| TRINITY REPORTER | Archivist's Perspective |
Trinity
alumni are trend-setters in many fields. An interesting example from the first
half of the 20th century is James Patrick Murray, Class of 1915, one of the
pilots who pioneered regularly scheduled airmail delivery between New York and
San Francisco in 1920. He later became a highly respected and influential
executive in the aviation industry.
Prepared at the Norwich (Connecticut) Free Academy, James (Red) Murray
entered Trinity in the Class of 1915, but completed his studies in three years,
graduating with a B.S. degree in 1914. As an undergraduate he was a member of
Phi Gamma Delta fraternity and was an outstanding shortstop. In his final year,
Murray was captain of the baseball team and was drafted by the Boston Braves.
Following three years of teaching mathematics and science at a preparatory
school in New Jersey, he volunteered in July 1917 for service with England's
Royal Flying Corps. After receiving his officer's commission as a pilot, Murray
was assigned to train British flyers.
Following the armistice, he flew mail planes from England to the
occupying forces in Germany. In 1920, Murray joined the fledgling U.S. Air Mail
Service, established two years earlier and making scheduled deliveries between
Washington, D.C., New York, Cleveland, and Chicago. He was soon selected as one
of the pilots to undertake the first scheduled roundtrip airmail flight between
New York and San Francisco, which began on September 9,
1920.
On September 10, Murray flew from Omaha to Reno, part of the westbound leg of
the route that took him over the Rocky Mountains. Another pilot completed
delivery of the mail to San Francisco the following day.
The introduction of airmail service following World War I was a revolutionary development that offered the prospect not only of accelerating intercity and intercoastal communication but also of advancing aircraft design and aviation in general. The airplane initially used for trans-Rockies flights was an open-cockpit twin-engine De- Havilland biplane, converted from military use. Carrying 400 pounds of mail, or about 17,000 letters, the De- Havilland could average 80 miles per hour. The first transcontinental flights were made during the daytime only, with stops at Cleveland, Chicago, Omaha, North Platte, Cheyenne, Rock Springs, Salt Lake City, Elko, and Reno. It took three days to fly the mails westbound or eastbound on the 2,600-plus- mile route, and there were occasional delays due to weather. The introduction of larger and more powerful aircraft and the lighting of airfields for night flying gradually reduced flight time.
With Cheyenne as his base, James Murray logged over 7,000 hours of
flying time, principally on the western leg of the transcontinental route,
before ending his career as an airmail pilot in 1928 to become the Washington
representative for Boeing Aircraft. Appointed a Boeing vice president in 1935,
Murray is credited with convincing the U.S. Army Air Corps in the late 1930s
not to abandon support for continued development of the B-17 Flying Fortress
because of initial test trouble. The B-17 was the long-range bomber that
became a mainstay of America's airborne might in World War II. Murray remained
with Boeing until his retirement in 1963 and died in 1972.
-- Peter Knapp '65