This stamp seems badly put together. It combines women filling in for men in a factory while showing British made Spitfire fighters in British RAF markings. No wonder the Queen looks so confused in the corner. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
Australia along with New Zealand again sent out a large contingent of forces in World War II. This spirit and service is worth remembering and I strongly recommend viewing the ANZAC memorial in Sydney that remembers Australia’s overseas deployments from World War I till the present day. There are often veterans on hand that add much color and poignance to what you are viewing.
Todays stamp is issue A417 a 41 cent stamp issued by Australia on April 12th, 1990. It was a five stamp issue that tries to show how the ANZAC spirit carried on into World War II. One of the stamps does even worse that this one by showing a not time appropriate helicopter. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 35 cents used.
World War II started in Europe two years before Japan’s aggressive moves in the Pacific Islands. As such many Australians volunteered for service in Europe. Among them were air force personnel that manned three squadrons of Spitfire fighter planes in Britain starting in mid 1941, after the Battle of Britain. When The Japanese began their attacks, Australia was almost completely devoid of fighter planes and pilots. By January 1942, Japanese bombers began bombing the northern Australian city of Darwin. Australia made an urgent demand that their pilots be returned to Australia. After some equivocation, Churchill agreed and also sent Spitfire fighters with them to join the fight and show Britain was with them.
The Spitfire was slow to arrive in Australia. It had to be shipped by sea in an unassembled state and then repainted to local appropriate camouflage. The pilots returning had remember been late for the Battle of Britain and did not have much experience in combat. They did get to Darwin in early 1943 and did their best. America had responded much more quickly and the vast bulk of the Royal Australian Air Force RAAF fighter force were American made P40s.
The Spitfire did not prove as useful in the Pacific War as it had over Europe. The plane had a short range which was a big hamper in the island hopping campaigns. The supercharged Merlin engines seemed to have a lot more trouble related to the hot moist climate. It took a long time to get enough airplanes to form a proper Spitfire training unit. The plane was also ill adept at dropping bombs which became ever more important as the war went along with fewer Japanese in the air to fight. The Australian armed forces were also not being assigned to many of the later retakings of islands such as the invasion of The Philippines in 1944.
In all Britain shipped 258 British made Spitfires to Australia. In October 1945, one month after the end of the war, all RAAF Spitfire flight operations ended. The plane must have made some impression in Australia. In the 2000s, an Australian kit plane maker fashioning itself as Supermarine, the company that designed the real Spitfire, built 100 flying kits the resembled Spitfires on a 75% scale.
Well my drink is empty and I will pour perhaps several more to toast the ANZAC spirit. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.