|
07.21.2004
1928. Speedy delivery
The men gathered in a thick fog at an airfield in Charlestown early one summer morning in 1928. Two biplanes and a delivery truck were parked in the misty shroud. Time was of the essence. The fog was too thick for the planes to take off. Their mission was in danger.
It was July 15, 1928. The men had gotten up as early as 4 a.m., preparing for a 12-minute flight that could carry them -- and The Providence Journal -- into history. Their destination was Block Island.
Around 7 a.m., one of the two pilots phoned the weather bureau on Block Island. Visibility was zero. Flying was out of the question.
Around 7:30, pilot Douglass Harris went up for a five-minute flight for a look around. He disappeared into the dense clouds. Five minutes passed. No sign of Harris. Ten minutes passed. Still, no Harris.
Harris and fellow pilot Robert A. Kamm, in a second plane, had been hired to fly The Providence Sunday Journal to Block Island. If Harris returned and the weather cleared, The Journal would become the first newspaper delivered by airplane to the island.
But, with the fog getting thicker and Harris still missing after 20 minutes, The Journal's leap into history was in doubt.
Around 8 a.m., some 25 minutes after taking off, Harris returned to the Charlestown field, explaining he had been lost in the fog.
The Journal's circulation director devised a backup plan: If the planes could not get off the ground, the delivery truck would speed to New London, to catch the Block Island boat that sailed from there. A decision would have to be made at 8:30 a.m.
When the appointed time arrived, the Charlestown field was still shrouded. They called the weather bureau on Block Island again. The northern end of the island was still blanketed, but a strong breeze was beginning to clear the southern end. In some spots, visibility was three miles.
Harris and Kamm decided to try. As several hundred Sunday papers were loaded onto their planes, they discussed the possibility of having to turn around midway and try to find their way back without landmarks, using only a compass -- and luck.
By the time the plane engines were warmed up and the papers were loaded, it was 9:45 a.m. The planes climbed into the sky, circling the field before heading out to sea.
Within a minute, the shoreline vanished into the mist. The sea could barely be made out. The fog hid everything except the Journal's other plane.
After a few minutes, the dark shape of the northern end of Block Island could be made out. Then the southern half of the island exploded in beautiful, clear sunshine.
The Providence Sunday Journal touched down at 9:57 a.m. About a minute later, Clifton W. Arnold, of Fair Oaks Farm, Lime Rock, who was attending an American Legion convention on the island, bought the first six copies of airplane-delivered Journals.
The Journal continued to make regular delivery to Block Island by air that summer, shaving as many as seven hours off the time it would take to deliver the paper by boat.
When improved passenger ferries could make the crossing in less than an hour, the paper was back to traveling to Block Island by boat.
| 
