After the war, France like so many nations had a mixed fleet of America DC3 and German Ju 52 war surplus. They were old designs more suited to passengers than cargo. Thus France contracted a design for a proper freighter well stressed for heavy loads and convenient rear cargo doors. However the need turned out to be moving paratroopers to far flung outposts under attack. 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.
The stamp came before the Noratlas’s many uses in combat. So here we get not a formation of the plane with paratroopers being dropped, but a peaceful blue single example perhaps on a regular supply run. So a stamp near the end of the planes life instead of the begining might have presented a different picture.
Todays stamp is issue C30, 1 200 Franc airmail stamp issued by France on January 16th, 1954. It was a four stamp issue displaying French aircraft. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.
The development of the Noratlas had it’s ups and downs. The prototype with French engines was underpowered so a licence to manufacture the more powerful British Hercules engine was arranged. In practice the plane was still underpowered so late production examples had two small jets added to the wingtips just used for takeoff only. The program received a huge boost when the newly reconstituted German air force placed a big order, as they read their situation as similar to the French. In practice the modern German military didn’t move around much so the planes were not much used. Soon Germany began giving them away to countries like Israel, Greece, and Portugal that had much use for the Nortalas. Israel had been forced to buy two from France in order to also get the Mystere fighters that they really wanted. Once in service, they proved useful in all the Arab-Israeli wars to come, so they allowed Germany to gift many more.
The first big combat was taking French paratroopers into Port Said during the canal crisis. Then the combat swiched to Portugal, when a squadron of the second hand German transports was located in each African colony Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea Bissau on call to take paratroopers to reinforce outposts under attack. The never ending war was so unpopular, that when the colonies were abandoned in the mid 1970s, the Nortalas planes were just left there. The post war Portuguese military was no longer going to move around much, German style.
The last large scale combat was deep into the 1970s when the planes were quite old. Greece had been given a large fleet or Noratlases by Germany and when Turkey invaded Cyprus, the planes were tasked with moving a battalion of Rangers to Nicosia airport from Crete so it would not fall to the Turks. The Greeks were able to get 13 of their 15 planes flying and enough reinforcements were flown in to hold the airport. One Noratlas was however shot down with a great loss of life, it is believed by friendly fire.
The last user of the Noratlas was France. A few examples called Gabriel were used for electronic warfare into the late 1980s.
Well my drink is empty and the German Noratlas pup is now closed. Come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.