HMS Tactician

[Colin Tabeart]

A clearly philatelic cover to the CO of the submarine TACTICIAN. Lt Cdr Collett commanded her for much of WW2 and may well have been a stamp collector judging by the array of MEF overprints on the cover. Fortunately he did not soak them off. I suspect it was sent from Beirut, but can anyone confirm where the censor 1824 was early in 1943 please? There are no backstamps.

[Alan Baker]

Clearly a collector. These were all the stamps issued in January 1943 (the 5s and 10s were not added until 1947). The stamps were for use by British forces in the Italian colonies in East and North Africa.

Can't help with the censor though

[Colin Tabeart]

Thanks Alan. So clearly not Beirut then. Perhaps from a friend at Tripoli or similar location. Can anyone help with the censor location please?
Colin

[Nick Colley]

It appears to be type N421. Daynes 2nd ed. (page 90) notes only that the N420 series of marks is well-known from Egypt. I'm not aware that anyone has, or maintains, a record of which numbers were where, Colin.

chrs
N