WWII mail from East Africa to US APOs

[Nick Guy]

I have a postcard from Tanganyika addressed to a US Army Post Office (attached) which I am writing up and I hope someone may be able to improve my understanding of its routing.  The card, postmarked at Moshi is addressed to an officer at HQ, CAFW, APO 625, US Army.  CAFW is the abbreviated title of the US Air Transport Command's Central African Wing which operated under that designation from 15 December 1943 to 31 July 1944 and had its headquarters at Accra where US APO 625 was located.  I am wondering whether the East African PO - or the East African Army Postal Service, since the cover seems to have been passed to APO 81 in Mombasa - would know where US Army POs were located, or would they need to send them to the USA to be redistributed?  Alternatively, were US Army POs treated as the USA wherever situate?  15c was the correct, Imperial, rate for a civilian postcard addressed to Accra whereas a card addressed to the USA incurred the foreign rate of 20c.

Thanks
Nick

[Ross Debenham]

Nick, I haven't heard of any direct service between Mombasa and West Africa. I just wonder if the post card was sent north to Khartoun, where it was off loaded and place on a plane travelling south to West Africa. I haven't heard of the US unit before, and wonder if there activity was tranporting planes from Takoradi to the Middle East as the RAF was doing.

[Nick Guy]

Hello Ross

I don't think there has been any suggestion of a direct route surface between East Africa and the British colonies in West Africa.  A small amount of material travelled West into the Belgian Congo but I doubt that would be used for onward mail, while the Nile route (north through the Sudan) was out of use even before the First World War.  I'm also confident that if the Civil PO was responsible for the routing of my item from E Africa it would have gone by road or sea to the Cape for onward transmission or if the East African Army Postal Service forwarded it.  The Cape-Kenya route was, after all, well established from the Abyssinian campaign. If that was the routing I was hoping collectors of US Forces Mail might be able to tell me enough for me to guess whether it would go from the Cape to the USA and back or direct to the Gold Coast.  If the latter was the case, I suppose the logic of treating it as underpaid was that even if a specific US APO was in British territory, the US Army postal Service was neither part of the British Empire nor a member of the African Postal Union, so the postcard was liable to the foreign rate.

The ATC had the twin missions of ferrying aircraft between the US and the North African, Middle Eastern and Far Eastern theatres and carrying freight and personnel between them.  The "Cannonball" route was certainly used for mail, and by 1944 there were daily departures.  US Forces Mail collectors might be able to shed some light on whether once it was in the hands of the US Army Postal Services they might have forwarded mail paid by surface by air, but at which point in the card's travels that would start goes back to the question of how the KUT PO/EAAPS would forward the postcard - ie back to the USA or direct to Accra or whatever, so another point they might be able to explain to me is whether the cover could have been passed to the US APO in Khartoum (The US APO in Nairobi moved to Egypt in January 1943).  Would what must have been a fairly remote outpost of the US Army Postal Service have had the expertise to accept international mail exchanges?

Thanks

Nick

[Nick Guy]

While I'm at it!  Can a US Force Mail specialist comment on whether the US APS would have attempted colledt the postage due?

[Neil Williams]

Folks

A number of observations on this as a result of doing a lot of work on mails from APO 663 in Aden, part of the ATC/CAFW route.

Any APO would only accept mail from US Forces individuals if it carried the appropriate US Forces concession rate. There was a reciprocal arrangement for personnel of the Canadian Forces, but not with British or other allies. In this period it would either be 'Free' (ie liable to surface transportation) or the US internal airmail rate of 6cts. Any APO could accept 'bagged mail' from official allied sources eg military, government or GPO for onward transmission by ATC. This would be offloaded at the nearest ATC base to destination for transfer back to the appropriate authority for sorting/delivery. There was a major hub for this at Lagos, which included transfer to & from BOAC/RAF for West African mails and for airmail to North America. There's a humungous set of reports (2000+ pages) on CAFW's activities on the West African Study Circle's website, with a some pages on handling mails.

My opinion is no way would any mail go to Miami and back (or Capetown), unless mis-sorted.

As there are no US APO marks on the item, and it's correctly franked for KUT to Gold Coast by normal mail, my feeling is that the KUT PO transferred it to the EA APO as it was for a military address. It then went through the British mails to West Africa, with a transfer at Khartoum. There is a possibility it went Khartoum to West Africa by ATC, but equally by BOAC/RAF.   

As for the Tax marking, that might have been applied by mistake at the initial civil PO thinking it was for the USA - a tax charge of 8 UPU cts would be about right for a EA 5cts shortfall. There's no indication this was collected - I doubt it. The underpaid APO mail I have seen has the tax collected at destination by the civil post office - however I've only seen this on airmails to the USA, and my feeling is the underpayment was identified on sorting at entry into the USA.

hope these comments help

Neil W

[Nick Guy]

Thanks, Neil - that really helps.

Nick