LEON "WINDY" SMITH AIR MAIL PILOT AT THE HEART OF THE 1919 U S AIR MAIL STRIKE

Description

LEON "WINDY" SMITH AIR MAIL PILOT AT THE HEART OF THE 1919 U S AIR MAIL STRIKE
SMITH, Leon SMITH, Leon Dick "Windy". U. S. AIR MAIL SERVICE PILOT AT THE HEART OF THE 1919 U. S. AIR MAIL SERVICE STRIKE.
Christmas card, undated, approximately
6X5
open, signed "Leon D. Smith".
SMITH, Leon Dick “Windy”.
HE WAS AT THE HEART OF THE 1919 U. S. AIR MAIL SERVICE STRIKE.
(1891-1960). Flight instruction at the Curtiss school; exhibition pilot; civilian instructor and senior civilian flying instructor at Rantoul IL and Memphis TN ( -1919); U. S. Air Mail Service pilot (1918-19); appointed 12-2-1918 and assigned at Elizabeth NJ (1918), Belmont Park NY (1918-19) and Washington DC (1919); he refused to fly Belmont Park-Washington because of bad weather and was fired on the spot on orders of Assistant Post Master Otto Praeger. Walter H. Stevens, Clifford L. Webster and E. Hamilton Lee also refused to fly and Lee was also fired, although he was reinstated by Praeger. The pilots decided to refuse as a group, resulting in a strike. The problem was resolved the following day when Postal Service officials agreed that the local field manager and the pilot, not Washington, would have the final say about flights. Pilots were also given a .00 per diem allowance. All pilots except Smith, who had written a letter accusing Praeger of recklessness, were reinstated (1919); Transport Pilot rating no. 3442 (1927).
U. S. AIR MAIL SERVICE pilot signatures are very difficult to find. There were not many of them during the 1918-1927 time of the Service and many of their careers were cut short by injuries and death.
DO YOU KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN U. S. AIR MAIL SERVICE PILOTS AND CONTRACT AIR MAIL PILOTS?
The U. S. Air Mail Service was formed as a branch of the Post Office Department under the Second Assistant Postmaster General in 1918 and flew air mail until it was disbanded in 1927. There weren't very many of them and the lives of many of them were cut short! The movement of air mail was placed in the hands of contractors in the later twenties. They were two distinct groups of aviators and flew under distinctly different circumstances. What makes the pilots of the U.S. Air Mail Service so interesting to us even today, more than ninety years after the service was disbanded? The answer lies in the kind of men they were, in their acceptance of significant risk in every undertaking, and their single-minded focus on a career in aviation. These men were to the children of the twenties what astronauts were to us in the sixties, railroad engineers were to the children of the nineteenth century and explorers were to still earlier generations. Their lives simply reeked of adventure! When pilots signed up for the Air Mail Service they were required to agree to fly fixed routes in literally any kind of weather. And to do it in antiquated open-cockpit planes with only the most basic of instrumentation, which most knew from their Great War flying to be dangerous under the best of circumstances. In the DH, for instance, the placement of fuel tank, pilot and engine assured that the pilot would be incinerated in any significant crash or nose-over. The hot engine drove the fuel tank into the cockpit and fire exploded the escaping vaporized fuel. Yet applications far, far outnumbered the available jobs and the pilots, day after day, accepted their flight schedules and did everything in their power to deliver the mail to the next air mail field on a fixed schedule. By the time air mail flying was placed in the hands of contractors and Contract Air Mail pilots were licensed by the Post Office Department, things had changed dramatically for pilots. Aircraft were purpose-built for air mail, radio had been introduced, weather was much better understood, pilots were carefully selected and trained and the risks of flying were better understood by the executives managing the air mail routes.
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This is part of my personal collection of over 2500 aviation autographs dating from the very earliest days of aviation. The collection includes many, many air mail pilots, record holders, aviation personalities, military/naval aviators from 1914 through Vietnam, etc.  All are in excellent condition unless otherwise noted and all are authentic.
The items I'm selling on eBay are from my own collection that I've been selling since my retirement.
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DO YOU KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN U. S. AIR MAIL SERVICE PILOTS AND CONTRACT AIR MAIL PILOTS?
The U. S. Air Mail Service was formed as a branch of the Post Office Department under the Second Assistant Postmaster General in 1918 and flew air mail until it was disbanded in 1927. There weren't very many of them and the lives of many of them were cut short! The movement of air mail was placed in the hands of contractors in the later twenties. They were two distinct groups of aviators and flew under distinctly different circumstances. What makes the pilots of the U.S. Air Mail Service so interesting to us even today, almost ninety years after the service was disbanded? The answer lies in the kind of men they were, in their acceptance of significant risk in every undertaking, and their single-minded focus on a career in aviation. These men were to the children of the twenties what astronauts were to us in the sixties, railroad engineers were to the children of the nineteenth century and explorers were to still earlier generations. Their lives simply reeked of adventure! When pilots signed up for the Air Mail Service they were required to agree to fly fixed routes in literally any kind of weather. And to do it in antiquated open-cockpit planes with only the most basic of instrumentation, which most knew from their Great War flying to be dangerous under the best of circumstances. In the DH, for instance, the placement of fuel tank, pilot and engine assured that the pilot would be incinerated in any significant crash or nose-over. The hot engine drove the fuel tank into the pilot's lap and heat and fire exploded the escaping vaporized fuel. Yet applications far, far outnumbered the available jobs and the pilots, day after day, accepted their flight schedules and did everything in their power to deliver the mail to the next air mail field on a fixed schedule. By the time air mail flying was placed in the hands of contractors and Contract Air Mail pilots were licensed by the Post Office Department the things had changed dramatically for pilots. Aircraft were purpose-built for air mail, radio had been introduced, weather was much better understood, pilots were carefully selected and trained and the risks of flying were better understood by the executives managing the air mail routes.
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