Rum-Runners of the Air
Who were the men flying the airplanes carrying illegal alcohol during Prohibition? Howard Mingos profiled some of them for a 1924 New York Times Magazine article... all anonymously, of course.
Many or even most had previously served in World War I, which ended in November 1918:
All are young; many had their first go at life during the last days of the war and have never recovered from the disappointment of the armistice which kept them from getting over enemy lines. And so, wherever there is a boundary, they have come to look upon it as an objective.
The federal government proved relatively powerless to stop this runaround from the skies:
The Coast Guard which is empowered to enforce the prohibition laws has no aircraft. The navy with its depleted forces has all it can do on routine work. The Army Air Service has not been ordered to patrol for prohibition. And the dry forces have not yet taken to the air.
Even if those dry forces had not yet taken to the air, how would a pilot avoid detection of his contraband cargo once his flight landed back on the ground? This story details one pilot's particularly inventive excuse:
He was scheduled to make a trip one night, and, in fact, was crossing the border with the cargo when his gasoline supply gave out. Switching on his emergency tank he found that it had been plugged up, a deliberate attempt to bring him down. As he landed in the only available field thereabout, a village constable ran up to him and exclaimed: "I bin tipped off that you're a bootlegger, and you gotta come with me!"
"Not yet," replied the pilot. "Do you see that green-painted tail there? Well, that means that this is a mail plane, and if you so much as come too close to this machine I'll have you arrested for obstructing the mails. Get me some gasoline."
It worked.
Back in 2012, when I attended a journalism conference in Georgia, all the conference attendees were bestowed a gift bag of authentic Georgia goodies including salad dressing. When going through the airport security line for my return flight, my bag set off the alarm because the salad dressing exceeded the 3.4-ounce maximum for a "liquid."
Apparently, sneaking in illegal alcohol on a plane back in 1924 was a relatively easy job. Getting legal salad dressing on a plane in the post-9/11 era? Not so much.
Rum-Runners of the Air
Published: Sunday, January 20, 1924