Interrupted flights’ mail

Alberto Savio

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The need has always been felt to get the correspondence to its destination as quickly as possible: an attempt to transport it by post by balloon was made in the United States as early as 1859 from Indiana to New York. However, it was only at the end of the 1920s that the most advanced countries began to establish air postal services on a regular basis, both within and outside the national territory.
Aerophilatelia deals with postal documents transported by aircraft and the presence of cancellations, stamps, wordings, signatures, superscripts, labels and special postage testify to travel by air with dates and places of departure and arrival.
Today we take it for granted that the journey ends with the arrival at the expected destination, but at the dawn of air transport the flight schedule often underwent changes or interruptions: from simple inconveniences that prevented its continuation, up to very serious accidents that have had world resonance.
The collection includes postal documents – arranged in chronological order – which were on board aircraft whose flight plan has changed from the schedule.
It is organized into two sections: one includes mail carried on board of Italian aircraft wherever the change or interruption of the flight has occurred while the other contains mail carried on board foreign aircraft whose flight has started, was directed or has been modified or interrupted on the Italian territory.
In the case of accidents, very often the courier bears the signs, together with stamps and / or notes relating to the event; sometimes, however, there is no visible damage or even particular stamps: in these cases the dates of the postmarks allow us to identify the flight while the bibliographic sources of the history of aviation allow us to know the outcome.
I would particularly like to underline one thing: the main nucleus is the collection of our late associate Fernando Corsari; I have integrated it with pieces of my property and I am continuing to expand it by also adding a third section that includes mail on board foreign aircraft whose flight has been interrupted or modified outside the Italian territory, but with an Italian sender and / or recipient.

ITALIAN FLIGHTS

April 1, 1926- 1st SISA flight with seaplane, Trieste-Venezia-Pavia-Torino, Majorana and Ferrari pilots. From Pavia, where he had stopped, the seaplane was unable to take off due to an engine failure.

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January 24th, 1932- Flight from Rome to Cape Town (Cape Town) undertaken by the pilot Lombardi in order to beat the record time set by the British on the route between Europe and South Africa. Interrupted in Tabora (Tanganika) due to accumulated delay.

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July 1st 1933- Decennial Air Cruise – Outward Flight – Rome-Chicago Leg. Flight interrupted tragically in Amsterdam due to incorrect landing maneuver. The 6 mail bags, containing 135 aerograms with the I-DINI seaplane mark, were recovered and opened for inspection; 31, bound for Amsterdam, were delivered and 104 were transferred to the reserve seaplane, brand I-MARI, and continued for subsequent stopovers.

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January 28th, 1934 – 1st direct postal flight Roma-Buenos Aires. Line: Roma – Casablanca – Dakar Thies – (Natal). Makeshift landing in Fortaleza (Brazil). After the accident, transport to Buenos Aires by Pan Am plane.

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September 27th, 1936 – Ala Littoria Flight, Adis Abeba Line – Asmara – Kartum – Wadi Halfa – Bengasi – Syracuse – Roma. The stage from Benghazi is done with the I-RODI hydroplane. After take-off an engine catches fire and the vehicle collides with a steamer and falls into flames in the port. Some bags of correspondence are recovered from the motor ship “Città di Messina”.
The courier consisted of civil and military correspondence and included mail arrived in Benghazi from Addis Ababa, via Asmara with the Ala Littoria line.

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December 24th, 1939 – Inaugural LATI flight Brazil-Italy. Line: Rio – Bahia – Recife – Fernando de Noronha – Ilha do Sal – Villa Cisneros – Sevilla – Roma. Due to the dense fog the plane hits a rocky ridge in Spanish Morocco, falling into flames near Tamanar. The mail on board is almost entirely destroyed. The recovered part, which shows evident signs of burns, is transported from Villa Cisneros to Rome by I-AREM plane.

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23 December 1951 – LAI flight, New York – Roma. New York – Garden – Shannon – (Milan) line. On landing at Malpensa, the plane goes off the runway and catches fire.

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18 December 1954 –LAI flight, Roma – New York. Rome line, Shannon, Gander, Boston (New York). The plane sinks, at the end of the runway, on the fourth attempt to land due to bad weather conditions.

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FOREIGN FLIGHTS

July 20th and 21st, 1931- Company AO (Air Orient) Saigon – Marseille. Line: Athens – Corfu – (Napoli) – (Marseille). The seaplane from Athens interrupted the flight due to engine failure. The postal courier, bound for France, including aerograms also coming from the Italian Aegean islands – transported from Rhodes to Athens by the Italian company AEI – is transferred to an amphibious aircraft departing from Naples and bound for Marseille. The latter also had an accident near Ajaccio and the recovered courier was sent to its destination and repaired with service labels from the French Post and Telegraphs.

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February 19th, 1932- England-Australia raid started on February 18^th. Route: Lympne Kent – Roma – (Brindisi – Athens – Australia). Due to the strong wind the aircraft lands in Grosseto. The following day he leaves for Rome where pilots Hamilton and Coupland pilots agree to transport a small private courier (eight letters) to Port Darwin. On Puglia they encounter a snow storm that forces the pilot to land blindly between Altamura and Corato. The aircraft suffers serious damage and Hamilton is injured; the flight is abandoned. On February 25, the dispatch is delivered to the post office in Ruvo di Puglia.

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March 28th, 1932- Air Orient flight, Saigon – Marseille. Line: Beirut – Corfu – (Napoli). The seaplane pushed by bad weather on the coast sinks near Crotone. The recovered mail is transferred to another seaplane, arriving in Marseille on 31.3.1932.

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August 19th, 1934 – Special flight: return of the New York-Roma transatlantic flight attempt. Line: Roma – (Dublin). Pilots Sabelli and Pond on August 18th take off from the Littorio airport in Roma for Dublin. While crossing the Irish Sea they encounter adverse weather and reverse their course towards Wales. At night the monoplane hits the mountain of Carne Ingli, roll over and is destroyed while the pilots are left unharmed. The air courier (60 aerograms) is recovered in perfect condition, delivered to the nearby post office in Newport in Wales and sent to its destination.

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October 1st, 1938 – Frankfurt am Main – (Milano). The airliner, due of a strong storm, crashes on Alpine glacier of Pizzo Cengalo, in the Swiss canton of Grisons. The postal courier, addressed to Italy, is recovered between July 1952 and 1958. The following dates are known to date from the explanatory notes of the Dutch Post Office: 25.7.52, 26.8.52, 29.8.53, 27.10.53 , 1.10.54, 12.1.55.

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November 3rd, 1950 – Air India International charter flight, Bombay – London. Line: Bombay – Cairo – (Geneva). The remains were found northwest of Mont Blanc, near the Vallot refuge. The plane had hit the mountain with extreme violence and disintegrated.

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January 10th, 1954- BOAC flight, Singapore – London. Singapore – Bangkok – Rangoon – Calcutta – Karachi – Bahrayn – Beirut – Roma – (London) line. The plane explodes at about 8000 feet high and falls into the Tyrrhenian sea, near the Elba Island. The wreck is recovered to study the causes of the Comet 1 aircraft disasters, mail is sent to London.

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February 13rd, 1955 – Flight Sabena, Brussels – Leopoldville. Brussels – (Roma) line. At night the plane collides with a rocky wall and falls on Mount Terminillo, near Rieti. He is found 8 days later. The mail is recovered in the snow and sent to Rome.

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