The History and Romance of Air Mail Stamps

The history of the flying machine reaches back as far as the earliest of man’s written records of his thoughts and ambitions. And one can only surmise how long ago it must have been, in the dim unchronicled past, when the idea of human flight first suggested itself to our ancestors.

¶ The ancient mythology of the Greeks reveals an interest in this problem. The philosophers who lived when Rome was ruler of the world, and the alchemists of the middle ages have left time-stained parchments of their thoughts and theories about artificial flight.

¶ And even today, after centuries of trial and error have brought an intangible dream to a streamlined actuality, the glamour and marvel of aviation still grips the minds of men. Hardly any device which humanity has fashioned has taken so lengthy a time to accomplish and, after being achieved, has been able to hold its place in the sun—in war and in peace.

¶ For it was war that brought the rapid development of the airplane into a machine that is serving man so capably as a peace-time vehicle. Bringing serum to the critically ill; winging food to flooded and snow-bound areas; transporting people over thousands of miles in a single day; and speeding up the wheels of commerce with its mail carriers; these are but a few of the almost magical feats which aviation has made possible.

¶ And, better than volumes of words could describe, one will find this vast panorama of man’s struggle for mastery over the air pictured in glowing colors and realistic scenes on the hundreds of air mail stamps which have been issued by almost all countries of the world.

¶ There is a tale of danger and daring behind each square of tinted paper, a pulse-quickening story of crossing fever-ridden jungles, battling treacherous, snow-clad mountain peaks, and risking the mocking death of desert wastes.

¶ It takes no great stretch of the imagination to visualize the magnitude and grace of the Zeppelins as pictured on the German air mail stamps. From afar, one seems to hear the deep-throated roar of the great engines and the whistle of the wind as it strums along the wires. The great “Graf,” air-traveler supreme, is flying before your eyes!

¶ One needs no trip to the Mediterranean to see the blue of its waters and the gold of its sun. The Grecian issue with an indescribable delicacy of line and color suffices. The ruins of the Acropolis, perched on their hilly site, before a background of cloud-studded skies, seem but a step away.

¶ But to single out stamps here and there does not do full justice to this theme—the myriad perfection of air mail stamps as a pictorial record of a great triumph must be viewed in a more methodical manner, and more broadly, as a grand mural of many events.

¶ Beginning with the fabulous flight of Daedalus and his son Icarus, on wings made of wax and feathers, we can follow the story of aviation on air mail stamps. We see the Roman philosopher, Virgil, on an Italian adhesive, gazing at a gliding eagle and remarking prophetically, “I assign limits neither to the extent nor the duration of the empire.”

¶ Even Leonardo Da Vinci, while creating paintings of undying fame, must have spent many an hour musing on the possibilities of flight by artificial means. His ideas were so detailed that he drew a plan of a glider which, although never constructed in wood and fabric, embodies several fundamental features of aero-dynamics.

¶ The progress of aviation was rutted in this theoretical stage, however, for hundreds of years. Many problems, some of them still unthought of, had to be overcome before controlled flight was a reality.

¶ Ballooning, of course, had developed steadily after the epochal success of the Montgolfier brothers in 1783. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, Alberto Santos-Dumont began experimenting with dirigibles. His early attempts were made with non-rigid balloons, and we can see one of this Brazilian’s ships circling the Eiffel Tower of Paris, on a stamp issued by his native land.

¶ The event pictured took place on October 19, 1901, before a group of officials of the French Aero Club who were there to award a prize of 100,000 francs if Santos-Dumont could successfully fly from the Aero Club Park to the Eiffel Tower and return. Several previous attempts had resulted in failure, but this day the craft made the first lap of the journey without mishap.

¶ At a fairly high altitude the balloon rounded the tower at its very tip, but as soon as the nose pointed homeward, a strong wind struck it, slowing the motor to such an extent that it almost stopped. For the moment Santos-Dumont was between the devil and the deep blue sea. If he loosened his control from the steering lever to adjust the carburetor, the balloon might swing wild. But the fates were kind that day—his ship sailed on as he tinkered with the spark and brought his sputtering motor back to a healthy roar.

¶ On he sailed, over the Bois, then over the throngs at the Auteuil race-track while precious minutes were ticking on. He had to complete the voyage in a half hour and only a few moments remained of this allotted time.

¶ The dirigible wobbled, it swung up and then down, the engine wheezed and coughed—but Santos-Dumont kept his eyes fixed on the goal. The cheers of the crowd rose into the air and then died to a whisper as nerves became rigid with suspense. It wasn’t a question whether he would make it, now, but whether he would do it on time. For the minutes were flying faster than the ship—at last he passed over Longchamps, the Seine was crossed, and finally Santos-Dumont sailed by over the heads of the French Aero Club officials. The line had been crossed—and the flight completed in twenty-nine minutes and thirty seconds!

¶ Another countryman of this successful aeronaut was Augusto Severo who built a much larger balloon than had ever been attempted up to that time. “The Pax” which has been illustrated on an air stamp crashed, however, dashing Severo and his mechanic to a horrible death. The unfortunate airman struck the earth with such terrific force that the bones of his feet were forced through the soles of his boots.

¶ To Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, though, goes the greatest honors for bringing this type of aircraft to a really practical development. After a hectic, military life during which he served the Union cause in the Civil War under the immortal Lincoln, he retired to dream about the vision that had lived with him since youth. To build rigid balloons, to put a skeleton of metal under a hood of fabric was his contribution to this science.

¶ Count Zeppelin was 61 years of age when his first great airliner was finished, a ship over 400 feet long and 38 feet in diameter. This was by far the largest dirigible ever built up to that time, and thousands of people flocked to witness its first flight in July, 1899. Journalists, peasants, scientists, men and women of all ages and interests came to see this huge sausage-shaped balloon navigate through space.

¶ The morning of that epochal day was clear and bright, as bright as the feverish glint in Zeppelin’s eyes, as, with poorly-concealed excitement, he tested ropes and wires, and examined the hundred-and-one vital parts of the L. Z. 1. The great crowds that surged about the lake stood in hushed awe as he came out of the hangar after the inspection was completed, and reverently bowed his head in silent prayer. A few moments later, the roar of two powerful motors went echoing over the waters of Lake Constance, and slowly the dirigible glided from the cavernous depths of its hangar. And then, with a serene indifference, the L. Z. 1 floated upward, higher, higher into the full glare of the sun.

¶ While wave after wave of full-throated cheers announced to the world a triumphant achievement, the airship traveled three and a half miles. Seventeen minutes later, it descended safely at Immenstadt.

¶ The air mail stamps existing today bear witness to the importance of this accomplishment. Dozens of them picture the great Zeppelins from their early beginnings to their present state of perfection. Tableaus depicting them over the polar regions, and topping the crags of mountain ranges, and even in the process of construction form a visual history of the balloon.

¶ And now the Wright brothers come to the fore! After years of patient experimenting, these humble bicycle builders from Dayton, Ohio, launched a ’plane powered with a gasoline engine upon a startled world. On the bleak sands of Kitty Hawk, Orville and Wilbur Wright had seen their efforts crowned with success. Aviation had taken its biggest step forward.

¶ The Wright ’plane’s successful performance, which is shown on a two-cent U. S. stamp of 1928, gave new impetus to this branch of aeronautics.

¶ And Santos-Dumont, apparently forsaking the lighter-than-air vessels that had occupied his earlier years, followed the trail blazed by these two Americans. In 1906 he perfected a biplane glider which rose from water and flew. This flight which was staged in Paris, the scene of most of the Brazilian’s experiments, was the first official European ascension of a heavier-than-air craft.

¶ Flying, by this time, had become a more practical affair. With the elemental principles understood and conquered, minor improvements were developed as a result of ever-widening experience. In the summer of 1909, Bleriot crossed the English Channel in a frail monoplane and received an ovation almost as great as that accorded Lindbergh for his daring feat.

¶ But before Lindbergh could take a ’plane from New York to Paris in one triumphant jump, years had to pass, years of war that spread havoc and desolation throughout the world. But from the embers of that conflagration one thing, at least, emerged with greater glory. While guns and ammunition were dumped in the sea, and warships scrapped, the airplane rose in the eyes of the world to a new height of importance.

¶ For the war had wrought a great change in this device—no longer were ’planes but the playthings of a few, but servants that could serve a world!

¶ Today we can see on the air mail stamps of Spain, of Brazil, and the African Congo, portraits of the early craft—and by turning a few leaves of the album, can view the wartime “devils of the air”—the D. H. 4’s, the Curtiss “Jennies,” and the deadly Fokkers.

¶ Soon after the great conflict had ended, the hundreds of daring airmen who found themselves footloose, began to gamble their lives against a new element. Where formerly they had defied machine-gun bullets, they now pitted their skill against the hazards of sea and jungle.

¶ The London “Daily Mail” had offered a handsome prize of ten thousand pounds for the first successful dash across the Atlantic Ocean. Having this as a powerful incentive, two intrepid flyers, Major Harry G. Hawker and Commander K. Mackenzie Grieve, were striving to be the first to span this dangerous trail with a non-stop flight.

¶ On the morning of Sunday, May 18, 1919, while the populace of Newfoundland’s capital were sunk in slumber, these two men trundled forth their frail Sopwith biplane and launched it over the turbulent sea, a desert of water that would menace them for thousands of miles. According to available records, they soon had the ill fortune to be caught in a series of storms. In Hawker’s own story of the flight, he states that after these will-o-the-wisp squalls had been overcome, the cooling system began to clog. In a few moments, the temperature of the water spurted to the boiling point.