Air Mail 100

On September 8, 1920, a DH-4 biplane lifted off in the early morning from a grass air strip east of New York City on Long Island, beginning a grand experiment to carry mail from the East Coast to the West in a series of hops across New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio and points west. Regional air mail service had commenced two years earlier linking New York and Washington, D.C. By 1919, 400 HP deHavillands where regularly carrying mail sacks between Omaha and Chicago, but the September flight that now pointed its nose towards the distant Hudson would link an entire continent, but not without financial cost and human sacrifice. Those first pilots called themselves "The Suicide Club."

Air Mail 100 will commemorate that historic event, which led within the decade to the commencement of commercial passenger air service. With the encouragement of several of the nation's leading general aviation organizations, we have organized a series of volunteer flights linking the sixteen original transfer points, only seven of which continue today as active airports. The other nine have been "lost" to sands of progress, hidden under golf courses, urban shopping centers, hospital parking lots, and poetically, wind-swept grass fields again.