Pacific Air Transport

On the morning of October 2, 1928, Pacific Air Transport pilot Grant Donaldson took off in NC5339 from Medford, Oregon, on his way to Portland with nine pounds of mail and passenger D. P. Donovan, a West Coast drugstore chain owner and a gemstone dealer who carried a satchel of diamonds. An hour into scud-running beneath low-lying clouds, Donaldson heard booming noises and discovered that he was scraping treetops. There was no time to recover. The 40C dove forward “as if it had been a giant scythe,” reported the Roseburg, Oregon News-Review. “One tree, nearly a foot in diameter was cut off about 25 feet from the ground.” Donaldson rushed out of the cockpit as the biplane’s nitrate-doped cotton skin fueled a fire so intense it melted the aircraft’s metal propeller. He fought through the flames to check on his passenger, but saw that Donovan had been killed on impact. Donaldson’s actions left him with severe burns; for the rest of his life he would have a scar tissue circumscription of flight goggles on his face. Bloody and incoherent, Donaldson staggered down to a highway, where a preacher and his family hurriedly drove him to a pharmacy nine miles north, in Canyonville. “The next day the airline went up there and they got the remains of poor Donovan,” says Pemberton. “They picked out what diamonds they could, and they salvaged what they could of the engine.” For years afterward, townspeople hiked up to the crash site to sift for diamonds. (Rumors abound of Canyonville wives who own rings set with diamonds from the crash.) In 1929, they hacksawed the tail section off to use as a nursery school jungle gym.
Source: www.airspacemag.com

The pilot James Irving Rutledge was performing a mail flight within California. En route, fuel exhausted and the pilot decided to abandon the aircraft and bailed out. The aircraft crashed and was destroyed. Unhurt, the pilot recovered the mail that was delivered to the local post office in Orinda.

The pilot Arthur D. Starbuck was completing a mail flight from Portland, Oregon, to San Francisco. While entering California, he encountered poor weather conditions with low visibility due to a snowstorm. He lost control of the aircraft that crashed in a canyon in Shasta Springs, near Dunsmuir. The pilot was injured and the aircraft was destroyed.

While performing a mail flight, the pilot encountered poor weather conditions. Due to low visibility caused by snow falls, the pilot lost his orientation and decided to abandon the aircraft. After he bailed out, the airplane entered an uncontrolled descent and crashed. The pilot was uninjured.

While on a mail flight from Saugus (Santa Clarita) to Bakersfield, the pilot encountered very bad weather conditions and lost his orientation. He decided to bail out and abandoned the aircraft that crashed shortly later and was destroyed. The pilot was unhurt.

Crashed in unknown circumstances some 3 miles from Gustine, CA. The pilote Edward Neher and the passenger Albert Schaller were killed.

The pilot Pat Patterson departed Medford on a mail flight to Oakland. En route, he encountered foggy conditions when the aircraft hit the slope of a mountain located near Ashland. The aircraft was destroyed and the pilot was seriously injured. He died from his injuries a week later on December 23.

During a mail flight, the pilot lost his orientation due to heavy rain falls and decided to bail out. Both occupants put their parachute but the aircraft stalled and crashed. The pilot survived while the passenger was killed.