<p>The facts are different. During 19 February and 1 June, when the Army handed over to the airlines again, the pilots moved 777,389 lb (352,624 kg) of mail. They flew almost 1,600,000 route miles (2,574,880 km), and logged 14,109 hours of flying time. Those numbers, extrapolated to a full year's effort, about match the performance of the commercial carriers. And the Air Corps did it with about half the number of airplanes.
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<p>That fleet was diminished severely by the 57 crashes that did occur, more than one every other day. Only four fatalities resulted on mail routes, and the total cost in lives was either 11 or 12, depending on whose data one believes at this time.
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<p>In retrospect, then, it was not a fiasco, even though it wiped out a substantial portion of the Air Corps' strength in aircraft. It was more than an adequate job, given the state of the planes and of the Air Corps' readiness to perform such a mission. It spurred development of instrument flight in the Corps, and led to the introduction of new equipment and techniques for that kind of flying. It was, in a way, a forerunner of the surge operations begun by Tactical Air Command in the 1970s, an exercise that strained the capabilities of aircraft, pilots, ground crews and facilities. And it proved that the Air Corps had a long way to go before it could think of operations around the clock, in all kinds of weather, over any kind of terrain.
