British Flying Boat Airmail.singapore To Manilla

Can anyone help me out with some information concerning 205 Sdn (RAF) flying mail from Singapore to Manilla and back? I haven't had too much success in finding out exactly why and for how long the RAF flew mail back and forth from Singapore to Manilla prior to WW II....

It seems that mid 1930's the RAF flew mail by Seaplane both directions from Singapore to Manilla. They flew out of RAF Selatar (?) until the Japanese forced the evacuation of Singapore in 41-42. The covers were stamped with the marking shown on the covers below...







One source informed me that this specific route was for Govt, and military use because it was faster than traditional mail routing. It only served the two cities. They may have added Shanghai to this particular route at some point. That is about all the info I could locate. I would like to know how long this route was in operation and ANY other info about it...
Thanks, Rick2

You might want to consider joining the American Air Mail Society. Your covers and information on them are listed in the American Air Mail Catalog, Seventh Edition, Volume 1 in the section "Philippine Flights 1911 - 1946". This 136 page section in this volume lists all of the hundreds of first flights around, to and from the Philippines during those years including of course the many flown by the British Royal Air Corps. It includes illustrations of cachets, photos of some of the covers, and information about the flights. Your first cover is listed as catalog number PI-106(d). I cannot read the dates on your second one so I cannot tell you its catalog number. Your third one is catalog number PI-100(c).

Thank you Kimo!

Ok, I looked at the 2nd cover its 29 June 1935 also. Thanks !!

What was the British Royal air corps? I have never heard of it.

There was a bit of confusion by the cachet maker - they should have written "Royal Air Force" and not "Royal Air Corps". Some of the other flights in this series of flights over several years have their cachets in which "Royal Air Force" is correctly written.

The aircraft used in these flights are Short model Singapore III flying boats which had 4 engines - two tractor and two pusher with a pair of tractor and pusher lined up in each of two pods. They were biplanes with triple tails. Short was a major flying boat manufacturer in Britain at that time. The Singapore III models first flew in 1934 and were extensively used by the RAF until the late 1930s when they were replaced by 1939 with the Short Sunderland model. Here is a photo of what these Singapore III flying boats looked like.

It is just pure speculation, but perhaps the reason the cachet maker used the phrase "Royal Air Corps" instead of the correct name "Royal Air Force" on the first few first flight covers of this series before correcting it on later ones with "Royal Air Force", might be because until 1944 the Philippines was governed by the US and the US aviation branch at that time was officially named the "US Army Air Corps". Also, this use of the term Corps rather thanb Force was mirrored by the local Philippine government in 1935 when they created a constabulary aviation force officially named the "Philippine Army Air Corps". Perhaps the term Corps was just on the mind of the person who made that first cachet made that error. This is just a guess though.