PILOT STORIES: Chandler, Harry A.

Harry Chandler's airmail personnel file is filled with forced landing reports. Most of these were simply travel delays due to fog and bad weather. On August 5, 1925, he was forced down into an un-harvested oat field near Rupert, Pennsylvania at 11 p.m. to get his bearings in a fog bank. He thought he could find and follow the Susquehanna River to Sunbury Field. During takeoff, he could not quite clear the tree tops off of the river. Tree limbs jammed into the flying and landing wires, causing the aircraft to sharply bank down back into the river. Chandler was rescued and brought to the hospital by men who had witnessed the crash. He escaped with only a fractured nose, a slight fracture above his right eye and minor lacerations. While Chandler's wounds were being attended to, the mail was pulled out of the water and set out to dry before being re-sacked and sent on its way.

On January 28, 1926, Chandler and fellow pilot Shirley J. Short combined on to make a nighttime flying record. They flew the mail from Chicago to New York in 5 hours and 24 minutes, demolishing the old 7 hour, 30 minute record. Short flew the Chicago to Cleveland leg of the trip, and Chandler flew from Cleveland into New York.

Chandler survived his years as an airmail pilot but died shortly after on September 18, 1927 while flying passengers on a sight-seeing trip out of Hadley Field, New Brunswick, New Jersey. Seven aboard, including Chandler, were killed and five more were injured in the crash. He had made five successful flights in the same ship that day. Department of Commerce inspectors concluded that the pilot had heroically tried to stretch his glide in order to get his passengers down safely. As a newspaper reported at the time, "Had Harry Chandler been flying alone on the night transcontinental mail, he would not have hesitated to 'set down' his Douglas mail plane in a forest. His thoughts this time were for the safety of his passengers."