions and to take a bit of literary license. A good example of this liberty was how to handle the word airmail, which appears a great number of times in the book. Although there are many cases where historical references and name usage was as two words, current grammatical checkers in most word processing programs flag air mail as incorrect and relentlessly attempt to substitute airmail. In addition, several highly respected dictionaries now list the term as one word. Therefore, I have chosen to accept the contemporary spelling for literary purposes. However, to cover my scholarly bases in the case of the numerous articles and books in the bibliography or where proper nouns use two words, those spellings have been preserved.

Another interesting development in word usage is that in just over a decade, what was originally known as blind flying became fog flying, and finally something closer to the contemporary idea of flight by reference to instruments. The early terms did not accurately describe the aeronautical phenomena, since an aviator was not actually blind, nor was all flying done in fog. However, I kept the terminology intact since it does trace the evolution to what we today call instrument flight rules (IFR). Finally, a sharp-eyed reader may see some other small liberties that were taken with the names of government agencies and other organizations as well, but such changes were kept to a minimum.

I hope aviation historians and individuals who are interested in the development of the US Airmail Service and early airway navigation system will find Flying the Beam a useful treatise. In addition, aeronautical faculty members at academic institutions, professional pilots, and instrument-rated general aviation pilots may wish to have this text on their personal bookshelf. Libraries with any significant aviation collection will want this book as part of their holdings. Perhaps Flying the Beam will even serve as a catalyst to encourage others to investigate and then articulate many of the previously untold stories about these early days in this nation’s aviation technology history.

Notes

1. Ladilas D’Orcy, Our National Airways, Aviation 15, no. 2 ( July 9, 1923). In an editorial that appeared in Aviation, D’Orcy stated clearly and quite profoundly the vision of what the nation needed in an airway system. D’Orcy called for the system to be a national investment and a national issuance of first class.

2. Air Transport Association of America, Inc., 2010 Economic Report (Washington, DC: Air Transport Association of America, Inc., 2010), 5.

3. Air Transport Association of America, Inc., Little Known Facts (Chicago: Air Transportation Association of America, Inc., 1937), 3.

4. Ibid., 7.

Chapter 1

Frustrating Beginnings (1917–1919)

The mystique of powered flight, while still occupying a unique place in the history of aviation, is almost mundane today. The magic that once held people spellbound when they saw an airplane or had an opportunity to take even the shortest flight seems to have finally worn off. Today, traveling by air is quite commonplace, and using this mode of transportation is easily within reach of just about everyone. However, almost one hundred years ago—particularly in the latter years of World War I—the impact of flying in general and the airplane in particular was quite astounding.¹

Some people were convinced that in the future those magnificent men in their flying machines certainly would be useful. There was even a belief that the airplane might make our daily life better in some way. For example, Many individuals and organizations were determined that aviation should not return to its prewar status of curiosity and sport, but should find profitable employment in the world of commerce.² Others considered airplanes and lighter-than-air airships and balloons primarily as instruments of war. However, most compelling—no matter which view held—was an aircraft’s ability to move through the air quickly without having roads or rails present. Such capability needed to be harnessed in a more peaceful way. Surely there must have been some use for these machines other than scouting, aerial combat, and bombing?

Foremost of those views was that of the US Post Office Department, which up until that time had used the US railroad system to carry the mail from coast to coast. Although trains were reliable for transporting significant loads of cargo and passengers, to transport the mail any distance by rail was too slow. Visionaries, on the other hand, liked the possibility of coast-to-coast service for critical letters and packages. The notion of a transit time of two days or less from the East Coast to the West Coast by using airplanes that could travel at one hundred miles per hour was appealing. In addition to having the advantage of speed, air travel could be done in an almost straight line rather than following the traditional circuitous routes used by any other mode of transportation to avoid geographical and topographical obstacles.

However, for mail to be carried successfully by air there were numerous problems, such as bad weather, lack of landing fields, unreliable aircraft, and similar issues that initially would have to be overcome. There was an entire range of opinion as to how successful such a delivery method might actually be if it were a reality. Many individuals saw the carriage of mail by airplane as a folly that would end up as an expensive and unnecessary escapade doomed for failure; others saw only opportunity.

The optimists envisioned the future of flying as a time when the only real expenses for utilization of that mode of transportation would be those resulting from the upkeep of the machines themselves.³ The realist entrepreneurs of the day offered the fact that no right-of-ways or expensive roadbeds were vital, no tunnels were mandatory, and no bridges would need to be built. Others took a more pedestrian view of things, seeing airplanes as safe, simple, lightweight, and if the process was kept within reason, a way to popularize sport aviation. Orville Wright, when asked if the airplane eventually would become useful for carrying mail, opined, Not to the extent that some people supposed… . I do not think it will supplant the steamship and the railroad as a mail carrier because it will be too expensive. It would take a very large number of flying machines, perhaps a hundred, to carry as much mail as we now get in a mail car.⁴

Had Wright been able to look just fifty years into the future, he likely would be quite amazed that a Boeing 747-400F or a Lockheed C5A could easily carry a 152,000-pound railway baggage car like the Great Northern 265 and almost 100,000 pounds of mail.⁵ The most astonishing fact, however, was that Wright could now make the first of the original three Kitty Hawk flights within the length of the economy section of the Boeing 747.⁶

None of this progress happened overnight. There were significant political, technological, operational, and economical hurdles that would take decades to overcome. However, to see how pilots, researchers, and other aeronautically minded individuals viewed and ultimately solved these challenges, perhaps the best place to start is in 1910.

A Brief History of the US Airmail

The earliest days of aviation were full of remarkable achievements. While the Wright brothers’ amazing triumphs in the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, are those best remembered, the heroic and dangerous aeronautical adventures of numerous pioneer aviators are often forgotten. In the airmail⁷ saga, the beginning of it all must surely have been on June 13, 1910, "when Charles K. Hamilton captured the public’s attention for a brief but glorious moment by flying round trip between New York and Philadelphia."⁸ Hamilton departed Governors Island in the New York Harbor at 7:30 a.m., his body wrapped in five inflated automobile tires that could serve as life preservers, should a landing in the water be needed. Such a flight was a very long distance at the time, and a special train followed his progress along the Pennsylvania Railroad’s main line. Hamilton traveled about forty-five miles per hour for the journey and landed in Philadelphia at 9:26 a.m. The return trip was a bit more eventful when Hamilton, after passing over New Brunswick, New Jersey, for some reason followed a different rail line and due to mechanical problems ended up landing along the Raritan River. Reports stated that he needed help freeing his machine from the mud. After waiting several hours for repair parts, Hamilton took off once again and arrived back at Governors Island. The reward was instant fame and a $10,000 prize jointly offered by the New York Times and the Philadelphia Public Ledger for his record-breaking flight.⁹

The total direct aerial distance from New York to Philadelphia is a little over eighty miles and approximately ninety miles via road. It is likely that that Hamilton, the daring aviator, followed a combination of the railroad line between the two cities (still in service today) and the Delaware River. The aerial distance was about eighty-five miles each way, which would be reasonable considering his reported speed. Unfortunately, Hamilton (1886–1914) did not live to see his amazing aeronautical achievement have an application in the carriage of mail. Reports of his early death at the age of twenty-eight attribute the cause to both a fractured rib and a lung hemorrhage from a long bout with tuberculosis.¹⁰

However, this historic flight did have far-reaching and immediate results on another front, the US Congress. The next day, June 14, 1910, Congressman Morris Sheppard of Texas proposed H. R. 26833. The legislation called for the postmaster general to investigate the practicability and cost of an aeroplane or airship mail route between the city of Washington and some other suitable point or points for the experiment and report the results to Congress at the opening of the short session in December next in order that it may be definitely determined whether aerial navigation may be utilized for the safe and more rapid transmission of the mail.¹¹

Although this resolution was never reported outside of the committee, and even considering that the New York Telegraph poked a great deal of fun at this notion of transportation of mail in this new manner, the US Post Office Department did take an interest in airplanes as mail carriers. During the next several months at aviation meets, the department issued various permits for the transportation of mail. The customary manner for carriage was to establish a post office station on an aviation field, receive and stamp letters or postcards, and then have an airplane transport the mailbag to another aeronautical location for distribution by a local postmaster.

One of the longer distance flights during the earlier part of this decade was Hugh Robinson’s journey carrying a few packets of mail in a Curtiss seaplane. Beginning on October 17, 1911, and covering 325 miles, the multi-lap trip followed the Mississippi River from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Rock Island, Illinois. Culminating on October 19, the 110-mile leg allowed the US Post Office Department to consider stretching its airmail wings a little more.

Additionally, numerous aviation meets of the day had a portion of the activities devoted to mailbag carriage. The typical locations for these events were racetracks (they had a large in-field area for takeoff and landings), large parks, fairgrounds, and very primitive outdoor areas often referred to as flying grounds. All mail flights were appropriately certified by the US Post Office Department, and delivery was made part of the festivities. One example of such an exhibition flight was the performance by Katherine Stinson—the Flying Schoolgirl—at the fall 1914 Montana State Fair. Stinson, reported to be a petite, somewhat frail-looking person, took the oath of office as an airmail carrier. During several of the fair days, she carried 1,333 letters and postcards in a mailbag, completed a short flight by circling the capital city of Helena, and returned to drop the mailbag at the fairgrounds to postal employee C. E. Anderson, who then distributed the correspondence. Never before had a woman flown official US mail.¹²

By mid-decade, the US Post Office Department had begun to authorize the regular transportation of mail between locations based solely on savings of time and distance. Of particular interest was the fifty-two-mile route between two California towns, Maricopa and Santa Maria, just one hour by air over a four-thousand-foot range of mountains in what is now the Los Padres National Forest. To send a letter between the same two cities—very important oil field locations—by conventional rail routes would have taken over fifteen hours and the post would have traveled over 410 miles. A similar situation existed between Pentwater and Manistee in Michigan; the cities were just thirty-five miles apart, with no direct rail service between Pentwater and Ludington, a town en route. By air a letter would have arrived in forty-five minutes; the same carriage by available surface means took over twenty-four hours. Several other routes, most comprised of rather short distances but nonetheless important to the US Post Office Department due primarily to unusual topographic considerations, continued to receive regular air service. However, because important air routes did not receive bids from possible contractors to carry the mail, a major turning point for the US Post Office Department may have occurred at the annual meeting of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) on October 5, 1916. The organization called on Congress to establish one or more experimental routes, with a view to determining the accuracy, frequency, and rapidity which may be reasonably expected under normal and favorable conditions, and there from to determine the desirability of extending this service wherever the conditions are such as to warrant its employment.¹³ Following congressional action for the 1916 and 1917 fiscal years, which included appropriations, the US Post Office Department