SA: 1974 NAIROBI LUFTHANSA CRASH: Cover from Great Britain to Johannesburg bearing a strike in violet of the English/Afrikaans cachet: "RECOVERED FROM AIR CRASH ON 20 NOVEMBER 1974 AT NAIROBI / HERWEN VAN LUGRAMP OP 20 NOVEMBER 1974 TE NAIROBI." Bearing British stamps tied Leeds cds 27 NO 74. Some faults as usual, nice unusual acceptance, scarce.
Lufthansa 540 from Frankfurt to Johannesburg crashed on takeoff from Nairobi Embakasi airport on the morning of 20 November 1974. The flight crew of the Boeing 747 "Hessen" were Captain C Krack, First Officer HJ Shacke and Engineer R Hahn. There were 61 fatalities; the aircraft was completely destroyed by fire. Investigation determined that the cause of the crash was a stall at low altitude precipitated by pilot error in not extending the leading edge flaps for takeoff. This procedure is now automated on 747's in current service. Recovered mail (mainly destined for South Africa) was forwarded on after receiving the bilingual English/Afrikaans cachet.
One makes the initial assumption that an incorrect date was used in Croydon cds. However we have had sight of commercial mail from Leeds with cds also of 27 NOV and the crash cachet. From these we believe that these letters were not on the ill-fated aircraft but that due to the delay in forwarding the recovered mail some mail arriving later got mixed up with the crash mail and also received the cachet in error.
