Airmail

The Blog

Joseph Steinmetz and the U.S. Army's Round-the-World Flight of 1924

In 1923, the U.S. Army Air Service decided that it would attempt to become the first group to circumnavigate the globe by airplane. This...

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An Air Mail First in Milwaukee

On August 1, 1928, the U.S. Post Office Department lowered the airmail rate to 5-cents for the first ounce. This was a significant...

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An Air Mail Plane Crash, John N. Luff, Harry Houdini: This Cover Has It All

(This post has been published in two places: A postal history journal named La Posta for the 4th quarter of 2024 and in the December...

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Contract Air Mail: The Catalyst of Commercial Aviation

I gave this presentation at the Great American Stamp Show in Hartford, Connecticut on August 16, 2024, and to the Greater Philadelphia...

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One-Page Exhibits

Some stamp societies invite collectors to submit one-page exhibits that are then displayed on their websites. These are noncompetitive...

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Celebrating 50 Years of Airmail Service to Bermuda

Update: This post was published in First Days , July-August 2024, pp. 60-69. The layout by editor Martin Kent Miller is fantastic. The...

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Trans-Pacific Mail to New Zealand and Australia Early 1940s

One of the major milestones in postal history was the establishment of transpacific airmail routes. The first route to be established was...

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First Transcontinental Airmail Involving Night Flying

Update: This article was published in the American Air Mail Society's Air Post Journal for June-July 2024. A copy of this article is...

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"First Air Mail to Arrive in New York from the East": Close But No Cigar

The cover shown in Figures 1 and 2 caught my attention when it was offered at auction in July 2023. I had heard of the recipient Edward...

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Advertising Covers - A Fascinating Collectible

Attached is a presentation that I delivered at the Philatelic Gathering on March 23, 2024. It's the final version of a presentation that...

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National Air Mail Week - A Big Deal in 1938

Update: This article was published in the second quarter 2024 issue of Kelleher's Stamp Collector's Quarterly. The editing was subpar - I...

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"This Was Airplane! Farmer Saves Flyer; Father Breaks Leg": A Crash Cover from 1929

Update December 23, 2023: This article has been published in two publications: Airpost Journal, November 2023, and Kelleher's Stamp...

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Airmail Cover from Salt Lake City to New York, 1926

Today, first-class mail is often carried by planes, but before 1977, air mail was a distinct service from first-class mail, and a sender...

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Cover Sent from the USS Iowa Anchored in Tokyo Bay at the End of World War II

(This article was published in the Airpost Journal, April 2024, Vol. 95, No. 4, Whole No. 1126, pp. 144-146. A PDF of the published...

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"Lindbergh Again Flies the Air Mail," February 1928

Charles A. Lindbergh became a household name after he made the first nonstop flight from New York to Paris in May 1927. But he didn't...

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A Trio of Graf Zeppelin Covers from 1930 and a "Baby Zepp" FDC from 1933

One of the technological wonders of the 1920s and 1930s was lighter-than-air transport. Indeed, there was a race between which would...

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