First Flight
Pilot Leon Cuddeback flew the first Eastbound CAM-5 flight, leaving in the early dawn hours from Pasco, Washington. Between 4,000 and 6,000 cheering people sent the pilot off with 207 pounds (94 kg) of mail. Cuddeback flew a Curtiss powered Laird Swallow biplane with a top speed of 90 miles per hour (140 km/h)
The first Westbound flight that afternoon was much less successful, however, as it was forced 75-miles off course by a storm enroute from Elko to Boise before making a forced landing near Jordan Valley, Oregon. The mail plane and its pilot, Franklin Rose, remained missing for two days until pilot Rose finally managed to reach a telephone on April 8 after carrying the 98 pounds (44 kg) of mail for many miles out of the wilderness by foot and later on a horse borrowed from a farmer. The Westbound flown mail finally arrived at the Post Office in Pasco late in the morning of April 9, three days after leaving Elko.
Read more about this topic: Varney Air Lines
Famous quotes containing the word flight:
“One man’s observation is another man’s closed book or flight of fancy.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“When the flight is not high the fall is not heavy.”
—Chinese proverb.