Standstill

Last week for the first time since 1918 not one letter, not one postcard was carried by air anywhere within the U. S. For seven full days the domestic airmail stood stockstill while the Army, knocked breathless by ten deaths, caught its second wind on the ground.

The man responsible for the standstill order was Major-General Benjamin D. Foulois, Chief of Air Corps. President Roosevelt had commanded an end to Army airmail deaths and the only way to execute that command was to keep flyers out of the air until conditions could be improved. Last week General Foulois started out from Washington to inspect his men, bases and equipment. "I am told," he said, "that our equipment is no good. Others tell me it is the finest in the world." The General flew first to Long Island's Mitchel Field. There he quoted Air Corps mortality statistics to back up his contention that military flyers expect one of their fellows to be killed nearly every week. In fiscal 1932 there were 50 fatali ties; in fiscal 1933, 46. Last month's Army crashes increased the current year's total to only 39. From Mitchel Field, piloting his own observation plane, the General proceeded to Newark Airport, to Cleveland, to Chicago, to St. Louis. He found two-way radios with ranges up to 400 mi. were being installed on Army planes. Landing lights were being attached. Beacon signals were being improved and a teletype weather reporting system was nearly com plete. Old-type observation ships were being outfitted with artificial horizons, di rectional gyroscopes, new compasses and flight instruments. Work was progressing feverishly on new bombers in the Martin factory near Baltimore. . His inspection trip convinced General Foulois that the Army was now ready to -make a fresh -start with the airmail.-On his recommendation the War Department announced resumption of limited service on eight trunk routes. These routes constituted only about 40% of the mileage flown by the private operators before their contracts were canceled. .The announcement had hardly-been issued before one more Air Corps death was added to the list. Lieut. R. G. Richardson of the Reserve Corps, onetime copilot on United Air Lines, was working in a filling station when he was summoned for mail duty. Making a test flight in the type of observation plane that bore two Army pilots to death in flames near Cheyenne last fortnight (TIME, March 19), Lieut. Richardson somehow got his ship into a nosedive, crashed three miles from the Cheyenne airport, died in flames. Nevertheless, with the weather generally clear, mail flights were resumed on schedule and the first day passed without mishap. Meanwhile even with the Army grounded all week, the Administration's position on the airmail controversy continued to be anything but comfortable. The cavalier treatment accorded Col. Charles Augustus Lindbergh by the White House had done President Roosevelt no popular good. Millions of citizens insisted on viewing the differences between these national heroes as something of a personal encounter. By last week the situation plainly called; for diplomacy. As a peace offering Secretary of War Dern asked Col. Lindbergh and two other famed flyers to sit on a War Department board of inquiry into the Army's airmail operations. Clarence Chamberlin accepted. Orville Wrright blamed ill health for his refusal. Col. Lindbergh declined because "I believe that the use of the Army Air Corps to carry the airmail was unwarranted and contrary to American principles. This action was unjust to the airlines whose contracts were canceled without trial. It was unfair to the personnel of the Army Air Corps. . . ." Though he would have nothing to do with the Army's airmail operations, Hero Lindbergh was quite willing to tell Congress what he thought about the contract cancellations and pending legislation to restore the mail job to private companies. The morning he was to appear before the Senate Post Office Committee the ornate caucus room in the Senate Office Building was packed and running over with a crowd that left no one in doubt as to his popularity. Senatorial secretaries deserted their desks, streaked through the hallways, tried to elbow their way inside. Lights glared while newsreel cameras waited. Senators basked in more publicity than they had had in months. Promptly at 10:30, bareheaded and wearing a grey suit without a vest, Col. Lindbergh strode in amid a thunder of applause. He shook hands with Chairman McKellar, sat down stiffly in a red leather chair, flipped through a copy of the bill, drummed his fingers on the table, smiled. Brisk and businesslike, the flyer identified himself as technical adviser to Transcontinental & Western Air and Pan American Airways, said he received a combined salary of $16,000 per year. Hunched forward in' his chair as the discussion veered this way and that for two hours, Col. Lindbergh: 1) Objected categorically to the bill as tantamount to conviction without trial of the private companies. 2) Characterized the clause barring from new contracts any company which pressed claims against the Government for annulling old ones, as ",one of the most unjust acts I have ever seen in American legislation." 3) Called "impractical" the provision requiring mail planes to carry Army or Navy men as copilots. 4) Objected to the proposed plane- mileage payment schedule as tending to limit the size of mail-carrying planes. 5) Opposed a permanent subsidy for airlines, but saw need for a temporary one. 6) Parried questions about the ethics of his own companies with: "I have not the legal background to make comment on that." 7) Advised separation of manufacturers and operators. 8 ) Called U. S. military and commercial aviation the best in the world. When Col. Lindbergh finally rose in a roar of applause, policemen shielded him from a surging wave of would-be handshakers. Newshawks scrambled for typewriters and telephones to describe what some of them considered the best show in Washington since President Roosevelt's inauguration. Col. Lindbergh was succeeded on the witness stand by the thin-haired flyer who followed him across the Atlantic. Clarence Duncan Chamberlin. Asked if he approved of the contract annulments, he replied: "There seems to have been plenty of reason for doing so, but whether sufficient I don't know." Requested to identify the airlines which he had elsewhere asserted were purchasing inferior equipment from associated manufacturing companies, he named Eastern Air Transport (owned by North American Aviation, Inc.) and United Air Lines (owned by United Aircraft & Transport Corp.). Next day appeared Capt. Edward V. ("Eddie'') Rickenbacker, famed World War ace and oldtime automobile racer, now vice president of North American Aviation, Inc. When he finished a prepared statement defending the companies, he stood up and with hands in pockets, intoned: ". . . In fairness to our Chief Executive ... he should, in purging this industry of so-called undesirable elements . . . purge his official family of those traitorous elements . . . who have misadvised, or advised without giving full facts, and have caused him to act contrary to American justice and judgment. . . .''* Interposed Chairman McKellar: "Mr. Rickenbacker, I'll have to ask you not to attack the President or make a political speech." As Capt. Rickenbacker strode out, Senator Barbour, a New Jersey Republican, clapped heartily.

*A persistent Washington rumor of last week was that President Roosevelt had been nagged into canceling the airmail contracts by Senators Black and McKellar who felt the airmail investi- gation was about to expire for lack of public attention unless the White House acted dramati-cally.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.