Rickenbacker At The Retiring Of The End Open-Cockpit Mailwing, 1935
U.S. of A. AIRMAIL, 1935. The lastly flight of a Pitcairn Mailwing-7, the lastly opened upwards cockpit apartment to bear U.S. of A. airmail on contract schedule, xvi October 1935.
The Pitcairn Mailwing was specifically designed inwards 1927 to alive sold to contract postal service carriers for nighttime air postal service runs. An immediate success, this arts as well as crafts which could bear 600 lbs. of postal service at speeds upwards to 136 mph was beingness produced at the accuse per unit of measurement of criterion of 1 per calendar calendar week by times the halt of 1928. Many an airline that is world-famous today was equipped with Mailwings during this era.
Many Mailwings finished out their days as crop dusters likewise a handful of Mailwings are however flight today. Well preserved examples tin bath alive seen at the Tallmantz likewise Smithsonian Air Museums.
The prime number release mover inwards the nativity of the air postal service was NOT the storey airplane pilot community, nor level the young aircraft industry. It was 1 Otto Praeger, Second Assistant Postmaster General, himself a non-flyer who only sought to improve the speed of intercity postal service shipments so carried exclusively by times train.
Oblivious to the limitations of 1918 aircraft technology scientific discipline likewise performance, he convinced his boss, Postmaster General Burleson, to suggest to the President that the Secretary of War could social lodge the Army Air Service to assume this novel role, starting inwards just a affair of several days!
And so the executive orders were quickly passed to War Secretary Newton D. Baker, thence to Chief of the Army Air Service Col. “Hap” Arnold, who promptly summoned his Executive Officer to his desk, 1 Major Reuben H. Fleet. The orders were dated May 3, 1918. The orders read to initiate daily air postal service service between Washington likewise New York on May 15, 1918. Hap Arnold likewise Reuben Fleet were professional person individual soldier-pilots who knew all also expert that you lot didn’t province “no” to the President, likewise they had to salute likewise bear out the orders as best they could, given no suitable airplanes, likewise no pilots with adequate cross-country navigational training inwards proficient atmospheric condition status or bad.
And it is inwards major crises that clever men rising to slice of locomote keen men. In this situation, Fleet needed to overcome his Air Service inadequacies inwards men likewise equipment inwards just twelve days to avoid embarrassing the President of the U.S.A. of America likewise the Air Service inwards the eyes of the news media likewise the American public.
His starting 4th dimension activity was to bespeak Col. Edwin A. Deeds, Chief of Air Service Production, to household an immediate social lodge to the Curtiss Aeroplane likewise Motor Corporation, Garden City, Long Island, NY, for (6) novel particularly configured JN-4H “Jenny” training biplanes with doubled fuel tank capacity likewise without controls inwards the front end terminate cockpit, which was to alive covered over as a postal service pit.
This would give the postal service apartment Jenny twice its stair out arrive at of exclusively 88 miles so it could inwards fact construct the trip from DC to Philly nonstop. The “H” model Jennies were powered by times the 150 hp Hispano-Suiza (“Hisso”) liquid cooled V-8 with enclosed overhead cams likewise automatic valve lubrication, making them far more than reliable than the earlier 90 hp Curtiss OX-5 V-8s with open, mitt lubricated valve actions.
Curtiss only added a minute stair out terneplate fuel tank inwards tandem with the regular tank between the firewall likewise the postal service pit. The apartment trouble was solved inwards curt social lodge through this minute cooperation between the engineering-educated Fleet, his convey upwards command staff, likewise the already humming production trouble at Curtiss.
http://www.lib.auburn.edu/archive/find-aid/101/96-066.htm
http://www.antiqueairfield.com/features/us_airmail.html
http://www.airplanesandrockets.com/airplanes/pitcairn-mailwing-aug-1968-aam.htm
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