North Atlantic Cruise
In 1933, the Italian Air Force, headed by General Italo Balbo – who was a Fascist leader – organized and led a series of flights consisting initially of twenty-five seaplanes. At the time, the concept of making trans-Atlantic flights was new. Balbo was a fan of the U.S. and was eager to establish relations between the Italian Air Force and the U.S. Air Force.
With a fleet of twenty-five seaplanes, they flew from Italy to Amsterdam, then to Derry, England. Next they went to Reykjavík, Iceland. They spent days in each location, between flights. Next they flew to North America, stopping first in Cartwright, located in Newfoundland and Labrador. After that, to Montréal and to Chicago. They then worked their way to New York, landing Jamaica Bay near Manhattan. Coming back, because Balbo’s popularity was rising so much, Mussolini made him skip his plans to go to London, Paris and Berlin. Instead, he was sent to the Azores and then to Lisbon, before returning to Rome.
It was a successful journey with millions of people greeting them at their various stops. They did lose two planes, one person from each plane – one in Amsterdam and another in the Azores. Nevertheless, the trip did wonders for Italy’s image around the world – of course, that would change when they would join with Germany in waging a world war.
The first two stamps on this page were to be used during the flight of the Air Armada. Besides the cockpit in the center for the pilot and co-pilot, each plane had two cabins for passengers. The crew and passengers could and were encouraged to send letters and postcards to commemorate their journey and the Italian air force.
These stamps have an unusual design, composed of three parts each. The left part has no face value as it wasn’t used for postage: maybe it was a keepsake for the sender, or could be put on the envelop. Since it was overprinted with an identifier of the particular plane, it was meant to indicate from which plane it was sent. The middle part of the stamp trio had a cost of five lira and twenty-five cents. It was meant to be used for express mail sent abroad, which is where these passengers were while on-board. The stamp on the right is has a different face value depending on which is used. One is nineteen lira and seventy-five cents. It was used for air mail to locations in Europe. The other has a face value of forty-five lira and seventy-five cents, the cost of air mail letters to the U.S. at the time. Whenever they would land, all mail would be given to the local postal authority for delivery.
Two-hundred thousand of these stamp pairs of three stamps each, were printed for use aboard Air Armada airplanes: ten thousand for each plane on which the stamps were used. For the plane of each batch, an identifier for the plane was overprinted on the left part of the stamp. The identifier format was Apparecchio (i.e., equipment) I for Italy, followed by a dash and a four-letter abbreviation for the name of the pilot (e.g., Apparecchio I-PELL for the plane flown by Aldo Pellegrini).
Note
This page is complete. I thought it would take me a long time to get them all, but I managed to find them at some good prices. The two long ones at the top, each containing three stamps together, were particularly expensive. I explain them and their purpose in the next section below. For now, I’ll mention that the overprint on the left stamps of each stamp trio is for one of twenty pilots that flew in the Italian Air Armada. The commander of the armada, who was also the founder and head of the Italian Royal Air Force, was Italo Balbo. Rather than collect all twenty of these sets, I bought one set and what I think is one of the better choices: the ones marked with Balbo’s name.
Contains 8 spots: own 8 – 8 unused, 0 used.
Page is finished.
Album or Web Page Last changed Oct 28, 2022
Stamp Details
The table below lists information about the stamps shown on this page of Lighthouse’s stamp album. For more details about a particular stamp, click on its description. That will take you to the related web page of Colnect.
spot |
own |
catalog |
subject |
description |
comment |
Italian Air Armada
✓ |
A51 |
North Atlantic Crossing |
5.25+19.75₤ (may 1933) |
||
✓ |
A52 |
North Atlantic Crossing |
5.25+44.75₤ (may 1933) |
Express Air
✓ |
A73 |
2₤ (jul 1934) |
|||
✓ |
A44 |
2.25₤ (jan 1933) |
Rome - Buenos Aires Flights
✓ |
A56 |
First Direct Flight |
2₤ (jan 1934) |
||
✓ |
A57 |
First Direct Flight |
3₤ (jan 1934) |
||
✓ |
A58 |
First Direct Flight |
5₤ (jan 1934) |
||
✓ |
A59 |
First Direct Flight |
10₤ (jan 1934) |
Footnotes
Spot refers to the postion of the stamp on the album page (e.g., 3.2 indicates row 3, position 2).
Amt. is an abbreviation for the face amount of the stamp.
Own indicates the stamp status: ✓ for unused; ✗ for used or canceled; ⭑ signifies I ordered one; ; ✨ indicates it was bought recently; ✠ means an auction bid is pending; and ◎ is used, and it costs too much for unused.
To search by catalog number, go to the search box and enter it in the catalog number box. However, it’s a bit broken; I need to fix it.
