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3. Civil Aviation between the Wars
- University of Nebraska Press
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11 3. Civil Aviation between the Wars Starting an Industry By the mid-1920s, military-minded leaders in the United States saw an obvious connection between the commercial airline industry and national defense. Transmitting the thoughts of President Warren Harding, Fiorello H. La Guardia told fellow congressmen that “the outstanding weakness in the industrial situation . . . is the inadequacy of facilities to supply Air Service needs. . . . To strengthen [the commercial] industry is to strengthen our national defense.” Other countries, La Guardia went on, already promoted their airlines as adjuncts to national airpower.1 Always the zealot for airpower, General William Mitchell urged the government to organize a “system for the development of commercial aviation” and to provide a larger industrial base and mobilization reserve of skilled personnel for the military.2 The President’s Air Policy echoed Mitchell’s statements, declaring that a strong commercial industry would create “a reservoir of highly skilled pilots and ground personnel . . . [that] will make it easier to rapidly build up an expanded air power if an emergency arises.”3 The problem for all the advocates of airline expansion was the lack of an industry to promote during the 1920s. Every company that had formed thus far to conduct scheduled passenger operations had gone under quickly. The aircraft available were small, slow, and too unreliable to provide routine service at a profit, even if enough daredevil passengers could be found willing to fly in them regularly. In any case, first-class travel on the railroads was cheaper, often faster, and certainly more comfortable than anything an aircraft of that time could offer. So, by mid-decade, the commercial aviation industry consisted of local air express operators and barnstormers performing circus stunts and selling airplane rides to anyone daring enough to ride along. In national aggregate, these tiny express operators transported a daily traffic of about two tons of “gold and currency, financial documents, jewelry and precious metals, plans and specifications . . . and other articles needed in a hurry.”4 At the time that Mitchell and La Guardia voiced their visions, therefore, commercial avia- Civil Aviation between the Wars 12 tion in America amounted to a recreational activity, plus transportation activities equal to the capacity of a few small trucks. The airmail service of the U.S. Post Office Department stood in bright contrast to the flickering prospects of commercial aviation. Well financed by tax money and the postage of the millions of letters it carried, the airmail service was noted for its expert pilots, well-maintained aircraft, and organized routes of airports, emergency strips, and beacon lights stretched out like a necklace across the countryside. Its trunk route, the “Columbia Line,” stretched 2,680 miles from New York to San Francisco. By 1924 relays of airmail pilots provided daily service on this line, crossing the country in about thirty-four hours, a third of the time required by rail. By the standards of the time, the airmail service also was safe. Airmail pilots suffered a fatal accident for about every 463,000 miles they flew, while a barnstormer or a passenger died for about every 13,500 miles flown.5 Appropriately, an airmail pilot, Shirley J. Short, received one of the first Harmon trophies for aerial achievement for flying 2,169 hours in all kinds of weather, mostly at night, without a single mishap.6 For those dreaming of a strong commercial airline industry, the lessons of the government airmail experience were obvious. First, reasonably safe and routine flying at night and in poor weather was feasible if operators were financed adequately and disciplined in their operations. Second, the government could help finance such safe and routine operations by transferring responsibility for carrying the airmail to civilian airline companies. That was the purpose of Fiorello La Guardia’s comments: to get Congress to move the airmail through civil companies, just as it contracted with the railroads to move surface mail. He was echoed by many, including the Department of Commerce and the American Engineering Council, which jointly pressed the post office to contract out the mail “as rapidly as it is possible” to support both the national economy and the national defense.7 Congress listened. In 1925 it passed the Air Mail Act, which authorized the postmaster general to “contract with any individual firm . . . for the transportation of air mail by aircraft between such points as he may designate.” In the next year, Congress passed the Air Commerce Act, which laid the regulatory foundations of a disciplined...