First AirMail of USA

A cover from USA with centenary of AirMail in US Stamp ! 

The USPS celebrates the centenary of its first AirMail service on May 15 , 2018. It issued two stamps a few days apart. 

Both stamps, printed in the intaglio print method—a design transferred to paper from an engraved plate—depict the type of plane typically used in the early days of airmail, a Curtiss JN-4H biplane. The biplane was also featured on the stamps originally issued in 1918 to commemorate the beginning of regularly scheduled airmail service. The stamp designs evoke that earlier period.

The words “UNITED STATES” and “AIR MAIL” are respectively at the top and bottom of the stamp. “EST” is an abbreviation for “established.” The stamp designer and typographer was Dan Gretta, and Greg Breeding was the art director.

The stamps will be issued as Forever stamps, which will always be equal in value to the current first-class mail (one ounce) price.

U.S. AIRMAIL HISTORY

On May 15, 1918, in the midst of the First World War, a small group of U.S. Army pilots delivered mail along a route that linked Washington, Philadelphia, and New York to begin the world’s first regularly scheduled airmail service.

The United States Post Office Department, the predecessor to the USPS, took charge of the U.S. Air Mail Service later that summer, operating it from Aug. 12, 1918, through Sept. 1, 1927. Airmail delivery—daily except on Sundays—became part of the fabric of the American economy and spurred growth of the nation’s aviation industry.

Army Major Reuben H. Fleet was charged with setting up the first U.S. airmail service, scheduled to operate beginning May 15, 1918 between Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and New York City.

For airmail service to succeed in the early days of flight, the post office had to develop profitable routes, such as between New York and Chicago, and to establish the infrastructure for safely making night flights. It set up lighted airfields and erected hundreds of airmail guide beacons between New York and San Francisco so that by 1924 regularly scheduled, transcontinental flying was possible, day and night.

The US AirMail logo 

Airmail delivery, daily except on Sundays, became part of the fabric of the American economy and spurred the growth of the nation’s aviation industry.

Thanks Sai for this beautiful cover ! I wonder if usps had re- enactment of the first flight between Washington DC and NewYork !?!?