Show Me Your Airmail Covers, Envelope Designs

This appears to be a personal cover mailed in 1947 at Washington, D.C. using commercial stationery. There is a label on the reverse indicating "insufficient address," but it appears that the letter was delivered. The vertical lines airmail border bending inward are also printed on the reverse.

Here is a nice one that was used in Alaska in 1940 with red/white/blue bordering, no bordering in the upper right corner where the stamps go, and at the middle right three lines reading VIA AIR MAIL/CORREAO AEREO/PAR AVION. The red, white and blue bordering is repeated on the back as well and the three line VIA AIR MAIL/CORREO AERO/PAR AVION in the middle.

I'm going to conclude my diagonals with these two, the first a custom corner design for the Texas Centennial used for the curious Automobile Trailer Mail event and the second a custom design for the Bryson Hotel in Los Angeles:

Some more diagonal for your pleasure

Very nice NAMW from Fleet Air Base, San Pedro. I didn't know the U.S. Navy participated in NAMW!

Don

I am moving to the category I call "Bottom only Bars" and will begin with two FAM covers with a solid blue bar with white printing and red maps. At first glance, they appear to be the same design, but the second cover (1940 FAM 19) has a small design variation, i.e. the red hemisphere maps are reversed. On the 1938 cover the western hemisphere is first, on the 1940 cover, the eastern hemisphere is first. It may be coincidence, but the FAM 17 cover is a western hemisphere flight and the FAM 19 an eastern hemisphere first flight. Perhaps such usage is what the designer and printer of these envelopes intended when creating this slight variation.

Two more airmail covers with bottom bars which appear to have been designed specifically for first flight covers.

@Zepman:

I happened to notice this cover designed by Carl Becken too. Never noticed it before today. Fairly common design. No copyright date on this one.

Don

Bottom bar specifically for girocopter first-flights followed by straight forward blue and red bars separated by aircraft.

I am moving on to my next category of different airmail borders/designators. This group is One-of-a-Kind, that is borders/designators of which I have not found others that are similar enough to make up a separate category.

The first, a 1927 cover with a mailbox in airmail colors, is an A.C. Roessler design, the second, an egg in airmail colors hatching an airplane with a single red line below is of unknown origin.

Two more from my One-of-a-Kinds category: The first depicts Mercury launching an airplane on its way and the second showing two signs on easels noted the change in airmail rates.

Another of my favorites, a firecracker border and Liberty Bell with a complementing 4th of July cancel. There is a dedication of Wertz Field cachet on the reverse, along with a return address of the sender. No indication of who might have designed this dramatic airmail border.

Way better: he was also the inventor of The Bat Bomb:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15666497

Patents require that an invention be "non-obvious" and include an "inventive step".

What with the railroads using hooks to grab & deposit mailbags on the fly, someone would have invented a similar system for aircraft, so I agree that it was an "inventive step" test, but was it really "non-obvious"?

The Bat Bomb, on the other hand, was clearly "non-obvious".

===

Re: https://www.stampcommunity.org/uplo...4-scfopt.jpg

Mr Griffiths' return address is a street address in Toronto, and he addressed the cover to himself at General Delivery in Albany.

Q/ Was he expecting the cover to be returned as unclaimed?

Q/ Was he crew or passenger on the flight?

Q/ Any markings on the reverse?

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Thanks, Ikey Pikey for an interesting sidebar on Dr. Adams.

An inventive mind, indeed! Any indication on how the U.S. was going to get all those bats to Japan?

I wonder if the guy practiced dentistry? A visit to his office might have been interesting.

@zepman is going to have to answer your questions about the Montreal first-flight. That's his cover.

Don