Notable Specimens.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20233, 17 February 1934, Page 8

Notable Specimens.

Flight Stamps.

First Tasman Air Mail Issue.

(Special to the " Star.") WELLINGTON, February 17. ISSUING a special stamp for the Faith in Australia’s trans-Tasman flight, New Zealand has been the first Dominion in the Empire to follow the example set by Newfoundland in 1919, and bring out a special stamp for use on the mail posted on great flights. Even if the countries of the Empire have not made a practice of issuing stamps for such air mails, however, foreign countries have not been backward and numbers of the famous flying feats on record are represented in the albums and catalogues of aero-philatelists. Newfoundland has issued a number of these special stamps, all of them now priced in pounds. First of all was the Hawker stamp, for which 200 copies qf the “ Caribou ” issue of Newfoundland were overprinted “ First Trans-Atlantic Air Post, April, 1919,” in five lines. Of this number, 95 were used on letters and 18 defective copies were destroyed. Specimens of this stamp, unused, are worth £2OO to-day. For the successful effort of Alcock and Brown, a month or so later, the 15 cent stamp of 1897 was overprinted “ TransAtlantic Air Post, 1919, One Dollar ” in four lines, and when the Marchese de Pinedo flew the Atlantic in 1927, the 60 cent stamp of the same set was overprinted “ Air Mail De Pinedo, 1927,” three sheets of 100 stamps each being so surcharged. These are now worth £250 per stamp. Special stamps were also issued for the trans-Atlantic flight of Messrs Boyd and Connor in Miss Columbia in 1930, and these are now priced at over £IOO apiece. When the Italian Air Armada flew from. Rome to Rio de Janeiro in 1930 a special stamp was issued for the mail aboard, and the same proceedure was followed on the occasion of the recent flight from Rome to Chicago and back. p The innumerable flights of the Graf Zeppelin from one part of the world to another have been responsible for dozens of stamps during the last six years. Germany has issued at least three sets and the United States, Brazil, Paraguay, Egypt and Iceland have all contributed their quota to the tally. The flight of the gigantic Do.X., the first “ flying ship,” around the shores of the two Atlantics moved at least two countries, Newfoundland and Surinam, to issue special stamps. Norway came forward with ,a set of seven stamps for Amundsen’s North Pole Expedition in 1925, but only one of them, the 25 cent, was used for mail. When the great R.A.F. Far East cruise, the flight of four Supermarine Southampton flying boats from London to Singapore, around Australia, to Hong Kong and back to Singapore, was carried out in 1928, the Philippine Islands issued a special set of stamps, overprinted in carmine with the words “ L.O.F. ” (London Orient Flight) and " 1928,” above and below a seaplane. When* the Dutch air mail service from Holland to the Dutch East Indies ran an experimental extension down to Melbourne in 1931, a special stamp was issued, and was on sale in Holland and in the Dutch East Indies, depicting the pilot, Captain M. Pattist, at the controls of the machine, and when the aeroplane had left, the unsold stamps were burned and the plate destroyed. Changing the colour of the stamp, for a special flight as has been done by New Zealand on this occasion, was first done by Belgium in 1930 for a flight to the Belgian Congo. The current 5 franc stamp was printed in violet-brown instead of brownish red, but on that occasion there was no overprint and the full significance of the stamp can only be appreciated at a glance by the initiated. All these stamps have been officially issued, but many other stamps of a similar type have also been issued with semiofficial backing, some of them being very rare.