Wiley Post: On the Outside Looking In

One way to gauge the importance of the air mail service is through the lens of a pilot who was not “plugged in” to the aviation community, at least not as well networked as the air mail pilots who, as a collective and cohesive group, invented scheduled flight. Numerous aspiring pilots failed to find a career. Some found their own niche, but the air mail pilots were their own club that supported each other, pushed each other, and inspired each other.

Willey Post’s flying career demonstrates the challenges of one attempting to become a pilot outside of the backbone of the Post Office and the developing airlines which it supported it. Post, like many pilots, had an early love of machinery and tinkering. He tried to become a flier during World War I, but the war ended before he could be trained. His career started as a parachutist, when some of the pilots gave him lessons. The barnstorming circuit was profitable for a couple of years, but as flying became more commonplace, Post began seeking other work.

Post eventually found work with an oil company, who felt that cutting down travel time in Oklahoma would allow them to get an edge in oil deals. This had Post traveling across the state, largely in remote areas using a variety of landing fields. While the air mail pilots began to have the benefit of improving airports, longer runways, and well marked flight paths, Post became known for quick take offs on rough runways. When in need of cash he worked in the oil fields, where an accident resulting in the loss of one eye killed any realistic chance he had of flying for a larger organization. Despite his diligent work in regaining his depth perception, his handicap took him out of contention.

Post was not completely without connections, but his noteworthy flying consisted of independent endeavors rather than team efforts. FC Hall, the businessman who initially hired Post, covered extraneous flying expenses, including Posts entry into the National Air Race from Los Angeles to Chicago in 1930, which Post won. In 1931, Post and an Australian navigator, Harold Gatty, set a record for flying around the World in 8 days, 15 hours, and 51 minutes. In 1933 Post soloed around the world, beating his old record by almost one day. Post also did groundbreaking work on pressure suits and high altitude flight, including working with the Jet stream.

These accomplishments did not come easily. Money never ceased to be an issue, both for personal use and in finding sponsors for projects. The loss of his eye made it difficult to find a steady aviation job, which increased the difficulty of becoming part of the community, rather than an adventurer on the outskirts.

Post is most famous for piloting the plane which crashed in northern Alaska in 1935, where he died along with famed newspaper columnist Will Rogers. The crash can pretty well exclusively be blamed on Post’s decision to modify a plane with different wings and pontoons, making it nose heavy.

Rogers was more of an acquaintance of Post’s rather than a close friend. Rogers was also a huge supporter of aviation. His connections also included Charles Lindbergh and Billy Mitchell. But despite his love of flight, he had no technical knowledge of planes. Had Post had the connections, would he have chosen another pilot or navigator, one who would have pushed the issue on the safety of the plane? Especially since his plans included heading into Russia. He initially contacted Fay Gillis, one of the foremost female fliers in the United States who also earned accolades for her free lance articles from the Soviet Union while her family was stationed there. She helped Post arrange the logistics of the Russian portion of his solo flight around the world. But she was not available for Post’s trip, which seemed to include plans to return to Russia.

Post’s exploits, with a handful of supporters and loose connections is a far cry from the tales of the Post Office pilots, where a core group supported each other both on and off the field. During the 1920s, pilots flew together, socialized together, rescued each other along with the mail, buried fellow pilots, and in at least one case served as godparent’s to each other’s children. Some went on to tackle other projects together.

How would Post’s life have been different had he been able to become fully part of the mail pilots, or even of the growing flying community? Perhaps he and Will Rodgers would have died old men in Oklahoma. Or perhaps he would not have begun investigating the jet stream and pressure suits. In any case, his life highlights the value of the community of pilots that conquered the skies.

Sources:

Forgotten Eagle, Bryan B. Sterling and Frances N. Sterling, Caroll and Graf Publishers, New York, 2001.

Around the World in Eight Days, Wiley Post and Harold Gatty, Orion Books, New York, initially published in 1931.

http://www.iwasm.org/saved/FayGillisWellsbio.htm

Jack Knight: Recording a Crash

Jack Knight became the most famous pilot in the air mail service during his overnight flight of Feb 22, 1921. He did so with a broken nose due to to a crash suffered the week before. The archives at the library in his home town of Buchanan Michigan contains his report on the story. The report is straightforward, but contains a cache of information regarding the day to day business of flying a plane across the treacherous terrain of Wyoming.

Besides saying when he took off from Cheyenne and the wind speed, he points out that “a down current of air always hits us about Horse Creek and drops us about 600 to 800 feet. This is on the Eastern Edge of the Laramie Mountains.” He goes on to note that “when we get within a few miles of Telephone Canyon we envariably [sic] hit a current of air that boost us 1200 to 1500 feet.” I can’t imagine how, among the other challenges of early flight, pilots planed for just taking a sudden drop or having little control of the elevation..

Knight also mentions that at the eastern edge of the Laramie Mountains, flying at approximately 8800 feet he started to the telephone line from Horse Creek to Laramie. For perspective, the city of Laramie is at 7100. The mountains range from about 8,000 to 9,500 feet. The highest peak is Laramie Peak, at about 10,200 feet. So Knight would have been around 1,000 feet in the air. Within 15 miles of Laramie, Knights oil pressure dropped, the motor temperature hit 195 degrees, and the motor dropped to 1200 RPM. Knight managed to land on a mountain in a snowdrift. The impact “knocked further details out of [Knight’s] system,” but when he regained consciousness he had been thrown from the plane. He says that he crashed around 7am, but woke up around 8:30.

The rest of the story follows many a pilot’s tale. Knight, banged up and with a broken nose, went searching for civilization. About two hours after setting out, he reached a ranch house seven miles away, where he found aid. The rancher drove him five miles to Laramie, and he made the usual call to the “home office” in Cheyenne to deal with the mail. He then hopped a train back to Cheyenne at 12:30.

Knight’s report of his crash only adds to the legend that is the night flight of February 21^st. But more importantly it is a first hand account of the regular business of flying which is how Knight earned his living. And when he retired from flying, United put him in charge of promoting flight. The uneven air, the dangers of crashing in Wyoming’s uneven landscape along with the scarcity of towns shows what the early pilots faced. And because Knight and others like him made those flights day after day, the service continued to grow.

McMullen: Hitting the Wires

Bryan McMullen, like several other pilots in the early days of the air mail service died due in large part to bad luck. The Omaha Bee tells the story in some detail. McMullen left Checkerboard field near Chicago just before 6am on October 16, 1920s. It seems that the weather was creating difficulties, and McMullen attempted to land in a field. A farmer and his wife saw the plane head towards the field before hitting a telephone wire, flipping over, and bursting into flames. They were unable to reach the McMullen and he burned, along with a large portion of the mail. He left behind a devoted wife who met him at Omaha’s Aksarben field almost every morning since he had been stationed there in October. His mother took over the funeral details, and he was buried near his home in Dallas Texas.

While it is true that the weather played a roll, had McMullen not hit that stretch of wire, had he been a couple of feet higher, it would have been your run of the mill, this is 1920, emergency landing. If you were lucky the farmer’s wife would make a cup of coffee and offer you breakfast while you waited for the weather to clear or the farmer would have given you a ride into town so that you could report your predicament. This time things took an unfortunate turn.

McMullen was born in Texas in May of 1893. According to census records in 1900 he was living in Gatesville, Texas with his father, mother, and sister. Ten years later he was 16, and living with his grandfather, a publisher, and his mother in Palo Pinto, Texas (about 20 miles west of Dallas). His mother and grandmother worked as milliners, meaning they sold and possibly made women’s hats. In the 1920 census, he was working as a salesman and sewing merchant in Dallas Texas. He and his wife, Eva, were boarders. Texas World War I records indicate that McMullen had served overseas from July 1918 to July, 1919. He likely learned how to fly in 1916 when he had been sent to flying school in Newport News Virginia due to being a Lieutenant in the 4^th Texas infantry (El Paso Herald—March 24, 1916).

A basic internet search does not indicate what McMullen did overseas, specifically whether he was in the Army Air Corps. Regardless of his service duties, it is easy to imagine a young man, just home from the war, finding temporary quarters and selling sewing supplies while figuring out what he was going to do with the rest of his life. He began flying for the Air Mail Service in August of 1920, only two months prior to his death.

McMullen’s mother died two years later in 1922. Although his father appears to have exited the scene sometime between 1900 and 1910. Daniel McMullen didn’t have an occupation listed in the 1900 census. He died in 1923 in Davenport, Iowa where he worked as a salesman (Iowa Death Records).

Reviewing the Numbers: 31 of 40

 

Every so often a statistic comes up in various air mail articles. Thirty one of the first forty pilots hired by the Post Office died while flying the mail. I’m not exactly sure where this number originated. I first came across it in a book on Nebraska flying history/reminiscing written by an amateur historian that was published in 1994. I have seen it in other places. A PBS site on Charles Lindbergh (referenced below) repeats the claim.

The Smithsonian Postal Museum website has a page listing all of the airmail pilots that also provides information on when they were hired, when they left the service, where they were stationed, and other details based on records found in their archives. This site is a treasure trove of information. I put the pilot information into a data base, and ran the numbers. The 31 out of 40 statistic does not appear to be correct. When the data is organized by hire date, three of the first 40 pilots died while flying the mail. Another pilot died in a crash a year and a half after leaving the service.

As in most circumstances, the stories that the data tell are more important than the raw numbers. Some pilots were hired, but failed to perform well in training, meaning the Post Office fired them prior to any air mail flights. Numerous others lasted for three to six months before they decided that the job didn’t work for them. According to the Post Office documentation, several pilots who resigned later requested the job back. Usually the request was not granted, but there are some exceptions.

Attempting to determine where the 31 out of 40 came from is an exercise in counting. But I do have a guess. An appendix in William Leary’s book Aerial Pioneers: The U.S. Air Mail Service, 1918-1927 lists all Post Office employees killed in crashes. There were 31 fatalities prior to January 1, 1923. This includes pilots, mechanics, clerks, airport helpers, and a division superintendent. This may seem like a random year, but for the most part 1922 marked the end of the era of air mail pilots being a “suicide club” and the beginning of mail service becoming safe and reliable.

There were forty pilots who worked for the Post Office between the end of June and August of 1927 when the final routes were turned over to private contractors. Some of these pilots continued flying over familiar territory with Boeing and National Air Transport, the two companies who took over the transcontinental route. Others quit flying the mail and moved on to other endeavors.

The point of quoting the 31 of 40 number is to emphasize the risks involved in flying the mail cross country in the early 1920s. I have not questioned the number prior to now because flights could be incredibly dangerous. Aviation was a new field of study, and a variety of issues were still being worked out.

The fatalities were real, and close shaves that don’t make it into the final numbers abounded. Mavericks of the Sky by Barry Rosenberg and Catherine Macaulay tells a story about Jack Knight writing a will while flying through the fog above the Appalachian Mountains because he had no way to determine if he would hit a mountain when forced descend to land at Bellefonte. Dangers of fog affected most pilots. Nearly all pilots who flew the mail for any length of time faced one or more emergency landings in uncertain terrain. Some got lucky when hitting trees or uneven fields. Some narrowly missed buildings, wires, or other objects that killed their comrades.

My brief overview of the pilot stories did lead me to the conclusion that flying the mail was a little safer then is generally portrayed, especially when specific crashes are analyzed. When the service started, the pilot often flew with a mechanic. Two of the crashes prior to 1923 killed two people, and one killed three. While it isn’t a major improvement, this means that there were only 27 fatal incidents, not 31. Several crashes involved similar plane issues, such as Junkers that caught fire when oil leaked on the engine. Once those issues had been resolved (the Junkers were removed from service), safety improved. A couple of crashes involved pilots doing stunts with the planes, and two more happened on the ground when someone got struck with a propeller.

Looking through the numbers gave me a better picture of what the Post Office looked like during its first two or three years of service. Pilots came and went. Some that left did get rehired at some point. Some were fired, some left for family reasons or other opportunities. Most continued to fly in some capacity or another. Only five pilots hired prior to 1920 flew continuously with the Post Office until it pulled out of the flying business. By that time Lester Bishop, E. Hamilton Lee, “Slim” Lewis, Jack Knight, and Robert Ellis had become the bedrock of the service.

Numbers and statistics are very subjective. Why make 1923 a cutoff year, not 1922 or 1924. Why count all employees and not just pilots? Why not? Statistics alone can be next to worthless. But statistics can become an excellent starting point for discussion, observations, and understanding.

https://postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibition/fad-to-fundamental-airmail-in-america-airmail-pilot-stories-no-old-bold-pilots/rest-of

http://www.shoppbs.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/lindbergh/sfeature/airmail.html

Earl Woodgard: The New Analysis of the Crash

While reviewing Earl Woodgard’s history, it struck me how his crash demonstrates how far crash investigation and reporting had come since the beginning of the age of flight.  Fundamentally, the question is the same…why did the plane fall out of the sky.  However in 1920, pilots had few instruments, and nothing recorded information.  So the logical deductions, such as that “Dinty” Moore crashed into a Wyoming mountain in 1923, the best information was that visibility was low and he was focused on the train tracks that he was following.

By 1938, however, much more information was available, both from inside and outside the plane.  The full report from the Civil Aeronautics Bureau is available at https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/32997.

Radio communication had become a standard part of transportation by that time, so the investigation was able to track the plane’s progress fairly closely.  The cockpit information included the plane’s altitude, so investigators could verify that the plane was flying consistently at 10,000 feet.  It also noted that one of the light beacons was not functioning and that radio transmissions were spotty in the mountains.  The verdict was that the plane was 15 miles off course and crashed into a mountain.

The report includes information that we are accustomed to seeing today, such as when the pilot had their last physical, and mechanical details of the aircraft.  It also notes witness reports and specific radio contact with Cheyenne and Salt Lake City.  The weather may have caused some radio static, particularly at the checkpoint shortly before the plane crashed which might have let Woodgard know that he was off course.

There are probably some reports on the crashes of the early air mail pilots in the National Archives in Washington DC.  But crash investigations weren’t as comprehensive before the 1930s.  Knute Rockne’s plane crash in 1931 helped bring the need for investigations to national prominence.

Comparing information once again demonstrates how the air mail service serves as a link between rudimentary flight practices, and something more sophisticated.  Most crash after about 1934 have a report with a detailed analysis of what might have gone wrong.  It is just one more sign of the modern age.

Earl Woodgard: The Second Wave

Earl Woodgard didn’t make the first round of air mail pilots.  He never flew for the Post Office, but was hired by Boeing when it acquired the Chicago to San Francisco portion of the route in 1927.  He was born in Ohio in 1898, and he ended up in Cheyenne, where he was based out of when he crashed into the mountains of southeast Utah in 1937.

Earl Woodgard, like many of the original air mail pilots, served in the US Army Air Corps in World War I.  According to Findagrave, he served with the 91st Aero Squadron.  Prior to the war he had been working in Frederickton, Ohio for the Ohio Mining Company as a weighmaster.  After the war, he apparently continued some military aviation training.  The 1920 census lists him at the Air Service flying school at March Field in Riverside, California.  After his army career, he was one of hundreds of men across the country who purchased a Jenny aircraft and began a life of barnstorming and miscellaneous aviation activities.  Various newspaper articles have him wing walking in Oregon in 1921, setting a parachute record with four men jumping from the same plane in California in 1921, dropping campaign material for an Ohio Secretary of State Candidate in 1924, and flying a pleasure craft for a Mr. Hinder in Ohio in 1924.

Although Woodgard’s life seemed anything but geographically stable, he married Ester Johnson in 1922.  Whatever aerial activities he became involved in must have been enough to support a family.   I’m not sure when and where Woodgard decided to fly for Boeing, but the Post Office’s contracting of the air mail routes was big news at the time.

There isn’t a lot of information about many details of Woodgards life, just pieces here and there.  An Omaha World Herald article in 1929 mentioned that he barnstormed in 20 states and had over 2,000 hours in the air at that time.  In 1931 engine problems while taking off at North Platte, Nebraska led to him making a forced landing in the Platte River, which ran along the edge of the field.  Apparently undeterred, he got in a reserve plane and continued on to Cheyenne.  In March of 1932, he averaged 192 miles per hour from North Platte to Omaha, with three passengers and 970 pounds of mail.

Woodgard liked photography, telling jokes, and apparently wide open spaces.  According to a World-Herald article from the time of his death, he planned to retire to Jackson Hole Wyoming and continue his photographic endeavors when his flying days were done.  But it was not to be.  Woodgard, along with three other crew members and 15 passengers died when he got a few miles off course during the flight from Rock Springs, Wyoming to Salt Lake City and crashed into a mountain.  His wife returned to Ohio.  The 1940 census has her living with her brother.  Woodgard was buried in Cheyenne.

Woodgard’s life is one more piece of the mosaic which is the development of flight.  One piece that talks about moving from place to place, wanting to settle down, keeping long distance ties with family, and day by day, flight by flight, moving the idea of aviation from a technology with unknown possibilities to a fact of every day life.

Lester Bishop – Tales of the Snow

Pilots landed in fields across the country, and the stories of their tales abound.  Frightened livestock, startled farmers, crowds of curious individuals, and other adventures often met them.  But the most adventurous stories in my mind are those of the pilots who crashed in the western United States during the winter.  Lester Bishop began flying in 1918, and ended up on the western route.

In December of 1922, Bishop was the first pilot to spot the downed plane of Henry Boonstra.  Boonstra had crashed on Porcupine Ridge near Coalville, Utah.  His assertion that he saw a flying suit near the airplane was seen as evidence that Boonstra survived the crash and would be found.  A day later he was found safely.

The following year it was Bishop’s turn.  He crashed about ten miles west of Lymon, Wyoming in three feet of snow.  According to the Omaha World-Herald he walked ten miles in search of help before being spotted by Robert Ellis, who picked him up and took him to Rock Springs.

Landing in the snow was always a tricky business.  Even if a pilot landed safely, reaching civilization or at least a house could be a trek of many energy sapping miles.  Their best hope was when they missed their arrival time and their fellow pilots went looking for them.

To my Scouting Friends: Edmund Allen

Growing up, my brother and I each got one magazine. I got National Geographic World and he got Boy’s Life, the magazine of the then Boy Scouts. And when I was done reading my magazine, I would read his. The magazine has had articles covering a wide variety of topics since 1911, and fortunately in July 1929, Edmund Allen contributed with a detailed account of the potential dangers of flying through the mountains.

Allen began flying west out of Cheyenne with a puppy that was insulated from the cold as best as possible with sacks and the mail. He describes circling the field several times to allow himself to become accustomed to the darkness, then hitting a patch of fog on the snowy night. Radio reports between Cheyenne and Rock Springs indicated clearing skies, so Allen thought that he could make it through.

Allen describes fighting the fear of flying without being able to see beyond his plane or knowing precisely how much distance lay between him and the ground. He describes using a combination of his altimeter and his bank and turn indicator, as well as his knowledge of the route, to remain on course. He also discusses the challenges and interpretation required while flying with instruments. The compass needle would continually swing back and forth. A bank and turn indicator determines if the plane is turning, but not how far or if you are on course. The altimeter indicates how much the plane has risen compared to where it started, but not how high above the ground it is. Allen was concerned because when he last spotted the ground he was only 30 feet above it, and although he had climbed 200 feet, the ground was rising at roughly that rate.

Allen describes how he dismissed the option of turning back, since it was probably more likely that he would crash while attempting to turn around than that he would crash while continuing to fly forward. Also, going forward he could make an educated guess as to where he was…he had no such assurance if he took the plane off course. He also discusses the dangers of ice on the plane…accumulation preventing his plane from gaining altitude as fast as it usually did by adding about 500 pounds of weight.

Allen finally saw the stars, indicating that he had risen above the fog. Since he was out of the moisture, the ice evaporated, and Allen continued on his way.

Allen began flying the mail in 1925, and went on to work for Boeing. He became a well respected test pilot in Seattle. Unfortunately, in February of 1943, he was test flying an XB-29 prototype Superfortress bomber (Smithsonian Postal Museum website) when a fire broke out. According to the Seattle times, Allen continued to pilot the plane, attempting to fly it away from buildings on the ground. However, he crashed into the Frye and company packing plant killing himself, ten other crewmen, and nineteen workers in the packing plant. Allen left behind a wife and two children. It was a tragic end for a man who had been able to fly blindly through the mountains to deliver some packages and a dog.

Introduction to Iowa

It occurred to me as I was driving across Iowa last weekend that, other than looking into a couple of specific incidents, I really haven’t spent much time diving into the details of Iowa’s air mail history.  Given that it is just across the river from Nebraska, where my exploration began, I am overdue.

The best place to start is with what I know about the route.  Luckily, pilots tended to have crash landings, which tended to be in the Omaha World-Herald, from which I have collected a partial sampling of data.  So I can at least begin to plot the route.  I will use I-80 as my major point of reference.  Although it was not in existence in the 1920s, it is probably the most well known path across Iowa now.

The airport in Iowa City, roughly five miles south of I-80, served as the Post Office’s intermediate stop between Omaha and Chicago.  The Post Office also attempted fairly early on to deliver mail to Des Moines, which was an on again off again experiment for a couple of years before permanent service hit.  Or so my memory serves me.  At any rate, the Des Moines airport is also south of I-80.  Even when the air mail was not stopping in Des Moines, the city served as one of those places of refuge, like Sidney and Grand Island in Nebraska, that attracted forced landings.

Many of the towns that pilots landed at seem to have been five to ten miles south of I-80.  Given the location of the Des Moines and Iowa City fields, this makes sense.  Atlantic, North English, West Liberty, and Wiota all hosted pilots in the 1920s.  A crash in Oscaloosa, Iowa killed the new head of the Chicago to Omaha portion of the service, but that pilot was likely lost and south of where he intended to be.  There are records of pilots being north of I-80, but those examples tend to be east of Iowa City.  Clinton and Clarence are the two examples I have.  There is also record of a pilot being in Davenport, on the Mississippi River ten miles south of Clinton.  This seems to indicate that, like Nebraska, pilots did not necessarily follow the exact same course.

So to sum of the data, pilots flying west out of Chicago seem to have crossed the Mississippi either near I-80 or about 10 miles north.  They then either dropped south to Iowa City or flew fairly straight west, depending on where they started.  They continued west in a fairly straight line, passing through Des Moines before dropping a bit south to Council Bluffs and into Omaha.  This generally corresponds with the 1920 pilots notes, which seem to have been followed more in this case than they were in eastern Nebraska.

The only other note about Iowa is that it hosted at least one contract route.  In 1930 a Northwestern Air Transport plane crashed near Moulton, almost at the state’s southern border.  But that is a bit of research for another time.

Norman Potter: From Sea to Shining Sea

My dad gave me a burnt envelope for Christmas a couple of years back and I jumped up and down with excitement. For the envelope had been burned when Norman Potter crashed into a tree at the Fort Crook airfield in 1929. The envelope and explanatory note from the Post Office mentioned the date, I found the details in the Omaha World Herald. We all have those things which trigger an incomprehensible and irrational excitement. The envelope happens to be one of mine. And it led to the usual questions, particularly who is Norman Potter? He was not one of my regulars: those pilots mentioned by newspapers time and time again crossing the Great Plains. So the tracking begins.

Potter was born in San Francisco in 1895 to Steven and Elizabeth Potter. His father was a court stenographer/reporter and his family was sufficiently wealthy to employ at least one servant, based on census records. He had a brother who became a doctor and a sister who was serving as a city librarian in 1920. He apparently liked doing puzzles. The San Francisco Chronicle had a childrens’ section, and he is mentioned as one of several winners at least five times between 1901 and 1904. In May of 1913 Potter and his brother attended a Pi Delta Kappa dance. In August of 1915 the family spent some time at Bartlet Springs resort, 100 miles north of San Francisco. When the time came to register for the World War I draft, he was a student at Berkley.

Potter joined the army, and apparently remained in the service until 1926. An 1925 article for the San Francisco Chronicle refers to him as Captain Potter, and a June 1926 article in the Tampa Tribune says that he had been out of the service for a month. According to his tombstone, he reached the rank of 2^nd Lieutenant.

After leaving the service, Potter teamed up with World War I Ace Reed Chambers and started Florida Airways, where Potter served as the chief pilot. They had 3 planes and flew between Miami, Tampa, and Jacksonville. Later stops were added in places like Macon, Georgia. Potter’s obituary from the Tampa Tribune credits him with being the first pilot federally authorized to fly over the Everglades which he did in 1925. He also joined Miami’s optimist club.

Around 1928, Potter returned to California. If I was writing this as a movie “based on a true story” I would say that he got homesick. He didn’t want to face another Florida summer. He missed his brother. So when he found an opportunity to head west, he took it. I don’t know of course, but not knowing is half the fun.

At any rate, Potter spend a brief period of time working for Western Air Express. In May of 1928 he flew a 12 passenger plane from Los Angeles to San Francisco in less than three hours. The plane was equipped with radio, both for the pilots and the passengers. The pilots could communicate with the ground the entire way, and the passengers could get their entertainment radio stations. In June, the San Francisco Chronicle said that he was now working for Boeing. Over the next three years he made several trips for Boeing, including a high profile trip in November of 1928. He took a record 735 pounds of mail along with some VIPS to Chicago for an aeronautical exposition. It was not his only time making the trip, as the crash in Omaha in January 1929 (without passengers) testifies to.

Potter apparently kept his had in other pies as well. In September 1929, he is mentioned as being on the board for Western Aviation, Incorporated.

Unfortunately Potter’s life ended tragically, as many did, in the mountain snows. In November 1931, he was flying from San Francisco to Salt Lake City when he hit a blizzard. He radioed in that everything was fine, but the airport lost contact with him shortly thereafter. The plane was found a couple of days later. Potter had apparently crashed into the ground nose first. Did something break? Did he just become disoriented? Did his instruments fail him? He was married by this time, and either living in Reno or Salt Lake City. But his brother came to help with the funeral arrangements, and Potter returned to San Francisco to be buried.

Potter’s story touches on a lot of important subjects in the “post seat of your pants” flying world. The rise of small airlines, before larger companies gobbled them up. The development of radio communication. The move from military to civilian flying. And the reminder that although flying was continually getting safer, tragedy could still occur…especially in the winter. Flying was safer, but there remained more to be done.