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Crossroads of the West: Aviation Comes to Utah, 1910-40
Crossroads of the West: Aviation Comes to Utah, 1910-40
BY ROGER D. LAUNIUS
THE CENTRAL ROCKY MOUNTAINS HAVE BEEN THE HUB of the trans- Mississippi West since the Mormons settled along the Great Salt Lake in 1847. Throughout the nineteenth century wagon trains, stage lines, and railroads passed through Utah Territory as the nation expanded between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Indeed, a noted western historian recently concluded that between 1850 and 1870 Salt Lake City was the most important and widely publicized transportation center between the Missouri frontier and California The territory's importance as a transportation center became even more critical after the completion of the transcontinental railroad at Promontory, Utah, in 1869. The proliferation of railways in all directions from the Union Pacific and Central Pacific tracks soon linked the Intermountain West, and Utah emerged as the hub of both east-west and north-south rail traffic in the region as well as the business center of the Mountain West. The development of highways near the turn of the century only reinforced the importance of the area between the east bank of the Great Salt Lake and the Wasatch Mountains as a transportation center.
The happy combination of climate, geographic location, and reasonably large urban populations assured that the region would also exploit aviation effectively. The Salt Lake City-Ogden axis, which had most of the population, most of the investment funds, and most of the political leadership, embraced aviation developments, assuring that the area would continue its role as a transportation crossroads. This essay will discuss how the air transportation system became established in northern Utah and the importance this held for the Rocky Mountain West
During the first decade of the twentieth century, the airplane began to be touted by some Americans as the great promise of the nation. These advocates had fostered a romance with aviation by 1910, emphasizing the wonders of a machine that allowed men to fly like birds. Some predicted it would make war impossible because of its ability to strike at the interior of an enemy nation and destroy its manufacturing capability. Others foresaw the linking of the world together in a great network of transportation routes. A few even argued that airplanes would improve people's health and refine their aesthetic sensibilities.
The enthusiasm of aviation proponents found tangible expression in several early aerial exhibitions. The first airplane flight in Utah took place on January 30, 1910, when French barnstormer Louis Paulhan appeared at an exhibition at the fairgrounds in Salt Lake City. Before a crowd estimated at 10,000, Paulhan flew for approximately 10 minutes and 30 seconds above the city. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, he "established a new world's record, for he sailed to a height of approximately 4,600 feet, while his best previous performance was 4,165 feet above sea level, done at Los Angeles." Unfortunately, because of the altitude of the city above sea level, the crowd saw the aircraft fly only about 300 feet above them. The pilot was disappointed that he "couldn't rise to a greater height, but the heavy biplane could not soar higher in this rarified atmosphere." He hoped "to come back some day with a lighter machine and do some real highflying."
The next year Salt Lake City businessmen sponsored an air meet at the Barrington Aviation Park near Saltair. During February 11-13, 1911, some 10,000 people paid $1.00 each to view the aerial exploits of such renowned pilots as Glen H. Curdss, Eugene B. Ely, and Charles S. Willard. Several aerial stunts and record attempts highlighted the meet. Lt. Alva Lee of the Fifteenth Infantry accompanied one of the flyers "to make observations in the interest of military science . . . ." This important event firmly established public interest in aviation in northern Utah beyond any hope of ending the romance. Subsequent air shows fostered this trend.
The spirit of flight prompted several Utahns to embrace the aircraft in these early years. In 1910 the Salt Lake automobile sales firm of Hill, Blake, and Irving marketed briefly a personal biplane. The partners predicted that "before another year there will be many styles of aerial craft on the local market and enthusiasts will be seen flying over and around the city." Although this prediction failed, it demonstrates some of the local optimism. Another Utahn, Salt Lake City resident Clarence H. Walker, entered the February 1911 air show at Barrington Park. He had purchased a Curds 30-horsepower biplane to fly at the show but was unsuccessful in getting the plane airborne during several attempts. "It was a bitter disappointment to me that I was unable to make a good flight," he said, "and especially so because this is my home town. The rarified atmosphere [at that altitude] is too much for my thirty horsepower engine .... The soft ground also retarded my machine considerably."
Also in 1911 a few enthusiasts formed the Utah Aviation Company and began constructing an aircraft prototype. Dyke Palmer designed a biplane with a 14-foot wingspan using a 6-horsepower Emerson twocycle water-cooled engine. Two investors, Joseph Kaufman and William Smith, put up the capital necessary to build the plane. In April 1911 construction was begun on the airplane at the company's property in Grantsville. The builders faced numerous problems. Dyke Palmer remembered: " It was impossible to get aircraft fittings at that time. I had to make turnbuckles out of motorcycle spokes. Plain galvanized wire was all I could find for flying drag and landing wires. I used three-fourth inch gas pipe for wheel supports on the landing gear." In spite of these difficulties, by June 1911 the airplane was ready for flight tests. Palmer made two attempts to get the machine airborne, each ending in serious damage to the delicate craft As this drama was acted out in a pasture, the Utah Aviation Company underwent marked organizational changes. William Smith quit and was replaced by Phillip Aljett. Aljett pushed out inventer Dyke Palmer and carried on further design tests with a series of mechanics over the next three years. By 1914 the company's leadership believed it had an airworthy machine and took it to Logan for a public demonstration; when this aircraft also failed to fly the Utah Aviation Company went out of business. Nevertheless, these efforts provide some measure of more widespread interest in aviation in the region and the possibilities of transcontinental air linkage.
With the exception of the Utah Aviation Company's activities, most aerial episodes were essentially spectacles with little practical application. The use of the airplane in World War I, however, changed the way Americans viewed the flying machine. Advances in the technology of flight and the forward thinking of some individuals encouraged private and commercial aviation developments. One early application was the delivery of mail by air across the country. In February 1916 the U.S. Postal Service, at the urging of assistant postmaster general Otto Praeger, advertised for bids to carry airmail on seven routes in the wilds of Alaska and one in Massachusetts. Although this first attempt stalled before getting underway, on May 15, 1918, the Postal Service established the first overnight airmail route, between New York City and Washington, D.C. Between 1918 and 1920 routes connected other cities along the Atlantic seaboard with Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Chicago.
As the expansion proceeded, postal officials laid plans for a transcontinental airmail system. With funding for a route to San Francisco via Chicago secured through a sleight-of-hand by postal officials for fiscal year 1921, the Postal Service began to search for the most favorable route, one that had adequate airfields and a business community willing to build the necessary facilities for airmail service. John A. Jordan, a field operative seeking the best route for the western part of the airmail system, visited several cities in 1920 for this purpose. The Postal Service induced the Cheyenne, Wyoming, business community, for example, to provide suitable fields and hangars for the proposed airmail route. The city fathers made $15,000 available for these facilities to ensure that Cheyenne became an airmail stop. The Postal Service did the same in Reno, Nevada. The linkage on the route to San Francisco was complete before the end of 1920.
Salt Lake City was a logical way-station between Cheyenne and Reno on this transcontinental air route. It had been used as early as August 1919 as a stopover for military flights from the West Coast, and special aircraft had carried letters from Washington to Salt Lake City a month later in a publicity stunt to demonstrate the potential of airmail service. When John Jordan visited Salt Lake City in May 1920 city leaders were anxious to secure the air station rather than allow rival Ogden, thirty-five miles to the north and a contender for the stop, to reap the probable economic benefits and prestige associated with airmail service. The local business community and city officials put up $27,000 to build a flying field; a hangar; and other repair, office, and storage buildings.
In July 1920 Otto Praeger, the Postal Service's "Father of the Air Mail," fixed September 1 as the official starting date for transcontinental air operations. He appointed Andrew R. Dunphy, a former Marine and as tough a manager as anyone could want, to supervise the Omaha-Salt Lake City section of the route. Dunphy made his headquarters in Cheyenne. Praeger then named John Jordan to head the Salt Lake City- San Francisco section. Both men were charged with ensuring that fields, aircraft, pilots, spare parts, and other resources were ready to support the operation.
In 1920 Praeger directed James Clark Edgerton, one of his chief assistants, to establish a radio network between each of the new western airmail stations. Edgerton acquired generators to power transmitters and receivers by trading the Air Mail Service's linen, used to repair aircraft, for surplus items. He also visited each city on the route and persuaded civic leaders to donate facilities for their radio stations, promising in return to provide them with emergency communications. All the community leaders were pleased with this arrangement. "Each success induced others," Edgerton wrote. "In what had become a triumphal procession, the publicity preceded me as my journey took me from city to city along the transcontinental [route]. Within ten days all work was in progress."
In spite of these efforts, Praegefs September 1, 1920, inauguration of transcontinental airmail service had to be delayed until September 8 when pilot Randolph Page took off from Hazelhurst Field, New Jersey, on the first leg of the route. Relaying mail between aircraft like the Pony Express of sixty years earlier, the first airmail reached Salt Lake City by the evening of that first day An Army pilot, LL Buck Hedron, flew a De Havilland DH-4 aircraft on the Cheyenne-Salt Lake City route. Carrying 380 pounds of mail, Hedron reached the temporary strip named Buena Vista Field at 5:03 p.m. Mountain Time on September 8. The Salt Lake Tribune reported that the DH-4 "first appeared in the north, flying low, and in a few minutes made a safe and easy landing in front of the hangar. The pilot, who made the trip alone, stood up in his plane, smiling as though he had just come in from an easy jaunt in an automobile." By September 11 the first airmail from the East had reached San Francisco. Perhaps Aerial Age Weekly, a booster periodical, summarized the event best: "September 8, 1920, will go down in history as the great day when the epoch-making event, the first trip of the transcontinental aerial mail, took place.
Meanwhile, Salt Lake City officials began construction of a new airfield for the Postal Service. In late August 1920 the city had purchased Basque Flats, about 106 acres of partially water-logged salt grass pasture, for $6,000. No plans were developed at that time for a paved or graveled runway; the field would have only a single, cinder-covered landing strip. It was to be named Jordan Field in honor of route manager John Jordan.
City officials delayed building the promised facilities at Jordan Field, however. By the beginning of operations in September, although there was much discussion of it in the press, no construction had begun. John Jordan issued an ultimatum on September 30: make arrangements to build a hangar or he would move the airmail stop to Ogden. The rivalry between the business communities in both cities was well known, and postal officials had used it before to gain concessions. The ploy worked, for late that same day the Commercial Club, a forerunner of the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce, organized the U.S. Air Mail Hangar Holding Company to raise money for the facility. "The company will consist of about 200 local people," reported the Deseret News, "each of whom will subscribe $100 to the enterprise." The $20,000 from this company would be sufficient to build a hangar and start other facilities.
By December 21, 1920, the airfield was sufficiently completed to warrant a dedication. Gov. Simon Bamberger, Salt Lake Mayor C. Clarence Neslen, and sports idol Jack Dempsey gave short speeches on the importance of aviation for the West. They named the new facility Woodward rather than Jordan Field for John P. Woodward, an airmail pilot who had died on November 7, 1920, when his De Havilland DH-4 flew into a mountain near Tie Siding, Wyoming, while en route to Cheyenne from Salt Lake City during a winter storm.
Airmail pilots flying through the Rockies encountered many problems, most of them related to winter weather. Daily operation over the forbidding terrain of the Cheyenne-Salt Lake City segment was especially challenging. From Cheyenne at 6,000 feet, pilots had to climb to 9,000 feet above sea level to cross the Laramie Range twelve miles westward. Crossing the Continental Divide, they usually followed the Union Pacific tracks through the narrow mountain passes. After a refueling stop at Rock Springs, these pilots, flying in open cockpit Jennys or De Havdland aircraft, had to cross the rugged Wasatch Range into Salt Lake. This part of the flight required a minimum altitude of 12,000 feet, at which height sudden snowstorms, erratic winds, subzero temperatures, and mountain peaks still hindered flights. Only the most diligent efforts could bring the mail to its destination over such terrain. Pilot James F. Moore expressed well the sentiments of many flyers when he wrote to the airmail's chief of flying that the route "from here [Cheyenne] to Salt Lake City is a good one to kill the men that you seem to have a grudge against or want to see out of the way."
Most pilots had better luck than John Woodward, although accidents still took place. On October 18, three weeks before his fatal accident, another airmail pilot, James P. Murray, left Salt Lake City for Cheyenne. He crossed the Wasatch Front without incident, but after passing Rock Springs he encountered a blinding snowstorm. Realizing that massive Elk Mountain lay ahead, but unable to see it, Murray tried to gain altitude. "I gradually climbed the machine full engine," he wrote, " until I felt it stalling [at] the treetops [ on the mountain] not more than fifty feet away." Since he could neither climb nor turn to miss Elk Mountain, he had to settle for a crash landing. Although his DH-4 was demolished, Murray was not seriously injured. He wandered eastward through the forest for several days, eventually finding a road that took him to Arlington, Wyoming, and help.
Flying hazards west of Salt Lake City were different but no less dangerous. The route to Elko, Nevada, passed over the Great Salt Lake, swampland, and alkali desert. In winter the Great Salt Lake, which would not freeze because of its salt content, could drop as low as 20 degrees Fahrenheit. If a pilot crashed into the lake, he would quickly suffer hypothermia and drown before he could be rescued or swim ashore. A landing in the sparsely settled desert was tantamount to being marooned on an island. Unless rescue workers found a downed pilot within a few days his chances of survival were slim; and without location transmitters or radios, finding a crashed aircraft or pilot, assuming he survived—a fifty-fifty chance at best—was not easy. The danger of a crash landing was underscored on February 22, 1921, when, during an attempt to set a transcontinental airmail record, William E. Lewis crashed en route from Elko to Salt Lake City. He died instantly.
In spite of these hazards. Woodward Field became the focal point for transcontinental air travel in the central Rockies. A few records were even logged. On December 16, 1920, pilot James F. Moore flew the first round trip between Salt Lake City and Cheyenne in one day. First Lt. C. C. Moseley, on a record-setting flight from Sacramento to West Point, transited the field on May 21,1923. It was also a stopover on a record setting 24-hour transcontinental flight in June 1924. Indeed, by 1925 Salt Lake City had become the center of expanding aerial activity that extended to Los Angeles and Denver, as well as to San Francisco and Cheyenne. Daily flights both westward and eastward operated through the station.
The swashbuckling days of airmail operations began to pass by the mid-1920s, however. The lone pilot dressed in a leather flight suit who sat in an open cockpit battling the elements to deliver the mail was romantic but inefficient To increase efficiency, the Postal Service emphasized safety and reliability as well as expanding operations during this era. Its leadership added immeasurably to flying operations. To make night operations possible Otto Praeger began a concerted effort to light airfields and build emergency landing sites. Under Praeger's direction, Charles I. Stanton, an assistant in the Air Mail Service, established minimum lighting requirements for all airmail stations: a 500-watt revolving searchlight, projecting a beam parallel to the ground, to guide pilots; another searchlight, projecting into the wind, to show the proper approach; and aircraft wingtip flares for forced landings. Stanton also noted that landing fields should be at least 2,000 feet by 1,500 feet to allow plenty of room for landings. A searchlight, to be mounted on airmail planes, was appended to his requirements.
Although common in the East, these requirements were implemented in the West only during the middle years of the decade. On January 14, 1926, lights were first tested at Salt Lake's Woodward Field. The main searchlight, it was estimated, could be seen 150 miles away. The Tribune reported:
Two years later Salt Lake City upgraded these lights and constructed a new control budding.
In July 1928 the Post Office selected six sites in the area for emergency landing strips: near the Union Pacific station at laho, near Therma, near Mada, near Lund, near Aron, and on the Union Pacific line between Lund and Cedar City, all in Utah. State leaders took pride in assisting with the development of these emergency fields, each with its own lighting system.
Night flying also required more effective navigational aids than the seat-of-the-pants approach airmail pioneers had used. As early as 1921 the Postal Service had stressed the placement of light beacons along the airmail routes to guide pilots. A little later, radio beacons emitting directional signals were placed on certain parts of the transcontinental route. It took many years before the routes surrounding Salt Lake City received radio beacons, for as late as 1933 only certain parts of the eastern routes had these advanced instruments.
Other types of less complicated directional markers pointed the way to Woodward Field, however. The first of these was essentially a highway sign painted on the top of the Mormon church's Salt Lake Tabernacle. In September 1928 the Mormon First Presidency agreed to allow the words "Salt Lake Airport" and an arrow pointing toward Woodward Field to be painted on the tabernacle roof in 30-foot-high white letters. The directional aid was needed, according to the Deseret News, because "Many fliers, not acquainted with the city, have in the past had to fly around the city until the landing field could be spotted." This was not too difficult at night, because the airfield was illuminated, but during the daytime no such directional aids were available. "As it is now," the News said, "the sign is easily seen and clearly legible within a radius of ten miles and in the language of one Boeing Air Transport pilot, who flies over the building daily, 'You'd have to be blind to miss it.'" The best evidence indicates that this sign remained in place until at least the late 1940s. In 1933 a high-intensity light beacon was erected on the roof of the First National Bank in downtown Salt Lake to send messages in morse code to aircraft overhead. Other directional aids followed throughout the remainder of the decade. By 1940 the transcontinental air routes through the northern Rockies were fully integrated into the modern navigational system.
While these advances were underway, other regional communities became increasingly interested in aviation and sponsored the building of airfields. In March 1921 the Utah State Legislature passed a law granting county governments authority " to lay out landing fields and to build hangars," and with this "Utah is credited with having one of the most progressive laws in aid for commercial aviation to be enacted anywhere in the United States. Many Utah cities took advantage of this authority.
The first to do so was Salt Lake's historic rival to the north, Ogden. After Ogden faded to win the Utah airmail station in 1920, the local impetus for an airfield flagged until 1927 when the Ogden Chamber of Commerce organized an Aviation Committee as an official pressure group to secure "a first-class Airborne or Aviation Field for Ogden." A year later this group, together with Utah Pacific Airways, a flying corporation created by Ogden aviation boosters, successfully established an airfield on the southeast side of the city on a plateau near the Wasatch Mountains. This airport was dedicated on June 30, 1928. Additionally, in 1929 Logan dedicated its airfield, and a year later both Provo and Payson followed suit.
The aviation business in the West grew rapidly with the passage of the Air Mail Act of 1925. Providing for the contracting of airmail routes, this act brought forth a group of aviation companies offering bids. On October 7, 1925, the first contractors on the transcontinental lines were announced. Western Air Express, incorporated in Los Angeles on July 13, 1925, received the Salt Lake Los Angeles airmail contract. Other contracts were signed for other routes throughout the Rockies later, with Salt Lake City as a major hub of operations. As a result, by 1928 several aviation companies routinely used Woodward Field for their airmail activities.
A few of these companies deserve comment. One of the first was the Thompson Flying Service. In 1922 Kenneth Ungar, a pilot who sometimes flew the mail, organized and operated a company from Woodward Field. Three years later A. R. "Tadspin Tommie" Thompson, another pilot, purchased this company and renamed it the Thompson Flying Service. This air transport company carried all manner of cargo on a charter basis throughout the Rocky Mountain West. Carl Helberg, one of Thompson's employees, recalled that when Thompson purchased the company he "fell heir to a large corrugated barn laughingly called a hangar. Inside was the fleet: a Curtis Oriol with a Curds C-6 engine and a Curds K-6 powered Standard. These together with a Hisso Standard he flew into town with were the flying stock." Still, Thompson turned a small profit there. The company passed to others upon his death, February 9, 1937, when the DC-3 he was flying crashed into San Francisco Bay.
Another local aviation firm was Utah Pacific Airways, founded in 1926 and based in Ogden. Dean R. Brimhall and Robert H. Hinckley, two native Utahns with a decided interest in aviation, operated this company until the mid-1930s. They sold aircraft on a retail basis, operated a charter air transport firm, promoted the idea of using aircraft to conduct a census of wild game at Yellowstone National Park, and pioneered the use of aircraft for the control of forest fires. Utah Pacific Airways enjoyed a remarkable record, largely because of the founders' emphasis on safety procedures and awareness. No fatalities occurred during their operations.
Clearly the most important of the Utah aviation companies arising in the 1920s was Western Air Express, later renamed Western Airlines. Although originally an airmail service, its leaders quickly grasped the potential profitability of providing regularly scheduled passenger service to and from Salt Lake City. Just five weeks after beginning scheduled airmail operations, the company carried its first passengers. The Salt Lake Tribune enthusiastically noted that "The schedule calls for departure from Salt Lake at 10:10 a.m. (Mountain Time) and arrival at Los Angeles at 5:25 p.m. (Pacific Time) after a stop at Las Vegas." Passenger service finally started on May 23, 1926, and the company's first traffic manager, James G. Wooley, boasted before flight that it was the first "regular commercial aerial passenger traffic in America. . . ." Wooley predicted that "the new service will cut 19 hours from the traveling time between Los Angeles and eastern points and that Salt Lake will become an important junction for both air and rad travel." He also thought passenger flights would bring prominent visitors to Utah and lengthen their stay since they would be able to decrease their traveling time.
The first passenger was Ben F. Redman, chairman of the Aviation Committee of the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce and a major stockholder in Western Air Express. He had lobbied long for the distinction, using his influence in the company to secure the first flight. He made that first airline reservation with a $20 check as a deposit on the $90 one-way ticket. Another Salt Lake City resident, John A. Tomlinson, accompanied Redman on the flight. Outfitted with coveralls, leather helmets, goggles, and parachutes, they climbed into the open compartment atop a bag of mail on a Douglas M-2 biplane behind pilot Charles N. "Jimmy" James. They received box lunches and portable toilet facilities—a tin can. The aircraft took off at 9:30 am. and after a short stop at Las Vegas arrived by 5:30 p.m. at Los Angeles. That same day. May 23, the first commercial air passengers from Los Angeles arrived in Salt Lake City—A. B. Nault and P. Charles Kerr, both prosperous Los Angeles businessmen.
Regularly scheduled passenger service grew rapidly. By the end of 1926 Western Air Express had carried 209 passengers at a profit of $1,029. Included among them was the first woman passenger, Maude Campbell of Salt Lake City, who flew about two weeks after Redman's May 23 flight. Other airlines operating throughout the region expanded into passenger service after Western's experiment By the end of the decade Varney Transport routinely flew passengers into Portland and Seattle, connecting from Boeing .\ir Transport which had the San Francisco to Chicago air routes. Pacific Air Transport, National Park Airways, and several other smaller companies operated passenger service regularly through the Salt Lake City hub.
While commercial aviation was growing in the West, the military perceived the advantages of operating through Utah for its transcontinental aerial operations. As early as 1922 the Air Service located a detachment at Fort Douglas on the east side of Salt Lake City. It erected a hangar on the post and used the parade grounds as a flying field for its three aircraft. The military used Salt Lake City as a stopover for virtually every flight over the northern Rockies before 1940.
More important, in 1934 the Army Air Corps become involved intimately in aviation in northern Utah. President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided that government mail contracts with the commercial airlines, initiated by his Republican predecessor's postmaster general, had been arranged through collusion and fraud and therefore warranted immediate cancellation. After reviewing options, on February 9 FDR directed Maj. Gen. Benjamin D. Foulois's tiny and antiquated Army Air Corps to begin domestic airmail operations effective February 19 until the contract issue could be resolved.
Anxious to demonstrate the effectiveness of his Air Corps, Foulois immediately began organizing for this mission. He and his chief advisors developed a plan that called for Brig. Gen. Oscar Westover, assistant chief of the Air Corps, to oversee the operation from Washington, D.C, with three commanders to manage operations in eastern, central, and western zones. Since Air Corps resources were insufficient to continue the extensive airmail service provided by the commercial carriers, the Air Corps planned to operate only fourteen of the twenty-six routes previously flown by contract carriers and to accept a corresponding degradation in the efficiency of the mail service.
Lt Col. Henry H. "Hap" Arnold was playing golf with Maj. Carl A. Spaatz on February 10, 1934, near March Field, California, when he was summoned to his office and learned that he was to command the western sector of the airmail route from a hub of operations in Salt Lake City. Arnold moved quickly to carry out his orders. On February 12 he dispatched thirteen aircraft, some of them transports but most P-26 single-seat fighters, to Salt Lake City along with mechanics and a small headquarters contingent Capt Ira C. Faker's Pursuit Group took the Salt Lake City-Los Angeles routes and Maj. Clarence Tinker, with his 2d Bombardment Group, handled the Salt Lake City-San Francisco runs. In all, fifty-seven pilots operated within the western zone, most of them out of Salt Lake City.
Arnold appointed Maj. Charles B. Oldfield as regional commander and gave him authority to schedule and control the movement of all aircraft on the routes from Salt Lake City to their first control stop. When the pilots landed at their first destination out of Salt Lake City, control then passed to one of four route commanders, depending upon the final destination. Oldfield, a fine manager, had matters well in hand by the time Arnold arrived in Salt Lake City from March Field, California, three days later. Arnold established his headquarters at the Newhouse Hotel in the city's central business district
Although Arnold thought his flyers could handle the airmail operation indefinitely, the Air Corps operated out of Salt Lake City only for about four months. Because of several disastrous accidents, poor efficiency, and bad publicity it was relieved of airmail responsibilities. Arnold had stressed upon undertaking the airmail operation that safety was the principal factor governing the mission. When challenged by reporters that Air Corps pilots were inferior to the commercial fliers, he replied that about 90 percent of the civilian airmail pilots had received their training in the Air Corps. In a letter to Lt Gen. Malin Craig, the army assistant chief of staff, Arnold had identified the safety issue as critical and predicted that the press expected the Army to fail:
The press was right Reporters did not have to wait long for disaster to strike. Very few Air Corps airplanes were equipped with either lights or navigational instruments. Only a small number of pilots had night flying experience and even fewer knew anything about instrument flying. These deficiencies, coupled with harsh winter weather conditions, created incredible problems in the West On the very first day of the operation two fatal crashes occurred in the western zone. During the remainder of the operation, through June 1, 1934, the Army Air Corps nationwide suffered sixty-six crashes and twelve deaths.
Except for the tragic loss of life the airmail episode proved advantageous to the Army Air Corps. It brought to the attention of Congress the inadequacies of the aerial defense forces. Its concern prompted a review of the organization by a special committee appointed by Secretary of War George H. Dern, a former governor of Utah, during the summer of 1934. Dern instructed the Baker Board to carry out "a constructive study and report upon the operations of the Army Air Corps and the adequacy and efficiency of its technical flying equipment and training for the performance of its mission in peace and war." In a little more than two months the review board compiled 4,283 pages of testimony. Among its many significant recommendations the Baker Board called for the establishment of an airdrome board to determine requirements, select sites, and establish Army Air Corps bases throughout the United States. These efforts prompted the War Department and the Army Air Corps to think in terms of base expansion, and Hap Arnold's experiences in the Rocky Mountain West impelled him and his associates to consider a location on the Wasatch Front as a site for a major airdrome. This ultimately led to the establishment of Hill Field near Ogden in 1940.
None of these developments, private or military, would have been possible, however, without the commitment to aviation of some of the region's leading citizens. A Deseret News reporter commented in 1927:
The result was apparent in 1928 when Salt Lake City was judged the second most important airmail aviation center in the nation behind Chicago, a distinction the city held until World War II.
Robert H. Hinckley commented on this in 1942 when he described what he called " air- conditioning"—" conditioning people to the air; just as the people of the South Sea Islands are conditioned to the water, that other strange element to man." He wrote, "to be air-conditioned means to be in a state of readiness to do something about aviation and not just feel strongly about it." This concept firmly entrenched itself in the West during the 1930s because of aviation's ability to link areas separated by an almost desolate environment As only one gauge of aviation's impact, the number of pilots licensed in Utah rose from 76 in 1938 to 230 in 1940. The hosting of a well-attended Intermountain women's aviation conference in Salt Lake City in May 1939 was another example of this phenomenon. Finally, regional support of an initiative by Hinckley and Dean Brimhall, by this time director and assistant, respectively, of the federal Civil Aeronautics Administration, for a college-level pilot training program demonstrated further interest.
The years between 1910 and 1940 constituted the formative period of aviation in the West During this time Utah, particularly Salt Lake City, established itself as a crossroads of air routes just as it had been a crossroads for land and rail transport for nearly a century. This condition resulted from both location and circumstances and because several Utahns exploited opportunities to establish permanent facilities in the state, charter commercial aviation companies, and make the most of military requirements in this area. After World War II the air hub for the West shifted to Denver, Colorado, but by 1940 the region was already firmly incorporated into the burgeoning American aviation industry, a development that has continued. Aviation in the West contributed to economic growth, provided good access to other cities and thereby a firm linkage to the mainstream of American society, and established a basis for attracting additional business and industry to the region.
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