50c Jacqueline Cochran stamp

The Postal Service honored Jacqueline Cochran with the issuance of a 50-cent international postcard-rate stamp on March 9, 1996, in Indio, California. Designed by Davis Meltzer of Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, the stamp features Cochran after winning the Bendix Trophy in 1938, which she won after completing the air race from Los Angeles to Cleveland in 8 hours and 10 minutes.

Jacqueline Cochran held more speed, altitude, and distance records than any pilot, male or female, in the world until her death in 1980. In 1953, Cochran became the first woman to fly faster than the speed of sound in an F-88 jet fighter plane. She was the director of the Women's Air Force Service Pilots program and the founder of Jacqueline Cochran Cosmetics, a highly successful cosmetics company. Cochran was also awarded the Distinguished Service Medal in 1945 and the US Air Force Distinguished Flying Cross in 1969. Born into a life of poverty and raised by foster parents around the turn of the century, she accomplished all of this with no formal schooling beyond the third grade.

The stamp was printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in the offset/intaglio process.

Reference: Postal Bulletin (February 1, 1996)

Scott Catalogue USA: 3066
mint

Copyright United States Postal Service. All rights reserved.

Museum ID: 1998.2008.219