MOLTRUP, Merle A. "Mope". CONTRACT AIR MAIL PILOT & ENDURANCE RECORD ATTEMPTS!

Description

MOLTRUP, Merle A. "Mope".
CONTRACT AIR MAIL PILOT WHO MADE AN UNSUCCESSFUL ENDURANCE RECORD ATTEMPTS.
(1898- ). Flight instruction by Edward Stinson at Newport News VA (1916); held
F.A.I./Aero Club of America Landplane Cert.
no. 962; at the time of his 1927 application for a Contract Air Mail Pilot’s Certificate he had been a pilot for
Rogers Airport,
Mercury Aviation Co., Mayer Aviation and had logged 3800 hours; Transport Pilot rating no. 929 (1928)
[1677]
; flew air mail for Clifford Ball on CAM route 11 as chief of operations and CAM 11 chief pilot (1927); flew air mail for Colonial Western Airways, Inc. on CAM route 20 (1928); with F. P. Little, two unsuccessful endurance attempts in a Stinson SM-1 Detroiter
Buffalo Evening News
at Buffalo NY (1929)
[520]
; flew air mail for Pitcairn Aviation, Inc. on CAM route 19 (1931).
A "first flight" cover canceled CHARLESTON SC APR 1 1931 and backstamped SAVANNAH GA APR 1 1931. He has signed it Mope Moltrup "Pilot" below the cachet. A-6558
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, more than 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 cockpit 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, 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.
A-6558
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