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A genuine 1934 air mail envelope carrying a hand-applied photographic cachet of the U.S. Navy's flying aircraft carrier, the rigid airship USS Macon, captioned in brush-lettered ink "U.S.S. MACON OVER ALBANY CALIF." — mailed from the tiny smelter company town of Selby, California on December 17, 1934, less than two months before the Macon was lost at sea.
1. Postal Markings & Operational Analysis
The Format: A small commercial-size envelope (approximately 6½ x 3½ inches, measured against the ruler shown), franked and endorsed for air mail, with a real photographic print trimmed and pasted across the left half of the address side to serve as a homemade cachet. The photograph shows a large rigid airship in level flight above a hillside residential district, with the ink caption lettered in the white border beneath the image. The cover is currently housed in a clear protective sleeve.
The Origin Postmark: A light but legible circular datestamp reads SELBY / DEC 17 / 9 AM / 1934 / CALIF., struck at left of the stamp with small star-type side ornaments. Selby was an unincorporated community on the Carquinez Strait in Contra Costa County, so a clear strike of this office on a dated 1930s cover is a useful small-town California marking in its own right.
The Franking: A single 6¢ dark blue Crater Lake stamp from the 1934 National Parks Year commemorative series (Scott 745), issued September 5, 1934 — making this a fresh, contemporary use of a then-brand-new commemorative on air mail rather than the usual winged-globe air post stamp.
Postal Rates & Law: The domestic air mail letter rate was reduced to 6¢ per ounce effective July 1, 1934, in the wake of the 1934 air mail contract upheaval and the Air Mail Act of 1934; this cover is franked exactly at that first-ounce rate. The magenta AIR MAIL handstamp at lower right supplies the required air service endorsement.
Payment Status: Fully prepaid by the sender at the 6¢ rate; there are no postage due or forwarding markings.
Transit / Receiving Marks: The reverse bears a clear black circular datestamp BERKELEY / DEC 17 / 11:30 AM / 1934 / CALIF. alongside wavy-line machine killer bars — the cover was worked through the Berkeley office two and a half hours after it was postmarked at Selby, on its way south to Los Angeles.
The Destination Address: Typed in four lines as written: "W. LEINER / 907 W. 70th ST / LOS ANGELSZ, CALIF." — the city line carries the typist's slip for "Los Angeles." An old collector's pencil notation, "Cat # 1304," appears at lower centre.
2. Historical Significance
The Airship: The USS Macon (ZRS-5) was a Goodyear–Zeppelin-built rigid airship operated by the U.S. Navy as a "flying aircraft carrier," launching and recovering Curtiss F9C Sparrowhawk fighters in flight. She arrived at her West Coast home, Naval Air Station Moffett Field at Sunnyvale, in October 1933 after a transcontinental delivery flight from Lakehurst, New Jersey, and spent 1933–1935 in Pacific Coast fleet scouting exercises. On 12 February 1935 she was caught by a storm off Point Sur on the central California coast and went down in the Pacific, ending the Navy's rigid-airship program. This cover was mailed on 17 December 1934 — within the Macon's last two months of service — which is what gives a cheap homemade photo cachet of her its weight today.
The Caption: The photograph is captioned as the Macon over Albany, California, the small East Bay city adjoining Berkeley. The Macon's Bay Area flights were a public spectacle, and the Berkeley backstamp on the reverse places the cover's handling squarely in the same stretch of the East Bay the photograph depicts. We cannot verify who took the photograph or the exact date of the flight shown.
The Place of Mailing: Selby was a company town built around the Selby Smelting Works on San Pablo Bay, later operated by the American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO); it was one of the largest refineries on the West Coast and is listed among California's company towns. The site is best remembered outside industrial history for the notorious 1901 theft of gold bullion from the smelter. Mail bearing a Selby postmark comes from a post office serving that industrial settlement rather than a conventional town.
The Recipient: Research turned up nothing on W. Leiner of 907 W. 70th Street, Los Angeles. The cover's character — a commemorative-franked air mail envelope with a hand-made aviation cachet and a later pencil catalogue number — strongly suggests a 1930s aerophilatelic collector receiving a cover made to order, but that is an inference, not a documented fact.
3. Transcription
Cachet caption (hand-lettered in ink beneath the photograph):
U.S.S. MACON
OVER ALBANY
CALIF.
Address (typed):
W. LEINER
907 W. 70th ST
LOS ANGELSZ, CALIF.
Handstamp: AIR MAIL (magenta)
Pencil notation: Cat # 1304
There is no enclosed letter; the envelope is sealed and shows faint show-through of typed text on the reverse.
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