100 years ago in Spokane: It was easy to catch two suspects in the latest Prohibition sting – but not the pilot who supplied them

A booze-smuggling airplane pilot made a delivery at the Parkwater airfield – and federal Prohibition agents believed they finally had the jump on the notorious smuggler.

The agents hid behind a building and watched as the pilot lifted two large bundles out of the cockpit and helped load them into a large auto, which had pulled up next to the plane.

“The four watchers burst forth from their hiding place and raced toward the plane, 100 yards away,” The Spokesman-Review reported. “The pilot saw them and dropped two bundles to the ground.”

Then the pilot escaped because – well, because he had a plane sitting there, idling.

He jumped back into the cockpit, waved goodbye to the approaching sprinters, and took off to the north. The four watchers could only look up at the sky in dismay.

The two men in the auto were easier to catch.

“They stood transfixed with fright,” the paper wrote. “In their care were found three gunnysack bundles containing two cases of bonded whisky.”

More whisky cases were on the ground, where the pilot had dumped them. The two men were arrested on federal charges.

The raid on the airfield was the result of weeks of surveillance based on various tips. Before this, the tips had resulted in many “false starts.” The officers hid in secluded spots, but no plane appeared.

Despite the disappointment, officers believed that it was now only a matter of time before the plane and pilot were captured.

“Well, I guess people won’t laugh any more and say it’s fiction when talk is made of booze being smuggled across the border in airplanes,” said Commissioner Maurice Smith, one of the four “watchers.”