My Newly Acquired Clipper Covers!

The stamp on your Crosby cover with the Alaska Clipper picture is Scott # C25-A, the six cent transport plane stamp in booklet format. So what you have is a single pane from a booklet. For a reason I cannot recall, the US Postal Department required a full pane to get the first day cancel for this issue. The six cent transport plane stamp was first issued -- Scott # C25 -- in 1941 for first class airmail. In 1942 US service personnel were allowed free franking for surface mail, and airmail for 6 cents (a bargain when posted from overseas, and much faster than surface mail to write home from the war fronts). The stamp was reissued in booklet format precisely as a convenience to service personnel (easy to carry in a pocket, more convenient than sheet stamps). But I don't think it was very widely used as intended. I collect U.S. airmail stamps and covers, and keep my eyes for wartime APO and Navy covers with the booklet stamp, and mostly what I see are the normal sheet variety, even after the booklet was issued. I do have a few covers -- postal history covers, nothing fancy or philatelic -- from APO's with the booklet stamp, but they aren't all that common.


Not that I'm aware of. I have dozens of Crosby covers, both of US Airmail issues, as well as WWII patriotic covers. One of the most unusual Crosby covers in my collection is both -- a Crosby WWII patriotic cover used as a first day cover for the six cent transport plane booklet stamp:

This may be one of a kind. I have a collection of "War time US Airmail FDC's on patriotic covers" that is kind of unique. There were only two airmail stamps issued during the war: Scott C25a and C26. Lots of FDC's were created for those stamps, but less common were people who took existing WWII patriotic covers and used those to get FDC's for these two stamps. I have maybe a dozen or so, and this Crosby cover is probably the most unique.

Crosby was very prolific. He would sometimes do six or more different cachets for a single first day issue. He would also do double cachets on #10 envelopes. He's popular with a lot of collectors. For the US Airmail transport plane series (seven stamps in all, counting the booklet stamp) I have a three ring binder stuffed with Crosby covers. Lots of different ways to collect Crosby covers.

Basil

Hey Basil, that is a great cover!
Give me a couple of hours and I'll start a thread where we can post the Crosby gems!
Cheers

I note also from the staple holes that the P.O. FDC crew tore apart existing booklets instead of just using panes cut from the sheet.

Here is the back of the philatelic announcement card for the Transport booklet noting the full booklet pane policy on FDCs, but not providing any particular reasoning. This is the same instruction given for the Prexie booklets released in January 1939.

hy-brasil I noticed the staple marks too, glad they have no rust around them! lol

Thanks for that John its a interesting bit of info there.

Panes cut from the sheet? You can't mean the sheet of the original six cent stamp, C-25. It would be apparent that they were not panes from the booklet. Do you mean torn from the booklet at the top perforation? Those do exist:

Its funny, I never really limed FDC collecting focussing more on the stamps until I came across these clipper covers and the other Crosby covers.

To be clear, you have a mix of first flight covers (FFC), first day covers (FDC), and regular mail (covers sent in the normal course of people sending mail). Sometimes a FFC can also be a FDC when the date of issue of the stamp coincides with the date the first flight takes off. This can happen when the post office and the company that has the contract to fly the mail get together to make it so such as your November 22, 1935 first flight covers flown by Pan American Airways from San Francisco to Hawaii and Manila, but more often than not First Flight Covers are not flown on the first day of issue of a particular air mail stamp. First Day Covers are ones that have been created whenever any new stamp is issued and dealers and collectors commemorate the first day it comes out with interesting covers or cards that are cancelled on that first day. Your February 15, 1937, June 25, 1941, and March 18, 1943 covers cancelled in Washington are examples of FDCs. There are collectors and catalogs for both first flight covers and first day covers and both are fun to collect. Regular mail has its collectors as well, mainly people who are interested in how mail was being moved from one place to another at a given point in time. One can trace the development of mail carriage over time this way. Your April 28, 1942 cover cancelled in Honolulu and censored is an example of ordinary mail. This was the envelope in which a person wrote a letter and mailed it to someone in Los Angeles. Because this was during the war and because there was military and civilian censorship in many places including Hawaii, all mail leaving Hawaii to anywhere including the US mainland was censored. There are people who collect censored mail, both military and civilian and who study how it developed over time and even develop lists of the details of how covers were marked. That is a lot of fun as well.

Thanks for the insight kino!
I think its kinda cool the way the clipper is celebrated, with its own stamp and covers, like the famed Zeppelin flights and also how the clippers were also a bit more romantic in a way!
Cheers

Pan Am created the "clipper" name for its flying boats starting in 1931 until 1946. They continued using this name for their aircraft afterwards, but it was their flying boats that are famous for creating this term as it is applied to aircraft. Pan Am borrowed the term "clipper" from the fast sailing ships of an earlier era. During this era Pan Am had 28 "clippers" that were of 4 different designs. Their first was the American Clipper which was a Sikorsky S-40 with 6 crew and 38 passengers. Other "clippers" designs were the Sikorsky S-42 with 4 crew and 37 passengers, the Martin M-130 with 9 crew and 36 passengers, and the giant Boeing 314 with 11 crew and 74 passengers.

Collecting first flight covers that were flown on these "clippers" is fun and includes not only the trans-Pacific flights, but the trans-Atlantic flights, the flights around Latin America and the Caribbean and flights to Alaska.

I like the Idea of the Samoa clipper....I'll be looking for them too

The Samoan Clipper was a Sikorsky S-42. Her original name was the American Clipper II, and was first delivered to Pan Am in September, 1936. She was destroyed in an accident in Pago Pago on January 11, 1938 so the window for covers flown by her under either of her names is relatively short.

I see that you live in Oz so I was thinking that you also might also enjoy looking for covers flown on another Clipper names the "Anzac Clipper" which was a giant Boeing B-314? She was delivered to Pan Am in June of 1941, then Pan Am sold her to the US Navy in 1942 for the war effort. In 1947 she was then sold to American International Airways who then sold her to World Airways in 1948 and finally was destroyed in Baltimore, Maryland, USA in 1951.

Thank you for that Kimo ANZAC Clipper?
That is, a new one for me, I'll be looking out for that!
You certainly are the clipper Oracle!
Cheers

Lawrence, have you seen the film at the beginning of the PAA Clipper thread? Very informative, as is the entire thread. Basil does a wonderful job of tutoring us on the Clipper flights. Thank you Basil.

http://goscf.com/t/55296

I'll check it bout , thanks littleriverphil

between Basil, Kimo, Rod and yourself I have learnt so much on the clippers already!

Thank you all for a speedy education, this is how a community should work!

Here's an unusual Clipper cover -- unusual for me, since I usually only collect the outbound first flights, and usually only if they have US airmail stamps on them:



This is FAM14-6. The trans-Pacific route shown in the cachet is nostalgic for me. I flew that same basic route in a MATS Super Constellation in 1961. Only the starting and stopping points differ, otherwise we hit all the same islands going across the Pacific: Honolulu, Wake, Midway, and Guam. My MATS flight started at Travis AFB and ended at Clark AFB in the Philippines. I was 14 at the time, Dad was a Navy Chief Hospital Corpsman headed to a US Marine MAAG unit in Tsoying, Taiwan. An aviation buff even back then, I got Dad to convince the pilot to let me take the First Officer's seat for about half an hour on one of the legs (somewhere between Midway and Guam, but I don't remember exactly).

Basil

Acronyms explained for those unfamiliar with the military jargon:

MATS = Military Air Transport Service

MAAG = Military Assistance Advisory Group. One or two of the guys in Dad's unit made some hush hush trips to a little country in S.E. Asia during this time, making them among the earliest of the US presence in that country that would draw us into a disastrous conflict. It was the early '60's so it shouldn't be hard to guess what country I'm talking about.