Soest plane crash
Sabena Savoia-Marchetti SM.73 and Unknown · The Soest air crash occurred on 10 October 1938
Event
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- Event fatalities
- 20 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- 0
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
Aircraft 1 · Savoia-Marchetti SM.73
- Aircraft type
- Savoia Marchetti SM-73
- Category
- Airplane · from aircraft type
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- Unknown
- Operator
- Sabena
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From BrusselsTo not recorded
Aircraft 2 · Unknown
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- Unknown
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Berlin
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
From the investigation findings the Wikipedia article reports, sorted into the NTSB's cause areas with AI assistance.
Not plotted · Not plotted: the Wikipedia article gives no coordinates, and its site names no town or airport that matches exactly.
From the Wikipedia article
The Soest air crash occurred on 10 October 1938. A Savoia-Marchetti SM.73 aircraft of the Belgian airline Sabena, for unexplained reasons, went from cruising altitude into a dive on the way from Düsseldorf to Berlin and broke apart. All 4 crew members and all 16 passengers were killed in the crash. The cause of the disaster could not be determined.
The pilot was still able to prevent a crash in the residential area of Günne (9 km southwest of Soest); the aircraft was smashed to pieces in a field. Among the passengers were three senior employees of Rheinmetall-Borsig AG. It was the deadliest accident involving a Savoia-Marchetti SM.73, for a long time the deadliest accident of the airline Sabena, and at the time also one of the deadliest air crashes in Germany. After the crash, the aircraft was found lying on its back in a field. A wing and propeller parts were found at another location.
Sequence of events
The aircraft, which had taken off in Brussels, was on its way to Berlin after a stopover in Düsseldorf. At the cruising altitude of 5000 feet (1524 m), the aircraft ran into a storm. Shortly afterwards, the pilots were asked to avoid another aircraft. A little later it suddenly went into a dive. The pilots still managed to pull the aircraft away from a populated area before a wing broke off. The aircraft turned onto its back and crashed in this attitude into a field near Günne (Soest district) in the Province of Westphalia. The wing and propeller parts were only found later at another location.
Among the passengers were three high-ranking managers of the company Rheinmetall-Borsig AG – among them the chairman of the board Friedrich Luther and the authorised officer Ernst Maurach –, Walter Kappes, an official of the Army Ordnance Office, with his wife and three children, as well as the journalist Paul Ullmann of the Berliner Tageblatt.
Joseph Van den Eynde (* 1903), pilot
André Edmond Moulin (* 1907), co-pilot
Josef Baus (* 1910), radio operator
Charles Deleusse (* 1912), flight engineer
Investigation and cause
Investigation
An investigation commission was assembled in Belgium as early as 10 October. It included representatives of the Direction générale du transport aérien (DGTA), the Belgian Ministry of Transport, Sabena and an engineer from SABCA (Société Anonyme Belge des Constructions Aéronautiques). The German investigation commission consisted of Luftwaffe officers and Lufthansa specialists. Although by law Germany alone was entitled to investigate the accident, the two commissions worked closely together.
There are a number of speculations about the causes of the accident, based on various pieces of evidence: bad weather, a missing briefcase, the breaking off of a wing at the engine, and a suspected collision with another aircraft.
Theory 1 – Loss of propeller / breaking off of a wing
Since the wing broke off at the engine, it was suspected that the propeller broke off and thereby damaged the wing. As a result of the loss of the propeller, control of the aircraft was lost and it went into a dive, during which the damaged wing broke off.
Theory 2 – Bomb attack
A sighting of a passenger with a briefcase was reported, which gave rise to speculation that there had been a bomb in the case which caused the aircraft to crash. During the investigation, traces of explosives were also found in the area of the cockpit.
Theory 3 – Bad weather
At the time of the crash there was bad weather, which is why the investigators initially assumed at the start of the investigation that the weather had led to a loss of control or to structural failure – but this was quickly considered unlikely, since there had been no similar accident with a Savoia-Marchetti SM.73.
Theory 4 – Aircraft collision
The flight crew was asked to avoid another aircraft; but it is not clear whether the crew responded to this. Some suspected that the aircraft collided; but no second debris field was found, and there were also no reports of the loss of a second aircraft. Nothing further is known about the other aircraft either, except that it was in the same airspace.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the German Wikipedia article “Flugzeugabsturz bei Soest” (revision 267423539, retrieved 2026-09-19) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out; the translation may contain errors, and long articles were cut to their first 700 words. Read the article
Sources
German Wikipedia article: Flugzeugabsturz bei Soest
- Article
- Flugzeugabsturz bei Soest
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 267423539 · 2026-05-27 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q108802705
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
Where each value comes from
- Record
- de Wikipedia article "Flugzeugabsturz bei Soest" (page 11944018, revision 267423539), translated into English with AI assistance
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site
- Map position
- none
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- operator is an airline according to Wikidata
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia infobox: total_fatalities
- Ground fatalities
- not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
- Summary
- Wikipedia article lead
Source notes (1)
- Wikipedia · Facts from the German Wikipedia article's infobox, translated into English with AI assistance, not checked against an investigation report. Independent review pending.