The Watchman And Southron

INDUSTRY
BLAZES GLOWING PATH
FOR PILOTS OF NIGHT AIR MAIL
The lights of steel mills, coal mines and oil fields help blaze a trail through the dark for the
night air mail pilot between New York and Chicago, says Wesley L. Smith (inset), long a pilot on
the New York-Cleveland run. Above is the artist's conception of the huge panorama of industry as
seen from the sky by night.
New York, Nov.--The fires of industry light the way across half a
continent for the night air mail.
If every aerial beacon between
New York and Chicago were turned
out tonight, the pilots of the dark
still could find their way above the
flaming stacks
of Pennsylvania
steel mills, across the coal and oil
fields, along Lake Erie's shore and
over Indiana to the gigantic crescent which is Chicago from the air
by night.
On an industrial map of the United
States such towns as Allentown,
Shamokin, Brookville and South
Bend are obscure and lifeless dots,
identified more or less vaguely with
steel or coal or oil or commerce.
Put to the night air mail pilot
these communities and many more
become landmarks in the dark:
distinctness each reflecting a character
of its own even to the light it diffuses into the heavens.
Wesley L. Smith, senior pilot of
the New York-Cleveland leg of the
air mail service under federal operation, tells how industry blazes
the trail for the night fliers who
take off from New York after dusk
to lay on Chicago breakfast tables
letters mailed, the night before, a
thousand miles away.
"The first thing we look for, flying
at night, after leaving
New
York and its brightly-lighted environs behind, is the steel country,"
Smith says.
"The furnaces of Allentown and Bethlehem in eastern
Pennsylvania are suffused in a glow
of reddish light that makes them
easy to identify.
"From them we jump to the
hard coal region, which lies in a
vast area from Hazelton through
Shenandoah to Shamokin in east
central Pennsylvania. Collieries
and towns in abundance lighted up
all night, give the region the appearance of an immense half
moon."
Central Pennsylvania is a black
area, for although it has many industries, few of them are in operation through the night.
"But beyond Bellefonte, Pa., we
come to more lights, scattered and
irregular, but definite enough to
look from the sky like a section
of the milky way taken down to earth. These are the lights of the
soft coal mines, and they stretch
straight from Snow Shoe to Du
Bois, Pa.
"Now the plane is over the oil
country, and here are lights of
still another sort. Population is
more scant and lights are even
more scattered, for there are no
large cities. But from Brookville
to Kennerdell, Pa., the oil wells
show up from the night sky, for
almost every one has an open gas
flame which shines like a torch."
Just across the Pennsylvania-
Ohio line the night pilot comes
upon the line of light which
stretches from Pittsburgh northwest through Youngstown, Ohio,
to Cleveland.
"Mills, ovens and blast furnaces,
all aglow, make it a simple task
to find this line and to follow it
into Cleveland."
Lake Erie by night, like others
of the Great Lakes, is identified
from the sky as a huge pool of
blackness. Smith relates.
But the flier sees below him
the rim of lights along the shore,
with scattered dots of light to the
south and westward from Cleveland he follows this line along the
lee of the lake. Now there are
more cities. Toledo appears to
the north as Lake Erie is left behind and the plane noses westward until South Bend appears,
then Gary with more steel mills
and blast furnaces.
Chicago and its metropolitan
area, banked around the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan,
loom from the air at night like a
great crescent. The pilot takes the
outer edge of the crescent, follows
it around the western rim, and
comes down at the air mail field
in Maywood with dawn
still
somewhere behind him.