Richard W. Pears FLEW NEWSPAPER CHASE PLANE FOR LINDBERGH'S 1927 NY-PARIS FLIGHT

Description

Philatelic envelope, 3.75" X 6.5", signed
"R W. Pears Pilot T.A.C." and bearing the FIRST FLIGHT cachet.
Also signed by Roy A. Patterson and canceled LANSING MICH JUN 16 1930. Backstamped GRAND RAPIDS MICH JUN 16 1930. Slit across the top but otherwise perfect.
ROY A.
PATTERSON, was a MOTION PICTURE STUNT PILOT.
He flew in Howard Hughes' ,000,000 epic film
Hell's Angels
(released 1930); flew air mail for Thompson Aeronautical Corp. on CAM route 27 (1930).
PEARS, Richard W.
HE FLEW THE NEWSPAPER "CHASE PLANE" FOR LINDBERGH'S DEPARTURE.
(1895- ). Purdue; WWI pilot; Air Mail pilot (1930); Aeromarine Airways pilot; Thompson Aeronautical pilot;
Transport Pilot
no. 189; flew the "chase plane", a Huff Daland, from which
New York Daily News
photographer Herb Cory photographed Lindbergh's takeoff on his historic flight (1927); Fairchild Aerial Surveys pilot (circa 1928-29); flying a Fairchild FC-2, tour no. 24, he placed twelfth in the 1928
Edsel B. Ford Reliability Tour
; flying a Fairchild 71, tour no. 40, he placed fifteenth in the 1929
Edsel B. Ford Reliability Tour
; Northwest Airways and Braniff pilot prior to WWI; WWII service in an unknown capacity. (COL, USAF.).
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.
A-6732
Please check my FEEDBACK regarding fast and well-packed shipments.
The items I'm selling on eBay are from my own collection that I've been selling since my May, 2000 retirement.
All autographs will be mailed by First Class Mail with Delivery Confirmation.
Larger items will be mailed by appropriate USPS mailing. Tracking numbers are available on all shipments.
I accept PayPal and adhere to their requirements that all PayPal orders be mailed with
online tracking and only to confirmed addresses.
Autographs are weatherproofed and mailed in heavily reinforced padded envelopes with stiff corrugated
!
I guarantee all the items in my collection to be authentic. I will pay the return postage on any item that is found not to be authentic. If you decide you want to return the item for any other reason I'll be happy to accept the return but must deduct my eBay listing and final valuation costs. All returns must of course be in the condition in which they were mailed
.
No matter how many photos or autographs you order (assuming they'll all fit in one 9.5 X 13 envelope) you'll only pay the P&H for one.
Powered by SixBit's eCommerce Solution