EARLY AIR MAIL SNAFUS PART 2

YESTERDAY, WE CAUGHT UP WITH the latest valuation of a rare “Inverted Jenny” air mail stamp. We also began the tale of Lieutenant George Boyle helping to inaugurate air mail service for Washington, D.C./Philadelphia/New York City. 

D.C. Postmaster Merritt Chance, Postmaster General Albert Burleson (with 2nd Assistant Postmaster General Otto Praeger hiding behind his shoulder), President Woodrow Wilson and Mrs. Wilson at the opening ceremonies in Potomac Park, D.C. Image from Nancy Pope’s “Wrong Way Boyle,” Smithsonian National Postal Museum, May 13, 2015.

There’s an unrelated snafu in this photo’s bandaged President Wilson. He learned the hard way not to pat a battle tank barrel after a firing demonstration.

Outta Gas, Then Worse. Pope recounts, “If anyone present believed in signs, perhaps the first one that something might be amiss that day came when Boyle climbed into his plane and tried to start the motor. Nothing. Mechanics jumped at the plane, desperate to fix the problem as the President looked on, a bit more exasperated as time wore on. Finally someone thought to check the gas tank. It was empty.”

Boyle in the now-fueled Jenny. 

“With a full tank,” Pope says, “Boyle took off, sliding up into the air smoothly, then circling the field a couple of times for effect before heading . . . southeast. Few in the crowd may have realized this, as they continued to cheer until Boyle’s plane was out of sight.”

Boyle made a rough landing in Waldorf, Maryland, about 25 miles south of D.C., and phoned for assistance. Mechanics trucked the plane back to Washington for another attempt.

“Keep the Bay on Your Right!” Pope continues, “On the second day of the service, Lieutenant Edgerton was tapped to fly the mail out of Washington. And he did so quite successfully. But on the third day, perhaps due to pressure from the Interstate Commerce Commissioner, Lieutenant Boyle was back in the cockpit. This time, Lieutenant Edgerton was told to take off in a separate plane at the same time as Boyle and lead him the first few miles on the road to Philadelphia. Boyle was told to just keep the Chesapeake Bay on his right.”

“After leading Boyle a fair way out of Washington,” Pope describes, “Edgerton waved goodbye, assured that all Boyle had to do was fly straight ahead and he’d get to Philadelphia. Unfortunately, the advice that rung in Boyle’s ears that day was all about keeping the bay to his right. And so he did just that, flying around the bay to the eastern shore, where he landed at Cape Charles, Virginia, about as far south as he could go before the bay turned into the Atlantic Ocean.”

Image from Google Maps.

A New Career. Pope concludes, “This time Boyle was directed to fly north to Philadelphia and amazingly enough, after refueling his plane, he actually managed to almost reach the city, crashing his plane onto the Philadelphia Country Club’s golf course. Impressive in-laws or not, nothing could convince the Army nor the Post Office Department to let Boyle back into a mail plane. Following his marriage, Boyle found another career—he became a lawyer.”

Ha. Rarely is aviation history so much fun. And so well recounted, thanks to the late Nancy Pope, a Smithsonian Institution curator and founding historian of the National Postal Museum.  ds 

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2023