Get Out Those Cards

Since the dawn of airmail, the Postal Service has reminded the nation to get out Christmas cards in time. Pioneering pilot Felix Pawloski was either miraculously efficient or decades late with this photo, which he used as the cover of a Christmas card in 1931 even though it was taken while he sat in the cockpit of a Bleriot XI in 1910 at Issy-Les-Moulineaux, France. Santa Claus has been a feature of aviation-theme cards since the era of ballooning. Just before Christmas of 1943, though, the 385th Bomb Group in England loaded their B-17F with a less Merry greeting.