Turbulent Times

[mgc1961]

The Flagship News (American Airlines employee newspaper) included in it's early editions the events at respective stations across the system. These station reports usually included a mix of personal and professional activities. However, based on my reading thusfar, it appears the updates often leaned toward the personal. The following four (4) paragraphs constitute the Fort Worth maintenance base report from the month that will live in infamy, December, 1941:

Our Ft. Worth newshawk has again returned with the choicest of news tid-bits.

Bowling is our current sporting event. Each department is represented by a team and by groans and creaking joints. W. W. Kessler is our present champion. The old hangar is the amusement center. Ping Pong and volley ball are replacing baseball and "Moon" tournaments.

We are glad to see Mrs C. H. Wilcox out again after her serious illness.

It was wedding bells on November 1 for Percy Reily and Miss Doris Loren. We all join in wishing them good luck and happiness.

Flash! House warming for "Buck" Skinner's new chicken house and duck pond on his "lower forty." "Buck" was presented a pedigree rooster by "Arkey" Bell and five white hens by Sam Hayes. "Wimpy" Harston gave ducks and an attractive tin water bucket was added by Hugh Gallemore and Earl Brewster.

As the war ramped up over the next two years, domestic airlines became involved in the effort to ship supplies to the various war fronts. Sometimes, those fronts required an air route were none had previously existed.

Here are portions of an article in the December 1943 edition of Flagship News which details some of the work carried out by American Airlines personnel who were not in uniform. The article was titled American Airlines Flies World Routes for ATC (Air Transport Command) Some chronological and space editing was done by yours truly:

American Airlines made its first north Atlantic flight on October 8, 1942. On December 16, a five-man crew left La Guardia Field on the company's first survey flight across the south Atlantic and to India.

The most spectacular of all our operations was our Alaska assignment. In the summer of 1942, when invasion by Japan was an imminent possibility, American Airlines joined the commercial airlines in flying forty converted DC-3's day and night to and from that theatre of war. Our crews manned twelve (12) of those forty planes. Goods which experts consider legitimate air cargo - ammunition, medicine, food and machinery parts - were carried to Nome and Fairbanks and the Aleutians. We also carried goods which the experts said would never move by air were flown in - barrels and barrels of gasoline and oil, load after load of lumber and nails. Into the stripped-down cabins of the "work horse of the air" went supplies for the Alcan Highway, then being rushed to completion. Troops in full battle armor were flown to defend those lonely arctic outposts - and coffins to bury them in should the battle go against them. Back at Edmonton, Alberta, a crew of American Airlines skilled mechanics kept the planes flying, and some of the company's finest pilots made up the two-man crews which flew them.

American Airlines made its first north Atlantic flight on October 8, 1942. On December 16, a five-man crew left La Guardia Field on the company's first survey flight across the south Atlantic and to India.

On April 11, 1943, American Airlines made the first survey flight ever made across the Atlantic from Newfoundland direct to Marrakesh, French Morocco, using a C-54A (a military cargo version of the four-engine DC-4). The crew which made this flight were awarded the Air Medal by the Army.

We are currently operating approximately 150 trans-Atlantic flights a month, and by November 15, 1943 we had chalked up a record total of more than 1000 flights in the first thirteen months of our overseas operation.

In my next post I'll provide interested readers with portions of a story from an AA captain who was awarded an Air Medal for an act of service he provided in the south Atlantic as well as a lesson on old flight navigational methods.