That’s about 65 hours faster than sending the mail by train. But the other eastbound plane made it all the way to Hazelhurst Field in New York, delivering the mail just 33 hours and 20 minutes after it left San Francisco. And one of the eastbound flights ended when the pilot, William Lewis, crashed his plane and was killed. The westbound flights were grounded in Chicago when a snowstorm hit. That was how the experimental flights were supposed to go, but that’s not exactly what happened.

As the planes made their way across the country, small towns along the route lit the way by keeping large bonfires burning through the night. When the pilots landed, their mail sacks were transferred to another airplane with a fresh pilot, who flew the mail to the next stop. The planes were flying the first stretch in what was, in effect, a cross-country relay, much in the way that the Pony Express had operated 60 years earlier. On February 21, 1921, the post office launched a night-flying experiment when it sent two planes east from San Francisco, and two more west from New York. If airmail service was going to survive, it was going to have to get much faster, and that meant flying at night. At that rate, it took about three and a half days to get mail from New York City to San Francisco, only a day less than sending it entirely by rail, and at much greater risk and expense. Then the mail was loaded onto a new airplane and flown again until dark. The mail they were carrying was then loaded onto trains, which hauled it through the night until daybreak. When these landmarks weren’t visible, they didn’t fly.Īt dusk, airborne planes landed at designated airfields near railroad lines. The pilots who transported the mail navigated by following roads, rivers, railroad tracks, and prominent landmarks as they made their way across the country. In an age before sophisticated navigation systems, flying after dark was just too dangerous. Post Office introduced airmail service in 1920, the mail could only be flown during daylight hours, when pilots could see where they were going.

The following is an article from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader

Transcontinental airmail arrows