Today’s post was written by David Langbart, archivist in Research Services at the National Archives at College Park, MD.
This is the tenth, and final, in a series of blog posts.
When we last left our pilots they had returned to North America at Icy Tickle in Labrador. From there, they flew to Hawkes Bay, Pictou Harbor, and returned to U.S. soil with an unscheduled stop at Mere Point, Maine, on September 5. Their journey was not yet over, however. From Mere Point they flew to Boston, New York City, Washington DC, Dayton, Chicago, Omaha, St. Joseph, Muskogee, Dallas, Sweetwater, El Paso, Tucson, San Diego, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Eugene, Vancouver, and finally returned to Seattle on September 28, after flying 25,180 miles in almost 355 hours of actual flight time.
One day after completion of the flight, Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes sent Secretary of War John Weeks the following congratulatory letter. This letter had been ready since September 19 and was sent as soon as was possible on the east coast given the time difference.
Acting Secretary of War Dwight Davis responded with this gracious letter on the same day.
The Department of State wrapped up its work relating to the around-the-world flight by sending the thanks of the United States to those foreign nations that had welcomed or assisted the pilots along the way. In early November, the Department sent the following instruction, or one similar to it, to the the U.S. embassy or legation in Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, China, Japan, Siam (Thailand), Roumania, Persia (Iran), Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria, the U.S. High Commissioner to Turkey, and the U.S. consulates in Bagdad and Beirut. The Department also forwarded a copy of the instruction sent to London to the U.S. consulate in Calcutta and sent a copy of the instruction to Beirut to the U.S. consulate in Aleppo.
The embassy on London implemented that instruction via the following diplomatic note:
On November 25, Arthur Bliss Lane, who had been carrying most of the load in the Department of State for this long-term project, sent the accumulated documents to the Department’s records office noting “I relinquish the file with pleasure.”
Sources: The letters to and from the War Department and the instruction to the embassy in London come from file “811.2300” in the 1910-29 Central Decimal File, RG 59: General Records of the Department of State. A listing of those documents will be found in the Purport List for that file, which is available online, beginning at frame 510.
The note from the embassy in London to the British Foreign Office is in file 879 of the 1924 section of the embassy’s files, part of RG 84: Records of Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State.