A fascinating piece of aviation history, this world map shows the routes of the short-lived Empire Air Mail Scheme, a plan to move all first class mail within the British Empire by air. The scheme only lasted from 1936-1939 when the outbreak of war brought it to a halt, though the use of unreliable flying boats and the enormous cost of the scheme would likely have doomed it to failure eventually anyway.

The map shows both operating and proposed routes extending from London to the great cities of the British Empire, including Cape Town, Bombay, Singapore, Sydney, and Wellington. Other major destinations are also illustrated with small aerial photographs along the edges of the map. Amusingly, London is represented in this list by a photograph of Croydon, the site of London's first international airport and one of the busiest commercial airports in the world at the time.

[WLD4868]