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306 NATIONAL POLITICS I918-I922
While these unfortunate things did sometimes occur, it was by no means the policy of the Post Office Department to require fliers to start on their trips under weather conditions that would endanger their lives. But accidents sometimes occurred because bad weather developed after a pilot had started his trip.
My May 12 annual report on the air-mail service was bound to be disturbing and provocative: either conditions for reasonably safe flying had to be developed or the service would have to be abandoned. In an effort to eliminate every possible disadvantage, we commenced an investigation on May 13, 1921. Among other things, we wanted to get to the bottom of these seven unexplained deaths.
Charges of 'misconduct, inefficiency, criminal negligence, and gross mismanagement" provoked the investigation, which centered to a considerable extent around Checkerboard Field in Chicago. One of the chief witnesses, a pilot, testified that early in the year he had been discharged for bailing out near Minneapolis to save his life. But, maintained the pilot, the real reasons for his discharge were the complaints he had leveled against the literally drunken management of some of the airfields. This pilot's testimony was supported by an inspector of rigging at Minneapolis, who pointed out that planes left the fields with propellers so badly split that persons were warned to keep away from the landing fields lest a propeller fly off and injure someone. The same inspector testified that, under pain of discharge, the mechanics were forced to sign papers declaring the ships safe for flight whether or not parts to repair them were available.
There is a story told about Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh, whom I came to know first as an air-mail pilot. He had a reputation for being one of the safest and most reliable pilots in the service. Lindbergh reportedly never took a plane off the ground unless he was as sure of his flying conditions as he could be, and not until he had checked his whole plane himself from stem to stern. No matter how many "O.K.s" came out of the repair hangars, Lindbergh always checked his planes himself. More Charles Lindberghs might have made the road that air mail traveled less bumpy, but we had a bad situation and knew it. A New York newspaper, under the heading "No More Manslaughter," severely berated the air-mail service in its May condition and later publicly changed its mind when the air-mail arm was nearly amputated by Congress in February 1922.
I had been doing a lot of talking about how important I thought the air-mail service was, I had listened to testimony setting forth the difficulties of flying, but I had never flown myself! So after completing the necessarv arrangements I flew the mail to New York with General Billy Mitchell late in May. I took a few other short hops around the country after that. Among newspapermen, Arthur Brisbane was one of