Tales of the Air Mail Pilots

                         By Burt M. McConnell


[Illustration]

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.

[Illustration: The highest beacon light in the world guides air mail
pilots as they fly at night across Sherman Hill in the Rockies.]

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.”

[Illustration: Pilot Lester F. Bishop]

“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.

[Illustration: Pilot Robert H. Ellis]

“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.

[Illustration: Ninety-six inspections before each flight!]

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.

To return to Pilot Vance, who in December, 1923, was caught in a
snowstorm between Reno and San Francisco: The flakes, large and fluffy
like the breast feathers of a Canada goose, floated lazily to earth,
entirely cutting off his view of the country below. Flying by compass
and resorting to the tactics taught him by experience, Vance
endeavored to climb above the storm. At 13,000 feet—two and a half
miles—the tempest still was raging. Snow was falling thicker than
ever. Vance realized that it would be pitch dark before he could reach
Reno. With the chances ten to one that he would become lost in the
snowstorm, and realizing that his gasoline supply was running low,
Vance decided to come down.

Gliding earthward at a sharp angle until he was within a few hundred
feet of the ground, the pilot discovered that he was in the vicinity
of the Last Chance mine. Picking out as a landing place what he
thought was a patch of low brush, the pilot steered his ship in that
direction. As he flew low over this area, Vance congratulated himself
on having such a level spot on which to land.

[Illustration: Pilot Claire K. Vance]

Skimming along the tops of the brush at sixty miles an hour, the
ordinary landing speed of a De Haviland, Vance’s wheels finally
touched the tips of the brush, cutting down the momentum of the big
machine. Then, as Vance settled lower and lower, the plane was tripped
like a roped steer. Brought up short in this way, the ship, with the
heavy engine in the forward part of the fuselage, now turned on its
back, and unceremoniously dumped Vance out on his head.

The pilot, entirely unhurt, found that he had landed in a big patch of
manzanita brush, six feet high and heavy in proportion. Here he was,
almost sixty miles from the nearest town—and the nights are cold along
the Nevada-California line.

After learning that his landing gear, upper wings, and propeller had
been damaged and that he could not hope to cut a path to freedom in
the darkness, Vance decided to build a fire and camp near the machine.
When he finally got the fire started, the pilot had only two matches
left. This one fact indicates the close escape he had from freezing to
death in the blizzard, or worst still, of becoming lost while fighting
his way out of the manzanita brush in the darkness.

A less resourceful aviator might have wandered about until he died of
exhaustion.

Vance lay awake all night feeding the fire with manzanita brush. He
had landed about half a mile from the edge of the brush nearest the
mine, instead of in the center of the patch. With the first ray of
dawn Vance struck off toward the nearest edge of the brush, and within
an hour had covered the half mile that separated him from freedom. At
the mine, the surprised superintendent loaned him two mules, one to
ride and the other to carry the 350 pounds of mail. One of the miners
volunteered to ride out with him to bring back the mules. It was
eighteen miles from the Last Chance mine to Michigan Bluff. This was
covered on mule-back. There Vance caught a stage to Colfax,
California—forty miles—where he put his mail aboard the eastbound
Limited.

[Illustration: There are five radio systems to keep track on the air
mail pilots as they wing swiftly from one edge of the United States
to the other.]

                  *       *       *       *       *

Returning from San Francisco, I stopped at Salt Lake, where Ellis and
Bishop were stationed. Theirs is a story stranger than fiction, and it
exemplifies the best traditions of the Air Mail Service.

Late in October, 1923, Bishop, one of the oldest pilots, in point of
service, was caught in a blizzard forty-five miles south of Rock
Springs, Wyoming, and forced down twenty-five miles from the nearest
point of civilization and communication. The sky above the Sierra
Nevada Mountains was thick and overcast, with the wind blowing at
forty miles an hour. The thermometer registered 18°. Snow of the dry
and powdery sort was falling heavily. Bishop could see less than a
hundred yards, and could make no headway whatever against this typical
Utah blizzard.

Concluding that it would be best to land on the route between Rock
Springs and Salt Lake City, with which he was familiar, rather than to
try to find his way through the storm, Bishop finally “sat down” on a
comparatively smooth and—at that time—bare plateau, known as Bridger’s
Bench. He landed without accident, and for approximately an hour kept
his motor turning over slowly, in the hope that the storm would
subside. By that time at least a foot of snow had fallen. Realizing
that he must get out of his predicament immediately, if he expected to
get out at all, Bishop began charging backward and forward with his
powerful machine, in an attempt to clear a runway with the “backwash”
from the propeller. For an hour he sent his plane at full speed over
the top of the plateau, backward and forward for two hundred yards at
a time, in an effort to clear a path ten feet wide. But each time he
had finished digging a runway long enough, and turned around, the snow
had drifted in, and the process had to be repeated all over again.

[Illustration: An alarm is sent out by telegraph and radio
whenever a plane is missing. Often a man’s life has been saved
by this information.]

At the end of two hours snow covered the plateau to a depth of two
feet. It now became more and more difficult to charge with his machine
up and down the runway; but Bishop carried on. Perhaps the wind would
cease, so that he could shovel a runway two hundred yards long and ten
feet wide. Finally, however, after he had tried unsuccessfully for
three hours to extricate his machine from the drifts; when snow had
fallen to a depth of three feet and the powerful Liberty motor could
not force the plane through the snow, Bishop climbed stiffly out of
the cockpit, shook himself free of snow, drained off the water from
the radiator, covered up the mail in the cockpit, and started walking
in the general direction of the nearest settlement—Lyman, Wyoming.

Bishop was familiar with the country, having flown over it dozens of
times, yet, being a careful and methodical pilot, he took the compass
from the machine. He had no emergency rations. He had neither
snowshoes nor rifle. He saw no game. There was no shelter within
twenty miles that he knew of. If worst came to worst, however, he
could still return to his machine and start a fire with his batteries
and some gasoline.

The pilot was strongly tempted to lay aside his heavy fur-lined flying
suit, but, as it seemed likely that he might have to use it for a
blanket that night, he threw the legs of the suit over his shoulders,
strapped them there in order to walk more freely, and floundered forth
into the snow, now three feet deep.

Soon Bishop was wallowing in drifts higher than his waist. For hours
he continued on, overheated by his exertions, and rapidly growing
weaker with each stride. There was nothing from which to make
snowshoes for his feet, even if he had had the tools and the time
before darkness fell. The storm still howled about his ears and shut
off the view ahead. But with his compass he kept a course toward a
farmhouse which he knew nestled at the foot of a mountain some twenty
miles to the westward.

For more than six hours Bishop, who was born on an Iowa farm and is
sturdily built, staggered wearily along through the snowdrifts,
traveling in that time about ten miles. At this critical juncture,
half way between the ship, where he could at least have built a fire,
and the farmhouse where he was sure to find warmth, food, and shelter,
Bishop realized that his fast waning strength was not equal to the
task of reaching the one or retreating to the other. He was becoming
drowsy by this time, but he struggled onward, still carrying his heavy
flying suit, for it seemed certain that he would be compelled to spend
the night in the open. No one could possibly have seen him land, and
certainly he, a mere speck against the spotless white, could not be
discerned from the farmhouse, even with the aid of glasses. Besides,
no one would expect even an Air Mail pilot to venture out in such a
blizzard.

[Illustration: The field flood-light—a powerful searchlight—makes the
landing field lighter than at noontime.]

By resting at frequent intervals, this husky Iowan accomplished two
more miles in as many hours. But now, after an eight-hour battle with
the elements, the pilot had arrived at the stage where he was
absolutely exhausted and almost in despair. How simple a solution of
the problem, he thought, merely to lie down and go to sleep. Just
then, however, he heard above the whistling of the wind the familiar
drone of a Liberty motor. Glancing up, and almost unwilling to believe
his eyes, the weary flier saw a plane directly above him. A miracle
had happened. One of the boys, Bishop concluded, had learned by
wireless that he was missing, and was now in search of him. The
“shipwrecked” pilot frantically waved his heavy flying suit, but,
despite his efforts, the plane passed a thousand feet above him,
flying eastward, without even a signal. Within a few minutes it was
out of sight.

Bishop now gave up hope. Was he to die almost within sight of a haven?
By this time it had stopped snowing, but a moderate gale still howled
out of the southwest. Bishop sat down to rest and think things over.
He was now on a “hogback,” perfectly level and almost free of snow. As
he sat there, another miracle happened; a miracle to stir one’s blood.
It was this: Bob Ellis, Bishop’s companion, flying from Salt Lake City
to Rock Springs, had seen his machine on the ground, but had noticed
that the engine was running. Ellis, anxious to keep to the schedule,
and believing Bishop was not in difficulty, continued on. But soon
after his arrival at Rock Springs, Salt Lake reported by wireless that
Bishop was missing. Ellis thereupon asked permission of the Division
Superintendent to retrace his flight to the spot where he had seen
Bishop’s plane on the ground. This was a splendid thing for Ellis to
do. He was weary from his four-hour flight. The wind was still blowing
at forty miles an hour. Nevertheless, this fearless pilot waited only
long enough for a ship to be fueled.

Taking along a mechanic in case of accident to his own motor, and food
and coffee for Bishop, Ellis set out in the face of the gale to find
among a thousand hills a stalled machine and its helpless pilot.

When I remarked to Ellis, a few weeks ago, in a conversation at Salt
Lake City, that this was a “mighty fine thing” for him to do, he
replied: “Oh, that’s nothing; Bishop or any other pilot would do the
same thing for me. We realize that any one of us may get into a jam at
any time. And then it’s up to his fellow pilots to get him out of it.”
This is the code of those who go down to the sea in ships.

After a flight of less than an hour, Ellis and his mechanic sighted
Bishop’s machine, half buried in the snow; a dead thing. There was no
sign of Bishop. Moreover, his trail had been blotted out by the
drifting snow. Ellis, flying low and in wide circles about the stalled
machine, asked himself what he would do in similar circumstances.
Immediately he concluded that he would make for the farmhouse, twenty
miles away. With an Air Mail pilot, to decide is to act and within
fifteen minutes, Ellis, flying a hundred feet above the snow, had
“picked up” a floundering figure half way between the stalled machine
and the farmhouse. Settling gradually, in order not to break the
undercarriage of his plane and thus leave all three at the mercy of
the blizzard, Ellis and his mechanic landed near their exhausted
comrade.

After a meal and some hot coffee, Bishop was able to “sit in” at a
council of war. Ellis’s machine, they agreed, could carry the three of
them, provided it could get into the air. But ground conditions were
so unfavorable—the drifts were so deep—that this seemed impossible. It
was then agreed that they would “taxi” the machine to a clear spot six
miles to the westward, from which to take off.

For four miles, with each mile rapidly eating up their fuel supply,
they churned their way through the powdery drifts, with Bishop huddled
in the cockpit and the mechanic, comparatively fresh and warmly
clothed, clinging to a precarious position on one of the wings.
Finally, Ellis, realizing that his gasoline supply was becoming
dangerously reduced, suggested that Bishop, with the aid of the
mechanic, try to reach the farmhouse, now some four miles distant,
while he flew back to Hock Springs to report Bishop’s safety—and get
more gasoline. This they attempted, but Ellis, watching Bishop’s
faltering footsteps from the air, realized that his exhausted comrade
would be unable to accomplish the four miles. Swooping downward, Ellis
again landed near the struggling pair, helped them to climb aboard,
and swore that he would get the ship off the ground with the three of
them on board, or “bust her up.”

Finding a ridge comparatively free from snow, Ellis, with his motor
racing at full speed, and his plane reeling drunkenly amid the
entangling sagebrush and snowdrifts, succeeded, after swaying and
dipping for two hundred yards, in getting into the air. Little by
little, an inch at a time, then a foot, with his propeller racing
faster than it had ever gone before, Ellis finally climbed twenty-five
feet into the air. By facing directly into the wind, the pilot
utilized its velocity to attain an altitude of a thousand feet. Then
he turned, and with the wind at his back, he flew with his passengers
to Hock Springs—and safety—in half an hour.

Within a week Bishop’s machine had been recovered entirely whole,
flown back to the field, and the pilot himself had recuperated. But he
freely admitted to me in Salt Lake recently that if Ellis had not
shown exceptional courage and excellent flying judgment, he, Bishop,
would have perished almost within sight of aid.

These are tales of Bishop, Ellis, Blanchfield, Boonstra, Huking, and
Vance.

Meager reports of other experiences are filed away, usually on single
sheets of paper, in the office of the Superintendent of the Air Mail
Service. For, with an Air Mail pilot, modesty amounts to an obsession.
Those with whom I am acquainted would be the first to deny that flying
is a dangerous game. Haven’t they been flying “crates” and “coffins”
for ten years? Nevertheless, every day these pilots take grave risks,
and in time of storm they undergo hazards comparable only to those
which aviators at the front underwent during the war. For the pilot,
once in the air, has nothing between the earth and himself but his
Liberty motor.

[Illustration: It is over this sort of country—wooded and
treacherous—that the Air Mail pilots fly.]

What sort of men are these sky-riders? They are a quiet, modest,
efficient, hardy, intrepid, expert, and likeable group of young men.
Many of them are in the Army Air Service Reserve. Most of them
received their training before or during the war. They fly every day
in the year, in darkness and fog, through snow, hail, “twisters,”
lightning, sleet, and rain. The dangers of flying they accept as a
matter of course. Even forced landings such as I have described, in a
rocky and uninhabited country, are smilingly accepted as part of the
day’s work. They fly at great altitudes, barely skimming the backbone
of the continent. On every side they see only dense forests, turbulent
streams, jagged peaks, and precipitous canyon walls. Yet they continue
on, day after day, year after year.

These pathfinders of the West have reduced the United States, in terms
of transportation, to one-fourth its size. One can appreciate the
value of the service they render only if he realizes that the
prosperity of the United States depends mainly on doing business with
ourselves on a bigger scale, and that business is carried on chiefly
by correspondence. And no branch of the Post Office Department takes
greater pride than the Air Mail Service in the motto from Herodotus
that is carved above the portal of the New York Post Office:

“Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these
couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”


[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the July 1925 issue of
McClure’s Magazine.]