May 15/16, 1918 Airmail Covers

In the image below are two covers from the first airmail flights from Washington, DC on May 15 and 16, 1918. If I'm reading my new (to me) 5th Edition of the American Air Mail Catalog, the top cover is AAMC #101 (a). Thus it would have been carried on Lt. Boyle's ill-fated May 15 flight (which "crashed" just outside of Washington, DC, when Boyle got lost and put down in a field, damaging his prop). Covers on Boyle's flight were returned to Washington and carried again the next day by Lt. Edgerton. It is backstamped "New York, N.Y. REC'D STA. W, May 16, 4 PM 1918.

The bottom cover appears to me to be a curious example of AAMC #101(i). In addition to the mail from Boyle's May 15 flight, the AAMC says


This (bottom) cover appears to be one of the scarce (?) covers with the "May 16 - First Trip" cancellation. But it lacks postage for the $0.24 air mail rate. It is backstamped "REC'D PHILADELPHIA, PA - May 16, 3 PM, 1918" and came (to me) with a PSE certification that reads


The certificate is dated 9/24/2010. I'm wondering if there ever was a stamp. The U436b is cancelled, and I see no evidence (residual gum) that a stamp was ever attached. But it was not marked postage due when received in Philadelphia.

What are the odds that it never had a stamp?

Basil

Hi Basil,
Can you make out what this says?
Don

Very nice covers.

The odds are very high that it originally had the 24c stamp, or at least sufficient postage to pay the correct fee. The faint marking that Don pointed out appears to be the "Fee claimed ..." marking indicating that the cover received special delivery handling.

Yes, it's the the "Fee claimed" special delivery marking. I believe the pencil numbers are for special delivery service.

In the reverse image, I think I see the ghost of a rectangle between the cancel and the 3c indicium. If you have a blacklight, have a look at that area.

Thanks for the sharp eyes, guys! With that, here are two close ups:





Basil

Basil, that's really nice photography!

This is great philatelic detective work! The second cover is quite rare and was flown on the first leg from Washington to Philadephia. I just wish that someone along the way had not removed the stamp - the cover is still valuable but the removed stamp is a bit hit on the commercial value. The flight continued on to New York City and then returned. The aircraft used was a US Army Jenny biplane. There is one inaccuracy in the description of the May 15th - according to the Air and Space Museum folks it was not a crash north of Washington. The pilot was Lt. George Boyle and he was chosen not for his flying skills, but for his fiancée's family connections. On May 15 when he was starting his take off run down the polo field to gain enough speed to take off he pointed his aircraft to go in the wrong direction and then he ran across a muddy area and face planted the nose of his Jenny in the mud. It was a minor incident that was the result of an insufficiently trained novice pilot running his aircraft into a muddy area that he should not have gone near and having his main wheels catch in the mud resulting in his plane nosing over into it.

Kimo,

I always appreciate your insight. I have read at least a half a dozen different accounts of Boyle's ill-fated "adventure." Often the details do not agree. But most agree that Boyle made it about 20 miles south of Washington to Waldorf, MD where he tried to put down in a field and the plane nosed over, damaging the prop. The field was reportedly next to propery owned by Assistant Postmaster Otto Praeger. Boyle's call back to Washington went to Hap Arnold, later commanding general of the USAAF in WWII and honored on a 65 cent stamp in the Great Americans series. The mail for Boyle's flight was trucked back to Washington and flown the next day by Lt Edgerton. Two days later Boyle was given another chance to fly the mail, got lost again. Major Reuben Fleet refused pressure to give him a third chance.

I have a display exhibit devoted to the life of Hap Arnold in which I illustrate his "life and times" with a variety of philatelic (and other) material. With next year being the centennial of the first scheduled airmail service in the U.S. I'm working on enhancing parts of the exhibit that detail Arnold's role in the development of airmail in the U.S. Arnold recounts his role in Boyle's mishap in his memoir "Global Mission."

Basil

How'd that go? "It's not what you know, but who you know nose!

Great story, thanks for retelling it and thank you for showing these covers.

Thanks, Basil. As you say there are a number of stories. I was going by the one that the NASM folks told me. The version you have also sounds plausible for a relatively untrained novice pilot. I just did online research and found a couple of descriptions that match the one you mention.

This first one is from the Air and Space Magazine website and includes some film that show the aircraft actually taking off from the polo field so that confirms Lt. Boyle did take off. It also confirms that he landed and then overturned his aircraft after landing (so it was a ground accident and not a crash) at the rural Maryland town of Waldorf which is about 20 to 25 miles south of Washington when he was supposed to be flying northeast to Philadelphia. http://www.airspacemag.com/videos/c...irmail-1918/

And here is a short description that includes a mention of how Lt. Boyle was given a second chance to fly the mail and got lost again. He was given an escort this second time of aircraft being flown by capable pilots to get him started in the right direction towards Philadelphia but after they told him to simply follow the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay to get him half of the way to Philadelphia and left him he followed the western shore but when the bay ends in northern Maryland Boyle did not keep going to the northeast and rather followed the Bay's north shore as it curved around the top end of the Bay and then followed the eastern shore going south southward until he ran out of gas and landed. After that second fiasco, apparently, his political connection could not save him from being sacked as an air mail pilot. https://postalmuseum.si.edu/airmail...le_long.html

The Smithsonian postal museum description notes that there was 134 pounds of mail on the first flight. Using a commonly used conversion of about 35 covers/cards per pound, that works out to something in the range of 4,700 covers on the first flight which for flight covers is a large amount of mail.