On November 19, 1928 air mail came to Champaign. Acclaimed to be “the country’s smallest city to be accorded the privilege of air mail service,” Champaign linked the surrounding territory to Chicago and Evansville, Ind. Two days before the inaugural flight the Champaign post office had 12,000 pieces of mail on hand waiting to receive a special stamp informing the receiver that the letter was sent on the opening flight of the airmail service from Champaign-Urbana. On the big day 75 pounds of mail left Champaign.
The first scheduled U.S. Air Mail service began on May 15, 1918, using six converted Curtiss JN-4HM “Jenny” biplanes flown by Army Air Service pilots, on a New York – Philadelphia - Washington, D.C. route. Among those present for 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.
Undertaken in dense fog without pilots trained in cross country navigation, and no instrument panels, the first flight was mostly successful with only one pilot getting lost and making an emergency landing in a Maryland farmer’s field.
Ten years later the responsibilities for air mail delivery had shifted from the Army Air Service to the U.S. Post Office’s Aerial Mail Service (August 1918) to commercial contractors (1925). The first daily transcontinental air mail service route (involving both day and night flying) opened on July 1, 1924. The total trip was 34 hours westbound and 32 hours eastbound.
- Sherrie, Archives Librarian