[Download] "Comments on the Air Mail Episode of 1934 (READER'S FORUM)" by Air Power History # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Comments on the Air Mail Episode of 1934 (READER'S FORUM)
- Author : Air Power History
- Release Date : January 22, 2010
- Genre: Engineering,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 372 KB
Description
I am in receipt of the latest Air Power History, [Vol. 57, No. 1, Spring 2010] and just wanted to send this unsolicited comment complimenting the journal editors on the quality of the essays and information presented in the publication. There is one essay that interested me since I recently published an essay on Jack Frye, one of the founders of Transcontinental and Western Airline, which in May 1950, became known officially as Trans World Airlines; the letter "s" was then added to the word airline. The article appeared in the American Aviation Historical Society Journal entitled: "Trans World Airlines: The Creation of a Global Airline by Jack Frye and Other Founders," LIII (Fall. 2008), 181-204 and in particular there was a segment, "TWA and the Air Mail," 188-89. The essay in Air Power History referred to above was Dr. Kenneth P. Werrell's "Fiasco Revisited: The Air Corps and the 1934 Air Mail Episode," pp. 12-29. As is now well known, the air marl story was covered on the front pages of the nation's leading newspapers and on the radio during the first administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In the early days of commercial flying, the profits for airlines did not come primarily from passenger revenues but from hauling mail for the postal service. During the administration of President Herbert Hoover, Congress passed the McNary-Watres Act (Air Mail Act of 1930), giving Postmaster General Walter Folger Brown (1869-1961) the authority and responsibility of assigning three transcontinental airmail routes. Postmaster General Brown was of the opinion that only one company should serve a single route, resulting in American Airlines winning the southern route, Northwest Airlines the northern route, and forcing Western Air Express (WAF), Transcontinental Air Transport (TAT), and Pittsburgh Aviation Industries Corporation (PAIC) to merge, forming T&WA (Transcontinental and Western Airline), with the result of being awarded the central route. The new company received its mail contract on August 25, 1930, and made the first all service coast-to-coast flight on October 25, taking thirty-six hours including a twelve-hour layover in Kansas City.