James H. Knight
American pilot (1892-1945)
James Herbert "Jack" Knight (March 14, 1892 – February 24, 1945) was an American pilot who made the first overnight transcontinental air mail delivery. Knight was part of an airmail relay team that flew 2,629 miles across the United States on February 22–23, 1921 in an effort to show that the airmail service was much faster than the railroads. When all the other pilots were weathered-in or broken-down, Knight flew extra relay sections through the night in snow and fog and is credited with saving the airmail service from political decommission. "Jack Knight's Night Flight" made him the most famous pilot in America in the era prior to Charles Lindbergh.
Early life
Knight was born March 14, 1892, in Lincoln Center, Kansas, as James Herbert Brockett. After his mother died in 1893, he and his sister were raised by their aunt and uncle in Buchanan, Michigan. Knight took on their last name, and also picked up the nick-name "Sky" as a child. He worked in Chicago as a mechanical engineer before joining the United States Army Air Service in 1917 to help fight in World War I. Knight became a pilot instructor at Ellington Field in Houston, Texas, and was discharged with the rank of first lieutenant in 1919. After the war ended, he took a job as an airmail pilot based in Nebraska. Knight was a member of First Christian Church in Omaha, Nebraska, where he sang in the choir.
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This entry incorporates text from “James H. Knight” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.