Ralph F. Johnson: 1920s U S AIR MAIL SERVICE PILOT, 8-PAGE LETTER ABOUT FLYING

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Ralph F. Johnson: 1920s U S AIR MAIL SERVICE PILOT, 8-PAGE LETTER ABOUT FLYING:
$232.99

JOHNSON, Ralph Jacob ‘Johnnie’. U. S. AIR MAIL SERVICE PILOT. Handwritten letter on the stationary of the Moana Hotel at Waikiki Beach, dated 10-29-1953, an eight page letter detailing his experiences as an air mail pilot. Signed ‘Ralph J. Johnson’. Envelope is stapled to letter. A-1363

JOHNSON, Ralph Jacob “Johnnie”. U. S. AIR MAIL SERVICE PILOT. (1895- ). Flight instruction, field manager and 2LT, ASSC at Wilbur Wright Field (1917); flight instructor at Gerstner Field and Carlstrom Field; Orlando Air Service pilot (1919-20); St. Paul Dispatch pilot (1920); U. S. Air Mail Service pilot (1924-27); appointed 8-25-1924 and assigned at Elko NV (1924-25), Omaha NE (1925), Iowa City IA (1925) and Omaha NE (1925-27); he flew a total of 1,492 hours and 140,520 miles during his tenure; flew as a contract air mail pilot for National Air Transport and landed one of their aircraft in a tree at DeKab IL while flying CAM Route 3, Chicago-Dallas (1927); Transport Pilot rating no. 272 (1928) {LICENSE}; he flew with Boeing Air Transport (1928); United Air Lines (1927- ). (1LT, ASSC.).

This is part of my personal collection of over 2500 aviation autographs dating from the very earliest days of aviation. The collection includes many, many air mail pilots, record holders, aviation personalities, military/naval aviators from 1914 through Vietnam, etc. I’ll also be including about 1000 autographs from a group my mother and father collected during the late twenties, thirties and just before WWII. All are in excellent condition unless otherwise noted and all are authentic.

Please ignore any numbers that appear in [ ] brackets. They are my bibliographical reference keys to the source of information regarding this individual.

Please check my response regarding fast and well-packed shipments.

This is part of my personal collection of over 2500 aviation autographs dating from the very earliest days of aviation. The collection includes many, many air mail pilots, record holders, aviation personalities, military/naval aviators from 1914 through Vietnam, etc. All are in excellent condition unless otherwise noted and all are authentic. The items I\'m selling on are from my own collection that I\'ve been selling since my retirement.

All autographs will be mailed by First Class Mail with Delivery Confirmation. Larger items will be mailed by appropriate USPS mailing. Tracking numbers are available on all shipments.I accept PayPal and adhere to their requirements that all PayPal orders be mailed with online and only to confirmed addresses. Autographs are weatherproofed and mailed in heavily reinforced padded envelopes with stiff corrugated board for rotection!

I guarantee all the items in my collection to be authentic. I will pay the return postage on any item that is found not to be authentic. All returns must of course be in the condition in which they were mailed.

DO YOU KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN U. S. AIR MAIL SERVICE PILOTS AND CONTRACT AIR MAIL PILOTS? The U. S. Air Mail Service was formed as a branch of the Post Office Department under the Second Assistant Postmaster General in 1918 and flew air mail until it was disbanded in 1927. There weren\'t very many of them and the lives of many of them were cut short! The movement of air mail was placed in the hands of contractors in the later twenties. They were two distinct groups of aviators and flew under distinctly different circumstances. What makes the pilots of the U.S. Air Mail Service so interesting to us even today, almost ninety years after the service was disbanded? The answer lies in the kind of men they were, in their acceptance of significant risk in every undertaking, and their single-minded focus on a career in aviation. These men were to the children of the twenties what astronauts were to us in the sixties, railroad engineers were to the children of the nineteenth century and explorers were to still earlier generations. Their lives simply reeked of adventure! When pilots signed up for the Air Mail Service they were required to agree to fly fixed routes in literally any kind of weather. And to do it in antiquated open-cockpit planes with only the most basic of instrumentation, which most knew from their Great War flying to be dangerous under the best of circumstances. In the DH, for instance, the placement of fuel tank, pilot and engine assured that the pilot would be incinerated in any significant crash or nose-over. The hot engine drove the fuel tank into the pilot\'s lap and heat and fire exploded the escaping vaporized fuel. Yet applications far, far outnumbered the available jobs and the pilots, day after day, accepted their flight schedules and did everything in their power to deliver the mail to the next air mail field on a fixed schedule. By the time air mail flying was placed in the hands of contractors and Contract Air Mail pilots were licensed by the Post Office Department the things had changed dramatically for pilots. Aircraft were purpose-built for air mail, radio had been introduced, weather was much better understood, pilots were carefully selected and trained and the risks of flying were better understood by the executives managing the air mail routes.