Burt M. McConnell

“ For the pilot, once in the air, has nothing between the earth and himself but his Liberty motor.
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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.”
Pilot Lester F. Bishop
“Well, it does get pretty bad. Take the day that came near being my last on earth. ”

“ 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. ”