Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
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Don't worry Phil, I won't cry for you.
Love,
Argentina 
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Yes, I find serenity in working on my stamps. No, I do not find sanity since I am insane and proud of it.
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The Dutch East Indies / Netherlands Indies has come into my collecting life too, as the result of a 1934 KLM airliner crash in Iraq.
The airliner, a DC-2 airliner named Uiver (Old Dutch for "Stork") was famous as the handicap winner of the MacRobertson International Air Race from London to Melbourne, in October. Here's an original photo of the Uiver landing in Melbourne.
Early on December 19, the Uiver took off from Amsterdam on a "Fast Christmas Flight" to Batavia, Java (present-day Jakarta, Indonesia) carrying four crew, three passengers, and hundreds of kilos of mail, including many special-event covers and stationery. The Uiver landed in Cairo about in the evening of December 19, took off for Baghdad about 9:00 p.m., and vanished.
The next morning, after a search that had been delayed because of a storm that covered most of the Middle East, its wreckage was found near Rutbah Wells, east of Baghdad. It was largely destroyed by fire, and there were no survivors.
Many bags of mail had been ejected from the aircraft, and much of the mail was badly damaged or destroyed by fire, smoke, oil, and rain. Mail that survived with addresses was delivered; if only return addresses survived, the mail was returned to the senders. Here is an example of one of the covers in my collection:
Crash mail (a class of "adversity mail") is normally identified with handstamped notations that it was delayed or damaged in a particular plane crash. In the case of the Uiver, postal officials were not, apparently, involved in the mail recovery, and none of the crash covers are identified as such. They are identifiable, however, by the cachets that were on all envelopes, by the dates of the cancellations and receiving marks, and by the damage evident on most of the covers. Some mail bags, however, suffered no damage at all, and the mail that was in them can be identified only through the cachet and dates. Occasionally on eBay you will see Uiver crash covers being offered for very low prices, by dealers who obviously don't know what they have. Of course, the pricing of crash covers is directly proportional to their damage. The more obvious the damage, the higher the price, as long as the cover can be identified.
No cause for the crash of the Uiver has ever been established. There was no official government investigation; KLM sent a team to the crash site, but never released its findings. The history section of the KLM web site discusses the MacRobertson race, but doesn't say a thing about the crash. Speculation is that it was hit by lightning, which normally isn't a problem for aircraft. But engines in those days were prone to fuel and oil leaks, didn't have static wicks to bleed off electrical charges, and had control surfaces (ailerons, rudder, and elevators) that were covered with fabric coated by "dope," a highly flammable substance that could have been ignited by lightning.
KLM, the world's "oldest operating airline," started operations in 1919. By 1934 it was making regular, scheduled flights to Java and to the Caribbean. The DC-2, even with the crash of the Uiver, was to put KLM in the forefront of long-distance passenger service. Many Dutchmen dreamed of returning Netherlands to the days when the country was one of the wealthiest nations in the world due to its far-flung empire and large commercial fleet in the 1600s and 1700s. The Uiver's crash brought that dream crashing down, so to speak, and plunged the country into nationwide mourning which to some extent has lasted to this day. Ask almost any older Dutch person about the Uiver, and he or she will recall it.
The triangular stamps franking the "Fast Christmas Flight" covers are interesting. They were required on mail carried on specially designated flights, and KLM, not the Dutch postal department, received all of the proceeds from their sale. The Netherlands Indies subsidiary of KLM, KNILM, benefitted from a similar stamp, in dark blue.
Bob
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Bob, thank you for the interesting article...i am delving into Netherlands Indies covers also..but taking a little more time with them than with the stamps !
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Thanks Bob, an excellent write up.
Regards ... Tim
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A Dutch-Canadian friend of mine, Ben Guilliamse, showed me the ]Uiver cover shown in my previous post in this thread. It had been posted by his father to a friend in Java, and had been returned by the friend (probably in another envelope since there's no indication that it been posted back to Netherlands.
Ben, who had become a bush pilot in northern BC after retiring from BC Telephone, wanted to know if I could tell him anything about the crash, which he thought had occurred in North Africa. I'd never heard of the Uiver, so I got to work and soon learned the salient facts about the crash.
Ben and I became equally intrigued to learn more, and did. He was instrumental in our research, serving as interpreter for many Dutch newspaper accounts and portions of a book, and introducing me to Bill Yearwood, head of crash investigations in BC. Bill flew DC-3s early in his career, and explained how the DC-2, very much like the DC-3, would have been vulnerable to lightning-caused fire.
I really wanted to get my hands on Ben's cover, and eventually we agreed on a trade, his cover for some photographs of him and his Cessna (I was working as a professional photographer at the time).
My friendship with Ben ended tragically in June, 2004. My wife and I heard on the morning CBC news about a plane crash in Prince George, BC, where we lived when we first moved to BC and where Ben and his wife had been our landlords. I had a premonition that it was Ben's plane that had crashed. I called the airport and talked to an air traffic supervisor; at first she wouldn't tell me who the pilot was, but when I persisted she asked if I could tell her who I thought the pilot was. I said, "Ben Guilliamse." There was a pause, and then she said, "Yes, I'm afraid that's right."
The cause of the crash seems evident. Ben took off into a low overcast with a ceiling of about 275 metres (900 feet) and entered the clouds. Moments later, the lone witness saw the plane come out of the clouds, heading straight down under full power. It crashed into bog not far from the end of the runway.
Ben probably suffered from vertigo once he entered the cloud, failed to trust his instruments, and tried to put the aircraft's nose down in what he thought was a steep climb. He was so low, however, that there was no possibility of recovering from the dive when he emerged from the cloud. Rescuers were barely able to remove his body from the cockpit before the aircraft sank out of sight in the mud. An autopsy ruled out a physical problem such as a heart attack or stroke.
Since I obtained my first Uiver, from Ben, I have found several others in various states of condition, including one without a sign of damage. Some of the mail bags in the Uiver were undamaged.
In addition to helping me with my research about the Uiver, he wrote an interesting and detailed account of a post-war flight to Amsterdam. from Curaçao, where his family had moved before the war. I turned it into a web page, "Consternation on a Constellation".
It has been interesting to see the many ways in which my interests in philately have intersected with so many of my other interests and experiences. Fortunately, most have not had the tragic overtones that were visited upon Ben.
Bob
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Bob, I found this article regarding the Uiver: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uiver
(Modified by Moderator on 2014-06-15 18:39:23)
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Adios Argentina, i regret i was unfaithful to drop you in midstream..but when i picked up a Dutch Indies starter album for 15 bucks..i never looked back. i sort stamps 130 years old that you can pick up for pennies apiece..but when you find the complete town or city cancel its a different story...yesterday i found good strikes of Tjibeber,Kesambe,Djatiroto,Soerak,Semerang and Medan...think of he history flowing through my hands!
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re: serenity and sanity? through stamps
Don't worry Phil, I won't cry for you.
Love,
Argentina
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re: serenity and sanity? through stamps
Yes, I find serenity in working on my stamps. No, I do not find sanity since I am insane and proud of it.
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re: serenity and sanity? through stamps
The Dutch East Indies / Netherlands Indies has come into my collecting life too, as the result of a 1934 KLM airliner crash in Iraq.
The airliner, a DC-2 airliner named Uiver (Old Dutch for "Stork") was famous as the handicap winner of the MacRobertson International Air Race from London to Melbourne, in October. Here's an original photo of the Uiver landing in Melbourne.
Early on December 19, the Uiver took off from Amsterdam on a "Fast Christmas Flight" to Batavia, Java (present-day Jakarta, Indonesia) carrying four crew, three passengers, and hundreds of kilos of mail, including many special-event covers and stationery. The Uiver landed in Cairo about in the evening of December 19, took off for Baghdad about 9:00 p.m., and vanished.
The next morning, after a search that had been delayed because of a storm that covered most of the Middle East, its wreckage was found near Rutbah Wells, east of Baghdad. It was largely destroyed by fire, and there were no survivors.
Many bags of mail had been ejected from the aircraft, and much of the mail was badly damaged or destroyed by fire, smoke, oil, and rain. Mail that survived with addresses was delivered; if only return addresses survived, the mail was returned to the senders. Here is an example of one of the covers in my collection:
Crash mail (a class of "adversity mail") is normally identified with handstamped notations that it was delayed or damaged in a particular plane crash. In the case of the Uiver, postal officials were not, apparently, involved in the mail recovery, and none of the crash covers are identified as such. They are identifiable, however, by the cachets that were on all envelopes, by the dates of the cancellations and receiving marks, and by the damage evident on most of the covers. Some mail bags, however, suffered no damage at all, and the mail that was in them can be identified only through the cachet and dates. Occasionally on eBay you will see Uiver crash covers being offered for very low prices, by dealers who obviously don't know what they have. Of course, the pricing of crash covers is directly proportional to their damage. The more obvious the damage, the higher the price, as long as the cover can be identified.
No cause for the crash of the Uiver has ever been established. There was no official government investigation; KLM sent a team to the crash site, but never released its findings. The history section of the KLM web site discusses the MacRobertson race, but doesn't say a thing about the crash. Speculation is that it was hit by lightning, which normally isn't a problem for aircraft. But engines in those days were prone to fuel and oil leaks, didn't have static wicks to bleed off electrical charges, and had control surfaces (ailerons, rudder, and elevators) that were covered with fabric coated by "dope," a highly flammable substance that could have been ignited by lightning.
KLM, the world's "oldest operating airline," started operations in 1919. By 1934 it was making regular, scheduled flights to Java and to the Caribbean. The DC-2, even with the crash of the Uiver, was to put KLM in the forefront of long-distance passenger service. Many Dutchmen dreamed of returning Netherlands to the days when the country was one of the wealthiest nations in the world due to its far-flung empire and large commercial fleet in the 1600s and 1700s. The Uiver's crash brought that dream crashing down, so to speak, and plunged the country into nationwide mourning which to some extent has lasted to this day. Ask almost any older Dutch person about the Uiver, and he or she will recall it.
The triangular stamps franking the "Fast Christmas Flight" covers are interesting. They were required on mail carried on specially designated flights, and KLM, not the Dutch postal department, received all of the proceeds from their sale. The Netherlands Indies subsidiary of KLM, KNILM, benefitted from a similar stamp, in dark blue.
Bob
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re: serenity and sanity? through stamps
Bob, thank you for the interesting article...i am delving into Netherlands Indies covers also..but taking a little more time with them than with the stamps !
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re: serenity and sanity? through stamps
Thanks Bob, an excellent write up.
Regards ... Tim
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re: serenity and sanity? through stamps
A Dutch-Canadian friend of mine, Ben Guilliamse, showed me the ]Uiver cover shown in my previous post in this thread. It had been posted by his father to a friend in Java, and had been returned by the friend (probably in another envelope since there's no indication that it been posted back to Netherlands.
Ben, who had become a bush pilot in northern BC after retiring from BC Telephone, wanted to know if I could tell him anything about the crash, which he thought had occurred in North Africa. I'd never heard of the Uiver, so I got to work and soon learned the salient facts about the crash.
Ben and I became equally intrigued to learn more, and did. He was instrumental in our research, serving as interpreter for many Dutch newspaper accounts and portions of a book, and introducing me to Bill Yearwood, head of crash investigations in BC. Bill flew DC-3s early in his career, and explained how the DC-2, very much like the DC-3, would have been vulnerable to lightning-caused fire.
I really wanted to get my hands on Ben's cover, and eventually we agreed on a trade, his cover for some photographs of him and his Cessna (I was working as a professional photographer at the time).
My friendship with Ben ended tragically in June, 2004. My wife and I heard on the morning CBC news about a plane crash in Prince George, BC, where we lived when we first moved to BC and where Ben and his wife had been our landlords. I had a premonition that it was Ben's plane that had crashed. I called the airport and talked to an air traffic supervisor; at first she wouldn't tell me who the pilot was, but when I persisted she asked if I could tell her who I thought the pilot was. I said, "Ben Guilliamse." There was a pause, and then she said, "Yes, I'm afraid that's right."
The cause of the crash seems evident. Ben took off into a low overcast with a ceiling of about 275 metres (900 feet) and entered the clouds. Moments later, the lone witness saw the plane come out of the clouds, heading straight down under full power. It crashed into bog not far from the end of the runway.
Ben probably suffered from vertigo once he entered the cloud, failed to trust his instruments, and tried to put the aircraft's nose down in what he thought was a steep climb. He was so low, however, that there was no possibility of recovering from the dive when he emerged from the cloud. Rescuers were barely able to remove his body from the cockpit before the aircraft sank out of sight in the mud. An autopsy ruled out a physical problem such as a heart attack or stroke.
Since I obtained my first Uiver, from Ben, I have found several others in various states of condition, including one without a sign of damage. Some of the mail bags in the Uiver were undamaged.
In addition to helping me with my research about the Uiver, he wrote an interesting and detailed account of a post-war flight to Amsterdam. from Curaçao, where his family had moved before the war. I turned it into a web page, "Consternation on a Constellation".
It has been interesting to see the many ways in which my interests in philately have intersected with so many of my other interests and experiences. Fortunately, most have not had the tragic overtones that were visited upon Ben.
Bob
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re: serenity and sanity? through stamps
Bob, I found this article regarding the Uiver: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uiver
(Modified by Moderator on 2014-06-15 18:39:23)
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