Officials from the United States Post Office Department, the predecessor to the United States Postal Service, drove the load of mail back to D.C., and unceremoniously put it on a train to New York. Realizing his mistake, he landed in a soft field in Waldorf, Maryland, damaging his propeller. With only a map laid across his lap to guide him on his northbound journey, Boyle turned southeast shortly after takeoff. The flight, however, never made it to the City of Brotherly Love. ![]() The president dropped a letter in Boyle’s sack, and the pilot took off for his journey from Washington to New York, with plans to stop in Philadelphia for delivery and refueling. The two men chatted for a few minutes, Wilson in a three-piece suit and bowler hat, Boyle in his leather flying cap, a cigarette in his mouth. As the crowd in Potomac Park buzzed with excitement, President Woodrow Wilson stood with the pilot, Second Lieutenant George Leroy Boyle. On a gloomy Wednesday morning, thousands of spectators gathered in Washington, D.C., to witness what would be the world’s first regularly scheduled airmail service. ![]() ![]() While their peers carried bombs across the Atlantic, these men carried the mail. Though they worked in the skies above East Coast cities, far from the carnage of World War I, their task was life-threatening, and it was as crucial to the nation’s psyche as any conflict fought on foreign soil. On May 15, 1918, as hundreds of thousands of American troops fought from the trenches of Western Europe, a small number of U.S.
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