Airmail First Flight Covers

#21 · May 17, 2023, 1:15 pm

Very nice, welcome aboard. Please fasten your seatbelt, we might be in for a bumpy ride!

#22 · May 17, 2023, 7:48 pm

Welcome back and looking forward to your posts, glad to see things have improved for you, I for one missed you. I also slowed down my posting and hopefully now catching up, pretty much for same reasons plus a stent. Still between two places, but hoping things will start settling down from now on. I like the cover you posted despite not collecting Airmails. Steve and Jamie have been working hard to keep the discussions and the displays live.

#23 · May 18, 2023, 11:39 am

Yes, nice to have Underbidder back. BUT.... further to his comment, 'Keep up the good work, Steve', none of us should forget the magnificent, if not major, contribution that Jamie has made to this site by posting material every day. I am particularly enjoying his Egypt at present. Underbidder has no internet connection - his local library is where he will read this - but I have over the years scanned a lot of his material which I will put up on his behalf subject to working out a mechanism whereby he can provide comments on it as it goes up. The expression 'snailmail' comes to mind!

Attached is an Airmail cover from his 'Apartheid' material. It's not first flight but July 1932 is still relatively early.

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yannisl has reacted to this post.

#24 · August 7, 2023, 12:59 pm

The Actual First flight of the Second Air Service was 26 August 1929. Major Alister Miller founded the Union Airways on 24th July 1929 and the first flight was on 26th August 1929, locally. The service was extended to England in 1932. Here is a cover from a flight from Cape Town to Bloemfontein on 29th August. The cover has a handwritten note that it is a return flight, but I don't know that. Also I am not sure if the local service carried passengers or just posts. ... Still a way to go. 🙂

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#25 · June 23, 2025, 9:21 am

Quote from Steve on June 23, 2025, 9:21 am
I was recently at a Stamp Fair in St Ives, Cambs (21st June 2025) where I purchased the following two items.

The first is not an airmail item. It is a registered letter from Althorpe, TVL, to Vienna, Austria, sent at a 7d rate, presumably 4d for registration and 3d for surface mail to Europe. Its reverse shows the route from Althorpe to its Head Office, Nelspruit, (both '10 JAN 28') and its arrival in London, '30 JAN 28'. Sadly there are no Vienna receiving marks. It is a pretty and relatively clean and spotless cover which I bought for my slowly growing Union of SA 1926 4d triangular collection. (I am also a sucker for the 1927 3d!)

So, compare it to the second cover sent to San Francisco, California, USA on '27 JAN 32' . Other than this cover also being pretty and clean and bearing a pair of the 1927 3d stamps, plus a 1/- orange airmail, making an airmail postal rate of 1s 6d, what you see is all I got for my money. There are no US postmarks on the reverse. Perhaps the most obviously intriguing part of this is the apparently cancelled airmail label. Was this done in the USA.? And why bother to cancel airmail labels but not apply a receiving datestamp? It's a small mystery but no big deal.

There is a relevant underlying story of sorts. According to the ex-display note supplied with this item, "This cover was flown by Imperial Airways flight No. AN47, the "City of Karachi", Capt. R. F. Caspareuthus from Cape Town on 27 January to Johannesburg; then the "City of Basra, Capt. H. Alger, which made a forced landing near Broken Hill. Mail was delayed until flight No, AN48, the "City of Baghdad" could collect the mail at Broken Hill." There is a pencilled note on the reverse that states "'r'c'd 2/25/32".

The point of this is speed of delivery. In January 1928 a Registered letter from SA to Austria took about 3 weeks for a cost of 7d. Four years later, in January 1932 an airmail letter cost more than twice as much and took about a month to reach California, albeit with a mishap en route. It was not much, if any faster. It would be interesting to know if surface mail posted on the same day to the USA would have got there quicker? When did the posting public begin to see the first real benefit of airmail - a speedier service?

Finally, there is photo of Capt. Reinhold Ferdinand Caspareuthus on Facebook. His is an interesting name. Does anyone know anything about him? I see that he was a South African who joined Imperial Airways after serving in the RFC (Royal Flying Corps) andthe RAF during WW1. He was an experienced land based aircraft pilot who primarily operated the London (Croydon) to and from Cape Town during the mid 1920s to early 1930s. He is not recorded as an Imperial Airways flying boat captain. He died in 1990 at the age of 91.

I was recently at a Stamp Fair in St Ives, Cambs (21st June 2025) where I purchased the following two items.

The first is not an airmail item. It is a registered letter from Althorpe, TVL, to Vienna, Austria, sent at a 7d rate, presumably 4d for registration and 3d for surface mail to Europe. Its reverse shows the route from Althorpe to its Head Office, Nelspruit, (both '10 JAN 28') and its arrival in London, '30 JAN 28'. Sadly there are no Vienna receiving marks. It is a pretty and relatively clean and spotless cover which I bought for my slowly growing Union of SA 1926 4d triangular collection. (I am also a sucker for the 1927 3d!)

So, compare it to the second cover sent to San Francisco, California, USA on '27 JAN 32' . Other than this cover also being pretty and clean and bearing a pair of the 1927 3d stamps, plus a 1/- orange airmail, making an airmail postal rate of 1s 6d, what you see is all I got for my money. There are no US postmarks on the reverse. Perhaps the most obviously intriguing part of this is the apparently cancelled airmail label. Was this done in the USA.? And why bother to cancel airmail labels but not apply a receiving datestamp? It's a small mystery but no big deal.

There is a relevant underlying story of sorts. According to the ex-display note supplied with this item, "This cover was flown by Imperial Airways flight No. AN47, the "City of Karachi", Capt. R. F. Caspareuthus from Cape Town on 27 January to Johannesburg; then the "City of Basra, Capt. H. Alger, which made a forced landing near Broken Hill. Mail was delayed until flight No, AN48, the "City of Baghdad" could collect the mail at Broken Hill." There is a pencilled note on the reverse that states "'r'c'd 2/25/32".

The point of this is speed of delivery. In January 1928 a Registered letter from SA to Austria took about 3 weeks for a cost of 7d. Four years later, in January 1932 an airmail letter cost more than twice as much and took about a month to reach California, albeit with a mishap en route. It was not much, if any faster. It would be interesting to know if surface mail posted on the same day to the USA would have got there quicker? When did the posting public begin to see the first real benefit of airmail - a speedier service?

Finally, there is photo of Capt. Reinhold Ferdinand Caspareuthus on Facebook. His is an interesting name. Does anyone know anything about him? I see that he was a South African who joined Imperial Airways after serving in the RFC (Royal Flying Corps) andthe RAF during WW1. He was an experienced land based aircraft pilot who primarily operated the London (Croydon) to and from Cape Town during the mid 1920s to early 1930s. He is not recorded as an Imperial Airways flying boat captain. He died in 1990 at the age of 91.

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