Army Airmail: Beneficial Disaster
Cold rain lashed the face of Army Air Corps pilot Lieutenant Harold Dietz, as he peered in vain through the wet night sky for a marker, a light, anything. The drone of his single engine bi-plane was both reassuring and frightening -- the plane's engine held him in the air, but how would he get the open cockpit plane down safely in the midst of the fog and rain enveloping him. Suddenly, he saw a light. With a surge of hope, he wiped a gloved hand across his goggles and strained his eyes for a better look -- automobile headlights, a row of them, with more blossoming in the misty night. Someone on the ground must be lighting the way to an open field. Lieutenant Dietz banked his plane in an arc and slowly descended towards the area between the life-saving beams. Then, too late, he saw the branches and heard the awful thrashing sound as his propeller ripped into a tree. With sputtering engine, the old plane tilted sideways, hit a telephone pole, and dove straight into the ground, throwing Dietz's world into darkness. Pulled from the wreckage by the good people of Marion Station, Maryland, Dietz suffered a fractured skull and internal injuries, but he survived. Many of the Lieutenant's fellow airmen fared much worse as they tried to deliver the U.S. Mail in antiquated airplanes, during the winter of 1934.
The U.S. Mail first took to the air in 1911. Over the next fourteen years flying the mail grew from occasional flights originating at air expositions to the U.S. Post Office Department's Air Mail Service of the 1920s. In 1925, Congress passed the Kelly Act, removing the United States government from the mail flying business by putting out contracts to bids from private operators.
In his excellent book Airmail: how it all began legendary aviation historian Carroll V. Glines described the Kelly Act as a law designed to encourage the development of a domestic airline industry. By the early 1930s, the American airline industry did indeed blossom from these air mail routes, but so to did charges of coruption and favoritism. The Crane Committee of the House of Representatives reported that between July, 1930 and December, 1933, "Airmail contractors had received more than$78,000,000 from the government, although actual service rendered was only about 40 percent of that amount."
On February 9, 1934, as the "Airmail Scandal" filled the nation's newspapers, Major General Benjamin Foulois, Chief of the Army Air Corps, was called to the office of Second Assistant Postmaster General Harllee Branch. After an hour of conversation about a committee they both served on, Branch asked the general, "Benny, if the President should cancel all contracts with civilian carriers, could the Air Corps carry the mail to keep the system going?" Foulois thought about how the Army had suffered from a lack of appropriations since the beginning of the depression and even before. The Air Corps in particular sufffered from beat-up old planes, poorly trained pilots, run-down facilities, and little or no money for research and development. The General knew that if he said yes, the mail would have to be flown in trainers, pursuit planes, and bi-wing twin engine bombers because the Air Corps had no cargo planes. Yet, Foulois saw an opportunity to shine a spotlight on the Army Air Corps and give the pilots some much needed training. "We could do it, Mr. Branch, if the President wanted us to try." Foulois said.
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