The first two commercial Contract Air Mail (CAM) routes to begin operation in the United States were CAM-6 between Detroit (Dearborn) and Cleveland and CAM-7 between Detroit (Dearborn) and Chicago which were simultaneously inaugurated on February 15, 1926. The contractor for both routes was the Ford Motor Company, operating as Ford Air Transport, using a fleet of six Ford built Stout 2-AT aircraft. Lawrence G. Fritz, later the Vice President for Operations for TWA, was the pilot of the first flight to take off with mail from Ford Airport at Dearborn, on the CAM-6 eastbound leg to Cleveland.[27][28]
On March 19, 1976, the USPS issued a 13-cent First Class commemorative Postage Stamp (Scott #1684) honoring the 50th anniversary of U.S. commercial aviation launched with Contract Air Mail service over these two routes as well as on CAM-5 which was inaugurated next on April 6, 1926, over the 487-mile route between Pasco, Washington, and Elko, Nevada, with an intermediate stop in Boise, Idaho.
Operated by Varney Air Lines (which later became part of United Airlines), the first Eastbound flight over CAM-5 was made successfully using a Laird Swallow biplane piloted by Leon D. Cuddeback. The first Westbound flight that afternoon was much less successful, however, as it was forced 75-miles off course by a storm en route from Elko to Boise before making a forced landing near Jordan Valley, Oregon. The plane and pilot Franklin Rose remained missing for two days until Rose managed to reach a telephone on April 8 after carrying the 98 pounds of mail for many miles on foot and 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.[29][30][31]
On April 15, 1926, the third route to open (CAM-2) began operation with pilot Charles A. Lindbergh at the controls on the first flight. In October 1925, Lindbergh was hired by the Robertson Aircraft Corporation in St. Louis, Missouri, (where he had been working as a flight instructor) to first lay out, and then serve as chief pilot for the newly designated 278-mile CAM-2 to provide service between St. Louis and Chicago (Maywood Field) with two intermediate stops in Springfield and Peoria, Illinois. Operating from Robertson's home base at the Lambert-St. Louis Flying Field in Anglum, Missouri, Lindbergh and three other RAC pilots he selected (Philip R. Love, Thomas P. Nelson and Harlan A. "Bud" Gurney) flew the mail over CAM-2 in a fleet of four modified war surplus de Havilland DH-4 biplanes.[32][33] A little more than a year later Lindbergh was catapulted from being an otherwise obscure 25-year-old Air Mail pilot to virtual instantaneous world fame when he successfully piloted the Ryan NYP single engine monoplane Spirit of St. Louis on the first non-stop flight from New Yorkto Paris in May, 1927.
Elrey Jeppesen, an airmail pilot, began to keep a notebook in 1930 filled with airfield charts, fields where he could land in an emergency, and instructions on how to land safely. Jeppesen also researched and included information about telephone or railroad service near these landing fields. Jeppesen provided copies of his notebook to fellow pilots not, he said, to make money, but "to stay alive."[citation needed] In a decade of service after the conclusion of the war, fatality rates improved from a rough average of 1 per 100,000 miles flown, to 1 per 1.4 million miles flown in 1927.[34]
A total of 34 Contract Air Mail routes would eventually be established in the US between February 15, 1926, and October 25, 1930, however with the so-called "Air Mail Scandal" in 1934 the USPOD cancelled all the contracts on February 9, 1934, which resulted in the suspension of commercial CAM service effective February 19, 1934.[35] Air Mail was flown exclusively by the U.S. Army (as the "Army Air Corps Mail Operation") from February 19 to May 8, 1934, when new temporary contracts with private carriers were put into effect. During this period there were a total of 66 accidents resulting in the deaths of 12 Army pilots including two who were killed on the last AACMO flight on June 6, 1934.
