![]() ![]() Say, if you ever want to worry your head, just try to find Iowa City on a dark night with a good snow and fog hanging around. Once or twice I had to go down and mow some trees to find out where I was, but it did not amount to much, except for all that stretch between Des Moines and Iowa City. "I got tangled up in the fog and snow a little bit. Knight then described his historic flight to the reporter. Subtitled, "Pilot Tells of Flight in Dark Through Snow and Fog," the article called Jack Knight the "hero of the coast-to-coast mail flight." The article quotes Knight's reaction to the end of the flight as "I feel fine, except that I need some eats and some sleep." On February 24, 1921, the New York Times ran an article trumpeting Knight's triumphant flight. He saved the first continuous coast-to-coast airmail flight from certain failure. ![]() His mail was relayed onto Cleveland and then New York, finally arriving 33 hours and 20 minutes after leaving San Francisco. When Knight finally landed at Chicago's Checkerboard Field he was greeted by a throng of people who had gathered to see if the daring young pilot would finish his remarkable flight. airmail pilots had a top speed of only 80 miles per hour?įinally, with daybreak, the fog burned off and Lake Michigan was in sight. When the snow stopped, the fog began.that the first airplane used by U.S. Knight refueled and took off again, heading toward Lake Michigan, which would serve as a "landmark" for him to find Chicago. With deep snow preventing a landing at Des Moines, Iowa, Knight put down at an emergency landing site at Iowa City, using the light of railroad flares set out by the field's night watchman. with only a road map to guide him over terrain he had never crossed. Knight, his nose broken in a airplane crash the week before, volunteered to take the flight. Landing at Omaha by the light of burning gasoline drums placed along the runway, Knight found that the relief pilot refused to continue east to Chicago through the storm. About midnight, near Kearney, Nebraska, he encountered snow, but kept on course to his destination. He left North Platte, Nebraska, flying the mail eastward to Omaha well after dark. Knight was originally scheduled to fly just one leg of the first day and night-time transcontinental airmail trip. Jack Knight's airmail odyssey illustrates the determination of those early aerial pioneers. ![]()
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