First Flight Covers - Atlantic Attempt Of Swedish Pilot Albin Ahrenberg 1929

This is my first posting attempt and this first post is from the exciting attlantic attemp of Albin Ahrenberg 1929.
I have copied text from the swedish author Örjan Luning:

Albin Ahrenberg was the most popular flyer in Sweden and on his around Sweden tours he gave hundreds of thousands of Swedes their first flight. He had been with ABA since its start in 1924 and had very good connections with the Junkers Co. of Germany. As many other flyers at that time he was fascinated by the thought, that Atlantic crossing via lceland and Greenland already could be possible with the flying material, at hand by the end of the twenties.
He wanted to investigate this for himself, and in some degree for the Junkers Co. A Junkers W.33 was acquired which he gave the name "SVERIGE". As most Atlantic flyers at that time he was short of funds. Suddenly one day he met in the street one of his former pupils, Axel Floden. Ahrenberg told him about his problems. Floden at once said: "lf you make me your co-pilot on the flight I will give you the needed 60.000 crowns." Another important source of income came from the mail that was to be transported. Through the collaboration of Uno Söderberg - chief of the recently opened philatelic bureau of the Swedish Post Office - it was arranged that a special mail should be transported at an additional postage of Sw.cr. 20:- per item. This extra charge was for the benefit of Ahrenberg. All In all 1269 covers were sent from Sweden and gave a substantial help to the venture. Some of the covers are of a specially printed type. Ahrenberg signed a few covers and some very few are signed by both Albin Ahrenberg and Axel Floden.
To the crew was added Robert Ljung·lund as radio operator and the flight started from Stockholm on June 9th 1929. After stops at Karlstad, Sweden and Bergen, Norway the flight went out over the Atlantic. Now the troubles began but the flyers succeeded in reaching lceland, where they had to go down on a desolate fiord on the eastern coast. After minor repairs they could proceed to Reykjavik. The engine proved however, to have a defect in the manufacture, and a mechanic plus a new engine had to come from Germany.
Ahrenberg did not despair and a proof of this is that additional mail was taken on board in lceland. 65 covers, with an additional postage of 25. lcel. Cr. The flight continued from lceland to Greenland on July 10th. Even though the engine was now in good condition it was obvious that a Junkers W. 33 of that time could not conquer the severe weather conditions of these polar regions. Ahrenberg tells about a strange experience. After one of the starts from lvigtut for Labrador such a strong headwind, was encountered, that the plane was driven backwards, despite that
the engine was running at full speed. After a number of attempts the flight had to be abandoned and the mail was taken to the US by steamer.
One mail sack happened to fall into the water at Greenland and the mail was soaked. Some sources have called this mall, "crashpost", but It Is to stretch the point a little too far.

Here are some cover examples from the flight.








/Ulf

Excellent!

Sweet! Thanks for sharing!

Strange the 3 letters had to be "sent back to sender"...
Maybe done purposely? The 2nd letter has the Stockholm arrival cancel..

This was done purposely. They made a special cover for the flight and with the additional postage of 20.00 Sw Cr ($60 in todays value) the sender get them back as a souvenir to collect. In this case they had to wait 4 month for the cover to find the way back to sender.
From around 1928/29 it become more and more common to collect First Flight Covers for almost every new flights.

These are very nice examples of some very rare first flight covers. Just to add a bit of information, the flight began on Sunday, June 9, 1929 so the New York arrival back stamps of Wednesday, September 11, 1929 show that the trip by air and steamer ship plus time on the ground for repairs took a total of 95 days. Another interesting fact is that of the 1,269 first flight covers that were sent from Sweden, 1,204 were sent to the USA and 65 were sent to Iceland. So to get a complete set, if that is even possible given the rarity, one would need three covers - Sweden to Iceland, Iceland to the USA and Sweden to the USA.

Thank you Kimo for your information. It's nice to know as much as possible about the history behind the flights.
I'm new in this community and started my collection with Scandinavian First Flight Covers and was so fascinated of these pioneers. After acquiring some zeppelin covers I'm trying to learn about those flights also, but it's difficult since most literature is written in german language. However, I have ordered the Frost books, but not received them yet.

My pleasure. An even rarer first flight for Sweden would be the one from August 16, 1928 to October 18, 1928 from Rockford, Illinois to Stockholm, Sweden. Pilots Bert Hassell (whose parents were Swedish and who along with some other Swedish born people in Rockford funded the flight) and his copilot and engineer Parker Crane flew a Stinson Detroiter from Illinois part way across the US and Canada to Greenland. While flying over Greenland on their way to Sweden they encountered a blizzard and were forced to land. After 13 days of walking out over the ice they were spotted and rescued by a passing fishing boat. They returned to their homes in Rockford, Illinois. They carried 10 covers and brought them with them when after their forced landing and had them back stamped in Rockford, Illinois when they finally arrived back home. The date of the back stamps is October 18, 1929. An interesting bit of trivia is that their aircraft, their Stinson Detroiter, was found and recovered 16 years later during the war. The ten covers are signed by both pilots along with the postmaster of Rockford. These have a very high catalog value and would likely be quite expensive to acquire one if you could even find one for sale.

Lot:1101
https://siegelauctions.com/lots.php...5&page_no=51
lot:2025
https://siegelauctions.com/lots.php...71&page_no=1
http://www.rockfordreminisce.com/be...er-rockford/

I wasn't aware of that flight. Very interesting indeed. I could see on the siegel auctions links that this cover was in the four figure price range. It was nice to see them and the history behind was really fascinating.
I'm glad I joined this great community. Thanks!