Airmail Pilot Charles H Ames – Lost to the Nittany Mountain range in 1925

By Dale Moore, in partnership with Bellefonte Victorian Charm

In 2008, Donald Dale Jackson, wrote a story for Air and Space Magazine about Bellefonteas Air Mail history. Jackson briefly recounted the disappearance of Pilot Charlie Ames in 1925 and how it put Bellefonte on the nationas front pages. Ames vanished on October 1 en route to Bellefonte from New Jersey on a night when clouds sagged below the Allegheny peaks. Field clerk Gates anxiously checked nearby emergency strips and then stood on the field, listening for an engine that never came. More than a thousand searchers combed the hills east and west of town for the next nine days. Finally, Amesa splintered aircraft and broken body were found near the summit of a mountain a few miles from the Bellefonte field. Longtime residents can still point out the gap in the Allegheny mountains that the courtly, well-liked Ames missed by about 200 feet. Retired newspaper editor Hugh Manchester, at the time of the article, still had the cushion from Amesa cockpit seat with the airplaneas number, 385, on it.

Photograph of airmail pilot Charles Ames. Smithsonian Institution

Manchester said the aviators were part of the life of the town. They stayed at the Brockerhoff Hotel or boarded with local families, played on local baseball teams, and flew exhibitions for the townsfolk. How big of news was Pilot Ames disappearance? The Democratic Watchman in October 1925 said they had dedicated 47,000 words of press to Ames disappearance; a record never before equaled in the history of Bellefonte.

The newspaper coverage started on October 9, 1925 when they reported; aBellefonte is in gloom of her first intimate contact with a tragedy of carrying mail by air at night. Charles H Ames, pilot for two years on the New York to Cleveland route, and one of the most skillful and likable men in the service is probably dead and no one knows where.a

They continued with; aThe Nittany Valley crew that had gone out onto the field to listen for the drone of the motor of the expected ship found the clouds very low. In fact, so alarmingly low that they were measured and found to be only 600 feet high, just a bit below the mountain tops. They could see the Hecla light faintly, but only when the beams shot directly at them.a

Bellefonteas involvement in Airmail began in September 1918 when the first flights used the Thomas Beaver Farm on East Bishop Street, where the Bellefonte Area High School is today. On July 3, 1925 the first night Airmail flights were established in Bellefonte, the only station between New York and Cleveland. Patrons could pay two cents per ounce to have mail included in the flights. A big crowd was present that first night as four planes came and went. Pilot Charles Ames was one of the pilots of those first four night flights. A total of eight pilots were hired. The 8 pilots were separated into two crews who would alternate who flew every other week.

Bellefonte Airmail Hangar via Donald Dale Jackson – AIR & SPACE MAGAZINE | SEPTEMBER 2008

These Airmail pilots would carry no food or water. They were equipped with two flares and a parachute. They only had enough gas to stay in the air for four hours and twenty minutes.

Pennsylvania Governor Pinchot was in Bellefonte during the search for Pilot Ames. Governor Pinchot directed the National Guard be called out for the search. There were many conflicting reports of where the missing pilotas plane had been last seen. Troop L and the Boal troop under the command of Major Hugh Curtin, with a complement of horses, were sent to Clarion to aid in the search. They were joined by companies from Lewistown, Tyrone and Punxsutawney.

On October 16, 1925 the newspaper reported that a day earlier a search party of 24 men and boys formed at Hecla under the direction of L.H. McMullen and Charles Workman. A compact was made between the searchers that any reward money for finding the missing pilot and his plane would be split equally. The group concentrated their search on the second ridge at the Nittany Mountain range at Hecla Gap.

One of the searchers, John Dearmitt, was celebrating his 15th birthday on the day of the search. Dearmitt was the first to spot the wrecked plane. The wrecked plane was so shielded by trees and underbrush that it could not be discerned from the air. Pilot Charles H Ames, son of Mr and Mrs Charles Ames of Hollywood, California, was found dead, still strapped into his pilotas seat. Ames was 35 years old. He had been in the Airmail service since 1920.

CHARLES AMES SEARCH PARTY – INSERT IS JOHN DEARMITT – 15 YEAR OLD WHO FOUND THE PLANE – PICTURE VIA DEMOCRATIC WATCHMAN

I did not find how much of a reward the group received but the Democratic Watchman reported in December 1929 that a $5,000 reward was offered when another pilot crashed and was missing. The search for that pilot, Thomas Nelson, attracted many searchers including Col. Charles Lindbergh. Lindbergh flew the route from New York to Cleveland, including the stop in Bellefonte. A The Pilot was found near Cleveland by another search party.