Ace of the Pacific Coast mail
by
Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune
Monday,
September 2nd 2019
Three minutes out from the
Medford airport, Robert “Pat” Patterson looked up, hoping to find a break in
the clouds. The fog that smothered his plane had turned into a thrashing rain.
Pilot Rock was gone and the
Siskiyou Mountains were somewhere ahead. He was cautious but fearless. Fellow
pilots called him the ace of the Pacific Coast mail route.
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| Robert B. "Pat" Patterson |
In was 10:33 a.m., Dec. 16,
1926. Patterson’s cargo of airmail was due in Oakland, California, in 3 1/2
hours. Trusting his compass, altimeter,
and skill, he juiced the throttle,
pulled back on the stick, and his Ryan M1 Monoplane wrenched upward, pushing
the 23-year-old aviator into his lightly padded seat.
 |
| Ryan M-1 |
“I knew I was flying low,” he
recalled. “I thought I was over the valley, not flying in the foothills.”
Five minutes into his flight,
there was a thud, a metal shredding sound, and then the plane pulled fiercely
to the left. Another shock, a smashing sound, and the plane brutally jerked to
the right.
As his plane hit a muddy
butte just west of Ashland, he was thinking of his wife and 6-month-old
daughter.
“I’ll be back before
Christmas,” he had told them that morning as he left for the airport.
The plane slid through mud
and snow. The crystal face of Pat’s wristwatch shattered, its hands frozen at
10:35. Robert Patterson passed out, but miraculously, he was still alive.
He had been too young to
serve in World War I, but in the 1920s had enlisted in the Marines. After a
brief shipboard assignment, he transferred to the Marine Aviation Corps.
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| Pacific Air Transport Airmail Route |
In the fall of 1925, Pat
signed on with Pacific Air Transport, a
recently formed airline that had just
won the airmail contract for the Pacific Coast. He flew the Medford-Oakland
segment, known as “the longest hop, over the roughest country of any part of
the 1,000-mile system.” His close friend Arthur Starbuck was his partner.
Almost daily, while one flew north, the other flew south, passing each other
somewhere near Mount Shasta.
 |
| Arthur Starbuck |
 |
| First Airmail Delivery in Oregon, Pat Patterson, pilot |
Airmail came to the Rogue
Valley, Sept. 15, 1926, and almost exactly three months later, Patterson
crashed.
 |
| Pilot Pat Patterson ready for takeoff |
Luckily, a group of woodsmen
were felling trees near the crash site. Patterson had regained consciousness
and his cries for help led rescuers to him. The men fashioned a sled from
nearby wood and pulled the injured pilot to the road, where he was rushed to
Medford’s Sacred Heart Hospital.
X-rays revealed that Pat had
no broken bones and apparently no serious internal injuries. Newspaper
headlines were optimistic, noting that “Patterson Escapes Serious Harm In
Wreck.”
Two days before Christmas, at
11 a.m., a weakened Robert Patterson welcomed reporters to his bedside for the
last time. He told them what he remembered about the crash and said that he
still hoped to be home with his wife and daughter by Christmas.
An infection had slowly crept
throughout his entire body. There was dirt, deep within a badly lacerated leg,
and no way to remove it. By the time it was discovered, it was too late. Six
hours after joking with the press, Robert “Pat” Patterson died.
Two months earlier, Pat had
told a Mail Tribune reporter that, “Flying over the Siskiyous is a very
interesting and beautiful experience.”
On Jan. 2, 1927, following
Patterson’s deathbed request, Arthur Starbuck flew his friend’s remains to the
mountains west of Ashland and scattered Pat’s ashes over the crash site.
Writer Bill Miller is the
author of “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and
stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com or WilliamMMiller.com.
