Rare flown airmail envelope, 6.5 x 3.75, postmarked twice on the front in Chicago, Illinois, on April 15, 1926, at 5:30 AM, to commemorate the “First Flight Inaugurating Contract Air Mail, Chicago-St. Louis-Route,” signed in the upper left corner in black ink, “C. A. Lindbergh, May 1934,” who was one of a team of pilots hired by the Robertson Aircraft Corporation for their new St. Louis-Chicago airmail route. The reverse is postmarked at St. Louis, Missouri, on April 15, 1926, at 10:30 AM. In fine condition. Accompanied by a vintage glossy photo of the Spirit of St. Louis aircraft in its hangar.
In October 1925, Lindbergh was hired by the Robertson Aircraft Corporation (RAC) at the Lambert-St. Louis Flying Field in Anglum, Missouri, (where he had been working as a flight instructor) to first plan and then serve as chief pilot for the newly designated 278-mile Contract Air Mail Route #2 (CAM-2) to provide service between St. Louis and Chicago with two intermediate stops in Springfield and Peoria, Illinois. Lindbergh and three other RAC pilots, Philip R. Love, Thomas P. Nelson, and Harlan A. ‘Bud’ Gurney, flew the mail over CAM-2 in a fleet of four modified war-surplus de Havilland DH-4 biplanes.
On April 13, 1926, Lindbergh executed the United States Post Office Department's Oath of Mail Messengers, and two days later he opened service on the new route. On two occasions, combinations of bad weather, equipment failure, and fuel exhaustion forced him to bail out on night approach to Chicago; both times he reached the ground without serious injury and immediately set about ensuring that his cargo was located and sent on with minimum delay. In mid-February 1927 he left for San Diego, California, to oversee the design and construction of the Spirit of St. Louis.
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