Category AVIATION &ТНЕ ROLE OF GOVERNMENT

As early as 1912, forward-looking leaders in the United States, including people from the sci­entific, industrial, and government sectors, had attempted to create a center for the study and advancement of aviation. President Howard Taft appointed a group labeled the National Aerody­namical Laboratory Commission that year, but Congress voted down its funding. Most of the energy in aviation in America seemed to be spent on patent litigation between the Wright brothers and Glenn Curtiss.

By contrast, the countries of Europe were well ahead of the United States in aircraft research and development primarily due to their government-sponsored approach. The countries of France, Germany, Russia, and England all had government-funded agencies dedicated to the coordination of industry, scientific, and govern­ment efforts to advance aviation.

On the death of Samuel Langley, the Smithsonian Institution appointed Charles D. Walcott its Secretary in 1907. Although Walcott was a paleontologist, whose interest and previ­ous scientific efforts were far removed from aviation, he nevertheless took up the call to end aviation’s plight as an orphan of government. In collaboration with Congressional sponsors, he outlined a bill that was introduced into both houses of Congress in January 1915 to cre­ate an advisory committee patterned along the lines of the British Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.

Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt endorsed the idea and the legisla­tion was attached to the Naval Appropriations Bill. It provided funding in the grand amount of $5,000. The enabling legislation for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics slipped through practically unnoticed by opponents on March 3, 1915, and became law on the same day when signed by President Woodrow Wilson. The mission statement of the NACA reads: “It shall be the duty of the advisory committee for aeronautics to supervise and direct the scientific study of the problems of flight with a view to their practical solution. ..”

The original committee was composed of 12 unpaid members selected from the military (Army and Navy), government (National Bureau of Standards, U. S. Weather Bureau, and Assis­tant Secretary of the Treasury), and academia (professors from Stanford, Columbia, Northwest­ern, and Johns Hopkins Universities). Walcott of the Smithsonian Institution became the commit­tee’s chairman.

The members soon began promoting the idea of a research laboratory and proposed a budget of $85,000 to fund their research. Against opposition, this amount was approved in August 1916 and led to the establishment of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory in Virginia. It soon became clear just how little was known in the United States about the science of aero­nautics, and there was a lot of wasted motion as the committee sought to find its way in uncharted waters. The first technical employee was an engineer selected from the Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Corporation. Its first efforts centered on experimentation with propellers.

But there were as yet no representatives from business or industry involved in the pro­ceedings. It soon became clear that, if the work of the NACA was to advance, it would be necessary to have industry at the table as well as the gov­ernment and its scientific advisors from the halls of ivy. And it was not long before everyone real­ized that horsepower was driving the quest for superiority in the skies over Europe in 1916, and horsepower was beginning to be seen as the main requirement of any advance in aircraft evolution.

The automobile industry had been for some years the main authority in reciprocating engines in the United States, and automobile manufac­turers had naturally become the principal build­ers of aircraft engines as well. Since the United States was not a belligerent in the European war in 1916, American manufacturers had not been presented with any particular stimulus to drive innovation or improvements as their counterparts in Europe had been. America continued to fall behind.

Thus it was that all the major engine manu­facturers were invited to meet under the auspices of the NACA with military procurement offi­cials from the government in June 1916. The main question presented was, what was holding back competitive engine production in the United States?

Howard E. Coffin emerged as the chief industry spokesman during the NACA meetings in 1916. Coffin had built a steam-powered auto­mobile and designed his first internal combus­tion engine while studying engineering at the University of Michigan in 1899. By 1905, he was the chief engineer for the Olds Motor Works and later a vice president of the Hudson Motor Car Company. He was chiefly responsible for the standardization of parts in the automotive indus­try and became president of the Society of Auto­mobile Engineers. He had been appointed to the Naval Consulting Board in 1915, so he had seen the interaction between industry and the govern­ment from both sides.

Coffin showed that the relationship between industry and government was tied up in bureaucracy and red tape to the point that hardly anything beneficial or constructive could be accomplished. He said that the solution was to rely on engineering instead of bureaucracy, as had been demonstrated by the record of coop­eration between the automobile industry and the Society of Automobile Engineers. His words did not fall on deaf ears. The NACA had early on developed a system of appointing commit­tees to address specific problems that fell within its authority. The NACA established a Com­mittee on Motive Power that began to provide a venue where industry people and government representatives could meet, discuss, and work out specifications for what the government needed and wanted in aircraft engines. The automotive industry would then provide those engines.

Thus, the men at the NACA had been instru­mental in solving, or at least understanding and diminishing, the conflict that was preventing the cooperation necessary for the advancement of aeronautical science and industrial production in the United States. There was optimism all around and, in fact, this spirit of cooperation did ignite the creation of the Liberty engine, which would begin production within the year.

But interdisciplinary cooperation was only part of the problem. The question remained, “What was to be done about the stifling patent litigation?”

■ The Cross-Licensing Agreement

Patent law is akin to medieval French to the modern mind. It operates in mysterious ways to the uninitiated. Since the first airplane patent was issued to the Wright brothers in 1906, which covered the entire airplane, the Patent Office had granted numerous patents in the field of aero­nautics by the time World War I began. In spite of the issuance of the patent to the Wrights in 1906, and the ensuing litigation brought by the Wright brothers in 1909 against Glenn Curtiss for infringing their wing warping idea, the Patent Office on December 5, 1911 granted Curtiss and the other members of the AEA a patent for the idea of the aileron.

The Patent Office, as it were, has tunnel vision; it does not adjudicate rights that flow from patents, nor does it decide issues of infringement, the existence of prior art, or other defenses to lawsuits claiming patent infringe­ment. These issues are decided by the federal courts. The function of the Patent Office is to grant or refuse to grant patents.

One of the results of this confusing progres­sion of patent practice is that one patent may have the effect of “blocking” another patent, so that the holder of neither patent is able to move forward with the implementation of his ideas and incorporate them into practical products for pub­lic use without encountering claims of infringe­ment. It was this “blocking” of patents, along with the pervasive litigation that had sprung up because of it, that had been instrumental in ham­stringing innovative aircraft technology in the United States. This was a primary reason that there were no competitive American airplane designs and no engines powerful enough to par­ticipate in the war that was now raging in Europe.

By the spring of 1917, it looked increas­ingly likely that the United States was going to be drawn into the European war, yet its aircraft and engine production was paralyzed by patent litigation. Many in the United States feared for its defense in the new era of aviation warfare.

Wilbur Wright had died in 1912, and Orville Wright had assumed the presidency of the Wright Company and all its activities, including the engi­neering and manufacturing responsibilities of the company. He also continued to pursue the myriad lawsuits that he and his brother had initiated, almost as in memoriam to his deceased brother. But in 1915 Orville decided to move on. He bought up most of the outstanding shares of the Wright Company and then sold them to inves­tors in New York. In 1916, the Wright Company merged with the Glenn L. Martin Company and became known as Wright-Martin (see above).

Thus, the main problem confront­ing the NACA men in 1917 was the Wright – Martin Company, which had paid in excess of $1,000,000 for the 1906 Wright patent. At the end of 1916, Wright-Martin issued a notice that all aircraft manufacturers would be required to pay a royalty of 5 percent on every aircraft they sold, with a minimum annual royalty of $10,000 per manufacturer. This royalty structure was to be imposed on all aircraft manufactur­ers irrespective of the means of control used, wing warping or aileron control. By that time, of course, all aircraft manufacturers used ailerons for lateral control.

Further compounding the issue, Curtiss was now also demanding royalties for his several patents as they may apply to new aircraft. Many believed that Curtiss was forced into this practice as a self defensive move due to his significant attorneys’ fees and costs of litigation, but the result was that aircraft prices in the United States were becoming prohibitively costly. Lawsuits and threats of lawsuits were the most prominent feature of aeronautics in the USA. It was obvious that something had to be done, and it was going to have to be done by government.

Alternatives were discussed, including nationalization of the aircraft industry and the taking of the patents through the power of emi­nent domain. There was also another possibility: years earlier in a similar case in the automo­tive industry a cooperative arrangement had been agreed to between auto makers to resolve conflicting patent claims. This agreement had been made possible when Henry Ford broke the “Selden” patent. In that case a man named Selden claimed a patent on the entire automobile, not unlike the Wright brothers with the airplane, but the celebrated patent attorney, W. Benton Crisp, had prevailed in the infringement case brought by Selden against Henry Ford.

W. Benton Crisp had later represented Howard E. Coffin (who was now head of the NACA) in the Hudson crankshaft case. Through the influence of Henry Ford, Crisp now repre­sented Glenn Curtiss against the Wright patent. Reluctantly, Wright-Martin was beginning to see the logic in compromise.

Under the proposal, all aircraft and parts manufacturers would join an association to be known as the Aircraft Manufacturers Associ­ation. For each aircraft produced, the manu­facturer would pay a modest sum into the Association, which amount would be shared by

Wright-Martin, the Curtiss organization, and the Association. The effect of the cross-licensing agreement was that the aviation manufacturing industry would produce aircraft without regard to patents, subject to the modest stipends men­tioned, and all ideas, practices, techniques, and procedures would be shared between the mem­bers. Aircraft engines were excepted from the Agreement.

Although the Agreement soon came under criticism from some aircraft manufacturers on grounds of favoritism (of Wright-Martin and Curtiss) and on antitrust principles, the cross­licensing agreement is considered one of the outstanding contributions of the NACA during World War I. Even though the Agreement had a proposed limited lifespan, no patent litigation relating to the original aircraft patents was ever revived.

The National Advisory Committee for Aero­nautics (NACA) in 1958 became the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

On December 9, 1929, Brown appeared before the Appropriations Committee of Congress and related his concerns and suggestions about the airmail system in place, and the lack of an effi­cient passenger service. Members of the com­mittee were receptive to Brown’s ideas and

requested that he draft a bill and send it to them as soon as possible.

On February 4, 1930, Brown sent to Congress a proposed bill that contained the majority of his ideas about how to fix the system. The bill expressly allowed the Postmaster Gen­eral to award contracts based on negotiated rates rather than competitive bidding. Although the bill was reported favorably out of committee, a minority report was filed containing objections by two members of the committee to the pro­viso allowing awarding contracts on other than a competitive bid. One of those was Representa­tive Kelly, the sponsor of the Airmail Act of 1925 (Kelly Act).

The form of bill that was passed by Congress was substantially the same as the draft submitted by Brown, with the exception of the removal of the proviso allowing award of contracts based on negotiation, and the removal of provisions allowing consideration of “equities” or “pioneering rights” to carriers based on prior contributions. The bill became law when signed by President Hoover on April 29, 1930.

Accordingly, the main provisions of the act required that the carriers would no longer be paid on the basis of weight, but by the volume of the available space in the aircraft for the carriage of mail. This encouraged the carriers to invest in larger aircraft to earn more money. It further provided that bonuses would be paid if the aircraft were multiengined and had certain navi­gational devices installed.

Although the Act did not permit the award of contracts based on negotiation, as Brown had requested, it did amend the prior requirement of straight competitive bidding to a modified ver­sion of competitive bidding. The Postmaster was authorized to circumvent the actual low bidder in favor of the “lowest responsible bidder.” Prec­edent for awarding contracts on this basis can be found in the Foreign Airmail Act of 1928.10 A “responsible bidder” was defined in the Act as one that had flown daily scheduled service over a 250-mile route for a period of at least six months. In actual practice, Brown redefined the definition of “responsible bidder” to require that the applicant not only show that it had flown a daily scheduled route for six months, but that
it had been flown in both daylight hours and at night. This requirement favored the larger, more experienced airmail carriers.

The law also granted the Postmaster General the discretion to “extend or consolidate” routes then in effect and to grant carriers who had flown existing routes for at least 2 years extensions on their contracts for an additional 10 years. The law gave near dictatorial powers to the Postmas­ter General.

The United States declared war on Japan the next day. Although taken by surprise by the Japa­nese attack at Pearl Harbor, Germany declared war against the United States on December 11, justifying this action on American provo­cations against German ships and submarines since September 1941. In fact, three American destroyers, the Greer, the Kearney and the Reu­ben James had fired on German submarines. These developments brought the United States fully into the European conflict. The world now was truly in total war.

In 1941, the most reliable way for the deliv­ery of goods to Europe was by cargo ship, but the German U-boat threat to the mercantile transport fleet was very real. Several innovations were instituted, including the convoy system across the North Atlantic. At the same time, the United States military, in conjunction with the domes­tic civilian air transport fleet, created a series of Atlantic Ocean air routes for the purpose of delivering war materiel from the United States to the war zones in Europe and Africa. These routes were generally operational beginning in 1942.

The primary air routes were the North Atlantic Air Route, the Mid-Atlantic Air Route, and the South Atlantic Air Route. Because no aircraft existed that had sufficient range to bridge the entire Atlantic Ocean from the United States, aircraft were required to “hop” from one landing field to the next over large expanses of ocean. The DC-3, whose military designation was the C-47, was the mainstay of transport aircraft at the time. Pilots were advised to place their trust in God and Pratt & Whitney.1

The South Atlantic Route began at one of four bases in Brazil, to which aircraft arrived from Florida, and then proceeded to Ascension Island, which is located in the South Atlantic some 1,400 miles from Natal or Recife, Brazil. From there aircraft landed on the African conti­nent, usually in French Morocco or Liberia.

The Mid-Atlantic Route ran from Morrison Field in Florida to Bermuda and thence to the Azores, from where landings were made in Mar­rakech or Casablanca, French Morocco or RAF St. Mawgan in Cornwall, England.

The North Atlantic Route commenced in either New Hampshire (Grenier Army Air Base) or in Maine (Presque Isle Army Airfield) and

“A jumble of rocks proved to be Semi­tak Island. It swept past our right wing and became lost almost instantly in the mist. Now for the fiord. The correct fiord. We held on straight for the coast line. We would soon be committed. The distance between the island and the mouths of the three fiords was only two miles. How could we be sure we had entered the fiord in the middle unless it was possible to see the other two? Eenie-meenie-miney-mo. .

Although the DC-3 was the mainstay of American transport aircraft in 1941, the Doug­las DC-4 and the Lockheed Constellation, both four-engine designs, were in development. While these two aircraft appeared at about the same time, they were very different from each other and the reasons for their appearance were based on very different circumstances.

The DC-4 was created under specifications requested in the late 1930s by United Airlines to provide that carrier with a longer range passenger airliner. It first flew on February 14, 1942 and because the United States had recently entered World War II, the production line was requisi­tioned by the military. It was designated the C-54 for military cargo transport. The DC-4 carried twice the number of passengers as the DC-3, had a much longer range, and was the first transport aircraft to have tricycle landing gear. It had a relatively simple fuselage design and could be produced in large numbers easily.

The Lockheed Constellation, on the other hand, was the brain child of Howard Hughes, who in 1939 had taken over control of TWA. His support for the creation of the Boeing 307 had so far caused five of the pressurized Stratolin – ers to be delivered to service, but he had bigger plans—plans that would create one of the most impressive shapes in the history of the commer­cial airlines.

The shark-like Constellation was to be pres­surized, unlike the DC-4 that would be limited to lower altitudes. Hughes favored pressurized aircraft partly due to his prior experience with the H-l Racer that he had designed and flown in 1935. Pressurized aircraft had the advantage of flying above most of the weather, without the requirement of oxygen masks, and could seek the further advantage of favorable winds. Hughes provided Lockheed with the essential specifica­tions and told them that he would buy it if Lock­heed would build it.

There was at Lockheed a young aeronau­tical engineer by the name of Kelly Johnson,

who headed up a small team of engineers in the Advanced Development Programs division. His team developed the P-38 Lightning in 1939, the world’s first 400 mile-per-hour aircraft, and much of his design was beyond government specifications and without a written contract. That was his style. He set up his team in a sepa­rate, walled-off section of the Lockheed building that was off-limits to all but a few. His mode of operation led to his group garnering the label “Skunk Works,” from which astounding aircraft developments would later appear, including the super-secret U-2 (1955), A-12 (1962) and SR-71 (1964) spy planes, and stealth aircraft like the F-117 (1977). His was a reputation for speed, innovation, informality, and on-time, under­budget aircraft productions.

In 1939 Kelly Johnson was put in charge of the design, development, and production of the Constellation. Lockheed agreed to How­ard Hughes’ terms, including that TWA would get the first 40 planes off the line and that the project be held in the strictest secrecy (Hughes was developing his reputation for paranoia even then). The deal was made with Hughes Tool Company, not TWA, both to ensure secrecy and because of the fact that Hughes Tool had the money. The project was begun, drawings were prepared, reviewed, revised, and by 1941 about half of the original prototype was done.

World events in 1939 and 1940 caused the War Department to conduct a survey of United States airplane manufacturing plants with a view to ascertaining production levels in the event of the United States being brought into the hos­tilities. The secret Constellation design was thus disclosed. The war atmosphere had also caused the United States to create the War Production Board, whose job was to allocate the industrial and manufacturing resources of the country in a way to best ensure its defense and guarantee the production of essential goods. This higher cause was understood by all concerned, includ­ing Howard Hughes, and by agreement it was determined that Pan American would participate in the Constellation project along with TWA. Pan Am was the only international air carrier for the United States, and it was not a competitor of TWA at that time. Further, Pan Am had the international experience, the routes, the landing rights, and the foreign contacts that could make the best and highest use of the Connie’s range and speed. Thus amended, the project went ahead under the auspices of the War Production Board.

General “Hap” Arnold was Chief of the Army Air Corps in 1941. He was one of the first military pilots in the Army and he had even received flight instruction in 1911 at the Wright brothers’ aviation school in Ohio. He was to play a central role in wartime aviation. His duties before and during World War II included the monitoring and evaluation of aircraft produc­tion at plants around the country. The design shape and relative complexity of the Constel­lation (military designation C-121) caused him to halt production work on the airplane several times in favor of the simpler and less expensive DC-4. Because of this, the Constellation would not actually fly until December 1943, almost two years after the first flight of the DC-4. After the first Connie was rolled out of the Burbank, California plant, and as a part of its test flight regimen, Howard Hughes and Jack Frye would fly it to Washington, D. C. in a new record time of under seven hours, nonstop.

The Connie would not contribute in any sig­nificant way to the war effort. The DC-4, on the other hand, would take center stage as the trans­port workhorse for the military for the duration of the war. With the exception of the five Boeing 307 Stratoliners in service, the DC-4 was the first serious transoceanic aircraft to become available. The first of these aircraft did not go to United Airlines, which had provided its specifications and had submitted the first orders for it, but ironi­cally to its competitor, TWA, which was flying the southern transatlantic route to Africa for the military. During the war, these planes would log

over a million miles a month over the Atlantic, some 20 ocean sorties every day.

The FAA issues Special Airworthiness Certifi­cates in the Experimental Category (SAC-EC) to civil operators of UAS and optionally piloted aircraft (OPA) for research and development, market survey, and crew training operations. This certificate does not extend to the carry­ing of persons or property for compensation or hire. The FAA has issued these certificates since 2005 to a limited number of applicants who work with the FAA to collect technical and operational data to improve the UAS certifica­tion process.

Public UAS

The FAA issues Certificates of Waiver or Autho­rization (COA) to public entities, including mili­tary, law enforcement, and other government agencies. These certificates are issued on a case – by-case basis for a limited period of time, usu­ally one year, and with restrictions for their use, such as the requirement for being transponder equipped.

The way that the CAB chose, over the years, to discharge its regulatory functions over the air­lines heavily contributed to the ultimate decision to deregulate the airlines. It goes without saying that it was completely impossible to have the CAB grant new entry for any trunk carrier at any time during the 40-year period that it operated. Between 1950 and 1974, for instance, the CAB rejected all 79 applicants who applied for author­ity to create new certificated airlines. Moreover, any change to the status quo for existing carri­ers required the filing of an appropriate petition, the scheduling of hearings, and the presentation of evidence to support the petition, after which the CAB would proceed to mull over the issues presented in its own good time. The laborious routine by which “business” was done before the CAB effectively prevented practically any change in the status quo, or any expansion or improve­ment to the air transportation system.

The following examples are representative of CAB practices:

Example 1: When Continental Airlines sought permission to add a new route to its system from San Diego to Denver, the CAB studied the matter for eight years before finally granting the peti­tion, but only after being ordered to do so by the United States Court of Appeals.

Example 2: When World Airways applied to fly a scheduled low-cost passenger service between New York and Los Angeles in 1967, the CAB con­sidered the petition for six and a half years and then dismissed the case because the record was “stale.”

Example 3: When Federal Express entered the freight market it had to do so as an “air taxi,” whereby the size of its aircraft were limited to 12,500 pounds. When FedEx business increased, Fred Smith found that he had to fly two aircraft in trail from Memphis to the same destination in order to carry all of his cargo. He applied to the CAB for permission to fly a larger aircraft on these occasions on the reasonable principle that it was almost twice as expensive to fly two small aircraft as it was to fly one larger one. The CAB denied that request.

Example 4: The CAB occupied itself largely with trivialities, from fixing the exact price of drinks on airplanes to setting special fares for skiers.

Politics

Deregulation in general had become a com­mon subject of conversation in the halls of Con­gress, applied to several areas of quasi-public activity. Railroads, trucks, public utilities, telecommunications, gas pipelines, banking, and natural gas were among the infrastructures dis­cussed. As such, deregulation became a political topic, and it was bipartisan.

The drive toward deregulation was led by President Gerald Ford almost immediately upon his taking office on the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974. As an economic conservative, he felt that the consumer was best able to “signal his wants and needs through the marketplace” and that government “should not intrude in the free market” except to preserve “well-defined social objectives.”

He found an unlikely ally in Senator Ted Kennedy, who convinced a young Harvard law professor named Stephen Breyer, who was to become an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court 20 years later on, to join his staff for a sabbatical in August 1974. In September Breyer attended a meeting of the major airlines with the Secretary of Transportation at which the Secre­tary openly urged the airlines to all “raise their prices” in order to help Pan Am. Breyer was shocked at this blatant price fixing and convinced Kennedy to hold hearings on the subject of air­line deregulation. Committee hearings began in November 1974, and continued into 1975.

The hearings disclosed a history of impro­priety at the CAB that extended nearly top to bottom. Breyer’s report issued at the conclusion of the hearings amounted to an indictment of the CAB commissioners, finding that there was “a strong likelihood of highly improper and possibly criminal behavior on the part of the Board mem­bers themselves.”3 Among the specific findings of the report were that the CAB had covered up the existence of an airline slush fund for illegal contributions to the Board and that the Board had observed an “unofficial moratorium” on granting any new route awards since 1969.

«Many wonderful inventions have surprised us during the course of the last century and the beginning of this one. But most were completely unex­pected and were not part of the old baggage of dreams that humanity car­ries with it. Who had ever dreamed of steamships, railroads, or electric light? We welcomed all these improve­ments with astonished pleasure; but they did not correspond to an expec­tation of our spirit or a hope as old as we are: to overcome gravity, to tear ourselves away from the earth, to become lighter, to fly away, to take possession of the immense aerial kingdom; to enter the universe of the Gods, to become Gods ourselves, w

Jerome Tharaud, ‘Dans le ciel des dieux,’ in Les Grandes Conferences de I’aviation: Recits et souvenirs, 1934

t is generally acknowledged that the success of the Wright brothers’ Kitty Hawk flight on December 17, 1903, was due to their success, for the first time, in combining into a single machine
the three essential elements needed for heavier than air powered flight:

1. A source of lift (the wings properly shaped),

2. Propulsion (an engine of appropriate power versus weight, and efficient propellers), and

3. A means of control (a “warping” or bending of the wings for banking, vertical rudders for turning, and an elevator for pitch).

To the date of their first successful flight, no one else had been able to assemble all three of these essential elements into one machine under conditions conducive to flight. It is generally acknowledged that the Wrights’ machine was not so much an “invention” as it was a “devel­opment,” one that relied upon the efforts, trials, failures, and successes of many who went before. In spite of that fact, the U. S. Patent Office issued a patent to the Wrights in 1906.

The flight experience of mankind prior to the Wright brothers’ success was limited to bal­loons, dirigibles, and gliders. Balloons and dirigi­bles are classified as “lighter than air” craft. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) classifies gliders as a category of aircraft separate from airplanes, but the essential and only significant difference is propulsion, or the lack thereof. The
wing of the glider produces lift, just as with the airplane, and the control surfaces of the glider (the ailerons, elevator, and rudder) are the same as the airplane. Early work and experimentation with gliders proved much more valuable to the long-term effort of sustained, controllable flight than did lighter than air experimentation. Since no history of flight would be complete without treatment of the history of all successful flight forms, we begin with the first flights of man.

t was not long after the Wright brothers were first successful in marketing their airplane to the French and to the U. S. Army, in 1908 and 1909, that the idea occurred to someone in the Post Office Department that the airplane could be useful in delivering the mail—and faster than the railroads. Federal funding for airmail deliv­ery was not forthcoming in spite of a bill intro­duced in Congress in 1910 by Congressman Morris Sheppard for that purpose. Beginning in 1911 without specific government funding, lim­ited experimentation with airplanes hauling mail (15 pounds a load) was initiated. Congress was not convinced that the entire process of flying mail to a point over a United States Post Office, and dropping it from various heights to the ground, was not too hare-brained to be dignified by appropriations. Only in 1916 did Congress finally approve limited funding ($50,000 from the “Steamship Fund”) for the establishment of a trial airmail route, in large part because of the rapid improvement in the reliability of aircraft. In 1918, specific funding was finally approved (the Sheppard bill had been hung up in Congres­sional debate for eight years) with a $100,000 appropriation for the purchase, operation, and maintenance of airplanes for use by the Post Office Department.

A Rough Beginning

Operations began by using airplanes and pilots furnished by the Army Signal Corps. It soon was clear that the airmail experiment was, in reality, a training device and exercise for the Army, and that delivery of the mail often amounted to an afterthought. It also became clear that the lack of training and experience of Army pilots, particu­larly in cross-country flying and navigation, was going to be a problem. Otto Praeger was Second Assistant Postmaster General of the United States from 1915 to 1921. He believed that the carriage of mail by air would be a logical next step in mail service to the country, and he also believed that the carrying of mail would have the secondary benefit of proving the use of the airplane for com­mercial purposes. After World War I, it seemed that business interests in the United States could not figure out how to put the airplane to any ben­eficial or productive purpose. This was the age of barnstormers, daredevils, adventurers, and a sideshow mentality that overshadowed most other thinking on the subject of airplanes. Banner tow­ing, the selling of rides, and the occasional charter hop from one municipality to another was about the extent of commercial benefit associated with aviation. Besides, flying was fraught with danger.

The aircraft available after World War I were numerous, but they were mostly JN-4s, the latest version of which was the H model. This airplane had an average speed of 50 miles per hour, 60 tops, and could carry some 150 pounds of mail. The route fixed as the first experimen­tal airmail route was between New York and Washington, D. C., a distance of 218 miles, with an intermediate stop at Philadelphia, and the date set for its inauguration was May 15, 1918. Airplanes would depart both New York and Washington at the same time. In Washington, President Woodrow Wilson was in attendance, attesting to the magnitude and portent of the event, as was Otto Praeger and other Post Office dignitaries. (See Figure 10-1.)

The pilot selected for the Washington depar­ture, Lt. George Boyle, was chosen more for his family contacts than for either his experience or his skill. (See Figure 10-2.) As the presi­dent watched, Lt. Boyle called “contact” and the propeller was pulled through for start, but nothing happened. After several attempts, amid an embarrassing silence from the august assem­bly, someone thought to check the airplane’s gas tank. It was empty. Upon being filled, the engine coughed to life and presently brand-new airmail pilot Boyle was finally airborne, and the airmail service had been launched, much to the relief of the Post Office and Army officials gath­ered there. (See Figure 10-3.) But there was yet another problem.

A pilot wishing to fly from Washington to Philadelphia is required to follow a generally northerly course, owing to the fact that Phila­delphia is north of Washington. Lt. Boyle, how­ever, turned to the south shortly after take off and landed in a pasture farther away from Phil­adelphia than where he started. The day was saved by the southbound mail, which arrived in Washington 3 hours and 20 minutes after it left New York. The second leg of the northbound route, from Philadelphia to New York, was sal­vaged when Boyle’s difficulties became known,

whereupon the second-leg pilot loaded his air­plane with Philadelphia mail and took off for New York.

Ш Scheduled Airmail Service

The experimental airmail service continued for about three months, until August 10, 1918, with an impressive record of 88% completion of flights attempted. The experiment using Army personnel had come to an end, and since it was the intention of the Post Office to use civilian pilots to operate the new, permanent airmail sys­tem, six new pilots were hired and new planes were put in service. (See Figure 10-4.) On August 12, 1918, the world’s first regularly scheduled airmail service was begun between New York
and Washington. On May 15, 1919, service was commenced between Cleveland and Chicago, the first segment of what was to ultimately become the transcontinental airmail route of the United States Post Office. Service on the segment from New York to Cleveland was deferred due to the adverse terrain, the Allegheny Mountains, which lay between those two cities.1 Attempts to inau­gurate that service in December 1918 had failed due to the fact that every airplane sent aloft had been forced down by weather. But by July 1, 1919, that service had been begun as well. The

New York-Chicago route segment would come to be known as the “graveyard run,” and it would claim the lives of 18 airmail pilots.

The mail was mostly flown in Curtiss Jen – nys from the beginning of experimental service, but it was clear that more powerful and larger airplanes were needed. The Army had developed an appreciation for Glenn Martin’s airplanes during World War I, and was about to order the improved MB-2 bomber when the Post Office took over airmail delivery from the Army. In 1919, the Post Office applied some of the Con­gressional airmail appropriation to order six Mar­tin MPs (mail planes), specially designed with nose cargo compartments capable of holding up to 1,500 pounds of mail, which were put into ser­vice in 1919 and 1920. Pilots crashed four of the new Post Office MPs on the New York to Chi­cago route, and the Post Office finally transferred the other two to the Army Signal Corps.

The Jennys gave way to the De Havilland DH-4 with Liberty engines, also leftovers from the war, that had earned the name “flying coffins” because of their propensity to catch fire on crash­ing, a not uncommon occurrence. (See Figures 10-5 and 10-6.) These planes generally had as

instrumentation an airspeed indicator, an altimeter of sorts, and an oil compass. The planes had to be flown visually, by reference to horizon, sky, and land outside of the cockpit. Navigation was also by outside reference, referred to as “pilotage,” “contact flying,” or “ded reckoning.”2 Landmarks on the ground were the prime navigational refer­ence for these early cross-country pilots, and when clouds or fog obscured these, finding one’s way became problematical, indeed. The airmail service did not operate at night; the mailbags were deliv­ered to the trains for continuation of the journey until the next day, when once again the mail flew.

These two incapacities severely hampered the fledgling airmail service from fulfilling its promise.

• First, the lack of instrumentation to fly “blind,” or by instruments alone, was a problem that had to be addressed by the aircraft manufactur­ers, their vendors, and by the pilots themselves.

• Second, the lack of any land-based naviga­tional infrastructure by which airplanes might find their way at night or in adverse weather conditions was a problem too big for indi­viduals or the fledgling aircraft community.

A navigational infrastructure was an under­taking for government.

The first airmail pilots (see Figures 10-4 and 10-7), like Max Miller and Wesley Smith, began pushing the limits of “blind” flying, usually in order to extricate themselves from situations inadvertently encountered, like flying into clouds or fog. Smith is said to have taken a half empty bottle of whiskey aloft, which he placed on top of his instrument panel, to practice flying wings level with the whiskey level. Soon, he found that a curved tube filled with liquid and containing a ball, like a carpenter’s level, was available, and this he fastened to his instrument panel. And so it went. It was found that turns made at a con­stant, steady rate could be timed and the airplane could be rather accurately rolled out on prede­termined headings. Sperry introduced a two-axis gyroscopic instrument that allowed a pilot to determine whether his airplane had inadvertently entered a turn. This was followed up with a three- axis instrument that showed changes in pitch attitude.

Immediately after passage of the legislation, Brown summoned to Washington representatives from the major lines around the country, who assembled in the Postmaster General’s office on May 19, 1930. It was his belief, he said, that the mail should be carried by substantial, established air carriers, the vast majority of which fell within the ownership of the three largest holding com­panies, United Aircraft & Transport Corporation, North American Aviation, and Aviation Corpora­tion. He explained his master plan to them in con­junction with the expressed and unexpressed terms of the new law. He decreed that there could be no monopoly of transcontinental service, but that competition along that route would be required, to the dismay of United. Brown explained, in effect, that the country would be carved up among a few lines, with United flying the transcontinental route to San Francisco, another line flying the New York-Los Angeles route by way of Pittsburgh and St. Louis, and still another line proceeding from New York via Washington, Atlanta, and Dal­las, thence on to Los Angeles. He also outlined a north-south route along the east coast. He told the representatives in attendance that they should decide among themselves who would take which routes.

Brown brought in William P. MacCracken, aviation’s first regulator as head of the Bureau of Aeronautics in the Commerce Department in 1926, to monitor the ensuing meetings among the carrier representatives in attendance. Not surprisingly, the strong-willed leaders of the industrial and financial interests that controlled these carriers were unable to agree among them­selves, as directed by the Postmaster General, as to how the country should be split up. Represen­tatives of the carriers remained in Washington, attending meetings with each other, until June 4, 1930. On that date, the carriers reported to the Postmaster General that they were unable to agree on allocating the five major routes in the country, including the transcontinental routes, and submitted the issues back to Brown. The carriers advised the Postmaster General that they would agree to be bound by his decision as to the route awards.

During June and July 1930, negotiations and correspondence continued between the parties with a view toward an agreement that would be fair to all concerned and that would take care of smaller lines having some “equity” due to their “pioneering” efforts. Brown suggested that the central transcontinental route should go to the beleaguered TAT, the plane and train airline, which had been flying without airmail subsidy. TAT had no night flying experience, however, and was ineligible for consideration for the trans­continental route because Brown had added this experience requirement under his “discretion­ary” authority. Western Air Express, however, did have the requisite night flying experience. Brown, in effect, ordered the merger of TAT with Western Air Express. This merged airline was to be TWA, or Transcontinental and West­ern Air. As consolation for sacrificing its inde­pendence, Western Air Express was allowed to survive as an independent entity and retain its passenger service between San Diego and Los Angeles, and between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City.

United kept its New York-San Francisco route through Chicago, and was allowed to expand northwest. Eastern was assigned New York-Miami, along with Atlanta, New Orleans, and Houston. TWA got New York-Los Angeles through St. Louis and Kansas City. American would fly New York-Los Angeles via Nash­ville, Dallas, and points in the Southwest. Thus were the “Big Four” (United, Eastern, TWA, and American) born.

Although the smaller lines were not invited to the meetings in May, the Post Office-carrier conferences were no secret. The Post Office had even put out a press release about the whole affair. Representatives of several small operators showed up, including Southwest Air Fast Express (SAFE), owned by oilman Erie Halliburton, Pittsburgh Aviation Industries, U. S. Air Transport, Curtiss Flying Service, Delta Air Service, and Thompson Aeronautical Cor­poration. During the summer of 1930, prior to the request for bids being sent out by the Post Office, discussions and negotiations continued. The financial interests of some of the smaller lines were taken into consideration, like SAFE and Delta, and mergers and buyouts were agreed to between them and the larger carriers who would be serving the routes on which the smaller lines had “pioneered.” The parties even agreed that Walter Folger Brown would be the arbiter of the value of the stock transactions made to complete the arrangements. Some of the smaller operators received “extensions” of the major routes as additional consideration for the overall agreement.

The airlines paid lip service to the require­ments of the Watres Act by going through the motions of competitive bidding with all of the carriers duly submitting bids. The only thing was, none of the Big Four submitted compet­ing bids on the routes that had been assigned by Brown to others. Lower bids on the assigned routes submitted by small carriers were rejected as “not responsible.” In this way, modern com­mercial aviation was born.

Hindsight will not compel a uniform judg­ment of Brown’s actions. It cannot be doubted that the struggling world of commercial avia­tion was given a mighty boost by the arrange­ments put in place, and that it evolved at a much accelerated pace over what would otherwise have been the case. At the end of Brown’s tenure in 1933, passenger traffic was rising, and the air­lines were competing on their transcontinental routes. The cost to the government was less than it had been 4 years before, down from an aver­age of $1.10 per mile in 1929 to half that in 1933, $.54 per mile. The airlines were in good shape financially. It is clear, therefore, that the public interest was served. As we shall see in the next chapter, the 1932 election of Franklin D. Roosevelt as President of the United States (he assumed office in 1933) would have a profound effect on the new commercial aviation com­munity. The allocation of airmail routes and the award of airmail contracts would be the subject of a political Congressional investigation, and Walter Folger Brown, himself, would be the sub­ject of intense scrutiny and criticism.

No evidence would be adduced that would even suggest any financial or material gain by Brown. His actions appear to have been the result of a sincere desire to promote aviation, and he did so with success. It is, however, beyond dis­pute that the procedures employed by Brown were outside of the requirements of the Watres Act. The Congress did not remove the require­ment of competitive bidding in 1930, yet that requirement was not observed. The bill that was passed by Congress had removed consideration being given to “pioneering” efforts of some of the operators, yet such consideration was given. But, with the aid of hindsight, it can be seriously argued that his vision for the future of aviation was far superior to any of his peers’.

Although the results of Brown’s actions would be undone at the beginning of the next administration, the reality is that the Big Four put in place by the Brown policy were still the Big Four for the ensuing 48 years, until deregulation in 1978, in fact. It was then, in 1978, that the country would finally have the chance to glimpse what might have happened during the 1930s had it not been for Walter Brown.

Endnotes

1. Sobel, Coolidge, An American Enigma, Regnery Publishing, Inc. 1998.

2. For a more detailed discussion of NACA, see Chapter 15.

3. See Appendix 4 for details of Lindbergh’s flight, including hourly log entries.

4. Lindbergh served as technical advisor to Pan American for 45 years.

5. See Appendix 5.

6. Moolman, Valerie, Women Aloft, Time Life Books, 1981.

7. By contrast, the around the world flight in 1938 by How­ard Hughes was 14,456 miles in length, incorporating the itinerary New York-Paris-Moscow-Omsk-Yakutsk-Fairbanks – Minneapolis-New York. Except for New York, Paris, and Minneapolis, all stops were above 55 degrees north latitude. Hughes’ flight set a new around the world speed record of 3 days, 19 hours, and 8 minutes, beating both of Wiley Post’s world records of 8 days and 16 hours in

1931 and 7 days 19 hours in 1933 along a route similar to that flown by Howard Hughes in 1938.

8. In 2012, the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) began its 11th expedition to Nikuma- roro (formerly Gardner Island) in search of evidence of Earhart’s aircraft. An underwater search of the waters off the western end of the island was conducted using unmanned submersibles. This coral atoll is about 400 miles southeast of Howland Island, which was Earhart’s intended destination. Although TIGHAR departed the area with no known positive results from their underwater search, in August 2012 TIGHAR announced that a review of high-definition video footage taken during the expedi­tion revealed aircraft parts similar to Earhart’s Lockheed Electra. Further analysis will be required to correlate this find definitively to Earhart.

9. An Account of Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Company 1925-1950, Frederick B. Rentschler, 1950, Pratt & Whitney Archives, East Hartford, CT.

10. See discussion of Pan American in Chapter 15.

As the sole American airline with prewar opera­tions overseas, Pan American became an impor­tant asset of the United States during World War II. Pan American operated flying boats, in part, because of the lack of airfields. But Pan Am also had experience in building airfields in remote areas. Roosevelt had secured rights to bases on many of the islands of the Caribbean from the British under the “Destroyers for Bases Agree­ment.” He now called upon Pan American to build airfields on these islands as a part of a larger plan to supply the war effort against Ger­many. Airports would be built down through the Caribbean to South America and along its east coast, for ferrying equipment and supplies across the Atlantic narrows to Africa. The British were engaging the Germans in North Africa, and North Africa would be the location of America’s first military engagements in World War II. Although the United States paid for all of the airport con­struction (over $90 million), Pan American held title to these facilities initially for appearance purposes since the United States was diplomati­cally neutral prior to its entry into the war. After the war, negotiations caused these improvements to revert to the United States, but with limitations on their use by airlines other than Pan Am.

The Airlines at War

At the beginning of the war, there were only some 365 commercial transport aircraft in the United States. The airplane manufacturing community would shortly begin to produce 50,000 aircraft a year, the largest manufacturing activity in the United States during the war, and at war’s end over 300,000 airplanes would have been produced. America’s main contribution was in production, not development, for the existing fighter and trans­port aircraft designs were considered sufficient, at least in the short run, to win the war if only there were enough of them. The P-51 Mustang was the only new development in airplane technology sup­plied by the United States after the onset of war.

The main production effort was, of course, directed toward fighter and bomber aircraft, although over 10,000 DC-3s, designated for the military as C-47s, were built, along with over

1,0 DC-4s (as C-54s). America needed every bit of transport potential it could muster during the years 1941-1945, including railroads as well as air carriers, and while the railroads enjoyed a resurgence of their former glory during these years, the air carriers came into their own for the first time. Aircrews flew everywhere, either as military or civilian to military or civilian airports, on domestic and overseas routes. Flying trans­oceanic routes became routine.

TWA, the only airline with land-based four – engine aircraft at the beginning of the war, set up a training center at government direction in New Mexico for instructing American and British pilots how to fly the four engine bombers, the B-24 and the B-17. (TWA had purchased the new Boeing Stratoliner, the 307, in 1940.) Pan American also contributed to four engine train­ing, sharing its pilots’ experience in long-range ocean and celestial navigation. (See Figure 17-1.)

Domestically, the airlines discovered after the onset of hostilities that they had only 165 air­planes to service their routes. The armed forces had commandeered the rest for military purposes. Travel space on the relatively few air carrier air­craft was allocated according to a government imposed “priority system”:

• Priority One was for persons traveling under the authority of the president.

• Priority Two got military pilots a seat.

• Priority Three was other military personnel or civilians on essential wartime business.

• Priority Four was military cargo.

The remaining seats, of which there were precious few, went to everyone else. The lexi­con of future airline travel was being established too. “Standbys” were those who hoped a priority above them would become a “no-show” so that a seat would become available. To be “bumped” was to have a higher priority passenger show up to take your seat.

American air carriers began to make money for the first time since 1934, and although the high load factor of domestic commercial opera­tions contributed to profitability, the main effort of the airlines during the war was as contract car­riers for the military.

The government allocated the airlines’ responsibility during the war in logical fashion. Northeast Airlines was given the North Atlantic route as far as Greenland and then Reykjavik, Iceland. Northwest was assigned to the Alaska route, Eastern to the Caribbean and Brazil. American flew to South America and, in the process, caused a radio range to be built along its route from the United States. TWA had its five Boeing 307s, the only four-engine land-based transoceanic aircraft available at the time, com­mandeered by the military and was given the transatlantic route to Egypt, the most significant long distance route of any airline except Pan

American. TWA set up its transcontinental divi­sion immediately at the beginning of the war, no doubt with an eye on the postwar period. At first, TWA flew to Africa via the South American route, and later, after Portugal granted landing rights, via the much shorter North Atlantic route by way of Prestwick, Scotland. TWA flew mili­tary supplies and equipment, like the other air­lines, but it was the preferred carrier for VIPs and, in fact, TWA carried President Roosevelt to the three wartime conferences with Churchill in Casablanca, Tehran, and Yalta.

It is not surprising that Pan American, as the only overseas carrier in existence before the war, was counted on as the major civilian arm of the military during the war. Yet, it is noteworthy that Pan American’s five divisions, the Alaskan, Pacific, North Atlantic, Caribbean, and Africa-Orient, flew half of all contract miles flown by all airlines for the U. S. mili­tary. In the process, Pan American began flying landplanes instead of the flying boats that had been its trademark during its early years, thus marking the end of the romantic and adven­turous era of the Pan American Clipper. The range and speed of the DC-4 and the airplanes to follow, the availability of the airports that Pan American and others had built around the
world, and the relative high maintenance costs and requirements of amphibious planes over landplanes sounded the death knell of the flying boat airliner, and Pan American never ordered another one.

Most of the flying done during World War II was not by the personnel of the commercial airlines but by the military forces created and trained by the government. The exigencies of war, shown once again to be a mighty moti­vating force, had caused a great technological leap forward in aircraft, engines, and systems. The feats of the non-combat pilots of the mili­tary lift branches, some 25,000 of them, during the four-year duration of the war testify to the great advance in air transportation over that short span of time. Feats only imagined a mere four years before were now commonplace. Distances had been covered and heights had been over­come for the first time in the airborne delivery of personnel and goods that would henceforth be considered routine. There was a confidence born not only of victory, but also of studied accomplishment.

Contrasted to the unspeakable devasta­tion visited on the landscapes and structures of Europe that had been created by the world’s most advanced civilization for the better part of two millennia, the homeland of the United States emerged from the war unscathed, and with the robust industrial complex that had supplied the weapons and material of war intact. America had:

• The pilots

• The planes

• The know-how

• The international presence on the ground

• The financial structure and stability to lead the world into the postwar realms of com­mercial aviation.

And the United States was ready to use all

of it.

Endnotes

1. Gann, Ernest K., Fate is the Hunter, Simon and Shuster, New York, NY, 1961.

2. Simon and Shuster, 1961.

Under the provisions of the FAA Reauthoriza­tion Act of 2012, the FAA has been directed to develop regulations to facilitate the widespread use of UAS within the United States and to pre­sent its plan to do so to Congress by the end of 2012. The FAA has announced that it will authorize at least six UAS test sites in the United States, and has created the Unmanned Aircraft Program Office (UAPO) to oversee the devel­opment of procedures, standards, and policies that will govern this activity. These sites will be operational sometime in 2013. The FAA says that it plans to fully integrate flights of UAVs into the NAS by September 30, 2015. But this conclu­sion presumes that issues of privacy and possible encroachments on 4th Amendment rights will have been settled by then. As of this writing, it appears that a battle may be looming over the general deployment of drones over the United States.

Investigation

The FAA conducts investigations of aircraft acci­dents subordinate to and in cooperation with the National Transportation Safety Board pursuant to an arrangement known as the Accident Investiga­tion Selectivity Program. This program is formal­ized in an agreement between the NTSB and the FAA and is designed to delineate responsibility in accident investigations and to avoid conflicts.2 Previously, separate investigations conducted by the NTSB and the FAA sometimes resulted in contrary findings and conclusions, and were the occasion for embarrassment to one or both agencies.

The types of accidents investigated by the FAA are normally limited to general aviation accidents or those that, by comparison to air­line accidents, are relatively limited in scope or impact in the aviation community. It should be noted that the objectives of an FAA investigation are different from those of the NTSB. In par­ticular, the FAA is looking for violations of the FARs, and it scrutinizes whether the accident was a result of deviations from standards adopted by the FAA. FAA investigations seek to determine whether FAA facilities were a factor and whether the FARs were adequate. The FAA also investi­gates aircraft incidents that do not result in acci­dents, such as “near misses” by passing aircraft or other instances when aviation safety may have been jeopardized. The FAA is also mandated by Congress to investigate all reports of violations of the FARs.