Pan Am Clipper Covers Or Stamps

Presumably, since I've found few covers from Navy ships from this period with transit cancels or even receivers. That includes addressed commemorative covers noting Hawaii, Canal Zone and Guantanamo locations.



Honolulu fits. China Clipper service was it for airmail to/from Hawaii and the mainland at the time; properly paid here.

Are there any reference works that document the dates of various Clipper flights? I ask because I'm wondering if it is possible to identify which specific Clipper a given cover was carried on. Take this one for example:

Is it possible to hazard even a guess as to what Clipper and route it took across the Atlantic? There are no backstamps.

I have just started collecting U.S. Airmails and took to the clipper stamps immediately!

they are a very nice set.

The multi-volume American Air Catalogue does list covers carried on the various first flights which we've been seeing here, so we can get a starting date for service.

The 30c stamp was issued specifically for transatlantic airmail. The first regular flight to England via Canada was begun on June 24, 1939. There was also a more southerly route to Marseilles but I'm pretty sure it was cut or truncated with the invasion of France in 1940. American Clipper was indeed the name of one of the planes; flight schedules, likely with aircraft names, would have been available from the P.O. and probably newspapers, too. This would follow ship sailing info with ship names included.

Most of the Pan Am flying boats were turned over for military use during WWII.

There is also "Pan American's Pacific pioneers: A pictorial history of Pan Am's Pacific first flights 1935-1946" by Jon E. Krupnick. This is available by mail check-out to APS members through the society's philatelic research library and a few other philatelic libraries around the country. There is also a follow-up book by the same author.

The example I posted was not the best example since it lists the American Clipper on the cover. Often no specific Clipper is mentioned, and especially where the letter was posted from somewhere else in the U.S., say on the West Coast, I'm curious whether there is any way to know which Clipper it would have flown on out of NYC. I believe early flights had backstamps tracing the path taken across the Atlantic, which might give a clue, but I've been looking at some 1941 covers without backstamps, posted from various places, and it doesn't seem likely that one can ever be sure of which Clipper the cover was carried on. Just wonderin'.

After the first flight, I doubt anyone would make a list of all flights for philatelists or aviation fans. It was regular airmail and passenger service after all. I think the research would be all your own, to go through online archives of New York newspapers for announcements. Pan Am and post office records should be somewhere, the Library of Congress, perhaps, though not necessarily available online. You could give inter-library loan a shot.

If you were mailing from say, the West Coast, you wouldn't be sure exactly when the envelope would reach New York and the proper office so you probably wouldn't even try to specify a certain flight. If you didn't care which flight it took, same thing. The sender seemed to make sure it went out as soon as possible and so carefully specified the flight, I believe. That is very German, to make a bad stereotype. The 30c stamp already "says" it's to go by air and the Pan Am Clippers were the only way at the time. The sticker looks to be a PO one, so best guess is that the sender went to some post office to get this stamped and mailed.

But you never know for sure. The sender could have missed the cutoff time for the intended flight.

Nice ciderella for the topic:

There is a Dutch reference: Noord-Atlantische luchtverbindingen met nadruk op de jaren 1939 - 1946, by Hans Aitink and Egbert Hovenkamp

It lists all clipper flights 1939-1942.

The April 3, 1941 cover above went by the Dixie Clipper, New York to Bermuda to Horta to Lisbon and arrived there April 4.

Jan

my clippers.

Were there supposed to be pictures attached?