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40 Responses to First Day Covers
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I see you still haven’t noticed that you didn’t close your italics after “Nearer My God to Thee” in the next post…it’s making the whole rest of the blog (including the sidebar) italic.
I’ve done that many times…(it’s worse when it’s bold).
Uhmmmmm, how did air mail by hot air balloon work? What was their tag line? “When it absolutely, positively, has to be there… eventually“?
hey, he’s delivering a sandwich! salami on italian with peppers?
only problem is it’s four days old now.
What about pigeons? Guess birds never delivered “official mail” with stamps and such.
or by, arrow.
Um, in the last one, Ben Franklin can’t take a jet. If you look closely, you can see the propellers.
Thanks for removing the italics.
I’m a bit puzzled by the 50th anniversary of the US Air Force stamp, espcially sinc ethere’s no year attached to it. Would that be counting from 1947 when the USAF was officially separated from the Army and made its own service (which it obviously isn’t)? Or from 1907 when the Army signal corps accepted the first aircraft? Or from 1918 when the Army Air Service serarated from the signal corps? Or what?
Also interesting to note that the B-52 (the big bomber) is still in service in the USAF. That airplane was flown by the grandfathers of some of its present aircrew.
I wondered that too, but also if the plane never came into being and the air force consisted of only hot air balloons. Would have made the nuclear bombings during WW2 interesting.
B52s.. you ain’t NEVER been brought to total alert on the highway until one of those BUFFs roared 50 feet over your car coming in for a landing in the dark of winter.
frequent enough occurrence on Highway 2 between Devils Lake and Grand Forks.
keeping the high prarie safe from flying saucers.
@DerKase
Used to play at Rancho Cordova Golf Course back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, under the flight paths of B52s (no not Rock Lobster B52s!) from Mather Air Force Base. They burned av fuel pretty rich at take off. You could get a nice coating if you were at the eastern most part of the course.
With some of the airframes dating back to 1955 (54 years!) I dare say that some of the aircrews’ great grandfathers flew the same planes.
@MikeH
Heh, delivering an M1 Abrams tank by hot air balloon would be interesting as well.
“Rapid Deployment Force In Eighty Days”
Question: why were they loading passengers into a B-36? (I jest, I jest, I know it wasn’t a B-36: no JATO engines). But still, I didn’t know any pusher-prop passenger planes had ever seen service. Not here in the U.S. anyway…
Question: why were they loading passengers into a B-36?
I was wondering that myself. It’s no plane that I can identify.
As to the the B-52′s, they are projected to have a service life of 80 years.
If any of you want to see a B-36 in action, go check out a copy of “Strategic Air Command” with Jimmy Steward and June Allyson, as blatant a piece of Cold War propaganda as we ever produced for the big screen. But, you get to see Colonel Potter slide on his back down a giant tunnel inside the plane.
Sorry. Jimmy Stewart.
@DerKase
Agree that dating the 50th Air Force Anniversary is confused. Fifty plus 1947 would be 1997, and the F-104 was long out of service by then. The Buffalo (B-52) was certainly in use then, but not “cutting edge”- a F-117 Stealth fighter/ B-1 combo would have been more appropriate.
1907+50 = 1957- the 104 and B-52 would fit, but it wasn’t the “Air Force” in 1907 or 1918.
When the Wright Bros. delivered the first plane, the War Department wanted to buy more. Calvin Coolidge apparently said “Why don’t we just buy one airplane and let the pilots take turns flying it?”
“Martin Scorcese imitating Abe Vigoda…” Tessio is dead, Jim! (Abe Vigoda isn’t!)
For a patriotic stamp, and I think any U.S. one with the Wright Brothers on it must be one, that “First Powered Sustained 100%-Helium-Free Primate-Piloted etc. etc.” business is too much. Though I have never met a Brazilian this stupid, word has it that thereabouts Aviator #1 is still considered to be Santos-Dumont, not because he flew before the Wright Brothers, but because his plane taxied on wheels, not lifted off rails. Yes, in flight, what matters is not what you do in the air, it’s what you do on the ground! A silly technicality…but note this stamp makes no mention of what was under the ship. The engraver’s supervisor probably said, “Don’t go there.”
@swschrad
I was stationed at Grand Forks in the mid-80s and was endlessly fascinated to watch BUFFs take off. Because of weird aerodynamics they would be several degrees nose-down and climbing. And yes, they leaked fuel like a sieve. It was one of those aircraft that you just had to say “No kidding? That thing really flies?”
Freestate, that’s a Convair XC-99, basically a B-36 wing and engines with a passenger fuselage. They only built 1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_XC-99
Interesting, Tony, thanks for the link. The first thing that caught my eye was the big Boeing bomber-tail (famous on the 17 and the 29), and then the B-36 wings. But then I noticed the (presumed) passengers standing around, and got totally confused. Thanks for clearing it up!
You’re correct about passenger versions, but there was a non-bomber version. Just one, the Consolidated XC-99, experimental cargo version, used extensively before decomission in 1957 with over 7,400 hours total time. Today it’s in storage at the U.S. Air Force Museum near Dayton, Ohio, awaiting restoration as a static display. The civilian passenger version, Convair Model 37, was a double-decker that was planned but never built. I theorize the drawing on the first-day cover shows the artist’s concept of the Convair Model 37 as it would have been.
Contrary to popular opinion, the B-36 did not have JATO bottles, but four General Electric J47-19 jet engines, two at each wing tip. Interestingly, they were for take-off and dash-speed over the target. In cruise they were shut down and not used. As 10 engines testifies, she was a very big girl.
My dad was supply officer on a B-36 base at the time I was born. When I was 4, Paramount Pictures came to the base and shot about a third of the scenes for “Strategic Air Command.” My dad once told me the only time he ever sold Air Force aviation gasoline to civilians was with special permission to the legendary Paul Mantz, who flew the Paramount camera plane, a converted-to-civilian-use B-25. This was in preparation for shooting the rather spectacular VistaVision air-to-air footage of the B-36. Dad said while his men refueled the B-25 he got to chat with Mantz, and shake hands with Stewart, himself a decorated veteran of 20 official missions over Germany flying B-17s and B-24s.
As for having B-52s blow the doors off whatever you were driving when they were on final approach over your head, the B-36 was even better at doing that. Lived on bases with both and the B-36 gets the cigar. I remember more than once my mom pulling over to the shoulder when a B-36 passed overhead on final, just to be safe. There was no more danger than with any other airplane on final, but you did become aware of the fillings in your teeth vibrating at those times, and the B-36s were just so thumping massive. I don’t think she ever got used to them driving on that road when they were on short final overhead.
In the aforementioned movie, there is a scene in which Jimmy Stewart is kissing his on-screen wife as a B-36 departs overhead. While the lovers are oblivious, everything in the house rattles, glass in the windows, furniture, pictures on the wall, stuff on the shelves falls to the floor. Boy do I remember that (everything rattling I mean). We lived on two B-36 bases before they were decommissioned and removed from the inventory when I was 7. Living in base housing a mile or more from the runway and feeling in your chest as much as hearing the shuddering roar of six Pratt & Whitney R-4360 radial piston engines on full run-up before departure, pretty much around the clock, let alone that low altitude short-final stuff, is something you never forget. And it’s not something you’re likely to hear any more.
We Air Force brats called it the sound of freedom.
Tony, agreed, thanks. That’s a new one on me.
Oh, and John, the first models of the B-36 did not have the jets. They weren’t added until later.
On the D model. Retrofitted back to the B model.
In the words of the USAF Museum page, “Twenty-two B-36Ds were built, and an additional 64 B-36Bs were modified to B-36D specifications (86 aircraft total). The first flight of the D model with J47 jet engines was July 11, 1949. The prototype B-36D initially flew with J35 jet engines on March 26, 1949; however, vibration problems required an external brace for the nacelle. During the modification, the J47 became available and these were installed in place of the J35s.
http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=2539
I think that the deal on the original Wright brothers flyer being returned from England to the Smithsonian was as follows:
The Smithsonian believed that Langley (sp?) built the first real airplane and, therefore, had no interest in that thing that the Wright brothers flew down there in in Outer Banks of North Carolina. Some museum in England said: “Well, sure, we’ll take it.” and the flyer went across the pond. When cooler heads prevailed, the Smithsonian said “Can we please have it back? Please?” and the Brits gave it back to us.
Langley’s planes never really flew that well, if at all, and we wont to kill their pilots. Langley also wanted to build a, get this, steam powered airplane which had just about as much success as our Air Force’s “atom powered” airplane.
That’s pretty close to the version I’m familiar with.
My paraphrase: “There was bad blood between the Wrights and the Smithsonian, because the Smithsonian refused credit and later actually falsified evidence to “prove” that the Wrights weren’t the first heavier-than-air developers and that Langley was. Orville Wright, the surviving brother, gave the Flyer to the British Museum in 1928 on the condition it could not be returned to the USA until after he died, just to put his finger in the Smithsonian’s eye. The Flyer did come home in 1948, shortly after Orville’s death, having spent World War II in an underground vault 100 miles from London with the rest of England’s treasures.” See “The Bishop’s Boys,” by Tom Crouch, ISBN 039330695X.
See also: http://www.nasm.si.edu/wrightbrothers/icon/feud.html
@DerKase
I’ll vote for 1907/1957.
The B-52 will be here when most of us are gone, so it doesn’t help much, but the F-104 was about the hottest thing in the inventory around that time.
By 1968, the F-4 Phantom would have been their canonical fighter.
@John Robinson
That would be a Convair XC-99, the largest piston-engined land-based transport aircraft ever built, developed from the B-36 bomber, sharing the wings and some other structures with it.
Only one was built, delivered in 1949. In August 1953, it made a 12,000 mile flight, from Texas to Rhein-Main Air Base, Germany, by way of Bermuda and the Azores. It could carry up to 104,000 lbs of cargo, or 400 troops. The Air Force operated it until 1957, logging 7,400 hours.
They decided that they didn’t need anything that big, and never ordered more. It’s currently awaiting restoration at the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio.
And if I hadn’t gotten all excited there, I’d have read Mr. Boarderman’s posts and saved some electrons.
now we’ll have to cut down a whole slew of power poles in an Amazon rain forest to replace those electrons!
I’d gladly leave a healthy tip from time to time, if there were a way to do so other than through that odious PayPal. Others probably woud also.
Great work. I have no time to visit your other works on a regular basis, because of work. Otherwise i’d spend all day reading your work, and learning how to twitter for those gaps that come along between your main product.
The above Certified Mail issue was in the book “MAD’s Talking Stamps”. The speech balloon over it said “You’re being evicted.”
My favorite from that book was the stamp honoring the Women’s Army Forces which had one of the female soldiers saying “I’d re-enlist if I didn’t have to wear that khaki bra.”
That’s Regis Philbin!
And that’s Robin Williams as Grandma Doubtfire!
The Wrights and the Smithsonian had a bit of a tiff over who invented flying, but I think a lot of that can be laid at the Wright’s doorstep. Their actions held back US aviation in the years between 1903 and the beginning of WW1. They had the idea that anybody else’s heavier-than-air machine that flew was an infringement on their patent and they took aviation pioneers to court by the truckload. As a result, US aviation invention was stifled, but Europeans, especially the French, thumbed their noses at the Wrights and made huge advances in flight engineering while the Wrights held the US back. That’s the reason why many of the basic flight and aircraft nomenclature is French. Concepts like fuselage, nacelle, aileron, etc. were invented and named by the French while US inventers were in court trying to explain how their flying machines differed from the Wrights’.
From the “For What’s it Worth Department”…First Day Covers is my number one favorite little corner of this site. Verily, a piece of America that would be forgotten if it weren’t for the vigilance of Mr Lileks…Thank You!
A bit a Googling shows that this stamp was issued on Aug. 1, 1957, so therefore they’re counting from the delivery of the first aircraft to the Signal Corps in 1907.
Samuel Langley, of course, being the Smithsonian Institution’s 3rd Secretary may have contributed to their organizational belief that the Wright’s were not the first in flight.
True, and I agree the Wrights’ bizarre concept of patent law held back American aviation. It’s the reason why Eddie Rickenbacker and the rest of American airpower in World War I flew Spads and Nieuports, French aircraft. Our own aeronautics industry was still an infant, its growth stunted by the years of byzantine legal struggles initiated by the Wright brothers. There was a small amount of production here, but none of it made it to Europe before the war ended.
At the same time, the Smithsonian paying Glenn Curtis $2000 in 1914 to re-engineer Langley’s aircraft so it could actually fly, then disassembling it back into 1903 configuration and putting it on display as the first heavier-than-air flying machine, is fraud. (My word, not anyone else’s).
This is not Weekly World News fiction, it is from the present-day Smithsonian’s Web site for the National Air and Space Museum, and you can read it word-for-word here:
http://www.nasm.si.edu/wrightbrothers/icon/feud.html ,
This is a URL I posted previously in this thread. Also Tom Crouch’s biography of the Wrights, “The Bishop’s Boys” gives even more detail, especially about their legal issues and pre-war business friendships in Europe.
The Wrights may have had quirky ideas about patents and slowed the early growth of American aviation as a result, but paying someone to create evidence and then to display it in the national museum as an 11-year old artifact is an outright swindle. It’s even worse because the swindle was propagated by the national museum, the Smithsonian, run and paid for by the government of the United States.
I completely understand why Orville gave the original 1903 Flyer to Brits, rather than the Smithsonian.
Lt. Thomas Selfridge died in 1908 when the airplane he was on (piloted by Orville Wright) crashed. Selfridge ANGB in Michigan is named after him (the base has detachments from all five services).
Okay – more trivia.
One of the first successful passenger aircraft was the Ford Trimotor, the Tin Goose. Designed by Wm. Stout. It was built in Michigan at Ford airport (now the Ford Proving Grounds across from The Henry Ford [H.F. Museum and Greenfield Village]). Stout Middle School is across from the old airport. Also across from the old airport is the Dearborn Inn – one of the first airport hotels, a beautiful building and first rate hotel (and it had great food ten years ago – expect that to still be true). The old airport also had a dirigible mast, and the only time I think it was used was when USS Los Angeles came by. USS Shenandoah was supposed to dock there, but she went down in a storm over southern Ohio.
The old airport was at the corner of Oakwood and Rotunda. Rotunda was named for the Ford Rotunda, a building from the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, that was moved to Michigan across from the Ford Headquarters building, at Scheafer and Rotunda. The Rotunda burned in 1962, and the old headquarters was pulled down in the late 1990′s – early 2000′s.
Yes, I am from Dearborn. How could you tell?
“…But, you get to see Colonel Potter slide on his back down a giant tunnel inside the plane.”
Even better, watch him go looney after getting hopelessly lost in some catacombs
in “What Did You Do In The War, Daddy?”