Great Western Railway

The first railway company to take advantage of the Royal Assent was the Great Western Railway. In 1933 GWR entered talks with Imperial Airways about co-operation. The route chosen was Cardiff to Plymouth via Haldon (for Torquay and Teignmouth). Imperial Airways would supply an aeroplane, crew and engineers with GWR supplying the traffic staff. Imperial provided a three engine; six passenger Wessex monoplane and the fuselage had the GWR colours and badge. The first flight was on the 11th April, when two planes flew the Directors of GWR and a press representative to Haldon for a reception at Teignmouth and then onto Plymouth. The service opened to the public on the 12 th April 1933 and extended to Birmingham on the 22 nd May. All the letters on the 12th were sent by the dealer A. Philips and letters with the 3d green newspaper stamp sent other than on the 12 April do not exist. From 27th April the postmaster general authorized the carrying of mail and GWR produced numbered stamps with a 3d rate for this. All mail would be sent to the nearest airport to the address and then posted. Thus, mail would have the postmark of the destination town not the originating town. The airport used for Plymouth was the Plymouth Roborough airport. Sited on a former Polo ground to the North of the City and next to the road to Tavistock. Roborough became an air ministry aerodrome on 6th June 1929, although flying from the grass field had been an activity since 1923, when Sir Alan Cobham of Surrey Flying services experimented with a passenger and parcels service to Birmingham, Manchester and Belfast. The project failed but interest in flying grew throughout the 1920’s and Plymouth city council purchased the 110- acre site for £20,748 in 1929. In 1933 62,400 air miles were flown, 714 passengers were carried, 454lb of air mail and 104lb of air freight were transported by GWR air services. Flight services were operated 7 days each week. 400 flights were completed in these six- seater aircraft in 173 days of operations. During the 1933 GWR Air Services operations the company lost £6500. The operating costs were 5 times the receipts.

GWR (Great Western Railway) First Flight 12th April 1933

On May 6th, 1933, an article by W. Ward titled ‘P.M.G recognises Railway Air Mail’ appeared in Stamp Collecting and a short summary is given here. “So long ago as February, 1891, the G.P.O. sanctioned the railway companies of Great Britain and Ireland carrying letters, to which must be affixed a special letter-fee stamp of a design approved by the powers that be plus a postage stamp for carriage of the letter from the station or point nearest the addressee…..Naturally, enterprising philatelists saw an opportunity to get some specially franked souvenirs of the really first British inter-island air service that could be distinguished other than by cancellations. All they had to do was address letters, fixing railway-letter and postage stamps, and send from Cardiff, Plymouth, Teignmouth, or Torquay, to be posted on arrival at the railway termini. and cancelled by the Post Office, according to G.P.O. Regulations made in 1891…. such a business-like innovation could not be allowed without first special permission. Thus came the fiat that has compelled the enterprising Great Western to announce that “at the present we are prohibited from forwarding letters by air". Before we continue, a few words about Railway/Air letters. A Railway letter which was expanded on the 15th May to include air letters, were a special dispensation which meant the railways were allowed to take the role of Royal Mail for the first part of a journey to speed up delivery. For example, if I was in Glasgow and posted a letter in a post-box, it would need to be collected, taken with all the other collections to the sorting office, stamped and sorted and sent to the train station. This could take several hours. With a Railway letter, I could take the letter to an office which accepted railway letters (main cities) and have it put straight on the train thus missing out all the collection and sorting time in Glasgow. When it reached London ,it would go into the postal system. If I post a letter in Glasgow when it is sorted it will receive a Glasgow postmark. If I send a railway letter, the railway stamp will be cancelled with the name of the office, but it will not get a postmark until it reaches and enters the postal system in London. Thus, a GWR railway/air letter will have the originating office on the GWR label only. The postmark will be where it entered the system at its railway/air destination (not the final destination). Back to the 12th April. We do not know on what day GWR announced they were prohibited from forwarding letters by air, but when Anthony Phillips an aero-philately dealer from Newport in Wales found his covers would not be accepted by the Airline in the normal fashion, he persuaded the Company to allow him to travel on the plane as a passenger with letters that had been stamped by GWR. These had railway parcel stamps not railway letter stamps, but I do not know if that is significant. At each stop he passed them to an agent who posted them in the normal manner. Phillips own account can be read in the article ‘The GWR Air Mail ’, printed in the ‘Air Mail Notes and News’ July 1933. The exact details of what happened died with Phillips and his agents and he was certainly reticent later in the 30’s to admit any involvement. There must have been some collusion at a local level with GWR, though possibly not at a national level. The choice of a Newspaper label rather than the railway letter stamp is curious. Certainly, it was a more impressive stamp than the dull green and white railway stamp and that may have been the deciding factor, as the service was unofficial anyway. The Postmaster General authorised the carrying of mail on April 27th, but no official mail appears to have been flown on the GWR service until May 15th. Almost all 12th April mail is addressed to A. Phillips. The one piece of mail which has been recorded not addressed to Phillips is shown further down this page, but this is clearly on a cover prepared by Phillips. On hearing GWR would not accept his prepared mail Phillips gave the following account “Mr. Phillips therefore decided to take the mail and carried it as a Passenger, bearing the first ticket issued, No. 0000. The plane left the Cardiff Airport at 9.15 a.m. arriving Haldon Aerodrome 10.5 a.m. Here our agents posted covers at Teignmouth, which bear the 10.30 a.m. postmark, and at Torquay, postmarked 11.30 a.m. Roborough Aerodrome was made at 10.35 a.m. and Newport-Plymouth and Cardiff-Plymouth covers bear the 12.30 p.m. postmark. On the return flight mail was carried by Mr. Phillips from Plymouth for Cardiff and Newport. We anticipated covers from Teignmouth and Torquay (Haldon), but owing to the short notice they were not ready. The plane left at 1125 a.m., arriving Cardiff Airport 12.50 p.m. Cardiff covers are postmarked 1.15 p.m. and Newport covers 2.30 p.m.” From his account we can see he was totally responsible for all the mail that day. However, by 1935 he was not being so candid. In his pamphlet ‘The British Inland Airmail’, he makes no mention of his involvement and claims there was no record of the number carried. What does he mean by that? He didn’t count them? From other letters I have seen from Phillips to airlines, he clearly dealt in large quantities. Owing to the relative large number of 12th envelopes that come on the market (compared with the 15th), the number he sent was probably quite large, but he didn’t want customers to know how many he had as that would repress the price he could charge. He was equally evasive about the numbers carried on the 15th understating them from his first account. It was clearly judicious for sales not to be accused of staging a philatelic event and instead make it sound like the normal process of mail. Whatever the truth of the matter, through his actions we have stages recorded on that historic first flight. My thanks to Mark Le Breton for pointing me to the obscure 1930’s journals which gave me clarity. Redgrove gives a classification of stages flown and it will be useful to keep that method here. A1. Cardiff to Plymouth A2. Cardiff to Teignmouth A3. Cardiff to Torquay A4. Newport to Plymouth A5. Newport to Teignmouth A6. Newport to Torquay A7. Plymouth to Cardiff A8. Plymouth to Newport As previously stated, these were unofficial covers sent by a dealer and which really has no greater status than that of souvenir mail. The first official mail accepted and sent by GWR was on the 15th, where they introduced their own label.

A5. Newport to Teignmouth

A6. Newport to Torquay

A7. Plymouth to Cardiff

A8. Plymouth to Newport (cachet very light)

Cardiff to Plymouth Signed E. DIsmore Newport to Teignmouth Signed G Olley

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Cardiff - Torquay

Newport - Plymouth

A3. Cardiff to Torquay

A4. Newport to Plymouth

An unusual cover not addressed to Phillips. Addressed in handwriting to Victor Bosman in Hove. Despite not being addressed to Phillips it is one of his covers. The typing and wording top left is identical to the others and he boasted in a later article about his careful placement of the air stamp (or in this case the label), which is in the same position as his other covers.

The following are two covers signed by GWR pilots. This historic flight was so oversubscribed that three planes flew this route on the first day. The first cover is signed by E.Dismore who flew one of the flights. The second cover is signed by Gordon P. Olley, who was another pilot on the flight. He was destined to go on to much greater things. He founded Olley Air services which became a serious force in the North West, taking over Blackpool and West Coast Air Services and eventually partnering RAS in services to the Isle of Man and Belfast.

A2. Cardiff to Teignmouth

British Internal Airmails of the 1930’s

A2. Cardiff to Teignmouth

A1. Cardiff to Plymouth

A7. Plymouth to Cardiff

A8. Plymouth to Newport

Great Western Railway

The first railway company to take advantage of the Royal Assent was the Great Western Railway. In 1933 GWR entered talks with Imperial Airways about co-operation. The route chosen was Cardiff to Plymouth via Haldon (for Torquay and Teignmouth). Imperial Airways would supply an aeroplane, crew and engineers with GWR supplying the traffic staff. Imperial provided a three engine; six passenger Wessex monoplane and the fuselage had the GWR colours and badge. The first flight was on the 11th April, when two planes flew the Directors of GWR and a press representative to Haldon for a reception at Teignmouth and then onto Plymouth. The service opened to the public on the 12 th April 1933 and extended to Birmingham on the 22 nd May. All the letters on the 12th were sent by the dealer A. Philips and letters with the 3d green newspaper stamp sent other than on the 12 April do not exist. From 27th April the postmaster general authorized the carrying of mail and GWR produced numbered stamps with a 3d rate for this. All mail would be sent to the nearest airport to the address and then posted. Thus, mail would have the postmark of the destination town not the originating town. The airport used for Plymouth was the Plymouth Roborough airport. Sited on a former Polo ground to the North of the City and next to the road to Tavistock. Roborough became an air ministry aerodrome on 6th June 1929, although flying from the grass field had been an activity since 1923, when Sir Alan Cobham of Surrey Flying services experimented with a passenger and parcels service to Birmingham, Manchester and Belfast. The project failed but interest in flying grew throughout the 1920’s and Plymouth city council purchased the 110- acre site for £20,748 in 1929. In 1933 62,400 air miles were flown, 714 passengers were carried, 454lb of air mail and 104lb of air freight were transported by GWR air services. Flight services were operated 7 days each week. 400 flights were completed in these six-seater aircraft in 173 days of operations. During the 1933 GWR Air Services operations the company lost £6500. The operating costs were 5 times the receipts.