While it was the end of action for a time, it did not end various repercussions. Mr. Geissler in Guatemala continued to warn of the consequences of failure to establish a service to Central America. General William ("Billy") Mitchell, who had advocated an airline to Latin America, accused the War Department of almost criminal negligence in not heeding Patrick’s importuning. The matter became an issue at his famous court-martial late in 1925. At one point the defense called on Raycroft Walsh, who reviewed the Central American Flight, his report, General Patrick’s concurrence, and the lack of concrete action. Meanwhile, Walsh testified, foreign interests had gained a foothold in Central America, threatening the Panama Canal.¹⁸

Walsh was apparently referring to moves in 1925 by Scadta, the German-and-Austrian-controlled airline company, to extend its operations northward from Colombia into the Caribbean and to the United States. Early in 1925 the company’s suave managing director, Dr. Peter Paul von Bauer, visited the United States and wheedled permission for company planes to stop over in the Canal Zone on a flight to survey the proposed extension. A member of the survey flight, he apparently impressed both Air Service personnel and diplomats in Panama when the flight visited the Canal Zone in August 1925. In Central America, Von Bauer and other flight members obtained contracts for service from several governments. After the flight ended in Cuba, Von Bauer continued on to Washington. There in the fall of 1925 he consulted with postal authorities, other executive branch members, and military and naval officials and also paid a courtesy call on President Calvin Coolidge. The Air Service played a kibitzer’s role in the diplomatic game between Washington and Von Bauer, who sought official backing for his plan to extend Scadta’s service to the United States and desired an airmail contract. ¹⁹

Von Bauer had chartered a company in Delaware to conduct the proposed new service, hoping that the United States government would allow the new company to use Scadta resources and personnel, thus stamping it with a Scadta imprint. At a series of interdepartmental meetings to consider approval of Von Bauer’s proposal, the Air Service’s influence was a major factor against acceptance. The War Department representative reported on the meetings as they developed to Major Walsh, Patrick’s liaison. During the meetings both the Post Office and Commerce Departments’ representatives leaned toward Von Bauer. The War Department representative sought to have the conferees advance ways by which the United States, rather than Scadta or some subsidiary in disguise, would have control of air routes in Central America and the Caribbean. In reply to the War Department’s request for specific recommendations as to achieving control, Patrick suggested passage of pending legislation authorizing air missions to be sent to Latin America and administrative action to promote an airline to Central America. For the most part the conferees evaded Patrick’s suggestions, but neither did they approve Von Bauer’s plan. Major Henry H. ("Hap") Arnold also had a part in the Air Service effort against Scadta. Alarmed at the company’s proximity to the Canal, he proposed that a purely American company be organized immediately as a counterweight. He and Major Carl Spaatz drew up a prospectus for such a company, which became a government weapon to counter Von Bauer’s plan. In addition to War Department and Air Service resistance, opposition by United States business elements helped to thwart Scadta.²⁰

The Air Service was not content to let conferences and interdepartmental decisions determine the fate of an airline to Latin America. During 1925 and on into 1926, it planned and shaped a new flight, soon known as the Pan American Good Will Flight. Major Herbert A. Dargue was to command it. Early in the planning Dargue listed the objectives for Patrick; the flight’s strategic, economic, and diplomatic objectives were to counteract foreign influence potentially harmful to the Canal by showing Latin Americans the superiority of United States equipment over foreign, to demonstrate the feasibility of commercial air service along the airways of Latin America, and to convey good will. Assistant Secretary of War for Aeronautics F. Trubee Davison, in a letter of July 1926 to Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg, expressed some of the same objectives but placed a slightly different emphasis. Davison stressed the need for "American-controlled airlines throughout Central and South American countries . . . [necessary] from both a commercial and national defense standpoint………"Such airlines would boost the U.S. aviation industry, whose expansion was vital to meet any future "national emergency." These airlines would also "counteract the creation of alien activities in Central and South America…."The Pan American Flight, Davison felt, would supply the necessary data for the establishment of a United States airline. After extensive preparation, the flight started on 22 December 1926, when five Loening amphibians took off from Texas and flew to Mexico.²¹

From the outset the Pan American Flight bucked psychological currents, with which the Central American Flight had not had to contend. Late in 1926 the United States government committed itself intensively in Nicaraguan revolutionary strife. The timing was unfortunate: the flight progressed in a period when Latin Americans voiced their disapproval at what many of them considered unwarranted U.S. interference in Nicaraguan affairs. The flight was a natural target for that disapproval. In the generally unfavorable atmosphere, old antagonisms sharpened, as in Mexico, where the flight’s reception was in the main cold. In Colombia, where there were still memories of the loss of Panama, the flyers avoided certain places where violence threatened. But in other countries, like Peru and Brazil, the reception was friendly, for there relations with the United States were above average for Latin America.²²

In Argentina the flight experienced a climax of bad luck. It had previously suffered delays and damages to planes, but no loss of life. Over Buenos Aires, two of the planes suddenly collided, and, locked together, they spun in. The parachutes of one two-man crew billowed, but the other two flyers, having neglected to wear parachutes, perished. Argentina had been officially friendly, privately unfriendly; but Latin hostility and indifference quickly turned to sympathy. It was sympathy for the dead and their comrades, however, not for the flight itself. The survivors regrouped and finished the tour.²³

In some respects, the flight was a failure bordering on disaster. Dargue’s own report belies the flight’s success in encouraging good will in much of Latin America. Its delays, accidents, and loss of life did not contribute to a positive image of a United States airline. Yet it did contribute something toward such an enterprise. Some of the airplanes were the first to cover the principal airways of Latin America in one journey, evincing further the airplane’s potential for transportation and commerce. Dargue’s official report contained a wealth of data relating to the Latin American scene. The flight itself was an accurate gauge of Latin American feelings toward the United States. American officials seem to have had its experiences in mind when planning certain future moves concerning good will.²⁴ Despite the partial failure of the good-will mission, largely through circumstances beyond control of the flight, it was significant of future United States’ change of attitude toward Latin America that official references to the flight included both "Pan American" and "Good Will."²⁵

In an address before the Inter-American Conference on Commercial Aviation at Washington in May 1927, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics William P. MacCracken, Jr., predicted that with the cooperation of business and industry a United States airline soon would be established over a "large portion" of the Pan American Good Will Flight’s 20,000-mile route.²⁶ He was not indulging in idle speculation. MacCracken was to be one of the select group who, a little over six months after the flight, made a very vital policy decision with respect to a United States-controlled airline in Latin America.

This decision did not come as an immediate result of the Pan American Flight. Between May and December 1927 other events transpired to influence decisive United States action. The Air Corps did not play a major role in the shaping of these May-to-December events, but on the other hand it cannot be denied that its action was part of a chain of events extending back to 1922. The first of these 1927 events was the great transatlantic flight of Charles A. Lindbergh in May of that year.²⁷ This flight brought new life to United States aviation, reviving and exciting public and official interest. In October 1927 a small new United States airline company, Pan American Airways, Incorporated (PAA), began to fly mail between Key West and Havana. Realizing that PAA was a genuine competitor, Scadta, through the Colombian government, began to apply pressure on the United States government for permission to use the Canal Zone as a necessary berth in any northward extension. Off came the velvet gloves as Scadta mounted a strident propaganda attack in Colombia and Panama, meant to force the United States to give in. This pressure led to a meeting in Washington, in November 1927, of representatives of executive departments, including MacCracken, at which it was decided the government should give strong encouragement to a United States airline to extend through all of Latin America, PAA was to be that line. President Calvin Coolidge quickly approved the decision.²⁸

By early 1928, Pan American Airways, Incorporated, with the assistance of the interdepartmental conferees and Postmaster General New, was planning its extension into Latin America. The company was the beneficiary of the past as well as the "chosen instrument" of current governmental policy. The routes it surveyed in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America had already been largely charted or tested by the Marine Corps, the Central American Flight, and the Pan American Flight. In the Foreign Air Mail Acts of 1928 and 1929, PAA was given an indirect subsidy; and by virtue of a provision in these acts that the Post Office Department could award a contract to a low bidder best suited to advance the interests of the United States, PAA could be and was favored in the awarding of contracts. The Department of State gave PAA extraordinary support. PAA also hired key personnel with experience in various branches of the government, including the military.²⁹

The Air Corps gave needed assistance to PAA in its efforts to span Latin American air routes. Early in 1929, for example, the United States Legation in Costa Rica sent an urgent telegram to Washington; unless Lieutenant John Jones of the Air Corps was given leave to pilot the PAA plane in Costa Rica, the company’s service there might have to be discontinued. Such a breakdown, the Legation warned, would adversely affect delicate PAA contract negotiations with the Costa Rican government. That same day the State Department wired back that the Air Corps approved. A short time later Costa Rican authorities signed a contract with PAA. Also in 1929 Washington forwarded the discharge papers of Lieutenant Robert Williams to its ambassador in Chile, to keep the lieutenant from having to go to the Canal Zone for discharge. Williams, who became Pan American—Grace Airways (Panagra) manager in Chile, and other key Panagra personnel were involved in negotiations with Chile.³⁰

The Air Service’s effort toward an airline to Latin America was not its only activity in the post-World War I competition for pre-eminence in Latin American skies. As mentioned, the Air Service early in the postwar era recognized the need for preserving a vigorous aviation industry in time of peace so that wartime demands might be met. The Air Service’s interest in synergy with the aviation industry has continued to the present, but in the 1920s Air Service policies and industry’s wishes were not always synonymous. Whereas the British, French, and Italians after World War I sent to Latin America military air missions whose demonstrations and allocations of surplus planes aided the sale of their respective national products, the United States government resisted sending military air missions of any kind. Major General Charles T. Menoher, Chief of the Air Service from 1918 to 1921, opposed missions and the sale of military aviation equipment on the grounds that there were no surplus planes or engines to spare for missions or for foreign countries generally, that countries like Mexico might use military planes against the United States, and that private industry ought to make sales abroad directly. Also, doubt existed in some government circles that the Air Service had sufficient authority to send air missions. From time to time private industry importuned the Air Service to aid it in establishing more of a foothold in underdeveloped areas by easing restrictions on sales and giving direct assistance in the form of air missions.³¹

Under General Patrick, the Air Service did modify its position on missions and sales of government aviation equipment abroad, advocating increasingly a pragmatic approach in the matter of sales. At certain times it accepted the lead of the State Department. In 1924, following a request from the State Department, the Air Service released, without opposition, military planes to the Mexican government which used them to help in quelling a revolt. Patrick urged passage of legislation that would clearly permit the sending of military air missions to advise Latin American governments. In 1926, when the Air Service became the Air Corps, Congress passed an act that allowed the sending of such advisers to Latin America. This was pioneer legislation, marking the first real step in a process that, while slow in developing, has seen air personnel influence Latin American military training. Today Air Force resources assist underdeveloped areas, like some in Latin America, to progress. ³³

Another legislative act of 1926 affected the Air Corps role in Latin American affairs. This act gave the President authority to detail Air Corps officers to work with the Commerce Department in its promotion of commercial aviation. Even before passage of the act, the War Department, at Patrick’s prompting, gave Lieutenant James H. Doolittle leave to make a sales tour of several South American countries for the Curtiss company. His salesmanship, which included demonstrating a plane in Chile despite the handicap of two broken legs, helped persuade the Chileans to purchase nine Curtiss aircraft. Doolittle was also part of a quickened sales effort by the United States in 1928, when he was given leave to accompany a Curtiss sales team to South America. At the same time Lieutenant Leigh Wade of the Air Corps was in South America with a team representing Consolidated Aircraft Corporation. The two teams, both under the aegis of the Commerce Department, faced heavy foreign competition. The Curtiss force was successful in selling Chile a sizable order of planes.³⁴

Pan American Airways, Incorporated, also successful in 1928 in "selling" its services to a number of Latin American governments. inaugurated in 1929 its new lines connecting the United States with the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central America. Lines spanning and joining the coasts of South America and much of the interior soon followed. Air Corps personnel played roles in the process, and the dream of an airline for the sake of the Canal was nearer reality.

A related Air Corps expectation moved toward fruition in the years 1928-31. When Air Corps First Lieutenants James E. Parker and Robert W. Douglass flew from the Canal Zone to Washington, D.C., and back in the summer of 1926, they tested the two most plausible routes for flying between the United States and the Canal Zone. On the way north, traveling through Central America and Mexico, they found good facilities only at the Marine Corps base at Managua, Nicaragua, and at one Mexican field. They found the return trip by way of Cuba and Central America a better one but only because it was shorter. They noted that PAA used a field at Havana but had nothing beyond that. In 1928 the Air Corps was not flying many of its planes back and forth between the United States and Latin America because of the lack of adequate facilities.³⁵

In the summer of 1929, First Lieutenants Westside T. Larson and Lawrence J. Carr, flying a Curtiss A-3, made a trip testing the Caribbean—Central American route to the Canal Zone, then flew the Central American-Mexican route back. They reported PAA installations or leased fields at Havana, Belize, and several places in Mexico. They had praise for PAA services and personnel "from Managua to Miami." When they bent a propeller at Belize, a PAA plane soon brought them a spare from the Canal Zone. Larson and Carr recommended that Air Corps flights between the United States and the Canal Zone should be "allowed and encouraged."³⁶