It’s the early hours of an unusually warm, dry June Saturday—perfect conditions for testing the U.S. Airmail’s experimental night flights. The difficulties of flying, especially the “Hell Stretch” above the Allegheny Front, are well-publicized, but you’re one of the most experienced pilots in the country, with well over 700 flight hours, so you’re confident in your abilities. If night flights can be done, you’re among a small company suited for the task.
On this particular night, June 20, 1925, your flight would be cut short. Poor weather, with a fog settling in the valleys of central Pennsylvania, make it nearly impossible to navigate. Without the ability to track distance using city lights and spotlight towers, you’re forced to bring your DH-4 open-cockpit biplane down. Luckily, you choose a valley littered with farm fields and successfully make an emergency landing, your third that month.
This was a typical day for U.S. Airmail Service pilot Charles Ames. By 1925, pilots like Ames were viewed with near mythical status. When they would pass through towns, it was a wildly popular newsworthy event, with townsfolk crowding to catch a glimpse of the dapper daredevils. Ames, the 32-year-old ace, was handsome, confident, charismatic and capable, known by his fellow flyers as an expert in the sky. Originally from Michigan, he learned to fly in California, later becoming an instructor for airplane manufacturer Curtiss before entering the Airmail Service in 1920.
In the early days of aviation, there were only a handful of planes to choose from for flight service. Manufacturers like Curtiss with their JN, nicknamed the “Jenny”; De Havilland and their DH line; and Junker, JL model, built single-engine biplane designs with open air cockpits that carried on the traditions of World War I aircraft. These planes were cutting-edge for the time, though they suffered many of the same faults. Moisture was the ultimate enemy of the instrument panel, causing frequent malfunctions when flying through storms and fog, and navigational equipment was nonexistent outside of a compass.
Pilots relied on maps, often with hand-drawn visual cues like unique buildings and geographical features that allowed the flier to determine their position. There are even stories of pilots, wary of their instruments, measuring their distance flown by how far their cigar had burned or measuring pitch by taping a small whiskey bottle to the dash and using its contents as a level. Ames and his counterparts were as ingenious as they were daring, with nearly every pilot recording dozens of emergency landings and crashes.
The route chosen for Airmail Service was as direct as possible, with the most hazardous section, known as the Hell Stretch, running from Belmont, New York, to Cleveland, Ohio, with one scheduled stop in between at Bellefonte Airfield. This section was made dangerous by the terrain of the Appalachian Mountains. Difficult-to-predict weather patterns, sudden updrafts and a propensity for fog forced pilots to fly lower than usual. To combat this, infrastructure was constructed including spotlight towers, giant arrows in fields, and mile markers painted on roofs to aid in “contact flying.” Even so, this section remained the most feared and, by the end of public Airmail Service in 1927, the most deadly. Ames would fly that section dozens of times between 1922 and 1925, making him famous in the flying community.
Ames’ life, like that of so many of his peers, was cut tragically short on October 1, 1925. That night had been preceded by three poor weather days and had a ceiling of 1,500 feet with an estimated visibility of 15 miles in Pennsylvania, which was enough to ground every other plane but Ames’. His was the only plane due in Bellefonte, for a scheduled night flight from New York.
Ames never arrived in Bellefonte that night. An exhaustive search was launched by Governor Gifford Pinchot, who called in the National Guard to aid in the effort. For 10 days, planes scanned the airways of central PA, and search parties trekked the mountainsides. Ultimately, it would be a 15-year-old boy in a search party out of Hecla Gap who would find the plane, with Ames’ body still strapped into the cockpit. The plane was found just 200 feet from the summit of a section of Nittany Mountain. Experts are unsure what caused Ames to crash, with conjecture of a malfunctioned altimeter as the likely culprit.
Of the 34 pilots who died in the Airmail Service, six died on the Hell Stretch. Airmail would be privatized in 1927 and advancements in technology, including more accurate navigational tools and fuel efficient engines, made the stop in the heart of the Appalachians unnecessary.
Airmail pilots like Charles Ames were pioneers, not only of airmail but of flight, pushing the boundaries of what was possible. Today, organizations like the American Philatelic Society and Smithsonian Museum memorialize these pilots and their contributions to aviation. Ames’ story, including artifacts from his crash, can be found at the American Philatelic Center in Bellefonte. T&G
Local Historia is a passion for local history, community, and preservation. Its mission is to connect you with local history through engaging content and walking tours. Local Historia is owned by public historians Matt Maris and Dustin Elder, who co-author this column. For more, visit localhistoria.com.
Sources:
Airmail: A brief history – about.usps.com. (n.d.). https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/airmail.pdf
Charles Ames, Airmail Pilot. National Postal Museum. (n.d.). https://postalmuseum.si.edu/charles-ames-airmail-pilot
Time Inc. (1925, October 19). Aeronautics: Death of Ames. Time. https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,721316,00.html
United Press. (1925, October 12). Find body of air mailman near beacon. Mount Carmel Item, pp. 1–6.
