by Ray Murphy » Mon Jan 16, 2017 1:36 am
Hi Stephen,
I’m not an expert on airline routing, but my guess on a travel time from Bolivia to Miami would be about 4-5 days assuming everything went right. I base this on an ad I saw claiming Miami to Argentina in 7 days in the early 1930's. (See FAM 9 writeup in AAMS Vol3) Since PANAM and PANAGRA changed out airplanes several times, this could depend on the type of aircraft used. PANAM was trying to get away from the flying boats in the late 1930's in favor of the faster and larger land-based aircraft. PANAGRA had switched to DC2's and DC3's. Jamaica was the critical point since there were no commercial landing strips available, only the harbor. PANAM threatened to cut off FAM5, so the Brits finally allowed use of Palisados Royal Navy airfield in 1940 for land-based aircraft. Apparently BSC and Censorship worked for this since the info they picked up was useful. As the war progressed, newer engine and better navaids improved flights..
One major problem in the prewar years was navaids, or the lack thereof. This limited flying to daylight hours. They weren’t going real fast - it took about 7 hours from Miami to Kingston with a stop at Cienfuegos which maxed out crew time. Going southward, I believe mail was transferred at Barraquila or Cristobal to FAM9. While passengers would be routed correctly, cargo has a nasty habit of not saying anything when delayed. I know FAM5 flew at a difference frequency than FAM9 so interconnects add to cargo delays. People, however, are normally ticketed on connecting flights - if not, they complain. On occasion, I had to track priority one shipments on military or civil aircraft. Even with good comm and manifest numbers, packages would get sidetracked regardless of priority. It really expanded my vocabulary!!!
One area that I didn’t cover in the book was the effect of mail contents on time to censor. Personal mail was easier to censor than business mail. As long as a person wasn’t on one of the lists, and didn’t take about war-related items, it went rapidly. Business mail, on the other hand, required someone with a knowledge of the particular industry. That is why the mail from stamp dealers was initially looked on with such suspicion. Eventually a bureau of dealers reviewed the mail and would indicated a copy for 20 PB of SG123 MNH/F or better was a legitimate order. They probably would be suspicious if it were a quantity of 4000 PB or of SG9876.
One of the reasons for mentioning time in the book was that some people saw a PC90 on a letter from Jamaica without a country code and said that it was censored in England, although addressed to New York. Since even today it takes about 8-10 days to get a letter to England, and about the same in return, a letter from Jamaica to New York via London arriving in less than 3 weeks by airmail could not have reasonably been sent to the UK, censored, and returned to the US.
Hope this helps.
Ray