MUSCATINE COUNTY IOWA HISTORY

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Perry Nelson, Pioneer Air Mail Pilot
By William H. Nelson

Transcribed by Elizabeth Casillas, April 7, 2015

    In early December, 1929, Will Rogers ended his day’s syndicated column with the following: “The morning paper states, ‘Another mail pilot found crushed on a hillside.’ Well, he might have been just another pilot to that newspaper, but he was more than that to me. This same boy Nelson, and right out of the same graveyard of aviators. Bellefonte, Pa., tried to get me through those mountains to New York one stormy night. He set he and I down that night in a bare spot no large than a film actress’ living room in my first forced landing, and without a scratch. So you will pardon me if I look on him as a litte…

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Pictured: Perry Nelson 1903-1929, Courtesy of William Nelson. Perry Nelson, son of Ashton T. and Lena Nelson, was a pioneer air mail pilot.

…more than ‘just another pilot.’ He was my first hero. Yours Will Rogers.’

     Thomas Perry Nelson was born in Wilton Junction on February 2, 1903 to A. T. and Lena R. Nelson. From the time he could read, his thoughts and spare time were centered on his desire to fly. His first flight with a barnstorming pilot at the West Liberty Fair in 1919 was the clincher.

     During high school days he built a propeller-driven go-getter – a light chassis with a rear-mounted motorcycle engine turning a propeller he had built in his Dad’s workshop. The prop was modeled after one he retrived from a crashed plane. He caused quite a stir testing his wind buggy on dirt roads near town. He was an all-around athlete, playing varsity basketball four years. He graduated from Wilton High in the Class of 1921.

     Unbeknown to his folks, he left school at Cornell College in mid-October that year and went to Davenport to enlist in the then Army Air Corps. On a weekend leave he came home to “inform” the family. He went to Brooks Field at San Antonio, Texas, for basic. Through his persistence he received an appointment as an Air Cadet. He was in the class with Chas. A. Lindberg and Phil R. Love. During advanced training at nearby Kelly Field a plane-starting accident prevented his graduating with his class. Their instructor at Kelly, Col. Bill Winston, rated Nelson the best of several thousand student pilots he had trained in an article that appeared in Liberty Magazine.

     Lindberg, through his father, the Minnesota Senator, had met Col. Robertson, who was forming the first St. Louis-Chicago Air Mail Route. Lindberg recruited two buddies, Perry Nelson and Phil Love, as pilots. They joined Robertson Aircraft Corp. in early 1926. The first flight was made in 3 Liberty-powered DeHavilland (DH-4) craft which had been World War I surplus attack bomber, observation…

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Picture: Air Mail Service at Wilton Honors Nelson – Courtesy of William Nelson
    Air Mail pick up was made at Wilton Junction, Iowa, on May 19, 1938, to honor air mail pilot Perry Nelson who was killed in a plane crash while carrying the mail.
    Left to right: Wilton Asst. Postmaster George Doran, Wilton postal worker, George Kook, Wilton Postmistress Olive Burrows, Lena Nelson, mother of Perry, Air Mail Pilot Curtis Hills, Jr. – Peterson of Sunbury, Irving Lenker and Hilbert A Stucker (Wilton rural carriers), Moscow Postmaster House, Tipton Postmaster Belgrade, Durant Postmaster Cecil Langmann, Sunbury Postmaster Peterson.

…planes. They left old Anglum (St. Louis) Airfield on April 15, 1926, flying in formation. At Springfield, Nelson peeled off and delivered that city’s first air mail. City and State officials presented him with a bronze commemorative medal. Phil Love did the same thing at Peoria where the postmaster greeted him. Lindberg’s arrival at Roosevelt Field at Maywood was greeted only by several base machinists. Lindberg’s gala reception was the butt of many jokes between the three.

    The first months of the St. Louis-Chicago run were strictly a seat-of-the-pants flying operation. There were no radios – no beacon lights – no navigational aids other than visible local landmarks. Flights were planned for daylight arrivals, though in winter it often became dark before they reached home base. Early in 1927 the first high-intensity rotating beacons were installed which were lighted only until the last flight came in. They seldom flew higher than 1,000 feet.

    While based in Chicago, Nelson met millionaire sportsman Clarence Yackey. With several mechanics, engineers and Yackey’s backing, they developed a racing plane to enter in the National Air Races. Nelson could not get off to race the plane. He had been its test pilot and the plane placed in the event. Through future years his interest in small, fast planes resulted in his building several ships which were successfully flown and later sold to race pilots.

    Lindberg made plans for his famous first trans-Atlantic flight while flying the mail. Soon after he left the line in early 1927, both Love and Nelson resigned. This company later became the basis of American Airlines.

    Nelson joined National Air Transport in May, 1927. While flying the Kansas City-Moline-Chicago run he had his first opportunity to fly over the home town. That fall he was given what pilots considered the top assignment of the day – the Cleveland-New York “graveyard”…

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…run. N.A.T. later became a part of what is now United Air Lines.

    When Lindy returned from Paris, the Senator arranged to have Nelson and Love meet him for his triumphant welcomes in New York and Washington. A few weeks later they flew a “commemorative” formation flight from Chicago to St. Louis and back.

    In addition to his mail route duties, Nelson served as a Test Pilot for N.A.T. at New Brunswick. When the Commerce Dept. started developing the first radio range beacon system, Nelson did most of the test flying. This opened the way for “Blind” flying on the commercial routes. He also tested the first two-way, plane-to-ground radio-telephone facilities for AT&T.

    On Sept. 24, 1927, he drew the assignment of flying the first “Air Express Special.” The New York Herald-Tribune chartered an N.A.T. plane to fly a special edition reporting the results of the Tunney-Dempsey Championship fight to Chicago. Nelson took off from Hadley at New Brunswick at midnight with the heaviest load (927 pounds) ever carried commercially to that date. Fueling at Bellefont and Cleveland, he arrived in Chicago at 9:06 a.m. Twenty minutes later news hawks in the Loop were offering pictures of the knockout blow. (Wirephoto had not yet been invented!) The publicity developed by this flight firmly established the Air Express industry.

    In April, 1928, he married Helen Wotton of Plainfield, N.J. They had one son, Thomas P. Jr., born in February, 1929.

    In the early morning hours of Dec. 2, 1929, Nelson was reported missing on a mail flight from New York to Cleveland. One of the most extensive flying searches in history was formed which included Col. Lindberg and Phil Love, as well as N.A. T. officials and fellow pilots. Three days later his plane and his body, shrouded in his partly opened parachute, were found by hunters in the hills near Chagrin Falls, Ohio. He was on course – about 15 minutes from his destination. The cockpit clock showed he was on time, as usual. The mail bags containing several million dollars in securities of a Philadelphia bank were intact. The Mail went Through!

    Perry was buried in Plainfield with hero’s honors. Col. Lindberg, then Lt. Jimmy Doolittle and Eddie Stinson joined two air mail buddied flying formation over the route to the cemetery, dropping flower petals. A squadron of Air Corps planes circled his burial place until dusk. The grave is marked by a simple marble slab inscribed: “Nor rain, nor sleet, nor dark of night, shall stop this pilot in his flight.”

    His son, Tom, is buried at his side – victim of a 1950 air crash while a student in aircraft engineering at Lehigh U. in Bethlehem, Pa. – a city his Dad flew over many times on the mail route.

    His home town and the post office department honored Perry Nelson on May 19, 1938, when a commemorative Air Mail pick up flight landed in a pasture north of Wilton. Postmaster Olive Burrows and Mother Nelson greeted pilot Curtis Hills, Jr. of Davenport, who flew a plane similar to early day open cockpit mail planes. George Cook loaded on board a mail bag containing several thousand letters bearing a special Memorial Cachet honoring Perry.

    He was a perfectionist…always striving to do the best in everything he undertook. He was a “pilot’s pilot” as evidenced by the tribute paid him by his co-workers and peers who had bestowed upon him the…

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…title, “King of Airmail Pilots.” He was fun-loving, yet serious. Many called him fearless, though a clear-headed, methodical evaluation of possible results always preceded his actions…be it a teenaged dive from the “Plug” track bridge into Mud Creek during a spring flood – or mature flights into the wild blue yonder. He was a great guy and a real brother. So move over Will Rogers, if you please, because he was my first hero, also.