With a Little Help from Our Friends
Early Efforts by Americans to Accelerate Mail Delivery to Europe and Locations beyond Using Overseas Airmail Services
Richard W. Helbock, Ph.D.
Published by La Posta Publications at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Richard W. Helbock
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Chapter 1
The First Small Steps and London to the Continent, 1924-1927
Introduction
World War I taught the nations that fought in the fields of Europe several valuable lessons. One of these was that aircraft were an extremely effective means of conveying time-sensitive information between points on the ground. Before the war flying machines were experimental novelties—suitable for the aerial circus or staged public events where a small quantity of souvenir cards and letters might be carried on board between two points that were more easily accessed by road or rail.
Visionaries recognized the immense potential of these contemporary flying machines to grow into much larger aircraft capable of carrying cargo and passengers at significantly higher speeds over vast distances in the near future. The problem facing such dreamers—both in private industry and government—was how to attract sufficient public interest and investment in times of peace. Airmail—the transport of personal, governmental and commercial letter communications onboard aircraft—was seen as a valuable tool through which the public might participate in this “communications revolution” and thus provide popular support for the development of the new industry.
The United States, as one of the victorious nations in WWII, and a country with 3,000 miles separating its citizens on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts was eager to foster the development of the aircraft industry. A year before the Treaty of Versailles officially marked the end of WWI the U. S. Post Office working with the War Department launched an airmail service connecting Washington, Philadelphia and New York. President Woodrow Wilson and many high-ranking members of his administration participated in the inaugural flight event at the Potomac Park Polo Grounds on May 15, 19181.
All the early flights were flown by U.S. Army pilots, but by August 12, 1918, there were sufficient Post Office Department pilots and aircraft to take over from the Army. The first pathfinder flight from New York to Chicago was made on September 5-7, 1918. A series of additional test flights followed a crash landing on Long island during the return of the pathfinder flight. The results of these tests led POD officials to conclude that airmail service was insufficiently reliable to make regular deliveries throughout the year. As a result, all United States airmail was discontinued on July 18, 1919. First class mail was occasionally flown on a space-available basis, but it would be June 1924 before a reliable regular airmail service was launched between New York and Chicago. When it was, the New York to Chicago segment was but one of three links on a trans-Continental service connecting New York and San Francisco.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, other nations were examining the possibilities of promoting their own aircraft industries and using the phenomenon of airmail as a means of generating public interest and support. During the war British pilots carried military messages across the English Channel to their forces in Belgium beginning in 1915. In 1917 Italy began a regular airmail service connecting Rome and Turin, and the Germans launched a short-lived airmail route between Berlin and Cologne in 1918.
Britain’s8
first international public airmail service was inaugurated August 25,
1919, with a flight from London by the Aircraft
Transport and Travel Company flying a de
Havilland DH 16 to Paris. The service became daily in September 1919
as a strike by British railway workers paralysed the rail system.
Four small separate British companies were soon competing for the
London to Paris traffic and opening new routes in Western Europe.
Unfortunately, none of them was seen as being sufficiently
financially successful to survive without subsidies from the British
government. In 1923 a government committee was appointed to recommend
future actions to be taken in order to develop external British
commercial air transport. The committee recommended merging the
assets of the four existing companies—Handley Page Transport Ltd.;
the Instone Air Line, Ltd.; the Daimler Airway; and British Marine
Air Navigation Company, Ltd.—into one company.(figure 1)
Figure 1
Imperial Airways Limited was formed on March 31, 1924. It inherited 1,760 miles of cross-Channel routes and five serviceable aircraft. Landplane operations were conducted out of Croydon Airport which had opened March 25, 1920.
Imperial’s
daily London-Paris route was opened April 26, 1924. This was followed
by a London-Ostend-Brussels-Cologne route on May 3rd, and
a summer-only service to Basle and Zürich in Switzerland (map
1).
Map 1 Imperial Airways 1924 routes from London
In its first year of operation Imperial Airways flew over 850,000 miles. It carried a total of 11,395 passengers and 212,380 letters2.
In the southern French city of Toulouse in 1918 Pierre Latecoere had a dream of an airline that would stretch some 8,000 miles from Toulouse south through Africa, then across the Atlantic Ocean to Brazil and onward to the southern tip of South America. Latecoere, a factory owner, launched the first flight of his Lignes Aeriennes Latecoere--nicknamed “the Line”-- in December 1918. In February 1919 the Line began carrying airmail letters to Spain and across the Mediterranean at Gibraltar to Rabat and Casablanca in the French colony of Morocco3.
In other European nations there were similar stirrings of interest in the commercial opportunities presented by international air service in the early 1920s. This was the dawn of a whole new industry that would within half a century come to dominate the movement of passengers and mail from place to place all over the world. Given the fact that the United States POD was already very actively involved in trying to build an airmail link between the east and west coasts of America, it is not surprising that they were closely watching developments in Europe with an eye toward providing American patrons with accelerated delivery of mail to overseas destinations. The purpose of this article is to examine the evolution of accelerated mail transport using non-American airmail services supported by the US POD to improve international service for American postal customers.
Scope & Organization
Robert Dalton Harris assembled an extremely valuable source of primary information on the subject of early United States relationships with international airmails. Published as International Air Mail in 1989, it was designated Volume 1 in the Postilion Series of Primary Sources. In this volume Harris extracted, organized and reproduced the original US POD announcements concerning international airmail arrangements for postal patrons in the United States that had appeared in the Monthly Supplements to the US Official Postal Guide from 1921 through 1945.
The announcements appear exactly as they were originally published and contain some errors, misstatements, corrections and adjusted details. Mild confusion results from the sheer volume of detail presented, but a patient reading reveals the story of American postal officials’ efforts to arrange accelerated service of US overseas mails with British, French, Dutch and a few other European governments.
The story presented in this article will rely heavily upon the US POD announcements from the Monthly Supplements reproduced by Harris. It will focus entirely on arrangements between the US and foreign governments intended to accelerate mail delivery in the eastern hemisphere—Europe, Africa and Asia. Early American efforts to establish international airmail links were entirely focused within the western hemisphere prior to the mid-1930s. Trans-Pacific Clipper service was inaugurated by Pan-American Airways to Manila in 1935, extended to China in 1937, and reached the South Pacific in 1940. The first trans-Atlantic Pan-Am Clipper service was begun in 1939. This story will examine how mail to and from the United States was given accelerated delivery by foreign airmail service in Europe, Africa and Asia.
Only airmail carried by foreign national airlines with published working arrangements with the US POD will be detailed in this article. Unfortunately this limitation somewhat obscures the complete picture of international transport of US mail by air in the eastern hemisphere since it was possible to send mail accelerated by air via national airlines without US POD arrangements to the United States.
Consider for example the German airline Deutsche Luft Hansa (DLH)—renamed Lufthansa in 1933. The company was formed in 1926 from two smaller companies and awarded a government subsidy to ensure economic success. With an effective monopoly on German air transport, DLH expanded rapidly and by 1928 it flew more miles and carried more passengers than all other European companies combined.4
Although the US POD announced several arrangements whereby US postal patrons could post mail to be carried on flights of German airships such as the Graf Zeppelin and via catapult mail from German passenger ships, there were no announced arrangements with DLH to carry US mails in Europe and Asia.
Figure
2 illustrates a cover mailed by an American through the U.S.
Legation in Tehran. Addressed to Pacific Grove, California, the cover
was postmarked Teheran on June 12, 1928, and endorsed “Pour Avion
via Baku-Moscow.” This air route—shown on the inset map—started
at Baku, a Soviet city on the Caspian Sea, and leap-frogged north to
Moscow. The cover would have travelled by surface transport north to
Baku. It reached Moscow on June 20th and Berlin on June
22nd. There are no other transit postmarks, but presumably
it would have been carried by ship from a German port to the US.
Figure 2
Never-the-less, all out-going US mails that received acceleration by air service were carried by overseas airlines operating under arrangements with the US POD, and it is the sense of this author that the majority of US in-coming accelerated mail was also transported by such carriers. The present article attempts to convey the broader history of accelerated airmail service between the US and nations of the eastern hemisphere. That means that there is an interest in both mail originating in the US and mail addressed to the US.
Since some of these very early airmail services carried only limited amounts of mail, it is difficult to locate examples of non-philatelic flown covers that precisely match the to-or-from-the-USA criteria. In a few instances the author has chosen to illustrate legitimate non-philatelic covers carried on particular routes that do not have a direct connection to the United States.
The First Small Steps
Belgian Congo River Air Service, 1920-1922
The first announcement pertaining to accelerated mail delivery through the use of foreign airmail service appeared in the December 1921 Monthly Supplement to the US Official Postal Guide as item 48. It reads in part:
The ministry of the colonies of Belgium has made an announcement as follows:
The colony of the Belgian Kongo(sic) has organized an air mail service which operates between Kinshasha and Stanleyville, or for a distance of 1,850 kilometers (1,156 miles) with stops at Kwamouth, Kolobo, Lukolela, Gombe, Coquillatville, Mobeka, Lisala, Bumba and Basoko. The airplanes fly above the river Kongo for the whole distance, which is covered in 3 days, or with an advance of 11 days over the mail carried by ordinary means.
An air mail plane leaves Kinshasha the day after the arrival of the mail from Antwerp and is certain on its return from Stanleyville to meet the same steamship, so as to permit the persons served by the air mail to reply to their correspondents by return mail.
The special rate for conveyance by airplane is fixed at 3 francs per 20 grams whatever the nature of the article; it is represented by special postage stamps.
Desiring to give to the mail of the international service the benefit of the air conveyance, over its territory, the office of the Belgian Kongo has decided to collect from the addressee the special tax for the objects for which the sender has asked this mode of transportation, by the indicator in very legible letters alongside the address, of the words: ‘Par avion, via Kinshasha’ (by airplane, via Kinshasha).
Lara-Ligne Aérienne Roi Albert (LARA) was the name of the Belgian company that established the Congo River air service using aircraft capable of water landing. Despite the popularity of the service among Belgian colonials, the air service was discontinued for lack of financial success in 1922. In 1926 Sabena began carrying the mail by air in the Belgian Congo, but that story must wait awhile to fit it within its proper context.
Although
the author has not seen any examples of mail to or from the United
States taking advantage of this air service, there can be no denying
the romantic image of a fragile little WWI-era aircraft flying over
the dense African jungle visiting remote settlements spread along
1,100 miles of Congo River (map
2).
Map 2 Congo River air mail service, 1921.
Indeed, the set of stamps
issued by the Belgian Congo in July 1920 for use on this service
captured the flavor of the romance rather well (figure
3).
Figure 3 The 50 cte value shows a wharf on the Congo River.
In August 1922, the US POD published an announcement stating:
Effective at once the aerial mail service between Kinshasha and Stanleyville, Belgian Kongo, is suspended, and postmasters will refuse to accept mail articles for dispatch via this service.
This supersedes order issued by this office under date November 9, 1921…
Cairo-Baghdad Air Service by Britain’s Royal Air Force, 1922-1927
The romantic image of airmail carried by early Belgian water-landing aircraft to isolated trading posts and mission settlements along the wild Congo River is equalled by the second international air service offered US postal patron in the POD’s Monthly Supplement to the US Official Postal Guide. In the March 1922 edition appeared an announcement under the heading Cairo-Bagdad Air Mail Service.
It reads:
This department has accepted the offer of the London office to accept ordinary and registered letters, postal cards, printed matter, samples of merchandise and commercial papers, except parcel post packages, for transmission to Bagdad, and northern Persia (Isphahan, Teheran, etc.), and to places as far south as Bushire, at the rate of 15 cents an ounce or fraction thereof, in addition to the international rate of postage required, the air mail fee and the postage to be paid by postage stamps affixed to each piece. Mail matter intended for dispatch by the Cairo-Bagdad Air Mail service should bear in the upper left-hand corner of the envelope or cover, a blue label with the words “By Air-Cairo-Bagdad,” or in lieu of the label to be prominently marked as indicated so that articles in assorting may not be overlooked.
All
mail articles for this service will be dispatched to New York for
onward transmission from that exchange post office. The London office
has furnished a table regarding the details of the service, reading
as follows:
The London office gives notice that it should be clearly understood that the Air Service is an experimental one and is liable to modification or suspension at any time in accordance with military requirements.
Great Britain was granted a League of Nations Class A mandate of Iraq when the Ottoman Empire was divided in 1919 by the Treaty of Versailles following World War I. The civil government of post-war Iraq was headed originally by the high commissioner, Sir Percy Cox, and his deputy, Colonel Arnold Talbot Wilson. The most striking problem facing the British was the growing anger of the nationalists, who felt betrayed at being accorded mandate status. The nationalists soon came to view the mandate as a flimsy disguise for colonialism.
Britain fought a bloody open rebellion against several militant Iraqi groups in 1920, and the country was in a state of anarchy for three months. Order was restored only with great difficulty after the Royal Air Force bombed a number of Iraqi towns and villages. At the Cairo Conference of 1921, the British chose Faisal ibn Husayn as Iraq's first King; they established an indigenous Iraqi army; and they proposed a new treaty. To confirm Faisal as Iraq's first monarch, a one-question plebiscite was carefully arranged that had a return of 96 percent in his favor.
A twenty-year treaty was ratified in October 1922. It stated that the king would heed British advice on all matters affecting British interests and on fiscal policy as long as Iraq had a balance of payments deficit with Britain, and that British officials would be appointed to specified posts in eighteen departments to act as advisers and inspectors. A subsequent financial agreement, which significantly increased the financial burden on Iraq, required Iraq to pay half the cost of supporting British resident officials, among other expenses. British obligations under the new treaty included providing various kinds of aid, notably military assistance, and proposing Iraq for membership in the League of Nations at the earliest moment. In effect, the treaty ensured that Iraq would remain politically and economically dependent on Britain.
With significant numbers of British troops assigned to Iraq, it
became essential to provide an airmail service to keep them in touch
with their kinfolk at home. The Royal Air Force was assigned the task
of establishing an airmail route from Baghdad across the desert to
Cairo. Surface mail, travelling via Bombay, took an average 28 days
from London. Flying from Cairo to Baghdad, the twin-engine RAF
D.H.10s, Vimys reduced the overall time to five days (figure 4).
Figure 4 1920 Vimy aircraft were flown on the Desert Air Mail route.
Their route over the southern part of the Syrian Desert was marked by ploughing a track through the rocky ground across it, which the pilots could follow visually. Emergency landing areas were marked out at intervals of about twenty miles, by ploughing circles; and underground fuel tanks were installed at two of these landing grounds, about 100 miles from each end of the route.
The Desert Air Mail service was operated by the RAF with great efficiency from June 1921 until Imperial Airways assumed control in January 1927 and extended to eastern terminus to Basrah. The intention at that time was to extend the Cairo-Baghdad mail route through to Karachi using aircraft with greater range, but the plans were upset by international politics. The Persian government refused permission for regular services to over fly their territory, and it was to be two years before the projected Cairo-Karachi service could be extended beyond Basrah.
Figure
5 illustrates a cover postmarked in Basrah on July 7, 1922.
Endorsed “Via Air Mail”, it was carried by surface transport to
Baghdad and then by the RAF airmail service to Cairo. The cover is
properly franked with Turkish stamps overprinted IRAQ IN BRITISH
OCCUPATION in denominations that total nine annas—the required
postage for Baghdad to Cairo air service was 3 annas for
international delivery plus six annas special airmail fee.
Figure 5
London to the Continent & Beyond, 1925-1927
The August 1925 issue of the Monthly Supplement to the US Official Postal Guide carried an announcement that opened opportunities for accelerated delivery of U. S. mail to a variety of nations in Europe and North Africa. Listed under the heading “Air Mail Service London to Continental Europe,” the POD reported that they had “accepted the offer of the postal administration of Great Britain to accept ordinary and registered letters and articles prepaid at the letter rate for transmission from London to the countries mentioned below according to the following air mail schedule from London:” Table 1 summarizes the details of the announcement concerning mail closing times, route designations, air fees additional to normal postage, and delivery times.
Table 1 London to Continent Air Mail Service, August 1925
The
listed airmail routes are illustrated on map 3.
Map 3 London to Continent Service, August 1925.
The announcement carried specific instructions for patrons wishing to take advantage of the new service:
Mail matter intended for dispatch by the above mentioned air service should be prominently marked in the upper left-hand corner of the envelope or cover with the words “Air Mail—London to Continent,” so that the articles, in assorting, may not be over-looked.
All mail articles for this service will be dispatched to New York for onward transmission from that exchange post office. [emphasis used in original notice]
Franking required by an American postal patron sounds simple enough as presented in table 1. A letter addressed to Germany, for example, required six cents per ounce in addition to ordinary postage. It must be recalled however, that 1925 was a time when U.S. airmail rates were based on a per zone rate scheme at a rate of eight cents per zone. International surface rates were either 2 cents per ounce for treaty nations such as the U.K., or five cents per ounce for all other nations, but the U.S. POD decided to reduce the international rate to these latter nations to just 3¢/oz. If they received US domestic air service.
Figure
6 illustrates a cover postmarked Denver, Colorado, in September
1925. It is franked with three stamps, and each of these stamps
perfectly matches the postage required for the three parts of its
journey. Denver to New York was a two-zone air charge so the 16¢
airmail was applied to pay that fee. A 3¢ Lincoln paid the
trans-Atlantic voyage to England, and a 6¢ Garfield paid the air
surcharge from London to Germany.
Figure 6
Addressed to Stuttgart in southwestern Germany, the cover bears a Cologne (KÖLN) backstamp suggesting that perhaps the routing from England was not through Rotterdam as suggested in table 1, but by way of Brussels and Cologne. This latter route was certainly one of the earliest flown by Imperial Airways and appears on map 1 quite prominently. The fact that it was omitted from the routes listed by the US POD in the 1925 Monthly Supplement was quite possibly just an oversight.
Many
early U. S. frankings intended to pay domestic, international surface
and air surcharges from London to the continent are less clear cut.
The registered cover shown in figure 7 was postmarked November
10, 1925, at Station P in New York City. Addressed to Budapest,
Hungary, it was endorsed “Airmail London to Continent”. The cover
bears a London registry mark dated November 18th and
several Budapest arrival markings dated November 20th
indicating a rather rapid delivery from London to the Hungarian
capital.
Figure 7
The cover presents a puzzle. Franked with a 24¢ airmail (Scott’s #C6), the stamps paid a 15¢ registry fee and a 5¢ international surface rate to London. That left a balance of four cents for London to the Continent surcharge. In 1925 Hungary was not listed as one of the nations eligible for air surcharge, so the cover was probably given air service to Cologne (then in French-occupied Germany where the 4¢/oz. surcharge applied) and onward by train through Germany and Austria to Budapest. The interesting thing is that by summer 1927, Hungary was being listed as a nation to which London to the Continent air service was available. The surcharge was six cents per ounce and the transit time from London was listed as “delivery at Budapest the next evening with express” (see table 3 below). So a second day delivery in Budapest from London by air and train in 1925 was equivalent to the service that was on offer two years later at a significantly increased rate, i.e., 6 cents air surcharge plus 12 cents additional for express service.
Three months after the initial announcement of London to Continent service, the US POD published a clarifying note stating that service on some of the routes described in August had been suspended. In fact, the only routes remaining in service at that time were the London-Paris route (Route A on map 3) and the Paris-Toulouse-Casablanca route (Route C on map 3). Although the November 1925 note did not mention it, air service on many continental routes was, and for several years continued to be, suspended during the winter months due the fragile nature of contemporary aircraft and the danger in operating them in harsh weather conditions.
1926: Air Rate Confusion Begins
The next Monthly Supplement to contain information relating to London to Continent airmail service was dated April 30, 1926, and appeared in the May 1926 edition. It reads in part:
Pursuant to recent advices from the postal administration of Great Britain, the air mail service mentioned in the notice of this office, dated January 6, 1926, is restated as follows:
Table 2 London to Continent Air Mail Service, May 1926
The announcement then describes a significantly expanded scheme over that of the previous year providing airmail service to various nations in Europe and beyond. Table 2 summarizes the details of the announcement concerning mail closing times, route designations, air fees additional to normal postage, and delivery times. The most significant additions to airmail routes listed in August 1925 are:
1) the inclusion of the London-Brussels-Cologne route that may have been omitted from the 1925 listing through error (now Route B); and,
2) Route D providing service to the Union of Socialistic Soviet Republics (Russia), Memel, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.
Inclusion of the Moscow route involved an Imperial Airways flight from London to Rotterdam and train transport onward to Berlin where a connection with the new Deutsche Luft Hansa (DLH) air service to Moscow was possible. DLH pioneered the Moscow service beginning May 1, 1926, with a night flight from Berlin to Danzig, Königsberg and on to Moscow. Bonfires were lit every thirty miles between Berlin and Königsberg in order to navigation assistance for the DLH pilots. The travel time between Berlin and Moscow was cut to just 15 hours by this service.
The May 1926 announcement concluded with the same instructions regarding endorsement and dispatch to the New York exchange office that had appeared in the August 1925 announcement, but added that:
Articles for Morocco and Western Algeria should, in addition be plainly marked immediately below the above-mentioned marking (“Air Mail—London to Continent”) with the indication “Par avion de Toulouse” (by airship from Toulouse).
Air surcharge rates from London to nations on the continent remained unchanged between 1925 and 1926, although new rates were listed for several nations that did not appear on the 1925 schedule. The major source of confusion over airmail rates—both domestic and international—arouse when U.S. Contract Air Mail (CAM) routes began to operate in the United States on February 15, 1926.
Mail carried on a CAM route not exceeding 1,000 miles was set at 10¢/oz. with 5¢ per zone additional for each zone travelled over the transcontinental route. For example, a letter mailed from St. Louis to New York was charged 10¢ for the St. Louis to Chicago to CAM flight and 5¢ for the Chicago to New York government zone. If the letter was mailed from St. Louis to Boston by air the total charge would be 25¢ (CAM St. Louis-Chicago @ 10¢, Chicago-New York @ 5¢ and CAM New York-Boston @ 10¢). Needless-to-say, this combination CAM-governmental zone rating scheme caused considerable confusion for both postal employees and the general public. It remained in effect for almost a year.
Figure
8 illustrates a cover postmarked at Los Angeles, Arcade Station
on June 16, 1926. CAM 4—the Salt Lake City-Los Angeles Route began
operations April 17, 1926, so this cover would have been carried to
Salt Lake for a fee of 10¢. There were three government zones from
Salt Lake to New York accounting for 15¢ additional air postage and
leaving just three cents to pay trans-Atlantic steamer service to
Belgium. London to Continent air service was not indicated and the 28
cent franking would not have permitted it.
Figure 8
The Monthly Supplement of August 1926 published a revised schedule of London to Continent rates and routes. While some of the changes were of a seasonal nature such as the resumption of air service from Paris to Basle, but there were two new major additions.
One new route—designated Route C in the August Supplement—was daily except Sunday morning service to southern France and Switzerland. It offered delivery the same afternoon or evening in Lyons with onward transmission by express service with same evening delivery in Marseilles or Geneva.
The second new route was due to an extension of Lignes Aeriennes Latecoere airline from Toulouse to Casablanca south to Dakar, Senegal. The London dispatch left at 6 PM each Wednesday and 6PM each Thursday for Paris with train connection to Toulouse and air onward. Delivery in Dakar was given at four days from the time of the Wednesday dispatch. The air surcharge was 24 cents per ounce.
1927: Domestic Uniformity but Confusion Still Reigns
The year 1927 would mark the adoption of major changes to the U.S. domestic air rate schedule, but the year began with a continuation of the confusing three-zone government arrangement with a growing number of Contract Air Mail routes offering feeder service.
Figure
9 illustrates a cover postmarked at Arcade Station, Los Angeles,
on January 11, 1927—less than a month before the confusing
CAM-government air rate schedule was abandoned. Franked with a pair
of the 16-cent airmail (Scott’s #C5), the cover was originally
addressed to a recipient at “Cite Pigalle, Paris, France.” It was
endorsed “London to Continent” in red ink. Los Angeles was on the
West Coast CAM route and would have been subject to a CAM fee of 10¢
for transport to San Francisco5. The three government
zones from San Francisco to New York would account for an additional
15 cents, and the remaining seven cents would have paid the three
cents surface voyage to London plus the four cents air surcharge to
Paris. At Paris delivery was redirect to the “Parisian Grill in
Budapest, Hungary” and the cover finally arrived in Budapest on
January 31st.
Figure 9
On February 1, 1927, the POD announced that henceforth domestic airmail would be carried over all routes—government and CAM—for a uniform fee of 10 cents per half ounce, regardless of the distance involved. One can almost hear the great sighs of relief that must have emanated from thousands of beleaguered postal employees and patrons around the country.
An announcement appeared in the February Monthly Supplement stating that postage on letters addressed to foreign countries intended to be carried within the U.S. by airmail would be 10 cents per half ounce for nations such as the United Kingdom where US domestic rates applied and 13 cents for the first half ounce for nations where the international letter rate was normally 5 cents. The 13 cents represented 10¢ domestic plus 5¢ international letter rate less 2¢ the domestic letter rate. Rate computations became more complicated with weights greater than one-half ounce, but we will refer readers to Wawrukiewicz and Beecher (1996) for further elucidation.
Despite the simplification of domestic airmail rates, there was still a great deal of confusion over the proper rates required to dispatch U.S. mails via the London to Continent service. No doubt the rapid expansion in such service coupled with surcharges varying from nation to nation had a lot to do with the confusion.
Figure
10 illustrates a cover postmarked in San Francisco on February 1,
1927—the first day of the 10¢ uniform domestic air rate. Addressed
to Moscow, the letter was mailed is a new red, white & blue Air
Mail envelope. The 21 cents postage applied did not match any
existing rate. The rate required for domestic airmail plus surface
transport to the USSR would have been 13 cents. The rate required for
air post to New York plus sea post to London and London to Continent
air service would have been 29 cents to the USSR. The 21 cent
franking would have been correct for London air service to
Yugoslavia, Rumania and Turkey. In any case the cover received a New
York backstamp of February 2nd and a Moscow arrival
marking of 18.2.27 indicating a total transit time of 18 days for the
7,500-mile journey.
Figure 20
Figure
11 shows a registered airmail cover mailed February 16, 1927, in
New York City. Addressed to Oudjda, French Morocco, the cover is
endorsed “London-Paris-Casablanca.” Backstamps include a London
capped transit mark of February 26th, an Oran transit
handstamp of March 3rd and an Oudjda arrival marking of
March 4th. The pair of 15¢ Map airmails paid 15¢
registration, 5¢ surface transport to London and the 7¢ air
surcharge to Morocco with a 3¢ overpayment.
Figure 11
Figure
12 depicts yet another incorrectly rated cover. Postmarked Los
Angeles on August 29, 1927, the cover bears handstamps indicating
transmission by airmail and is addressed to Germany. The total
postage applied equals 32 cents. A correct payment would have been
13¢ airmail in US plus sea post to Europe, or 19¢ for US airmail,
sea post to UL and air surcharge London to Germany for a letter
weighing ½ ounce or less. A letter weighing ½-1 ounce would have
required 29 cents postage. The logical explanation is probably a
double-weight letter overpaid by 3 cents, but the selection of stamps
might argue for the 3¢, 8¢ and 11¢ 4th Bureaus paying
the old transcontinental airmail fee with 10 cent left over to move
the letter to England and on to Germany.
Figure 12
Other interpretations are certainly possible. For example, the 10¢ Map air could have been intended to pay the old CAM airmail fee to Salt Lake City with three transcontinental zones of government air service accounting for an additional 15 cents and the remaining seven cents paying surface to London and an air surcharge of 4¢ to transport the cover to Berlin. Unfortunately for that theory, the air surcharge to Germany on the date the cover was postmarked was still 6 cents although it was changed to four cents on September 2, 1927, while this cover was still in transit. There is also no indication that the sender intended London to Continent air service.
The February Monthly Supplement also included a note identified as Change No. 123 to the 1926 U.S. Official Postal Guide modifying the information appearing under the item “Mesopotamia (Iraq) in the Foreign Mails section.
The Cairo, Egypt-Bagdad airmail service has been extended so as to reach Basra, Iraq, and a further extension to Karachi will be made later. The following facilities are made available:
The airmail leaving London every second Thursday will be due to reach Bagdad late in the afternoon of the following Thursday (7 days from London), and Basra on Friday morning (7½ days from London). At Basra this mail will be due to connect with the fast Saturday mail steamer due at Karachi on the second Thursday (14 days from London) and also with the service for various Persian Gulf ports leaving Basra on alternate Sundays. Thus, in the week of dispatch, the airmail will offer, in comparison with transmission by the desert motor route, or by sea route, a saving in time of transit of about 2 and 17 days, respectively, to Bagdad, about 3 and 13 days, respectively, to Basra, approximately 7 days to Bushire and other Persian Gulf posts, and about 2 days to Karachi and Northwest India.
The airmail rates have been increased from 6 to 7 cents per ounce, in addition to the international rate of postage of 5 cents for the first ounce and 3 cents for each additional ounce.
The
cover illustrated in figure 13 was postmarked in Teheran in
late November 1929. Endorsed “Air Mail Basrah-London”, it was
given surface transport to Basrah in southern Iraq and then carried
by the Imperial Airways service to Cairo. The cover bears backstamps
of Basrah dated November 27th and Cairo dated November
29th. The international postage required to mail a letter
from Teheran to the USA at the time was 15 shahis (Ch), and, since
this cover bears 40 Ch in stamps, it appears reasonable to assume
that the air surcharge to carry it from Basrah to Cairo was 25
shahis.
Figure 13
The June Supplement announced the reopening of summer airmail routes from London to the Continent. The nations served by these routes, the London closings times, the air surcharges to each and observations concerning delivery times are detailed in table 3.
Table 3 London to Continent Air Mail Service, June 1927
The November 1927 Supplement announced a suspension of certain of the weather-dependent air routes in Europe as had been the case in previous years. The new four cent per ounce air surcharge for Germany was also mentioned, and it was noted that service to Gambia, French Guinea, Sierra Leone and Belgian Congo was available through Dakar at an air surcharge rate of 24 cents per ounce.
Figure
14 illustrates a cover postmarked in Oakland, California, in
October 1927 to be carried by transcontinental airmail, sea post to
the U.K., and London to Continent air service. Egypt was not a
country that was listed by the U.S. POD in1927 to which accelerated
air service was available, but the sender apparently believed that
service could be advanced perhaps by air to Paris, train to
Marseilles and steamer to Egypt.
Figure 14
The 20¢ Map air paid double the 10¢/oz. transcontinental rate and the 7¢ McKinley paid 3¢ sea post to England and the 4¢ air surcharge to France.
Endnotes:
1 Jones, A.D., Aerial Mail Service, 1993, page 23.
2 http://www.imperial-airways.com/History_page_1.html
3 http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Commercial_Aviation/germany/Tran19.htm
4 ibid.
5. Technically the West Coast CAM—Seattle to Los Angeles—exceeded 1,000 miles by 99 miles and was therefore subject to a 15 cent rate, but existing evidence suggests that in practice patrons using this CAM almost always paid 10 cents per ounce.
References
Jones, A.D., Aerial Mail Service, Mineola, NY: The American Air Mail Society, 1993.
British Postal Museum Archive, http://www.postalheritage.org.uk/research/downloads/BPMA_Info_Sheet_Airmail_web.pdf#search=%22london%20to%20paris%20airmail%22
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_in_aviation
http://www.imperial-airways.com/History_page_1.html
US Centennial of Flight Commission: http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Commercial_Aviation/germany/Tran19.htm
Wawrukiewicz, Anthony S. and Beecher, Henry W., U.S. International Postal Rates, 1872-1996, Portland, OR: Cama Publishing Co., 1996.
Chapter 2
1928: A Second European Gateway Becomes Available
The January 1928 Monthly Supplement once again restated the growing list of nations to which accelerated service had become available by using the London to Continent air service provided by the postal administration of Great Britain. For the first time this information appears in tabular form and the various airmail routes were assigned numbers rather than simply arranged in lettered paragraphs. This change, while not dramatic, no doubt rendered the details listing of destinations, times and fees more easily understood by both postal employees and the public.