Military Air Mail Letter Card sent from Ceylon (R.A.F. Base P.O, no date) to Toronto, Canada.
This letter was sent via Lagos, Nigeria, to the US and Canada.
Single-ring instructional handstamp “Canada and U.S.A. only”, presumably added by the R.A.F. Base P.O in Colombo to allow for easier sorting at the Lagos intermediate stop.
Required postage was 75 cent (Ceylon) or 25 cent (Canadian), so overpaid by 3 cent.
WW2 Air Mail Letter Card for Australian military personnel for communication with family and friends in Australia. The handstamp "H.M.A. Ships" indicates that the airletter was to be distributed to soldiers serving on one of the ships of the Australian fleet.
One of the previous owners made this note on the reverse:
"Kenya +Uganda. Newly discovered similar to 3 MLS will be catalogued"
I have no idea which catalogue was referred to here. My reference is P. R. Adby, Aerogrammes - Air Mail Letter Card - Air Letters, 1997. This handbook is not easy to handle, but here is a shot:
- Shape A, 125 x 95 mm when folded, single top sealing flap, 1 mm blue border, no security overlay on paper
- Width of "LETTER CARD" on the top of the front panel: 50 mm
- Vertical distance M (in Air Mail, covered by the censor label) to R in "LETTER: 4.5 mm
- Affix instruction is "Stamps / must be / affixed / here", which is Adby's type A-7
- No address lines on front panel
- Blue label in top left corner, "BY AIR MAIL" in white
- red 25 cents KENYA & UGANDA imprint over the Affix instruction (partly covered by the censor label
This is Adby type F1A-3, but there is no match with the listed subtypes. The one closest is F1A-3d. The only difference is that the "25 cents .." imprint on Adby F1A-3d is in blue. The one in the copy above is in red.
I'm
not aware of a more recent catalogue issue, but I have found similar
copies in the "Military Aerogrammes" exhibit of Roggenkämper which is
available online: http://www.aerogramme.com/exhibits/wwmals/ExhF2P12.htm.
Unfortunately, the scans of the exhibit pages are not very clear.
