On May 15, 1918, America’s first official airplane mail service was inaugurated. The man in charge was Major Reuben H. Fleet, U. S. Army Air Service. We will hear more of Major Fleet later on in our story.

Piloted by Army aviators, airplanes took off from Washington, D. C., bound for New York, via Philadelphia—and from New York bound for Washington, by the same route. Twenty minutes after Lieutenant George Boyle took off from Potomac Park, Washington, with 350 pounds of mail, he lost his course, and in landing near Waldorf, Maryland, the plane nosed over, breaking the propeller. Lieutenant Leroy Webb, who took off from the old Belmont Race Track near New York City at 11:40 A.M., had better luck, however, and reached Philadelphia an hour and twenty minutes later. Lieutenant J. C. Edgerton took over the controls and flew on from there, landing in Washington at 4:00 P.M. Within another half hour Boy Scouts had completed delivery of the 500 letters and parcels consigned to Washington, and air mail service in the United States had begun.

Wartime Curtiss Jenny training planes were used for the first air mail service. They could carry about 300 pounds of mail and had a top speed of 90 miles per hour. In August, 1918, the air mail service was taken over by the Post Office Department.

The original air mail route of 1918 was only 218 miles in length, but it was not long before the Post Office Department extended the service. By September, 1920, transcontinental air mail service was in operation between New York and San Francisco, California.

Flying in single-engined, open-cockpit Army Jennies and DH-4’s, the unsung pioneers of our early air mail service were Army aviators. They had no reliable flight instruments. Roads, rivers, and railroad tracks were their only airway markers, and the family wash on a clothes line was the means by which the fliers ascertained their wind direction.