Crash site	Argana, Morocco
Airline	Air France
Aircraft	Dewoitine D.338 – F-ARIC – Ville de Dakar
Route	Dakar – Villa Cisneros – Agadir – Casablanca – Oran – Barcelona – Toulouse
Crew	3 – no surviviors
Passengers	6 – no survivors

 

The crash

The plane left Dakar at 06:00. At 15:30 the crew was informed of deteriorating weather and negative temperatures. A few minutes later the plane crashed on a mountain near Argana, 160 km southwest of Marrakech. Two hours after the last contact Air France sent out two search planes from Casablance – a Wibault 283 reg.no. F-ANBM and a Dewoitine D.338 reg.no.F-AQBO, but they were unable to locate the plane. The wreck of the plane was later found by a native in the Argana-Imin region.
The crash report concluded that the airplane was “victim of a sudden icing due to unpredictable weather conditions”.

 

The mail

A large part of the mail was recovered. A variety of crash markings are known from this crash – mostly of French origin (handstamps, service covers and manuscript notes).
I have only seen one cover with a Nordic relation (see below).

 

 

Examples of mail

Cover from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil with stamps missing and illegible postmark. The stamps have probably been torn off by a stamp collector. The cover is addressed to Lysekil, Sweden. French service cover type No 827 with 4-ine handstamp and postmark of the depot for damaged mail in Paris = DEPOT CENTRAL DES REBUTS PARIS 9 -5 39.