Pioneers

2003 "Extreme Endeavours" series

The untimely death of astronaut Sally Ride this week made me think of other women pioneers so here is the record breaking aviator Amy Johnson (1903-41).  With only 50 hours of flying experience she made the first woman's solo flight from England to Australia, taking 17 days. Further record-breaking flights acorss Siberia, the Atlantic and solo to Cape Town followed. Amy Johnson disappeared over the Thames estuary in January 1941 ferrying an aeroplane for the Air Ministry in World War Two.  In bad weather and running out of fuel she drowned after bailing out. There is a mystery of her death, was she on a secret mission for the air ministry or was she shot down by coastal defence guns after giving the wrong identification code of the day?

Here she is with her Gypsy Moth waiting to take off from Croydon airport in 1930 which was where international  flights came in and out of London. The airport closed in 1959, it had no room to expand, and all that remains are the terminal buildings, the control tower  (which houses the visitors centre) and the Aerodrome Hotel.  I wonder if business travellers or tourists stay there now, there are no aeroplanes

or rocket launchers. A  'smiler' stamp and cancel celebrates the 40th anniversary of the moon landing and a cancel for the first commercial supersonic flight from Heathrow (the airport which replaced Croydon) is on the Charles Babbage stamp. The latter was a 1991 commemoration of his birth centenary.  Babbage (1791-1871) and his Difference Engine which he later called an Analytical Engine is considered a computer pioneer in his quest to store data and then reuse the information to add more.

I like the whimsy of the cover, the Mars 'postage stamp' at the bottom and on the back there are stamps for a Mars Tourist visa, the moon station and the International Space Station and if you have enough money to go into space the $5000 Earth Tax mentioned there would be a snip.

An entry to Viridian Postcard's Sunday Stamps