a passenger. The route was Martlesham Heath – Bourget – Centcelli Rome – Otranto – Malta – Mersa Matru – Heliopolis – Baghdad – El Amara – Ahwaz – Bushire - Bandar Abbas. At Ahwaz mail (cancelled Base Post Office MEF 10 Jan 19) was picked up. No mail is known from Bushire, which was reached on 11 January 1919. After landing at Bandar Abbas on 12 January 1919, and collecting a small mail, HMA Old Carthusian took off on 13 January 1919 for Jask. After a forced landing at Omara, Major Maclaren and mails were transferred to HMS Britomart by which they arrived in Karachi on 16 January 1919. One of the few covers known from this flight is addressed to Major General Sir Percy Cox in Teheran. Like other covers it has a three-line cachet “FIRST THROUGH AERIAL MAIL/ GREAT BRITAIN TO INDIA/ KARACHI 14.1.1919”. The cachet was applied at the British Embassy in Bandar Abbas. The “14” of the date was amended in manuscript to “17”. <Pradip Jain, London Philatelist, September 2015> 16 April 1919 Report from Lt.-Col. A. T. Wilson, Officiating Civil Commissioner: Ref: IOR/L/PS/18/B320 The Use of Aeroplanes in Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf. Note by Lieut.-Col. A. T. WILSON, Civil Commissioner, Baghdad. Part I.—South-West Persia. 1. The Deputy Political Resident, Bushire, recently addressed the Government of India suggesting that the controlling authorities in Shiraz would be more effectively supported throughout the Province by the presence of aeroplanes than by expensive Persian gendarmerie of doubtful calibre, and urged that the general question of aviation in Persia should be taken into active consideration with a view to presenting the Persian Government, with the least possible delay, with an effective force capable of immediate utilisation, thus curtailing as far as possible the stay of our military forces in South-West Persia, where they have been off and on for the past four years at enormous expense engaged principally in maintaining order on behalf of the Persian Government.
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