Eugene B. Fricks 1930 FLYING CIRCUS & INTERSTATE AIRLINES AIR MAIL PILOT, SIGNED

Description

FRICKS, Eugene B.
CONTRACT AIR MAIL PILOT.
Transport Pilot rating no. 1300 (1928); flew air mail for Interstate Airlines, Inc. on CAM route 30 (1928).
A philatelic cover approximately 3.5" X 5" canceled NASHVILLE TENN 1 DEC 1928. It bears a stamped cachet celebrating FORST FLIGHT SIR MAIL C.A.M. 30 NASHVILLEM TENN. DEC, 1M 1928 and signed by FRICKS and the postmaster.
Backstamped SAINT LOUIS 2 DEC 1928. Perfect!
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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