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Monday, October 6, 2014

Gun Toting Pilots

On a recommendation from Comrade Misfit I'm reading Fate is the Hunter. Along about page 76 I encounter this:
"For example, we were suddenly authorized to carry our mail guns in our flight kits instead of strapping them, sheriff-wise to our belts."
A 'mail gun'? What the heck is a mail gun? Is it a gun-gun, or is it some kind of ticket puncher device, like a nail gun, that is used to, I dunno, punch the mail-bags? I go a-Googling, but I must not be holding my mouth right because I come up with bumpkis. So I asked the instigator, and she replied:
"Those who transported mail were once required to be armed. The airmail pilots in the `20s in their mail planes all carried guns. The airline routes in the `30s were all mail routes (it was the fees from the Post Office that kept the airlines from going broke), so the pilots were required to carry guns. TWA bought enough guns to have a standard-issue gun for that airline in 1931.

"I'm not sure when the requirement was ended."
So this business of airline pilots carrying guns is not new. And the internet doesn't know everything.

2 comments:

Comrade Misfit said...

Go most of the way down this article and you'll see this photo of a hot-weather airline pilot with his .38 mail gun.

Note that he's not carrying any extra cartridges. I'd be somewhat less than astonished to learn that the revolver wasn't loaded.

Ole Phat Stu said...

When flying a small single-engined plane multi-hop across the Atlantic, you are required to carry a gun in case you go down in Canada or Greenland etc (and get attacked by bears?).

Been there, done that.