Airmail, back when men were men...

The Forgotten Giant Arrows that Guide you Across America ? www.messynessychic.com ? Readability

<<If you’re ever really lost on a road trip across America, and I’m talking really lost (let’s say the battery on your smartphone just died along with that compass application you downloaded for situations just like this), perhaps you might be lucky enough to find yourself next to one of the giant 70 foot concrete arrows that point your way across the country, left behind by a forgotten age of US mail delivery.>>
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I used to see these guys flying over the farm in 1932 so when I got to be a big boy I painted some pictures of them.
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I have a couple more.
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When I was in middle school (about 50 years ago) I read the book "Pilot Jack Knight". A lot of first hand experience about flying the mail in those days... Those guys were sumpthin else...

 

Great work, Bob!

 

Thank you, Jim. I recall seeing directional arrows and names and the miles to the nearest town painted on the roofs of buildings. My oldest son has located and visited most all of the directional beacon sites AND ARROWS of the routes through the Columbia Gorge from Pasco, Wa. to Portland, Ore. He's working on a documentary. Re the painting of " 398" flying in the moon light. When it was published in Flying Magazine an old gentleman wrote to me with the typical shaky script of his age and he said, " Please send me a picture of Slim Lewis flying 398 over the North Platte". He was a pioneer airmail pilot and knew what the painting was trying to say and where it was.

 

Bob- Great paintings. Is that a Ryan in the one painting? Do no see many of those except you know who's.

Killed a lot of pilots doing that job when the idea was ahead of the technology.

 

Thanks, Taz. Yes, that it a Ryan M-1, the progenitor of the Spirit Of St. Louis. Colorado Airways used them in 1926 and I tried to show how one was lost in the grey overcast and landed in a rancher's pasture to borrow some fuel from him. People have asked me what was covering the funnel and it is always amazing when I tell them that it was a chamois to strain the junk out of fuel that was so prevalent then. When I was a squirt airport junkie I used to see them straining fuel that very same way. The Ryan M-1 number one is in the Museum of Flight in Seattle and it is in this configuration with the Hisso V-8 in it. Chatting with Ty Sundstrom, the gentleman who found the remains in a field near Paso Robles, Ca., about how it handled after he rebuilt and flew it. " A lousy handling airplane compared to todays standards." The ailerons were too small and lacked gap seals so they were very ineffectual. One bay added to the tail arm, ten feet added to the wing span by adding 5 feet to the M-1 wing tips, a stronger landing gear,and the addition of the new Wright J-5 made the Ryan NYP. It was still a marginal airplane to fly according to Lindbergh but it did the job. I think that one of the most interesting stories about the pioneer airmail pilots was the one where a guy was in a whiteout snowstorm and realized that his DH-4 had slowed down and quit flying. He then realized that he had flown onto a gradual rise and sort of landed in some thick snow and sage brush. He walked out to a rancher and phoned in that he was grounded. The next spring they went to the location and cut a runway out of the sage and he took off and took the DH-4 home with little or no damage.

 

Bob- Too bad they did not have a lottery back then. He should have been buying tickets. One tall bush would have ruined his day.

We had an EF-111A squadron commander at Taif during Desert Shield/Storm that was out practicing SAM evasion manuevers at night. He came back with bushes stuck in the crevices on the bottom of the aircraft. Sometimes you get lucky, even if stupid got you there.

 

That's a bit before my time, but then, so are "Burma Shave" signs as well.

 

Maybe... with a DH-4 the ground speed may have been close to zero or even a negative number depending on wind.. ha.

Bob, love the two Ryans... first with a Hisso I assume and the lower one with a Wright like the Spirit. I didn't know they were such poor handling planes even though, IMO, it's a very good looking plane.

 

No dihedral, poor aileron design. Lindbergh mentioned some difficulties in one of his books. The NYP had short span wide chord ailerons(not the most effective configuration) and if you watch movies of him landing you can see that they appear to be going from stop to stop. The M-1 had adequate tail volume but the same tail group was used on the NYP and Lindbergh mentioned that he had to be on the controls 100% of the time because of the small tail feathers. Pietenpol Air Camper had the same affliction.

 

Well, maybe the '100% of the time' helped him stay awake, at least... ha...


I read The Spirit of St. Louis the first time when I was about 10. Several times, since. Enjoyed the stories of his early AirMail days.

Also "We" published by Putnam (who married Amelia).