AIR MAIL

I believe the decision by the United States Post Office to leap into the 20th century of mail delivery was taken with all the alacrity and planning you would expect from the second oldest and most entrenched bureaucracy in the U.S. government. On 6 May , eighteen years into the new century (and 15 years after the Wright Brother's first flight), U.S. Army pilot Major Reuben Fleet was summoned into the office of Secretary of War, Newton D. Baker. There Baker announced that Major Fleet was to be responsible for setting up the first Air Mail Service between Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and New York City. Further, the stunned Major was informed that the first plane of the new service would take off from Washington, D.C. at 11:00 a.m. on May 15th, just nine days hence.

Major Fleet was flabbergasted. This is the first he had heard of such an idea. He pointed out to the Secretary that the best plane in the Army’s inventory was the JN-4D, known as the Jenny, which was so under-powered that if you tried to execute a turn while flying without first dipping her nose, the Jenny would stall.

Worse, the Jenny was a two seat trainer, capable of barely 65 miles an hour and had a range of less than 90 miles. In other words, a Jenny could not reach the mid point of Philadelphia non-stop from either New York or Washington. The Secretary explained that whatever the difficulties were, they had to be overcome because - and this was the kicker - the Postmaster General, Albert S. Burleson, had already issued the press release about the first flight. As any military officer in Washington can explain, once the press release has gone out, you are committed to the policy.

Major Fleet (whose personal motto was, "Nothing Short of Right Is Right") immediately called the Curtiss Aeroplane Corporation on Long Island and ordered the emergency conversion of twelve Jenny’s - replacing the front seat controls with storage for mail bags, changing the 90 hp engine with a 150 hp one, and adding fuel tanks to increase the range. Curtiss promised to deliver the planes to Belmont Park airfield on May the 13th.

But as Fleet overcame each obstacle it seemed two more popped up. Originally he wanted to start the Washington flights out of College Park, Maryland, nine miles north of the capital (and thus saving nine miles on the first or the last leg). But the Post Office insisted on using Potomac Park, on the Tidal basin, (top of the above photo), right next to the middle of Washington, and ringed by huge trees. The Department of the Interior was insistent that not a branch of those magnificent trees be touched. Fleet then asked for six of the most experienced pilots in America to fly the routes.

He got four; plus two political "ringers". The two ringers were Lieutenants James Edgerton and George Leroy Boyle. Both Edgerton and Boyle had just graduated from flight school in Texas (well, almost graduated), and so far their solo flying experience consisted of one cross country flight of 15 miles. In Texas. In fact they had just crossed the country by train in order to get to Washington in time for the first flight. It seems they had received their travel orders before Major Fleet had received his.

On the plus side, Edgerton was the son of a Post Office purchasing agent and Boyle was engaged to marry the only daughter of Interstate Commerce Commissioner Charles McChord (above, holding the bag). That made both young men politically if not avion-ically qualified for staring roles in the Air Mail drama. Major Fleet knew enough about the way Washington worked that he did not argue with their selection. Instead, after leaving instructions for the surreptitious removal of one particularly pernicious tall tree at the edge of Potomac Park, Fleet left Washington by train with what he judged were his best five pilots, headed to Long Island to pick up the planes. Fleet left his sixth pilot, Lt. Boyle, in Washington to entertain the lovely Miss McChord, and presumably her  father, Commissioner McChord, as well. Frankly, after having read the young man's record, and having met him, that was the assignment for which Major Fleet figured Lt. Boyle was best qualified.

At the aerodrome inside the Belmont Park race track outside New York City,  Major Fleet found his modified brand new Jennys had been delivered as promised – but still in their crates. The mechanics and pilots spent the next two days desperately lashing the required six planes together. Two newly assembled Jennys were flown to Philadelphia. Two more planes were ready to go from Belmont. And early on the fifteenth, Fleet, exhausted and bone weary, flew the last plane assembled (Number 38262) from Belmont to Philadelphia, and then on to Washington, landing at Potomac Park at 10:35 a.m., with barely twenty-five minutes to spare before the 11:00 a.m. takeoff deadline, as per the previously released press release.

The First Lady and President Woodrow Wilson, his hand still wrapped in a bandage, arrived. The previous day Wilson had rested his hand on a cannon barrel still hot from having fired a salute to him. Franklin Roosevelt, the under-Secretary of the Navy, arrived, as did the Postmaster General and the Secretary of the War. The makeshift airfield was filled with brass and political heavyweights and press. But where was Lieutenant Boyle? Fleet had just about decided to take the flight himself when a voice from the crowd boomed out confidently, “Never fear, because Boyle is here.”

Forward stepped the cocky young Lieutenant George Leroy Boyle (left), looking like a young Jay Leno, and followed by the lovely Margaret McChord, carrying a dozen roses she had gotten from somewhere. Boyle bravely tolerated the distribution of commemorative watches and nobly posed for official handshakes. Then , ignoring the photographers, Major Fleet attempted to coach Boyle on how to follow the railroad tracks north from Union Station. By now the photos of the Lieutenant give the impression of a man prone to motion sickness who has just realized that he has volunteered to be abandoned on a life raft in the middle of hurricane. As he struggled to keep Boyles' attention, Major Fleet was interrupted by a wail of sirens. A mail truck, carrying 140 pounds of First class (24 cent) Air Mail in four bags had arrived.

The photographers were momentarily distracted, getting pictures of the bags being loaded into the Jenny. The noise and excitement did not help the nervous Boyles' concentration, and eventually Major Fleet simply taped the road map to the now almost catatonic Boyle’s leg (below). Boyle was now starting to resemble a hunter on his way to meet a firing squad of well armed deer.

There were more photos taken as Boyle climbed aboard the unfamiliar airplane and set the switches to start the engine. A sergeant windmill-ed the propeller three times to pull fuel into the cylinders. Lt. Boyle yelled, “Contact!”, and the sergeant pushed the propeller through again, hard. The engine coughed and died. Twice more Boyle and the sergeant tried to start the engine. But the motor stubbornly refused to engage.

The President was getting annoyed. The crowd was starting to giggle. Boyle was beginning to look as if he might pass out in the cockpit. Finally a sergeant thought to look in the gas tank. It was bone dry. Fleet had been lucky to arrive that morning before he ran out of gas. And no one, amid all the hoopla, not even the exhausted Fleet, had thought to refuel the plane.

Fuel was borrowed from some planes in the nearby U.S. Naval Yard field (which raises the question why the army was not using their air field) and, 45 minutes late, Lt. Boyle turned his wings into the wind and roared down the open lawn. The crowd held its breath as he just cleared the trees at the end of the makeshift runway, by all of three feet. The U.S. Army was in the Air Mail business; sort of.

Meanwhile the flight from Belmont Park had gotten off on time, and arrived at Philadelphia two hours later. But after waiting for Boyle to arrive from Washington  for almost an hour, the New York bound Jenny took off from Philly without any mail and headed north. When it arrived on Long Island everyone there was so excited they forgot to ask where the mail was. But eventually somebody thought to ask "What happened to Lt. Boyle?" The answer to that question arrived an hour later.

After finally getting into the air, Boyle came to the depressing realization that he could not read a map to save his life, even one taped to his own thigh. He mistakenly followed a branch line of railroad tracks for 20 miles to the southeast from Washington, the approximate opposite direction from New York City. By the time Lt. Boyle had realized his error, he had almost run out of gas. On crash landing near Waldorf, Maryland, the chastised Lt. Boyle flipped his Jenny onto her top.

Boyles’ mailbags were eventually delivered to Philadelphia the next day by another pilot. And thankfully, in a swell of patriotism, the wartime press corps chose to bury the lead of the story. The failure to refuel the plane, and Boyle's inability to read a map, went unmentioned. And that should have been the end of that. But the Postmaster General was not inclined to let the story or Lt. Boyle fade into the crowded grey pages of history. Instead the Postmaster General urged Major Fleet to give Boyle another chance.

Which is why, on May 17th, Lt. Boyle took off from Washington, again. This time he was following another (more qualified) pilot, who guided the wandering pathfinder due north out of the national capital and up the four track wide main railroad line toward Philadelphia. Boyle faithfully followed the guide plane for fifty miles. But eventually the guide plane turned back. And that was when, finally alone in the air, headed in the right direction, somehow, someway, the dashing but incompetent Lt. Boyle managed to get turned around yet again. All he had to do was not turn. And yet he did. And evidently, he did so almost immediately. This time Boyle ended up flying for three hours and fifteen minutes the wrong way - due south. Not only could he not read a map, he couldn't read a compass. Eventually he set his ship down successfully, safely, landing on Cape Charles, on the very Southeastern tip of Virginia, barely avoiding an excursion out over the open Atlantic only because he ran out of fuel before he hit water.

Determined not to fail this time, and having missed the Atlantic ocean by a hair's breath and a pint of petrol, Boyle bought gasoline out of his own pocket, got directions from a farmer, took off again and this time actually made it to Philadelphia; well, close to Philadelphia. He crash landed on the Philadelphia Country Club golf course, sheering both wings off his Jenny and bending the landing gear.

When the Postmaster General Burleson asked that Boyle be given a third chance, Major Fleet replied, “The conclusion has been reached that the best interests of the service require that Lieutenant Boyle be relieved from this duty.” And so he was. But it would appear that Lt. Boyd was such an incompetent pilot that he somehow managed to cause the man who replaced him to suffer five forced landings over the next three months. Whatever affliction Lt. Boyle was suffering from, he was infectious.

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