3309 UNITED STATES (Hawaii) - Pearl Harbour

Located on the island of Oahu, west of Honolulu, near the center of the Pacific Ocean, roughly 2,000 miles from the U.S. mainland and about 4,000 miles from Japan, Pearl Harbor is well known as the scene of a devastating surprise attack by Japanese forces on December 7, 1941, that finally propelled the United States into WWII. Just before 8 a.m. on that Sunday morning, hundreds of Japanese fighter planes descended on the base, where they managed to destroy or damage 21 American naval vessels, including 8 battleships, and over 300 airplanes. 2,390 Americans died in the attack, and another 1,178 were wounded.

2425, 2738, 3158 NETHERLANDS (Sint Maarten) - Maho Beach

2425 Sint Maarten - An Air France Airbus over Maho Beach

Posted on 01.04.2016, 05.08.2016, 07.10.2017
The island of Saint Martin is served by many major airlines that daily bring in large jet aircraft, including Boeing 747s and Airbus A340s carrying tourists from across the world. The short main runway at Princess Juliana International Airport, and its position between a large hill and a beach, causes some spectacular approaches. Aviation photographers flock to the airport to capture pictures of large jets just a few metres above sunbathers on Maho Beach.

2738 Sint Maarten - Aircraft over Maho Beach

Located in Sint Maarten, the Dutch side of the island, the Princess Juliana International Airport is the major gateway for the smaller Leeward Islands, including Anguilla, Saba, St. Barthélemy and St. Eustatius. It is named after Juliana of the Netherlands, who as crown princess landed here in 1944, the year after the airport opened. Started as a military airstrip in 1942, it was converted to a civilian airport in 1943. Despite the reputed difficulties in approach, there have been no records of major incidents at the airport.

3158 Sint Maarten - Aircraft over Maho Beach (3D lenticular postcard)

2968 ROMANIA - First Airplane Postcrossing Meet-up in the World

Behold, after the first postcrossing meet-up in a train, which took place on February 29, 2016 on the route Bucharest - Ploieşti, Romanians relapsed in premieres, organizing the first postcrossing meet-up in an airplane, on the route Cluj-Napoca - Bucharest, on February 24, 2017. It is true that to the meet-up attended only two members, Sandor Zaica and Ovidiu Bu, who came to Bucharest to attend the meet-up occasioned by the launch of the first Romanian postcrossing stamp, but they issued a special postcard and signed postcards during the flight, so might be called a postcrossing meet-up.

2823 UNITED KINGDOM (Scotland) - The map of Pabay Island

Pabay is an island in the Inner Sound of Skye, the largest and most northerly major island in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. It lies south of Longay and east of the larger Scalpay. The island is formed of fossil-containing limestone, and forms a flat plateau with cliffs on the North and East shores. The surrounding low reefs encroach on its shores and double the area at low water. Pabay was inhabited in the 19th century, but now it has a single house and is only accessible by boat or helicopter. It issues its own postage stamps.

2753 FRANCE (Saint Barthélemy) - Gustaf III Airport

Gustaf III Airport, also known as St. Jean Airport, because is located in the village of St. Jean, was named for King Gustav III of Sweden, under whom Sweden obtained the island from France in 1784 (it was sold back to France in 1878). In 1984, Swedish Minister of Communications, Hans Gustafsson, inaugurated the terminal building. Most visiting aircraft carry fewer than twenty passengers, such as the Twin Otter, a common sight throughout the northern West Indies and as a curiosum, the Canadian-built de Havilland Dash 7 is the largest aircraft ever allowed to operate this airport.

2660 GERMANY (Hesse) - Frankfurt Airport

Located at 12km southwest of central Frankfurt, Frankfurt Airport is operated by Fraport and serves as the main hub for Lufthansa. It has a capacity of approximately 65 million passengers per year, being the busiest airport by passenger traffic in Germany as well as the 4th busiest in Europe. Frankfurt Airport has two large main passenger terminals (1 and 2) and a much smaller dedicated First Class Terminal which is operated and exclusively used by Lufthansa.

2448 FRANCE (Saint Barthélemy) - Savaku

Located at Saint-Jean, not far from the Gustaf III Airport, the bronze statue Savaku, the work of the freelance graphic designer aged 27 years Guillaume Blanchard,  was inaugurated on August 24, 2007. It evokes the soul of St Barth, a metaphor for the island as envisioned by the artist, representing in the same time the forces of nature, including hurricanes.

2301 BELGIUM - Au revoir, Sabena!

2301 Au revoir, Sabena!

The airplane has long ceased to be just a means of transport. It changed not only our lives, but also our way of thinking, and has shaped deeply our culture. We can reach in places of which we even didn't dreamed before its appearance, we can get things that didn't even know that exists. It is therefore part of our daily lives, in one way or another, and airlines are an important vector in this regard.

2153 NAURU - Flying to Nauru

Nauru, formerly known as Pleasant Island, is the smallest state in the South Pacific and third smallest state by area in the world. Its nearest neighbour is Banaba Island in Kiribati, 300km to the east. Nauru has one airport, Nauru International Airport, which flies to Brisbane, Australia; Majuro, Marshall Islands; Nadi, Fiji; and Tarawa, Kiribati. Nauru Airlines in the only airline to fly in the airport. There are five airplanes in service, four Boeing 737-300, and one Boeing 737-300F.

2091 ROMANIA - IAR 99 "Şoim" (Hawk)

IAR 99 "Şoim" (Hawk) is an advanced jet trainer and light attack aircraft capable of performing close air support and reconnaissance missions. The aircraft is of semi-monocoque design, with tapered wings and a swept back tail unit. A large blade-type antenna installed beneath the nose on the port side of the fuselage gives the IAR 99 trainer a distinctive appearance.20 IAR 99s are in service now for the Romanian Air Force.

2073 FRANCE (French Guiana) - Kourou

Kourou: 1. ? 2. The Dreyfus Tower on
the Pointe des Roches; 3. Ariane 5.

Located at 60km northwest of Cayenne, at the mouth of the river with the same name and ringed by four hills, Kourou has three lakes within its limits, the riverbank and all points inland consisting mostly of mangrove and dense tropical rainforest. It was formerly the home of the Kourou Prison, which was one of the main prisons in French Guiana, and which was also a part of the notorious Devil's Island Prison System.

1912 UNITED STATES (California) - RMS Queen Mary and the domed hangar of the Spruce Goose in Long Beach Harbor

 

 

Downtown Long Beach is located approximately 35 km south of Downtown Los Angeles, though the two cities border each other for several miles on Long Beach's southwestern portion. The  Port of Long Beach is the United States' second busiest container port and one of the world's largest shipping ports. In the harbour, right at the mouth of the Los Angeles River, is permanently docked the Art Deco ocean liner RMS Queen Mary, famous for being the fastest in the world from 1936 to 1952.

1673, 1686 UNITED STATES (Florida) - Space Shuttle Endeavour at Kennedy Space Center

1673 UNITED STATES (Florida) - Kennedy Space Center
Space Shuttle Endeavour approaches Launch Pad 39A

Posted on 16.06.2015, 21.06.2015
Space Shuttle Endeavour (Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV-105) is a retired orbiter from NASA's Space Shuttle program and the fifth and final operational shuttle built. The United States Congress authorized the construction of Endeavour in 1987 to replace Challenger, which was lost in 1986 when it broke up 73 seconds after launch. It was named after the British HMS Endeavour, the ship which took Captain James Cook on his first voyage of discovery (1768–1771). It embarked on its first mission, STS-49, in May 1992 and its 25th and final mission, STS-134, in May 2011. Since 2012 it is housed in the Samuel Oschin Pavilion of California Science Center in Los Angeles, California.

1686 UNITED STATES (Florida) - Kennedy Space Center
Space Shuttle Endeavour roars into space
on mission STS-99

As it was constructed later, Endeavour was built with new hardware designed to improve and expand orbiter capabilities. Most of this equipment was later incorporated into the other three orbiters during out-of-service major inspection and modification programs. The first African-American woman astronaut, Mae Jemison, was brought into space on the mission STS-47 on September 12, 1992. Over the course of its 19-year spaceflight career, Endeavour logged nearly 123 million miles (198 million kilometers) and zipped around the Earth more than 4,600 times.

1604 UNITED STATES (Colorado) - United States Air Force Academy

1604 Colorado Springs - United States Air Force Academy,
Cadet Chapel and Cadet Honor Court
with B-17 Flying Fortress and P-40 Warhawk memorials

The United States Air Force Academy (USAFA), located immediately north of  Colorado Springs, is the youngest of the five United States service academies, having graduated its first class in 1959. Graduates of the Academy's four-year program receive a Bachelor of Science degree, and are commissioned as second lieutenants in the United States Air Force. Recent incoming classes have had about 1,200 cadets; historically just under 1,000 of those will graduate. The buildings in the Cadet Area were designed in a distinct, modernist style, and make extensive use of aluminum on building exteriors, suggesting the outer skin of aircraft or spacecraft.

0236 TRANSNISTRIA - A retired aircraft

To understand what is the deal with Transnistria (the name means Beyond the river Dniester), you should know some history of Moldavia (Moldova in romanian), and for that we must go back almost 700 years ago. Well, as is said in Chronicle from Putna, "in year 6867 from the creation of the world (1359 AD), with God willing, have started the country of Moldavia". Namely in 1352, Louis the Great, King of Hungary and Croatia, has set a mark between the Carpathians and Siret, intended to defend the Hungarian kingdom against Tartars invasions, and its leadership entrusted it to Dragoş, a romanian voievod (voivode) from Maramureş, at that time a possession of the crown. 

0200 RUSSIA (Moscow) – "With greetings from the past"

This is the first Soviet postcard received by me. Yes, Soviet, because it was issued in 1981, so with a year before Brezhnev's death. I have a lot of postcards from that period (uncirculated, purchased recently from the flea market in Ploiesti, some of them very beautiful, that I will provide for swap), but I not received any. Many thanks, Egor, for this premiere.

On the back is wrote "USSR Exhibition of Economic Achievements Industry Square". Named in nowadays All-Russia Exhibition Centre, it’s a permanent general-purpose trade show in Moscow which was established in 1935 as the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition (VSKhV), renamed in 1959 Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy.

So in 1935 an existing site (then known as Ostankino Park) was approved for the exhibition, and in the next year was approved the master plan by Vyacheslav Oltarzhevsky, but the first show began barely in 1939, after several delays. Meanwhile the architect was arrested, because the exhibition didn’t suit with "the ideological direction of the moment", and was "too modest and too temporary". After WWII delays continued, the complex being reopened only in 1954. Until 1989 the exhibition had 82 pavilions with the exhibition area of 700,000 m2. Each pavilion was dedicated to a particular field: the Engineering Pavilion (1954), the Space Pavilion (1966), the Atomic Energy Pavilion (1954), the People's Education Pavilion (1954), the Radioelectronics Pavilion (1958), the Soviet Culture Pavilion (1964). In image is, of course, the Space Pavilion.

The aircraft is a Yak-42 (NATO reporting name Clobber), CCCP-42304, a three-engined mid-range passenger jet, a new model at that time, a T-tail with both the vertical fin and the horizontal surfaces swept. It performed the first flight in 1975, was introduced in 1980, and was built between 1980 and 2003 in 178 copies. It was the first airliner produced in the Soviet Union to be powered by modern high-bypass turbofan engines. Two engines were mounted in pods on either side of the rear fuselage, with the third embedded inside the rear fuselage.

Above it's mounted a Soyuz (Union) rocket, a expendable launch systems developed by OKB-1, and manufactured by TsSKB-Progress in Samara, Russia. The Soyuz vehicles, used as the launcher for the manned Soyuz spacecraft as part of the Soyuz program, is the most used and reliable launch vehicle in the history of spaceflight. By the dawn of the 21st century, more than 1,600 Soyuz rockets of various kinds had been launched with an unparalled success rate of 97.5% for production models. It can lift up to 7,500 kg into low Earth orbit and has been used to launch a wide variety of scientific and military satellites.

Both aircraft and rocket are even now in the exhibition, but not in the same position, the rocket being placed vertically, next to the aircraft.

The stamp depict Ryazan Kremlin (25R) and is part of the series Russian Kremlins, about which I wrote here.


sender: Egor Ivanov / Egorivanov (postcrossing)
sent from Moskow (Russia), on 07.04.2012
photo: V. Davydova