Sixty Years of Sri Lankan Air Mail

On that faraway February day ...

By Roger Thiedeman (in Melbourne)

The carriage of mail by air is so common- place today we easily take it for granted. So, it would be appropriate to recognise that yesterday (February 28) was the 60th anniversary of the inauguration of a formal Air Mail service for Sri Lanka.

In 1938, Ceylon was still a small but important constituent of the then-mighty British Empire. Another ten years would elapse before Independence from its colonial ruleras was attained.

At the time, telegraph and radio transmissions were still relatively unsophisticated and often erratic. The ordinary letter was, therefore, the principal method by which people in distant Ceylon communicated with Great Britain, and vice versa.

Since 1842, mail between the United Kingdom and Ceylon had gone by sea. Until the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the journey from England to Ceylon via the Cape of Good Hope used to take 90 days.

The period between the two World Wars saw aviation in Great Britain develop by leaps and bounds. A thriving British aircraft industry produced large passenger aeroplanes, both land planes and seaplanes, to open up newer, quicker avenues of transport between the seat of British government and her colonial outposts in the east.

Those huge and commodious (for their time) airliners were operated on overseas routes by Imperial Airways, precursor of BOAC and today's British Airways. Successful as their land planes were, Imperial Airways became synonymous with seaplanes or, more correctly, flying boats.

Fostered by British seafaring tradition, flying boats exploited the proximity of most major cities to sea coasts, rivers, even estuaries and lagoons. Not requiring the complex infrastructure of airports, runways and other paraphernalia, flying boats could land and take off literally at the doorstep of the metropolis. In time, along with passenger transportation, Imperial Airways began using their flying boats to supplement the sea mail service, in what became known as the Empire Air Mail Scheme.

But even in the early-to-mid-1930s, air mail service to the Indian subcontinent was somewhat limited. Imperial Airways flying boats took the mail only as far as Karachi. Remember, Karachi was then a part of India, the birth of Pakistan to which it now belongs being several years in the future. From Karachi, mails destined for other parts of India, Burma (now Myanmar) and Ceylon would take a tedious, circuitous route by road, rail and ferry boat. Of course, the reverse would apply to mails westbound from those countries to the U.K

All that began to change in 1932 thanks to an enterprising and wealthy young Parsee named J.R.D. Tata. An enthusiastic aviator and scion of India's powerful Tata industrial empire, 'JRD' obtained from the British colonial government a licence to extend the Empire Air Mail Scheme beyond Karachi to other major cities in India. His pioneering service, using small single-engine de Havilland Puss Moth and Fox Moth aircraft, linked Karachi with Madras (now Chennai) in the south, via Ahmedabad, Bombay (now Mumbai), Bellary and, later, Hyderabad.

It also signalled the humble birth of Tata Sons Ltd. (later Tata Air Lines) which subsequently blossomed into Air India, under J.R.D. Tata's chairmanship one of the most respected airlines of its day. But that's another story......

By 1936, the air age in Ceylon had well and truly arrived after a faltering start back in 1911. Colombo now had a proper aerodrome, at Ratmalana, even if only a simple grass paddock. In fact, on Christmas Day, 1936 an 'unofficial', ad hoc Tata flight took mails from Ceylon to India and thence by Imperial Airways to the UK and the Continent.

Soon, in 1938, with the lines on Tata's Indian route map stretching ever southwards it seemed logical therefore, to both 'JRD' and the British government, to officially continue the aerial mail link across Palk Strait to Ceylon. This extension of the Empire Air Mail Scheme would also coincide with the elimination of a surcharge for carriage of letters by air. How times have changed!

Preparations began late in January 1938 with a series of trial flights between India and Ceylon. Carrying the occasional passenger, Tata's operated a service on Tuesdays and Thursdays connecting Ratmalana with Trichinopoly (Trichy), Madras, Hyderabad (where a night stop was made), Bombay and Karachi. The type of airplane chosen was the American-built WACO (rhymes with "Marco"), and the opportunity was taken to familiarise as many as fifteen Indian pilots with the new route

In less than a month, all was in readiness for Ceylon to join the Empire Air Mail Scheme, concurrent with an increase in frequency to four flights a week. An expectant air hung over Ratmalana aerodrome as it awaited the first outbound air mail service from Ceylon. According to contemporary newspaper reports, February 28, 1938, a Monday, dawned in a blaze of sunshine with a few fleecy white clouds to keep the blue sky company. Adam's Peak, however, disappeared from view in a shroud of mist. Sixty years later, is it still possible to glimpse Sri Pada from Ratmalana airport?

Guest of honour on that festive occasion was His Excellency The Governor of Ceylon, Sir Andrew Caldecott, accompanied by Lady Caldecott and their daughter Joan. Also present were VIPs from the government, military forces, diplomatic corps and the large business houses.

Soon the time for departure drew near. The Governor cut a ribbon stretched between two posts of a pandal, before stamping three small silk bags conveying greetings to his counterparts in Madras and Bombay and the 'Big Chief' in Whitehall, London. When these symbolic mailbags joined the real ones in the waiting WACO, its door was shut and the biplane's single engine and propeller spun into life.

With Tata's Air Superintendent B.W. Figgins at the controls, the aircraft taxied slowly to the far end of the aerodrome. Then, under full throttle and using only half the length of the grass strip, the WACO climbed gracefully away from Ratmalana. Performing an aerial salute to the excited crowds below, Figgins circled the aerodrome briefly before finally heading off in the direction of India.

After making the usual stops on its Indian route, the Tata WACO reached Karachi's Drigh Road aerodrome the next day. From here the mailbags were quickly transferred by road to Karachi harbour and into an Imperial Airways Short S.23 flying boat named Centurion, ready to leave on a historic mission. When Centurion alighted on Southampton Water a few days later (air travel was more leisurely then!), for the first time ever mails from Ceylon to the United Kingdom had travelled all the way by air under the auspices of the Empire Air Mail Scheme.

So, the next time you stick an Air Mail label on a letter, or receive an aerogramme from a friend or loved one overseas, spare a thought for the flight which officially launched Sri Lanka's Air Mail service on that faraway February day in 1938.

Footnote: The Tata Sons' flight that day was also, effectively, the beginning of scheduled passenger services to and from Ceylon, albeit by a foreign carrier. The commencement of true Sri Lankan commercial aviation, with a locally owned and operated airline, did not occur until December 10, 1947 when Air Ceylon made its inaugural flight. That milestone has been well documented in the Sri Lankan press over the past few months.

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