This did convince a lot of people in Congress by 1916, after doing this whole tour thing for a while, to look into it, spend money to look into if an expanded airmail system would work.

They prove $50,000 to do it, which is a lot of money for back in the day.

But then we have a problem.

So the government didn't want to do the experiments

themselves. They wanted a contractor. This is the United States we're talking about. Yeah, of course.

The problem is there's no aviation sector. Really? Sure. There are no companies to do this.

There's no contractors. And I just ran an inflation calculator for 50K from what, you said 1915, right?

Yeah, 1916, but pretty much the same.

So you're looking at like a million and a half. Like that's a chunk of change, but that's not that much money. It's a lot of money for the U.S. government in 1916. True. The U.S.

government really isn't taxing very effectively then. They don't really spend a whole lot.

It's still very much when like federalism

existed. This is before the advent of the income tax. So they dropped it. They dropped the whole

idea. They can't get anybody to do it until 1917. I was approved again. And this time when

nobody else that Ford do it, the U.S. Army Air Corps is like, we'll fucking be the airmail. So

the U.S. airmail system was born on the back

of the United States Air Force. Hell yeah. They take all the letters. They load them into Snoopy's

doghouse, and the flying ace flies once again. There you go. It's important to remember that this is

1917. World War I is still going on. Sure. And it didn't take long for the Postal Service and the Department of War to come up with an agreement.

The post office would just give them the mail and the army would do everything else.

With one small caveat, the U.S. Army would not be giving over their actual pilots.

All of the airmail deliverymen would be student pilots. They're flying the mail for more

experience. I mean, that makes a lot of sense, honestly. Yeah, it 100% does. It gets them dozens of

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