PRESIDENT FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT - TYPED LETTER SIGNED 04/04/1922 - HFSID 27726

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
Signed, typed 1922 letter revealing FDR's involvement in a plan to build a commercial fleet of dirigibles.
Typed Letter Signed: "Franklin D. Roosevelt", 1 page, 8¼x11. New York, 1922 April 4. On Emmet, Marvin & Roosevelt Counsellors at Law stationery. To Edward Schildhauer, Esq., Washington, D.C. In part: "Mr. Fahnstock has asked me if it would be possible to have a conference in accordance with the suggestion in your letter to him...I do not think there is any real need of going over the matter, as the program forwarded you by Mr. Fahnstock is one with which I thoroughly agree, and is the result of my mature deliberation. On going over the matter very carefully and taking a number of important elements into consideration which I had not done on my first snap judgment, I am convinced that the wise procedure is that outlined in the memorandum. Having once decided on a program I think it is extremely inadvisable to change, as it is better to go ahead along a definite line than to be continually shifting our scheme of operations...." Lightly soiled. Paperclip stains and file holes at upper margin. Lightly creased. Folds, vertical fold touches "l" in Franklin. With Stanley Fahnestock's two-page typewritten memorandum, a five-page memorandum by Mr. Bradley concerning the organizational structure of the proposed airline to be called "General Air Service" with FDR as Chairman of the Executive Committee, and a photograph of a terrestrial globe on which are indicated some of the intended air routes. General Air Services, which had acquired through FDR's connections in the Navy Department, airship patents seized from Germany at the end of World War I, would have operated a fleet of lighter than air (helium) dirigibles, beginning with a route between Chicago and New York. The venture was a failure, never beginning service. All lightly creased and worn. Typed pages have file holes and folds. EDWARD SCHILDHAUER was an engineer who had participated in the construction of the Panama Canal and was also interested in the field of aeronautical design. Four items.