EUGENE R. LEACH - FIRST DAY COVER SIGNED - HFSID 258683

EUGENE R. LEACH
1997 first day cover honoring the Boeing 314 and signed by Eugene R. Leach. Accompanied by a QSL card with a b/w photo of a Boeing 314 and Leach's amateur radio call sign. Leach was the radio operator on a Pan Am Boeing 314 that was forced to circumnavigate the globe to return to the United States after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.
First day cover signed "Eugene Leach/ Flight Radio/Operator aboard/NC18602/Boeing B314/Dec 7 1941". 6½x3½. First day cover honoring the Boeing 314 flying boat with a cachet of three warplanes. Postmarked Dayton, Ohio, July 19, 1997. One 32¢ color Boeing 314 stamp affixed. FIRST DAY OF ISSUE. Fine condition. Accompanied by: Unsigned QSL card with a b/w photo of a Boeing 314 and Leach's amateur radio call sign W6OLL. Lightly toned and soiled, otherwise in fine condition. Boeing 314 flying boats, first built in 1938, were the largest commercial planes to fly until the advent of the Boeing 747 in 1969. Pan Am used them on trans-Atlantic and Pacific routes until 1946; the last one was retired in 1951. Leach was the radio operator on Pan Am's Pacific Clipper, a Boeing 314 flying boat, during a routine flight from San Francisco, California to Auckalnd, New Zealand on Dec. 7, 1941. They were two hours out of Noumea, New Caledonia when Leach received word of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. Unable to return east to the United States, the Pacific Clipper was forced west, returning to the United States after an unintentional round-the-world trip. After all was said an done, the Pacific Clipper spent a total of almost 210 hours in the air, crossed 3 oceans and the equator 6 times and landed on 5 continents under the flags of 12 nations. Leach is still registered as an amateur radio operator in California as of this biography. QSL cards are used by short wave radio buffs to acknowledge reception of a distant transmission. Two items.