Why Is This A "Patriotic" Cover?

Actually, I don't think it is:



This is a common FDC for Scott #C25a. It is cataloged in Mellone as #40, "Designer Unknown." But true "patriotic" covers with C25a are uncommon, and not cataloged by Mellone. (One Crosby cover, Mellone C25a-#8 might be an exception.) I wonder who was the first to call this cover a "patriotic" cover, and why? As I understand the term, it refers to covers -- during WWII -- that were intended to encourage support for the war effort. Many of them are notably bellicose. This cover lacks the cachet (in the classic dictionary sense) of the patriotic covers of WWII. The colors cannot explain it: they are the traditional red and blue of air mail. The plane is a transport plane, not a WWII bomber or fighter. And picture of the pilot is nondescript.

Here is C25a on a real patriotic cover from WWII:



This may be one of a kind. It is the only one I've seen.

"Keep Em Flying" refers to the home front doing it's part to keep the Air Force pilots going strong. It was a common saying during the war. It is certainly a patriotic cover.

I would have looked for the "Keep Em Flying" to accompany a war bonds pitch, savings stamp, etc.

There are lots of activities which patriotic citizens could do on the home front during the war to "keep em flying". Many of these activities also become slogans. "buy war bonds", "buy defense bonds", "conserve manpower", "food will win the war", "Oil is ammunition - use it wisely", etc. And variants to recycle paper and metal, use less fuel and tires, etc. Many of these were incorporated into meter machines as add-on slogans to their corporate mail.

revcollector is right about the "Keep 'Em Flying" slogan. I would have recognized that if I had Googled for images with the slogan. It turns up a lot of WWII posters, some of which I've seen before. But I wonder if it wasn't a bit appropriated here to mean to keep the air mail flying, rather than the US aviation forces involved in the war effort. Of course, by 1943, it would be hard to distinguish the two, at least as far as delivering air mail overseas was concerned. Ken Lawrence had an interesting article in a recent APS about FAM 22 and how PAA was basically taken over by the military with the land transport plans (the seaplanes being turned over to the Navy) carrying both air mail and war material.

I have recently become interested in watching for US air mail FDC's during WWII issued on patriotic covers. It is a very focused interest, because only two US air mail stamps were issued during the war years, C25a in 1943 and C26 in 1944. Regular postage issued during WWII on patriotic posters is quite common. But with the exception of the cover under discussion (and the Crosby cover I mentioned), FDC's of the two air mail stamps issued during the war on specific patriotic covers are much less common. Their scarcity and variety make for a nice collection of unusual FDC's.

I'll keep the cover under discussion in my "Wartime US air mail FDC's on patriotic posters" collection, but with an asterisk.

I remember seeing the smiling aviator cachet on this cover attributed to John Coulthard. It resembles his style, at least for non-cartoons.

Certainly, the "keep 'em flying" slogan was used often enough to constitute a collecting sub-field in itself.

Don

With respect to the war bonds pitch, here is an uncommon variant of the Mellone #40 C25a cover:



It is FDOI, but with a "Buy War Savings Bonds and Stamps" cancellation rather than the FDOI "First Day of Issue" cancellation.

Don,

I've often wondered how one of the most common C25a FDC cachets could go so long unattributed. I suppose many just look it up in Mellone and look no further. Thanks for the suggestion that it could have been John Coulthard. Looking at some of his early "Naval" cachets I can certainly see a similarity of style:



Thanks for shedding some light on this mystery.

Basil

The face on the Keep Em Flying cover has a lot more shading and is a much more complex drawing than the China drawing. They don't seem to be from the same hand to me, but I am far from an expert on art.

Well, the two cachets are from two different time periods, the China drawing being from an earlier period (1938). I am no "art" expert either, but I also wonder if some difference could be attributed to the medium, in that the earlier cachet was made with a rubber stamp, and the second printed directly to paper. If there is any better evidence to connect the C25a cachet to Coulthard, it would be interesting to see it.

Edit: I'm guessing that the earlier cachet was with a rubber stamp, because of how faint the impression is compared to printed cachets.

Here's another patriotic in the same style, (see link) and probably by the same artist. Again no attribution on the cover, but note the cover is addressed to Cachet Craft. Possibly, Cachet Craft did a series of these during WWII. I'll stick with John Coulthard as the artist, until someone provides a more positive ID.

https://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/ODUxWDE0...YIw/$_57.JPG

Don

Update,

For those who might be interested, Don's guess about the creator of the cachet was a good one. I ran across this add in an old First Days:



Further research turned up this bit in First Days:



The 2nd Edition of Mellone's volume that catalogs C25a was published in 1984, a couple of years after these items appeared in First Days. So the knowledge was out there. FWIW, I have noticed an error in Mellone's cataloging of cachets for this stamp. His cachet #'s 8, 9 and 10 are three of the Cachet Craft cachets showing early airplanes found on other series of The Transports. I have never seen a C25A on one of these covers, and doubt that they exist. Mellone shows none of these covers for C25, but they exist: I have C25 (not C25a) on four of the five designs in my collection. Either he accidentally cataloged C25 covers as C25a, or mistook C25 covers for C25a. I imagine it was just an accident, not a case of actually mistaking one for the other.

So be careful with Mellone. And another FWIW, in looking into all of this, I saw a review of Mellone's in First Days that was anything but flattering. It may be all that we have, but it is not without its flaws.

Basil

For the sake of equal time for the Navy, here's a well known slogan on a soldier's free-franked USO cover.

...and the Army.

It should have said "Let's Keep 'em Floating!"

Now if I can just find C25a or C26 on one of those USO covers I'd scoop it up in a heart beat. I'm on a quest right now for both FDC's and postally used covers with these stamps on patriotic covers. They are the only airmail stamps issued during the war, so that sets a nice limited time frame for a focused collection of covers.