https://peertube.dngr.us/videos/watch/798ffab9-eaec-4026-b05a-3acb37dc7c2e The first official experiment at flying Air Mail to be made under the aegis of the United States Post Office Department took place on September 23, 1911, on the first day of an International Air Meet sponsored by The Nassau Aviation Corporation of Long Island, when pilot Earle L. Ovington flew 640 letters and 1,280 postcards from the Aero Club of New York's airfield located on Nassau Boulevard near Stratford School in Garden City (Long Island), New York, to the nearby Mineola Post Office in Mineola, located less than six miles away. After being duly sworn in by U.S. Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock as the first U.S. Air Mail pilot in history, Ovington took off in his own American-made Bleriot Queen tractor-type monoplane, Dragonfly, at 5:26 PM and dropped the bag of mail over Mineola six minutes later from an altitude of 500 feet. Unfortunately the bag broke when it hit the ground, but all of the mail was eventually recovered and forwarded by regular channels with the cancellation reading "AEROPLANE STATION No.1 - GARDEN CITY ESTATES, N.Y." The first scheduled U.S. Air Mail service began on May 15, 1918, using U.S Army Curtiss JN-4HM "Jenny" biplanes flown by Army pilots operating on a route between Washington, D.C. (Washington Polo Grounds) and New York City (Belmont Park) with an intermediate stop in Philadelphia (Bustleton Field). Among those who were on hand for the departure of the first flight from Washington, D.C., were President Woodrow Wilson, U.S. Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson, and Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt. Army Lt. George L. Boyle was selected to pilot aircraft #38262 on the first Northbound flight which, unfortunately, turned out to be a somewhat less than successful initial venture. Maj. Ruben Fleet by Lt. Boyle's Jenny before the take off from Washington, D.C. for Philadelphia on May 15, 1918. Almost immediately after taking off at 11:47AM, Boyle became disoriented and started flying South when he followed the wrong set of railroad tracks out of the city. Realizing that he was lost, Boyle attempted to find out where he was by making an unscheduled landing just 18 minutes later at 12:05PM in Waldorf, Maryland, about 25 miles south of the city. Unfortunately, however, he broke the prop on his airplane when he made a hard landing, so the 140 pounds of mail he was carrying had to be trucked back to Washington from where it was finally flown North to Philadelphia and New York the following day.[10] The site of the first continuously scheduled air mail service is marked by a plaque in West Potomac Park in Washington, D.C.. The route was extended to Boston three weeks later on June 4. After four months of the mail being flown by the Army, all flight operations were taken over by the USPOD's Aerial Mail Service on August 12, 1918, using a fleet of six purpose built mail biplanes designed and constructed by the Standard Aircraft Corporation of Elizabeth, NJ, and flown by civilian pilots hired by the Post Office Department. After a number of "pathfinder" flights made in September, November, and early December, the first flight providing scheduled east-west service between New York and Chicago occurred on December 17, 1918. The original Air Mail letter rate per ounce between any two points on the route when service began was 24 cents per ounce for which the first special purpose U.S. Air Mail stamp (C-3) was issued on May 13, 1918. The red and blue stamp's vignette depicted Army JN-4 #38262, the aircraft that made the first Air Mail flight from Washington two days later, and the 24 cent fee it represented was apportioned at two cents for postage, 12 cents for air service, and 10 cents for Special Delivery. On July 15 the rate was dropped to 16 cents for the first ounce and 6 cents for each additional ounce, and on December 15 the rate was dropped again to 6 cents per ounce when Special Delivery was made optional. Additional monochromatic stamps of similar design to C-3 were also issued contemporaneously with these rate changes in 16 cent (green) and 6 cent (orange) denominations.[12] Although these extra fee stamps were issued for use on mails to be serviced by air, the legend "AIR MAIL" did not appear on any USPOD stamp until eight years later when the 10-cent C-7 rectangular was issued on February 13, 1926, two days before the first ever mail flight under contract with a commercial carrier was made on February 15, an eastbound trip between Detroit and Cleveland over CAM Route 7. This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov3kkmvp2i4 Mirrored from Periscope Film (https://www.youtube.com/@PeriscopeFilm) Sat, 13 Jun 2026 05:30:46 GMT https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html PeerTube - https://peertube.dngr.us https://peertube.dngr.us/lazy-static/avatars/41a6fee9-7f57-42d0-a5fc-5db4f1af2e31.png https://peertube.dngr.us/videos/watch/798ffab9-eaec-4026-b05a-3acb37dc7c2e All rights reserved, unless otherwise specified in the terms specified at https://peertube.dngr.us/about and potential licenses granted by each content's rightholder.