The Airmail Act of 1925 (The Kelly Act)

m Recently a man asked whether the business of flying ever could be regu­lated by rules and statutes. I doubt it. Not that flying men are lawless. No one realizes better than they the need for discipline. But they have learned discipline through constant contact with two of the oldest statutes in the universe—the iaw of gravity and the law of self-preservation. Ten feet off the ground these two laws supersede all others and there is little hope of their repeal, ff

Walter Hinson, 24 July 1926, Liberty Magazine

The exact timing of the decision by the Post Office to turn over the airmail delivery service to the private sector is lost in the mists of time. Dur­ing the period from 1918 to 1925, however, the Post Office did spend $17 million to operate the airmail service while realizing a return of about one-third that amount. And during the nine years that the Post Office Department carried airmail (1918-1927), 32 pilots—about one out of every six—were killed in the service.

The railroads also made it clear that they were opposed to any long-term government intrusion on their longstanding mail contract subsidies. In 1925, Postmaster Harry S. New, a former Congressman himself, worked with Con­gressman Clyde Kelly (who represented railroad interests) to formulate a legislative bill designed to put the airmail delivery service up for com­petitive bid.

Congress passed the Kelly Act (so-called after the name of the bill’s sponsor) on Febru­ary 2, 1925. The act was appropriately titled “An Act to Encourage Commercial Aviation and to

Authorize the Postmaster General to Contract for the Mail Service.” The statute called for the Postmaster General to seek competitive bids to operate the airmail feeder routes to the transcon­tinental main airmail trunk line between New York and San Francisco. The operation of the transcontinental trunk was to be initially retained by the Post Office service; it made its last flight on that route on September 9, 1927.

Advertisement for bids was published in the middle of 1925, and bids were received from 10 companies. Although eight routes were to be awarded, financial responsibility concerns caused the Post Office to delay assigning some of them until later.

Seven contract airmail (CAM) routes were awarded at the beginning of 1926:

1. CAM 1: Boston-New York, awarded to a group including Juan Trippe, later to found and operate Pan American Airways. Colo­nial Air Transport operated the airmail service.

2. CAM 2: Chicago-St. Louis, awarded to Robertson Aircraft Corp., a forerunner to American Airlines. Robertson hired Charles Lindbergh as chief pilot. (See Figure 12-4.)

3. CAM 3: Chicago-Dalias, awarded to National Air Transport, a forerunner of United Airlines.

4. CAM 4: Salt Lake City-Los Angeles, awarded to Western Air Express, a forerun­ner of TWA.

5. CAM 5: Elko, Nevada-Pasco, Washington, awarded to Varney Air Lines, a forerunner of United Airlines.

6. CAM 6: Detroit-Cleveland, awarded to Ford Air Transport.

7. CAM 7: Detroіt-Chicago, awarded to Ford Air Transport.

Ford was the first to begin service, on February 15, 1926, with the others following

FIGURE 12-4 Charles Lindbergh on CAM 2, flown between Chicago and St. Louis.

Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.

within four months. The last to begin service was Colonial Airways on CAM 1. Subsequent awards that year were:

8. CAM 8: Los Angeles-Seattle, awarded to Pacific Air Transport, a forerunner of United Airlines.

9, CAM 9: Chicago-Minneapolis, awarded to Charles Dickenson. Northwest Airlines began operating the route in 1926.

10. CAM 10: Atlanta-Jacksonville, awarded to Florida Airways Corp, a forerunner of Eastern Air Lines.

11. CAM 11: Cleveland-Pittsburgh, awarded to Clifford Ball, later absorbed by United Airlines.

12. CAM 12: Pueblo, Colorado—Cheyenne, Wyoming, awarded to Western Air Express.

The aircraft available to serve the new air­mail companies were limited and unreliable. The Post Office had largely relied on the World War I British-designed DFI-4, but its Liberty engines were pretty much used up. Varney had to begin airmail service with the underpowered Swal­low biplane, and Western Air Express bought the Douglas M-2, all six of them. Ford had the

first of the Ford Trimotors (see Figures 12-5 and 12-6), producing 14 in 1926. Juan Trippe of Colonial Air Transport, impressed by Fokker’s monoplane design and its absence of wires and struts, ordered the first three Fokker Trimotors produced, but they would not be available until 1927. In 1928, Western Air added Fokkers for its Los Angeles-San Francisco passenger service.

One of the most advanced airplanes in 1926 was the Boeing 40, which had been designed around the Liberty engine. A joint study done by Boeing and Pratt & Whitney showed that a Wasp mounted on the Boeing 40 airframe would be able to carry a payload of 1,200 pounds as compared to 300-400 pounds using the Liberty engine. This was interesting information to have when the Post Office announced in the fall of 1926 that the Chicago-San Francisco airmail route was going up for bid (the eastern leg of the transcontinental route from New York to Chicago was awarded to National Air Transport).

The western route was challenging when viewed from any angle: the Rockies, the weather, the distance, and the fact that night flying was a requirement. Boeing had been flying the interna­tional airmail route between Seattle and Vancou­ver with seaplanes under contract with Canada and the United States since 1919, but that route
was basically flat and over tidal water. Another problem was that the U. S. Navy had dibs on the first 200 Wasps that P&W could produce.

Rentschler’s contacts once again proved fruitful. An agreement was made for Boeing to step ahead of the Navy for delivery of these engines, at the rate of five per month for a total of 25 Wasps. Thus, the Boeing 40 A, with a single Wasp mounted upfront, was bom and the fuselage revised to accommodate two passengers behind the firewall. Based on the results of the joint study, Boeing submitted a bid that was about one-third of that of any of its competitors.

Over protests of bad faith and “low-ball” bidding, Boeing began flying the Chicago-San Francisco route on July 1, 1927, and it made money in the process. This was only possible because of the Wasp, and it put private airmail carriage off to an excellent start.

« I’ve tried to make the men around me feel, as I do, that we embarked as pioneers upon a new science and industry in which our problems are so new and unusual that it behooves no one to dismiss any novel idea with the statement that “it can’t be done!” Our job is to keep everlasting at research and experimentation, to adapt our
laboratories to production as soon as possible, and to let no new improve­ment in flying and flying equipment pass us by. w

William E. Boeing, founder, The Boeing Company, 1929

Orders for the Wasp began to flood in from the commercial side as well as the military. Var­ney Airlines was the first to order the Boeing 40 A with the Wasp engine. The Wasp quickly began to replace the smaller Wright engines in the Trimotor Ford and Fokkers and practically every other large aircraft type. The Wasp was destined to reign supreme over its competition for several years before larger P&W and Wright engines became available. Soon the Boeing 40 В was designed with an enclosed four-place pas­senger compartment, with glass windows on each side, located between the Wasp/Hornet engine and the pilot in his open cockpit behind.

The 40 Bs set a completely new standard of reliability in the air. Proven reliability was an absolute necessity before transporting pas­sengers on any broad scale could be seriously considered. With the Liberty engine, making the long-distance run without an engine failure or forced landing was practically unknown. The Wasps began running 250 hours and more with­out adjustment of any kind or requiring overhaul.

These engines actually ended the long­standing superiority of European engine manu­facture that began before World War I and led to the establishment of American air supremacy for decades to come, well through World War II. They also laid the groundwork for the suc­cessful beginning of the commercial air transport business.

T

he process of creating an air transportation system had begun as an incidental consequence of privatizing the United States airmail delivery system. While a partial and rudimentary navigation infrastructure was in place, there was very little else on which to base a civil air transportation network. In 1925, it was difficult to imagine air travel ever overtaking the familiar modes of travel by sea or rail. Flying was not only still the province of adventurers, it was prohibitively expensive. About the only thing that would recommend travel by air was the element of speed, but this was more than offset by the dis­comfort of the associated noise, heat, cold, or tur­bulence, as well as the likelihood that mechanical failures would result in unscheduled landings, causing delays or, heaven forbid, even worse.

But aside from the optimistic efforts of the undaunted enthusiasts of aviation, there were national interests to be considered. In Europe subsidized national flag carriers were being formed, Imperial Airways in Britain in 1924, for instance, and there were rumors of Lufthansa in Germany (which did form in 1926). Other Euro­pean countries were forming airlines. There was criticism heard in the United States and recol­lections of how far behind Europe America had been before and during the First World War.

The United States had no civil aviation policy. President Calvin Coolidge, like most everybody else, had never been inside an airplane. But Coolidge was in a position to do something about it—he formed a commission to study what should be done. It was called the Morrow Board.

Coolidge and Dwight Morrow had been classmates at Amherst. Morrow had gone to Yale Law School and was in law practice in New York in 1925 when Coolidge asked him to head up a “blue-ribbon” committee to make a general inquiry into U. S. aviation. Coolidge biographer Robert Sobel characterized Coolidge’s style this way: “Find the right man, tell him what has to be done, then step aside.”1

Having such a man was particularly important since two related committees had preceded this one: (1) the Secretary of War had convened the Lassiter Board in 1923 to try to resolve competing interests of the Army and Navy regarding airpower and how it should be controlled, and (2) the House of Representatives had appointed the Lampert Committee in 1924 to look into allegations of malfeasance by the Chief of Air Service, General Mason Patrick, regarding budget cuts for military aviation and the policy of the Army that placed air units under control
of ground commanders. It was in the Lampert Commission hearing that General Billy Mitchell got in such hot water with his insubordinate statements about military aviation that President Coolidge ordered his court-martial. In short, the state of American aviation was in turmoil.

Now the Morrow Board was formed in September 1925 to look into the future of aviation in both the military and civilian aviation sectors. It was composed of a federal judge, an engineer on the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), several former military officers, and the World War I head of the Board of Aircraft Production. Morrow himself knew little about aviation, although he was a member of the Guggenheim Fund Board of Trustees (see below).