Army's First Week

Three days after the Army started to carry the airmail, Lieut. Durward 0. Lowry of the 94th Pursuit Squadron, Selfridge Field (Mich.), took off at 4 a. m. from Chicago for Cleveland. An icy blast whistled over his open cockpit and below he could see the shimmer of deep drifting snow left by the blizzard. When his radio went dead he had to fight by guesswork along an unfamiliar course. Then a chill fog enveloped him and his plane started to fall. Frantically he tore open its mail compartment, began to dump sack after sack over the side. A farmer near Deshler, Ohio, 50 mi. south of the Chicago-Cleveland airway, heard a plane roar over his roof. He heard a motor cut off. He heard a crash in his wood lot. He found Lieut. Lowry's mangled body in the wreckage of his ship.

Inside the Senate Office Building at Washington all was snug and warm as Senator Black badgered onetime Postmaster General Brown about airmail contracts which the Administration had canceled for "fraud and collusion."

A dim noon sun in a grey sky found Lieut. Howard M. McCoy piloting an observation plane with 211 Ib. of mail in her belly from Newark to Cleveland. Suddenly something went wrong with the lubrication. The motor burned out and Lieut. McCoy was forced down into a cow pasture at Dishtown, Pa. He slung the 211 Ib. of mail on his back, slogged two miles through the snow into Woodland, where he handed his mail over to the postmistress to be forwarded by train.

When Senator Black tried to show that a dead friend of Mr. Brown's had made money from the sale of a Cambridge (Mass.) postoffice site, the onetime Postmaster General cut in: "I assumed the real issue before us was whether I followed the policy of Congress on ocean and airmail contracts, and further, whether I was honest." The hearing took two hours and 15 min. off for lunch,

Far off his course. Lieut. Charles P. Hollstein was heading east over the Allegheny '"Hell Stretch" with mail from Cleveland to Washington. His radio, which the Army had less than ten days to install for airmail service, faded out. Completely lost, Lieut. Hollstein ran into a soupy fog, made a crash landing on an ice-clad hill outside Uniontown, Pa. His head and face badly gashed, he managed to scramble out of the wrecked ship and summon aid to rescue his mail.

Republican Senators produced evidence that Democratic Postmaster Farley had done no less than his predecessor when he extended an airmail route from Buffalo to New York.

On the Newark-Miami run, Lieut. Harold Dietz plowed into a night fog over Maryland. He circled Salisbury, where he knew there was a private landing field. There was a field but its beacon had not been in use for some time. Townsfolk heard the ship droning in circles overhead. Too late they rushed out to the landing field to turn on the lights. Lieut. Dietz pushed on to Crisfield, where his ship hit a tree and a telephone pole trying to land. The motor was thrown free and so was Lieut. Dietz. His skull was fractured, but he managed to shout: "Don't bother anything in the plane! Take care of the mail!'

At a dinner in balmy Savannah "General" Farley explained that the Adminitration's airmail policy would end "abuses which grew out of an unfair and stifling competition."

Just before dawn next morning, Lieut. Norman Burnett ran into a howling snow-storm on the Cleveland-Chicago route. The ceiling closed down and he missed a beacon. Then his gasoline line clogged and he went into a tight spin. He had no mail so he took to his parachute. In landing he fractured his leg.

Mr. Brown said that Mr. Farley had said of Senator Black's Committee: "I haven't any sympathy with this political investigation." Senator Black sent for Mr. Farley, found he was out of town.

Well into the stormy afternoon three flying officers--George F. McDermott, James H. Rothrock. William S. Pocock Jr. --took off from Floyd Bennett Field, N.Y. for Langley Field, Va. to pick up mail planes. Their amphibian was not in the air ten minutes before it became unmanageable in the stiff wind. They alighted in a heavy sea off Rockaway Point. When a Coast Guard and a Navy destroyer steamed up, the amphibian had drifted off into the dusk. The Navy boat finally picked up the flyers five miles away. Lieut. McDermott had been washed overboard. His exhausted companions were hospitalized.

Mr. Brown swore that Mr. Farley had described Senator Black to him as a "publicity hound." Mr. Farley swore he had done no such thing. Either the Postmaster General or the ex-Postmaster General was a liar.

As its first week of airmail carrying came to an end the Army totaled up its score. Five pilots were dead, three of them killed fortnight ago before the Army officially took over. Six pilots were more or less seriously injured. Eight planes were wreckage. Aside from lost man power and morale, the Army Air Corps, according to conservative estimates, was out $300,000--$25,000 for each of the lost planes, $20,000 in insurance and training costs for each dead pilot.

When commercial operators lost their airmail contracts, they warned Washington and the country that the Army, for all its fine spirit. was not equipped or trained to step into the breach (TIME, Feb. 19). Their words were airily swept aside as sour grapes. But last week a sense of shocked surprise ran through the land. Citizens began to wonder if, after all, the commercial operators were not right, if President Roosevelt was not wrong on his airmail policy. Newspaper editors wailed loudly that the toll of the Army's first week with the airmail was too high a price to pay for "purging" commercial aviation of some wrongdoing that was not yet satisfactorily proved. At the Capitol the White House was accused of "legalized murder." Able Correspondent Arthur Krock reported for his New York Times: "For the first time since the President was inaugurated ... his administration seems really on the defensive. . . . The signs grow that the Administration feels the airmail is a bear it has by the tail. It is anxious to let go. ... The problem is how to get out gracefully. . . ."

What President Roosevelt had put the Army up against was described by Major Clarence L. Tinker, commanding the western division of the Army airmail service at San Francisco. Said Major Tinker:

"Commercial air pilots have from a year to a year and a half special training over the routes which they are to take before they are allowed to go alone. . . . The large new land planes used by the commercial transports are fitted with many automatic control instruments for blind flying in darkness and fog which are not seen on planes used by the military units. Also, closed and warmed cockpits and cabins prevent pilots from having to expose themselves to dangerous temperatures. . .

"Army pilot training, on the other hand, is the direct opposite. There are no radio beams or lights to show him where the enemy is. ... The army pilot is used to flying in formation, to bombing, to fighting ships in the air, to pursuit and attack. ... If the weather is bad, there is no object in sending an army plane up. In war we must see our objective. . . ."

In Washington, Major General Benjamin D. ("Benny") Foulois, Chief of Air Corps, alarmed at the rate his flyers were going to destruction, sent out an order commanding "safety first." For all its valor, the Army, flying 60% less route miles than the commercial carriers, had delivered only a little more than 50% of the mail assigned it during its first tragic week.

Despite Republicans' cries that the Administration was "trying to make Congress share the blame," the House passed 248-to-81 a bill turning the airmail over to the Army for one year.

While the Army was counting its losses, the commercial aviation industry, stripped of its postal subsidies, was having a full-sized tragedy of its own. A United Air liner rose out of Salt Lake City and headed for Cheyenne. When it failed to report its progress, officials began to worry. It took two days of searching on foot, on horseback and in airplanes to find the missing ship. Within 15 min. after leaving Salt Lake City, the plane had crashed into the head of Parley's Canyon at the top of the Wasatch Range, a bare 20 mi. from the Salt Lake airport. The plane's nose was deeply buried in the earth, its wings embedded among pine trees. Five passengers, including the Mayor of Benton Harbor, Mich., pilot and co-pilot were badly mangled. Their remains were carried out through the snow on their overcoats. Intact was the body of pretty Mary Carter of Chattanooga, Tenn., the stewardess, who met death instantly with the seven men.

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