The Airway to Everywhere: A History of All American Aviation, 1937–1953 by W. David Lewis, William F. Trimble

Abstract

1076 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE particularly on the incorporation of new aviation technology into the army, development of radio navigation aids, and the training and establishment of a technologically oriented “new” military service. His discussion of the airmail crisis of 1934 is the best short account that has yet appeared, and is admirably annotated by reference to key documents. The book is not without some small flaws. Maurer has many excellent sections on various war games and exercises but very little to say about how these subsequently influenced strategic and tactical thought and operational planning. Doctrine is likewise mentioned only in passing. The interest of airmen in lessons from foreign wars (notably the war in Spain and the Sino-Japanese war) is not men­ tioned, even though a substantial body of documentation exists that indicates such information was of acute interest to military planners. His discussion of air racing fails to indicate the very real importance that racer aircraft had for future design developments; they were (to use a modern term) the “technology demonstrators” or the “X-series” of their day. Finally, I quibble with his implied criticism of F. Trubee Davison, President Hoover’s assistant secretary of war (for air) be­ cause he was disliked by both partisan airmen and dedicated ground officers. Davison was somewhat like James Forrestal after 1945: the fact that he came under criticism from various camps should be taken as evidence that he was doing his job in a remarkably fair and evenhanded way. But all of these are very small criticisms indeed. Maurer has written a superb book, one that is an ideal companion to the very few other scholarly works on interwar aviation. It is one that will remain an important resource for years to come. Richard P. Hallion Dr. Hallion is on the staff of the Advanced Projects Office, Air Force Systems Command, Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland. He is a former curator at the National Air and Space Museum and the author of eleven books and monographs in the field of aviation history. The Airway to Everywhere: A History ofAll American Aviation, 1937—1953. By W. David Lewis and William F. Trimble. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988. Pp. ix + 230; illustrations, notes, appen­ dix, bibliography, index. $27.95. The title of this book is slightly deceptive, suggesting that the subject is a large international airline. The authors did not intend to deceive, but I like book titles to give me an idea of the subject material. Lytle S. Adams, inventor of the airmail pickup system, may have aspired to see it used all over the world, but it served only a region covering parts of Pennsylvania and West Virginia and a few adjacent TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 1077 points, and lasted only from 1939 to 1949. Its operating airline name, All American Aviation, was also to prove something of an overstate­ ment. Adams’s system was ingenious. Specially equipped airplanes trailed a cable to drop sacks of mail in specially designed containers and simultaneously to pick up mail by a grappling device from a poleand -wire apparatus on the ground. After years of trial and error, Adams succeeded in attracting interest from Richard du Pont, of the prestigious corporation of that name, and the system was put to the test of regular service to the public. On May 12, 1939, All American Aviation started service, using Stinson Reliants, on a meandering air network linking Pittsburgh with selected points in the hinterland. The terrain and weather in that part of the world were forbidding for aviators, but these very same factors deprived many small communities in the Allegheny Mountains and isolated places in the Ohio River Valley region of convenient surface transport. As so often happens, a promising idea did not work out in practice. Theories and experiments are no substitute for day-in, day-out commercial work. The beneficiaries were able to correspond with the big cities in half the time it took them before, but there was a limit to the amount of letter writing they could do; consequently, revenues did not grow too sharply. On the other side of the economic equation, the costs could...