A Little Help from Our Friends

At the dawn of the age of air mail communications, the US Post Office Department forged new alliances with European air lines that would enable Americans to speed up delivery of their mail to and from distant places overseas. This is the story of those alliances told in a chronological way and copiously illustrated with full color maps and images of mail carried by US and foreign air carriers.

The book consists of seven chapters beginning with the first small tentative steps toward international air mail service in the early 1920s that saw routes established from London to continental Europe and on to North Africa. Chapter 2 takes up the story in 1928 when the US Post Office added instructions to its patrons that would allow them to take advantage of service by Air France and thus recognized Paris as a new gateway through which Americans could accelerate mail delivery.

Chapter 3 focuses of Britain’s Imperial Airways and the story of its pioneering air route to India by way of Egypt and the Middle East beginning in 1929. Amsterdam and the Dutch air line KLM joined British and French carriers in 1930 on the eyes of the US post office as potential carriers that could assist Americans in speeding their mail to far flung destinations. The story of KLM’s air link to the Dutch East Indies and the heated three-way competition that touched off for air mail business is the focus of Chapter 4.

Chapter 5 sees the story return to Britain’s Imperial Airways as it opened up a daring air route south from Cairo to its colonies in East and South Africa in 1931. In Chapter 6 the race to be the first European air carrier to offer service to and from China takes center stage as 1932 witnessed intense competition among the British, French and Dutch carriers to dominate this route. The final chapter describes the establishment of air mail service from Europe to Australia and New Zealand with regular service initiated in 1934.

Although arranged chronologically according to the date service was initiated, all of the chapters discuss evolution of air service up to 1939-1941 when the increasing hostilities that preceded World War II gradually curtailed much of the international air mail service around the world.