Aircraft on Covers

As a companion thread to Aircraft on Stamps, I will post a few pages from my Aircraft on Covers collection. Here is a cover bearing the likeness of the Benoist Flying Boat which is also feature on the $1 coil stamp issued by the U.S. in 1990 as one of the Transportation Coil series. The airplane carried only two people, one passenger and the pilot. It cruised at 65 mph!

Don

The cover:


The stamp:

 

Lovely cover <Don> and a tri-color into the bargain!

 

Hello all,

Don,
I can contribute to the thread only with this german cover:

 

Makanudo:

Very nice cancel. Great image of a Douglas DC-4 or in this case the military version, C-54 Skymaster. Looks like the cancel is commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift. A highly collectible cover for us Aircraft on Covers collectors.

I have not seen this cancel before. Thanks for the post.

Don

 

A Ford 5-AT is the aircraft on this cover. Henry Ford purchased the Stout Metal Airplane Company in 1925 and developed the Ford Tri-motor from the original Stout single engine Stout Pullman.

Don

 

There is currently discussion on another thread about travelling post offices and sea post There was also in the U.S. a short-lived experiment to use aircraft to sort mail. I don't think mail was actually canceled on these flights, just sorted. At least, I have never seen a flying mail car cancel. Here is a cover commemorating the inauguration of this service featuring a Fairchild Packet, Flying Boxcar.

Don

 

A little off topic in this case, but it is an extension of the travelling post office thread again. To counter the decline of the railway post offices in the U.S. the postal service inaugurated highway post offices (HPO) in 1941, I believe. The HPOs were buses configured to carry and sort mail while in route. One of these came through the town I lived in when I was a teenager. Here's a cover that commemorates its route.

HPOs didn't routinely cancel much mail on the vehicles. They dispatched and picked up mail at the post offices on their route, but it was already canceled in most instances. The majority of HPO cancels are first-trip cancels and philatelic in nature. Highway post office cancellations on non-philatelic mail are not so easy to find.

Don

 

Today's aircraft on covers is a little unusual in that it is a private airplane as opposed to commercial airliner or military aircraft. The majority of aircraft on stamps and covers are either commercial or military. If one looks closed at the airplane in the cachet, probably using a magnifier of some kind, it is possible to see the Federal Aviation Registration number on the fuselage of the airplane. By going to the FAA data base for aircraft registration one can find the current owner and location of this airplane. The airplane is a Piper PA-28-140 Cherokee, a very popular design for pilot training and personal use.

Don

 

Great stuff, Don! Thanks for sharing. Did not know of the HPOs at all.

I think I can see Sky King and Penny in the Piper!

 

This airplane won't appear on many stamps or covers since it did not go into production. Cover produced by the Lockheed Stamp Club. Many businesses had their own stamp clubs back in the 1940s.

Don

 

I've always thought this was an attractive cover. Lots of images of the Wright Flyer, especially around the key anniversary dates.

Don

 

Here is a multi-faceted cover with, at least for me, three collecting points.

Those of us who are older remember Smilin' Jack from the "funnies." It was a popular, long-running cartoon strip (1933 - 1973). I enjoyed it for its aviation theme. I collected this cover not only for the Smilin' Jack reference, but also for the drawing of a Douglas DC-6 aircraft and the association value of it being addressed to Ernie Kehr a prominent philatelist who became the advocate of Stamps for the Wounded, a WW II program that promoted stamp collecting as a theraputic activity for wounded veterans.

Don

 

I haven't posted to this thread for awhile, so here is one from my shoe box album of aircraft on covers. It is a handmade cover with a photo of a Ford Tri-Motor 5-AT clipped from a publication and pasted onto an envelope. The corners are also pasted on and the dots hand colored to create an airmail border. It is franked with U.S. Sc. C-12. The return address on the reverse is the same as the addressee, so Henry Stinemetts apparently made this cover for his own collection. It is an airport dedication cover. San Benito is north and a little west of Brownsville, Texas. The appellation "The Resaca City" is a little confusing as the Google translation for resaca is hangover or backwash. Perhaps it was intended to mean a "backwater town." The airport at San Benito is no longer in existence.

An interesting cover destined for my Aircraft on Covers collection.

Don

 

I went a little deeper into the shoe box and came across another cover prepared by Henry Stinemetts, much in the same style as the previous. The second one (posted below) is another airport dedication cover, this time for Eaker Field in Durant, Oklahoma. Eaker Field is about 100 miles SE of where I live and still an active airport known for its pilot training program conducted by the state college in Durant. This cover is made very similarly to the one above, with a cut out photo of an airplane pasted to the envelope, this time full size, plus the paste on diagonals to the corners, address label and same franking. Try as I might, have not been able to positively identify the aircraft pictured. It looks like a variant of a de Havailand DH-60 Moth. I have not been able to find a model with the enclosed cockpits, though. The aircraft registration on the side of the fuselage beginning with M indicates it was registered and operated on the Isle of Man. Oh well, it's a nice looking cover which will fit in my Aircraft on Covers collection as a mate to the above. I wonder how many covers of this type Henry Stinemetts made? I'll have to start searching aircraft on covers again to see if I can turn up others.

Don

 

A first flight cover Bombay to New York that includes a good image of a Boeing 747. It is for aircraft image that I collected this cover. The 747s were heavy haulers in the 1970s & 80s, but are now being phased out of most airline inventories.

Don

 

National Air Mail Week in the U.S. (April 14 - April 21, 1938) produced a plethora of covers, many depicting recognizable aircraft, historic and, then (1938), contemporary. Here is one from Garden City, NY, along with an accompanying enclosure.

It depicts a Bleriot XI. The Bleriot gained fame and a place in aviation history by being the first aircraft to be flown across the English Channel successfully on July 25, 1909. Two years later, Earle Ovington flew a Bleriot carrying mail between Garden City, and Mineola, New York, a distance of two miles on 9/23/1911. That flight was reenacted as part of National Air Mail Week, May 19, 1938. A flyer describing the event that was in this cover follows below.

Don

 

Don its a very nice looking cover indeed.

 

Thanks, Makanudo.

Don

 

Franked with commemoratives dating from 1936-1937, this cover posted on the second day of National Air Mail Week cover shows a reasonably good likeness of a Douglas DC-3. By 1938 the DC-3 had become the flagship of U.S. airlines and would remain so until after WW II. A second collecting point for this cover is the phrase in the cachet "Mail by Air -- Everywhere." It alluded to the increasing use of air mail, but there was also a movement that began in the late 1930s to move all domestic, first-class, long distance mail by air. That probably would have happened in the early 1940s had the U.S. not entered WW II. As it turned out, domestic air mail as a class of mail was not abolished until October 1975. From that point forward, all U.S. first class mail was carried by air at the regular first-class postage rate where practical.

Don

 

This year, 2018, marks the 100th anniversary of airmail service by the U.S. Post Office. There are a couple of new stamps marking the centennial, but it was the 20th anniversary of airmail in 1938 that was the premier celebration. The cover in the post above notes the commemoration in Los Angeles and the cover in my post today is one of Philadelphia's efforts. Today's cover has several collecting points, but it is the TWA label with its DC-3 image that serves as the motive for collecting it.

Don