Neither Snow, Nor Rain, Nor Plane Crash...

By Dan Hagen

These days, we’re abandoning post offices and mail deliveries, but people once risked and lost their lives just to see that the mail got through.

At 5:55 p.m. on Sept. 16, 1926, Charles Lindbergh took off from Lambert Field in St. Louis for his airmail run to Springfield and Peoria. Night fell when he was 25 miles northeast of Peoria, and what had been a light haze became a low fog that completely masked the ground. Too late, the Lone Eagle learned he could not land.

‘Lindbergh maintained his course until 7:15, at which time he saw several patches of light atop the dark, heavy blanket of fog,” wrote A. Scott Berg. They were the glows of towns and searchlights directed by worried ground crews, but couldn’t help Lindbergh.

“At 8:20 his engine quit, and he cut into his reserve tank, which held another 20 minutes of fuel. When that was exhausted, Lindbergh headed toward open country, nosing his plane up. “At 5,000 feet,’ he wrote, ‘the engine sputtered and died. I stepped up on the cowling and out over the right side of the cockpit, pulling the ripcord after about a 100-foot fall.’

Lindbergh left the mail in the plane, figuring it would survive the crash since the fuel tanks were dry. Then, parachuting down toward the fog, he heard the sound of his airplane engine starting.

“Apparently, when the ship nosed down, residual gasoline drained into the carburetor,” Berg wrote. “Lindbergh dropped into the fog — 1,000 feet into nothingness. He crossed his legs to keep from hooking a branch or wire, and he guarded his face with his hands, and waited.”

Lindbergh landed safely in a tall cornfield, becoming the only person in the U.S. known to have had his life saved by skydiving three times running.

Although his plane was smashed into a ball, the mailbags survived, and were taken along to the Ottawa, IL, post office in time to catch the 3:30 a.m. train to Chicago.
Source: ‘Lindbergh’ by A. Scott Berg