Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
When I decided to collect airplanes on stamps, I soon realized that completeness was a fantasy. Besides, I wasn’t all that interested in most aircraft that were featured on stamps. What interested me most were a handful of stamps featuring aircraft with which I’d had some actual or virtual experience.
My father, who worked for barnstormers as a teenager growing up in New York State, was a wannabe pilot for his entire life. He never encouraged me to become a pilot — two of his barnstorming friends were killed in aircraft accidents — but he taught me a lot about airplanes. When I was about six years old, Dad asked a friend who had been a fighter pilot in the Second World War if he would take my sister, Helen, and me on a flight in a Piper Cub. Here we are:
And here's a William Piper/Piper Cub FDC:
When I was about 14, Dad got permission for the two of us to get inside a TWA Constellation that was parked on the ramp at the airport in Albuquerque, waiting for the crew and passengers to arrive. I can still remember the hot, dusty aroma of the cockpit and the feel of the leather pilot’s seat warm against my back, and my strong desire to have that airplane take off and carry me to all of those places I had read about, collected stamps from, and dreamed of visiting; here's a postcard showing the Albuquerque Airport with TWA Connies on the tarmac:
Following are other of my favourite aircraft featured on stamps and postcards:
• Beechcraft T-34B Mentor: I once had an “intimate” relationship with this aircraft. The only time I’ve flown in one was as a passenger. We took off, flew over the Gila National Forest in New Mexico, and “landed” in the forest at high altitude, late in the day. The forest won. The plane lost. By some sort of miracle, we were rescued by smokejumpers. Only one stamp picturing the Mentor has been issued, as far as I know:
This is what the Mentor looked like after its"landing" in the forest:
The smokejumpers parachuted from a war-surplus AT-11 Twin Beech. Here's a stamp picturing the Twin Beech (which is similar to Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Electra):
In the early 1990s I got a ride in a Northern Thunderbirds Airline Twin Beech from Prince George, BC to an aboriginal community, Fort Ware, 428.91 km (266.51 miles) north of Prince George. We flew with another Twin Beech to Fort Ware; here's a photo I took of that plane taking off from the airfield at Fort Ware:
• The Lockheed Electra II airliner, which flew me to San Diego in 1962 for U.S. Navy boot camp.
That image of the Electra II soaring over the Golden Gate Bridge may be a fake. I have another postcard which shows a C-141 Starlifter in the same position over the bridge, and it certainly seems to be a fake!:
• The Douglas DC-2, which I learned about through researching a cover recovered from the crash of a KLM DC-2 called the Uiver (or Stork) in the Syrian Desert in 1934:
• The Douglas DC-3, which I flew six or seven times while I was on leave in the Navy and once following my enlistment.
• Two years later I returned to California in a Continental Airlines Boeing 707. Jets don’t excite me all that much, but they’re faster than the Connie!
• I had other “opportunities” to fly in a helicopter, a Sikorsky UH-34D Seahorse, on a search and destroy mission, at the beginning of Operation Utah, and then on March 5, 1966, after I was wounded and flown first to a field hospital, then to the hospital ship U.S.S. Repose, and again when I was evacuated to Da Nang to begin my evacuation to Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego. This is a photo of me, with a Lucky Red Lions Squadron Seahorse about to land, a couple of weeks before I was wounded.
I can't show you a stamp picturing a Seahorse because they don't seem to exist! If you find one, please let me know!
• My evacuation from South Vietnam involved a flight from South Vietnam to the Philippines in a Lockheed C-130 Hercules:
Then I was flown from the Philippines to Travis AFB via Hawaii (where I was given my Purple Heart) in a C-141 Starlifter:
I have no memory of the plane that flew me from Travis AFB to San Diego. I was suffering from infections in my leg from the gunshot wound and in my bladder from a "dirty" catheterization on Repose.
• Finally, there’s the Handley-Page H.P.52 Hampden bomber. The Hampden was one of two long-range, medium bombers in the Royal Canadian Air Force at the beginning of the Second World War in 1939. I learned about the Hampden, which I had never heard of, after researching a postcard that I found in the late 1990s in an antique store in northern British Columbia. It turned out that the sender of the postcard, Joseph M. Hicks, of Fort William, Ontario, was in training to be a pilot, but punched out his commanding officer at a graduation party and was sent for further training not as a pilot but as an observer, an RCAF enlisted rating that combined navigation with the duties of a bombardier. With further research, I learned that Joe had been killed following an incendiary raid on Rostock, Germany when his RCAF Hampden bomber crashed on the Danish island of Fyn (known then as Funen). Here's a stamp featuring the Hampden:
I do have stamps featuring other aircraft that I have flown in, such as the Beechcraft Bonanza, a Cessna 140 and Cessna 150, a Convair CV-580 (on my honeymoon!), an L-1011, several B-737s, a B-727, and a Fairchild F-27, but they're not all that interesting to me so I don't "collect them" per se.
Bob
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As some of you may know my topical collection is of the Douglas DC-3 with some of the other Douglas airliners to fill in the story of Douglas. I flew on DC-3s not that many times, but it did start a sort of love affair with the model. They were already pretty old by the time I was a passenger. In the mid 1970s i started working as a field service technician for the company which involved a lot of flying to oil seismic crews in the European/African/Middle Eastern regions. Up until then I had been on crews full time so the flying was to join a crew and 2 or 3 months later to leave on break. I never had the same fondness for other aircraft models as I did for the DC-3.
My first DC-3 flight was a scheduled flight from Norwich in England to Aberdeen in Scotland on Air Anglia. Norwich served Great Yarmouth which was at that time one of the two, the other Aberdeen, North Sea oil support bases. I got off one survey boat and flew up to join its sister ship. That was probably 1973. Norwich airport still had the old tin huts from the war serving as its terminal buildings. The captain stood by the boarding steps collecting tickets. He was in uniform and had a large RAF type mustache. You could imagine him in the Battle of Britain.
About 4 years later I was back in the field after leaving my office based job. I was on a crew way down in the desert south of Benghazi in Libya. Our way to and from the crew was by ex-Olympic DC-3s from Benghazi to strips we made ourselves with the crew Cat. This time the pilots were ex-USAF guys who also looked like they were out of a WWII movie. It seemed that at Benghazi airport it took 3 aircraft to keep one flying so there were lots of planes in pieces to keep the few still flying going. I never felt unsafe on these old planes. Maybe it was because they went so slow. Outside of Benghazi cars on the main road south were gong faster than us in the air.
I never had the same fondness for other aircraft although I did have a hate for one model. Air Algérie had turboprop 2-engine Nords serving the Sahara towns out of Oran. I used to relieve the base field service tech who covered three Algerian crews from there. It meant every two weeks I had to visit the crews using these planes. (I think they were Nord 262s.) I had a scare on one flight and afterwards used to visit the crews in a hired Peugeot taxi, taking 3 or 4 days to do loop covering all three crews.
That's my story anyway. Collecting just one aircraft model makes it manageable and you can aim at completion. I don't try to collect every stamp in a set or series as I'm happy to have just one example from the set. I do collect DC-1s and DC-2s as well as I look at them as the DC-3 Mk. 1 and Mk. 2, although by rights I should see the DC-3 being the DC-1 Mk. 3 
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DannyS makes an interesting point — "I do collect DC-1s and DC-2s as well as I look at them as the DC-3 Mk. 1 and Mk. 2, although by rights I should see the DC-3 being the DC-1 Mk. 3" — and raises a question: What determines the morphing of a prototype like the DC-1 into a brand new airplane with a different name, like the DC-2 instead of a variant, which would be a DC-1 Mark 1 as DannyS suggests, or simply a DC-1A, which is a common way to name aircraft variants? In the case of those Douglas airliners, the determining factor in the changing designations appears to have been size (The DC-2's fuselage was slightly longer than the DC-1s, and for the DC-3, larger size than the DC-2 and major structural changes (different wings, fuselage shape, and engines). Most aircraft variants appear to very similar or nearly indistinguishable from their antecedents. The DC-6 and DC-6B, for example, are almost indistinguishable.
Bob
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There are even stamps which show the Soviet version of the DC-3, the Li-2, which was built under license and was in service in several countries. There was also a Japanese version, but I don't know whether it is shown on any stamps.
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The Li-2 shows up more often on stamps from Eastern Block countries rather than on Russian stamps, although there is a more recent Russian stamp on Arctic/Antarctic explorers showing one landing on snow I still have to buy. You are far more likely to find the Russian designed Ilyushin Il-12 and Il-14 aircraft on stamps of the period than the Russian Li-2. Maybe this was to do with nationalistic reasons. The two Ilyushins can be mistaken for DC-3s, but the giveaway is they have no tail wheel as they use a tricycle undercarriage.
The Japanese version was similar to the Russian version in many ways, built under license from Douglas before the war started by the Japanese aircraft pioneer, Nakajima. It is on a 1937 Japanese stamp and on a more recent stamp-on-stamp from Palau.
Both the Russians and Japanese started off with the DC-2 license and changed up to DC-3 after its appearance. The Japanese version had a lot of wood used in its manufacture due to wartime metal shortages.
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In another discussion, BrightonPete wrote this about collecting airplanes on stamps: “I thought the same thing and started, but there is no end to the number of planes on stamps! It's like WW collecting to me - overwhelming!”
When I decided to collect airplanes on stamps, I soon realized that completeness was a fantasy. Besides, I wasn’t all that interested in most aircraft that were featured on stamps. What interested me most were a handful of stamps featuring aircraft with which I’d had some actual or virtual experience.
My father, who worked for barnstormers as a teenager growing up in New York State, was a wannabe pilot for his entire life. He never encouraged me to become a pilot — two of his barnstorming friends were killed in aircraft accidents — but he taught me a lot about airplanes. When I was about six years old, Dad asked a friend who had been a fighter pilot in the Second World War if he would take my sister, Helen, and me on a flight in a Piper Cub. Here we are:
And here's a William Piper/Piper Cub FDC:
When I was about 14, Dad got permission for the two of us to get inside a TWA Constellation that was parked on the ramp at the airport in Albuquerque, waiting for the crew and passengers to arrive. I can still remember the hot, dusty aroma of the cockpit and the feel of the leather pilot’s seat warm against my back, and my strong desire to have that airplane take off and carry me to all of those places I had read about, collected stamps from, and dreamed of visiting; here's a postcard showing the Albuquerque Airport with TWA Connies on the tarmac:
Following are other of my favourite aircraft featured on stamps and postcards:
• Beechcraft T-34B Mentor: I once had an “intimate” relationship with this aircraft. The only time I’ve flown in one was as a passenger. We took off, flew over the Gila National Forest in New Mexico, and “landed” in the forest at high altitude, late in the day. The forest won. The plane lost. By some sort of miracle, we were rescued by smokejumpers. Only one stamp picturing the Mentor has been issued, as far as I know:
This is what the Mentor looked like after its"landing" in the forest:
The smokejumpers parachuted from a war-surplus AT-11 Twin Beech. Here's a stamp picturing the Twin Beech (which is similar to Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Electra):
In the early 1990s I got a ride in a Northern Thunderbirds Airline Twin Beech from Prince George, BC to an aboriginal community, Fort Ware, 428.91 km (266.51 miles) north of Prince George. We flew with another Twin Beech to Fort Ware; here's a photo I took of that plane taking off from the airfield at Fort Ware:
• The Lockheed Electra II airliner, which flew me to San Diego in 1962 for U.S. Navy boot camp.
That image of the Electra II soaring over the Golden Gate Bridge may be a fake. I have another postcard which shows a C-141 Starlifter in the same position over the bridge, and it certainly seems to be a fake!:
• The Douglas DC-2, which I learned about through researching a cover recovered from the crash of a KLM DC-2 called the Uiver (or Stork) in the Syrian Desert in 1934:
• The Douglas DC-3, which I flew six or seven times while I was on leave in the Navy and once following my enlistment.
• Two years later I returned to California in a Continental Airlines Boeing 707. Jets don’t excite me all that much, but they’re faster than the Connie!
• I had other “opportunities” to fly in a helicopter, a Sikorsky UH-34D Seahorse, on a search and destroy mission, at the beginning of Operation Utah, and then on March 5, 1966, after I was wounded and flown first to a field hospital, then to the hospital ship U.S.S. Repose, and again when I was evacuated to Da Nang to begin my evacuation to Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego. This is a photo of me, with a Lucky Red Lions Squadron Seahorse about to land, a couple of weeks before I was wounded.
I can't show you a stamp picturing a Seahorse because they don't seem to exist! If you find one, please let me know!
• My evacuation from South Vietnam involved a flight from South Vietnam to the Philippines in a Lockheed C-130 Hercules:
Then I was flown from the Philippines to Travis AFB via Hawaii (where I was given my Purple Heart) in a C-141 Starlifter:
I have no memory of the plane that flew me from Travis AFB to San Diego. I was suffering from infections in my leg from the gunshot wound and in my bladder from a "dirty" catheterization on Repose.
• Finally, there’s the Handley-Page H.P.52 Hampden bomber. The Hampden was one of two long-range, medium bombers in the Royal Canadian Air Force at the beginning of the Second World War in 1939. I learned about the Hampden, which I had never heard of, after researching a postcard that I found in the late 1990s in an antique store in northern British Columbia. It turned out that the sender of the postcard, Joseph M. Hicks, of Fort William, Ontario, was in training to be a pilot, but punched out his commanding officer at a graduation party and was sent for further training not as a pilot but as an observer, an RCAF enlisted rating that combined navigation with the duties of a bombardier. With further research, I learned that Joe had been killed following an incendiary raid on Rostock, Germany when his RCAF Hampden bomber crashed on the Danish island of Fyn (known then as Funen). Here's a stamp featuring the Hampden:
I do have stamps featuring other aircraft that I have flown in, such as the Beechcraft Bonanza, a Cessna 140 and Cessna 150, a Convair CV-580 (on my honeymoon!), an L-1011, several B-737s, a B-727, and a Fairchild F-27, but they're not all that interesting to me so I don't "collect them" per se.
Bob
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re: Collecting "Airplanes on Stamps"
As some of you may know my topical collection is of the Douglas DC-3 with some of the other Douglas airliners to fill in the story of Douglas. I flew on DC-3s not that many times, but it did start a sort of love affair with the model. They were already pretty old by the time I was a passenger. In the mid 1970s i started working as a field service technician for the company which involved a lot of flying to oil seismic crews in the European/African/Middle Eastern regions. Up until then I had been on crews full time so the flying was to join a crew and 2 or 3 months later to leave on break. I never had the same fondness for other aircraft models as I did for the DC-3.
My first DC-3 flight was a scheduled flight from Norwich in England to Aberdeen in Scotland on Air Anglia. Norwich served Great Yarmouth which was at that time one of the two, the other Aberdeen, North Sea oil support bases. I got off one survey boat and flew up to join its sister ship. That was probably 1973. Norwich airport still had the old tin huts from the war serving as its terminal buildings. The captain stood by the boarding steps collecting tickets. He was in uniform and had a large RAF type mustache. You could imagine him in the Battle of Britain.
About 4 years later I was back in the field after leaving my office based job. I was on a crew way down in the desert south of Benghazi in Libya. Our way to and from the crew was by ex-Olympic DC-3s from Benghazi to strips we made ourselves with the crew Cat. This time the pilots were ex-USAF guys who also looked like they were out of a WWII movie. It seemed that at Benghazi airport it took 3 aircraft to keep one flying so there were lots of planes in pieces to keep the few still flying going. I never felt unsafe on these old planes. Maybe it was because they went so slow. Outside of Benghazi cars on the main road south were gong faster than us in the air.
I never had the same fondness for other aircraft although I did have a hate for one model. Air Algérie had turboprop 2-engine Nords serving the Sahara towns out of Oran. I used to relieve the base field service tech who covered three Algerian crews from there. It meant every two weeks I had to visit the crews using these planes. (I think they were Nord 262s.) I had a scare on one flight and afterwards used to visit the crews in a hired Peugeot taxi, taking 3 or 4 days to do loop covering all three crews.
That's my story anyway. Collecting just one aircraft model makes it manageable and you can aim at completion. I don't try to collect every stamp in a set or series as I'm happy to have just one example from the set. I do collect DC-1s and DC-2s as well as I look at them as the DC-3 Mk. 1 and Mk. 2, although by rights I should see the DC-3 being the DC-1 Mk. 3
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re: Collecting "Airplanes on Stamps"
DannyS makes an interesting point — "I do collect DC-1s and DC-2s as well as I look at them as the DC-3 Mk. 1 and Mk. 2, although by rights I should see the DC-3 being the DC-1 Mk. 3" — and raises a question: What determines the morphing of a prototype like the DC-1 into a brand new airplane with a different name, like the DC-2 instead of a variant, which would be a DC-1 Mark 1 as DannyS suggests, or simply a DC-1A, which is a common way to name aircraft variants? In the case of those Douglas airliners, the determining factor in the changing designations appears to have been size (The DC-2's fuselage was slightly longer than the DC-1s, and for the DC-3, larger size than the DC-2 and major structural changes (different wings, fuselage shape, and engines). Most aircraft variants appear to very similar or nearly indistinguishable from their antecedents. The DC-6 and DC-6B, for example, are almost indistinguishable.
Bob
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01:54:28pm
re: Collecting "Airplanes on Stamps"
There are even stamps which show the Soviet version of the DC-3, the Li-2, which was built under license and was in service in several countries. There was also a Japanese version, but I don't know whether it is shown on any stamps.
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re: Collecting "Airplanes on Stamps"
The Li-2 shows up more often on stamps from Eastern Block countries rather than on Russian stamps, although there is a more recent Russian stamp on Arctic/Antarctic explorers showing one landing on snow I still have to buy. You are far more likely to find the Russian designed Ilyushin Il-12 and Il-14 aircraft on stamps of the period than the Russian Li-2. Maybe this was to do with nationalistic reasons. The two Ilyushins can be mistaken for DC-3s, but the giveaway is they have no tail wheel as they use a tricycle undercarriage.
The Japanese version was similar to the Russian version in many ways, built under license from Douglas before the war started by the Japanese aircraft pioneer, Nakajima. It is on a 1937 Japanese stamp and on a more recent stamp-on-stamp from Palau.
Both the Russians and Japanese started off with the DC-2 license and changed up to DC-3 after its appearance. The Japanese version had a lot of wood used in its manufacture due to wartime metal shortages.
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