Stamp Story No. 125 When The Postman Came In A Balloon

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30158, 15 June 1963, Page 8

Stamp Story No. 125 When The Postman Came In A Balloon

[Specially written for “The Press" by

Kenneth Anthony]

TNDIA is often credited with the first airmail—on a flight from. Allahabad to Naini in February, 1911. Fifty years later India issued three very attractive stamps, showing aircraft old and new, to mark the anniversary. The stamps were inscribed “First Aerial Post. Golden Jubilee.” But that claim was unjustified—and here is a stamp to prove it! For though India was certainly the first to carry mail in a powered aircraft, far earlier cases are

on record of mail carried by air.

With so much progress in modern aviation, some people forget that flight did not begin with the Wright Brothers in 1903. The first flight across the English Channel, for instance, took place as far back as January, 1785 —by two men in a hydrogen balloon. Napoleon used balloons for reconnaissance. Even air raids are not all that new. for the Austrians tried the idea in 1849 when they attacked Venice with balloons laden with bombs!

But balloons really came into their own in the siege of Paris during the FrancoPrussian war of 1870. A regular balloon service was started to carry mail out of the beleaguered city, messages in the reverse direction coming in by pigeon. In this way, Parisians kept in touch with the rest of France until normal communications were restored.

Surviving letters carried by this first-ever airmail seri vice have today become . highly prized collectors' ; items. And in 1955 France issued the handsome stamp illustrated here, showing bags of mail being loaded on to a balloon during the siege. Altogether, 67 of these balloons were dispatched between September, 1870 and January. 1871, conveying some 2J million pieces of mail. Delivery, of course, was not guaranteed and some of

the balloons were lost, but most of the mail reached its destination safely.— (Central Press Features. Ltd. All Rights Reserved.)