Behind the Lens: Women in the Airgraph Service

The solution was the Airgraph Service, which used novel approaches to sending letters and depended on work carried out largely by women.

A Letter Turned into Film

Intense naval battles were being fought across the Mediterranean in 1940, after Italy entered the war. This resulted in fewer flights between Britain and the regions of North Africa and West Asia, where troops were fighting in harsh environmental conditions. The importance of maintaining morale by sending letters, coupled with the impracticality of slower alternatives, such as long sea routes around Africa, prompted the GPO to consider a new mail delivery system.

This new system, known as the Airgraph Service, was developed by the GPO, Kodak and the British Overseas Airways Corporation. Its inspiration lay in the Pigeon Post, which operated between the Parisian pigeon-fanciers’ club L’Esperance in partnership with the French Ministry of the Posts. The Pigeon Post bypassed the Parisian blockades during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Clerks at the Central Telegraph Office in Paris photographed letters before they were sent and enlarged upon arrival.

In both cases, wartime necessity encouraged collaborations between state institutions and private expertise. Like the Pigeon Post, the GPO’s Airgraphs relied on photography to transmit messages by air in wartime conditions. Microfilm was already being used in banking to store large amounts of information efficiently, so it was a natural step for the GPO to adapt this technology for personal communication.

An engraving that depicts men enlarging microscopical prints during the Siege of Paris in 1870, which was used by the GPO in 1942 as a reference for the Airgraph Service (POST 118/1429)

Airgraph forms could be purchased by soldiers for 3 shillings and by civilians for 8 shillings. Soldiers benefitted from a reduced rate to encourage them to communicate with their close connections, boosting their morale. Women in the GPO’s clerical workforce used specially adapted Recordak cameras to photograph the completed forms and print them onto rolls of microfilm.

Seaplanes supplied by the British Overseas Airways Corporation carried the rolls of film to their destination. Each film roll weighed approximately 155 grams (5.5 ounces) and yet could carry up to 1,700 letters, dramatically reducing weight and space. Upon arrival, Kodak technicians photographed the film rolls again, converting the messages back into readable text printed onto smaller sheets of paper. These sheets, known as airgraphs, were placed in envelopes and sent to their final destinations.

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Kodak supplied the photographic materials needed to launch the Airgraph Service, including rolls of film and Recordak cameras used to transfer letters onto microfilm. These high-speed cameras could photograph documents onto 16mm or 35mm film, which greatly reduced the amount of storage space required for record keeping. In turn, the GPO provided the stationery that kept the service in motion. Behind this carefully coordinated operation was a diverse workforce that spanned gender, age, and nationality, distributed across Kodak and the GPO, whose labour made the system work in practice.

Women at Work

By the early 1940s, women were becoming a more recognised part of the GPO’s clerical workforce, working as telephonists, sorters and clerks. The GPO acknowledged the high-quality work of women in the London Postal Region, as well as the desirability of retaining trained staff, while also redeploying women to temporary posts in other departments as wartime needs changed.

Wartime labour shortages expanded the potential responsibilities for some women, yet these opportunities were uneven and continued to be shaped by restrictions including marriage bars, which were reinstated after the war ended. The surviving records provide no detail about the ethnic backgrounds of women employed in the Airgraph Service, reflecting broader gaps in official documentation. Current research at The Postal Museum is seeking to develop our understanding of how race and gender intersected in women’s workplace experiences.

Within this framework, sorting shaped much of the daily work of the Airgraph Service, both at the sending and receiving ends. Staff read the handwritten Airgraph forms, grouped them by destination, and prepared them for microfilming or for delivery. In this way, airgraph processing built on existing skills, drawing heavily on forms of clerical work already familiar to many women employed by the Post Office.

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At Kodak, women were often responsible for preparing the microfilms to be photographed and checking the film for errors. According to Airgraph, in an article by the Forces Postal History Society, “microfilming was done by girls working in London” and when the service began in May 1941, “it coincided with the heavy bombing and destruction of large parts of the City of London.”

Airgraph processing at Kodak Ltd in 1942 (POST 118/1424)

Women were also central to operations at Kodak’s factory in Harrow. The factory workforce was largely made up of “housewives working half-day shifts”, suggesting that paid employment was structured around domestic responsibilities and shaped by wartime economic pressures. Even so, labour shortages remained a persistent problem, to which women adapted. Women’s work is framed in terms of endurance, reporting that “each girl worked alternative nights and stuck it out in spite of almost continuous anti-aircraft fire and frequent bombing.”

A Wider Workforce

Shortages of labour meant that civilians were sought to fill the places left vacant by men who had enlisted in the war, or to take over repetitive tasks that would, as the GPO’s senior management stated, “release workmen from the simpler duties from the more important work of which there is pressing need.” Within this colonial and military context, culturally diverse workforces were formed, with British administrators holding authority and local civilian workers carrying out the supposedly simpler labour under testing conditions.

At the No. 5 Base Army Postal Service in Algiers, French women were recruited by the GPO to sort incoming Airgraphs, as well as all letters to be shipped to the UK. A report from the period describes how, “despite language handicaps, they became surprisingly efficient.” Their efficiency was achieved under demanding conditions, with twelve-hour shifts worked seven days a week.

Women numbering, sorting, and enveloping airgraphs at the British Army Post Office in Algiers in the 1940s (POST 56/10/5)

Women were not the only ones recruited to keep overseas airgraph stations running at full speed; children were too. In Algiers, for example, Egyptian boys were employed to envelope airgraphs before they were dispatched. A report stated that “they became very expert at this job and together envelope and seal 100,000 to 150,000 per day.”

Egyptian boys enveloping and sealing airgraphs in the 1940s (2025-0245/01)

Brief but Crucial

Work continued at a speedy rate until the Airgraph Service was terminated on 31 July 1945, due to a decline in Airgraph traffic, as cheaper, improved air letters became more widely available. The war also ended, which meant that air routes were no longer impeded. Even so, Airgraphs fulfilled their wartime purpose of offering cheap, fast mail transmission, with Kodak employing hundreds of people to make this possible. Between 1941 and 1945, the GPO recorded that 300 million Airgraphs were processed worldwide by a largely unseen workforce.

Despite gaps in historical records, it is clear that the Airgraph Service relied on the labour of women. Official documents rarely focus on the daily experiences of the women who ran the system. Instead, they only appear briefly in photographs, meeting minutes and, occasionally, in company magazines. Although these references are brief, the records give the impression that the GPO’s managerial staff were surprised by the ability of women to perform the work. These brief but powerful snippets of information allow us to recognise women’s crucial role as technical workers in wartime communication. They were not background helpers, but essential to the system itself.

This research was made possible through the support of colleagues in The Postal Museum archive and the Asian and African Studies staff at the British Library.

Sources

1. Airgraph, A detailed Handbook on the Airgraph with Indications of the value, produced by the Forces Postal History Society, January 1987, E.H. Keeton
2. POST 69/13 – Post Office Board 1941: Index, board papers and proceedings
3. History of British Army Postal Service/ Vol lll 1927 – 1963’, edited by Edward B Proud and published by Proud Bailey Co Ltd