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group of five Dakota planes carrying returning servicemen made a stop-over at Kisumu on

the edge of Lake Victoria, Kenya, and then took off again in pitch darkness after 3am.

However, one plane failed to arrive in Pretoria. It was soon established that it had crashed
into the lake killing all 28 men aboard, ten of whom were Cape Town servicemen, among

whom was Alf Seymour. It was the worst SAAF air disaster until that time. All the bodies
were recovered from the lake and were buried the next day at Kisumu.

It was neither the first nor the last air crash at Kisumu. On 19 December 1942 Major-

General Dan Pienaar and eleven others had died when their plane crashed into Lake

Victoria. On 11 May 1945 a SAAF Dakota crashed near Kisumu killing two and injuring
24; two days later on 13 July an RAF Catalina crashed at Kisumu killing five and injuring

five. Elsewhere in Kenya there were crashes at Nairobi and Jibuti during the same period.

As a consequence the shuttle service was later abandoned in favour of repatriation of the
troops by sea.

It seems that the crashes were caused by a tragic oversight. After landing, the planes were

parked and elevator locks were then put in place to prevent the tailplane from flapping
about in the wind and being damaged. Before taking off again the elevator locks would

have to be removed. Had they not been, the jammed elevators would have prevented the

plane from climbing and banking left, as it had to to avoid a prominent hill. It would then
have slid sideways, lost height, and crashed into the lake below. Des Cochran remembers

that, when he was repatriated by shuttle in December 1945, great care was taken before the
daylight take-off at Kisumu to ensure that the elevator locks had been removed. By this

time other shuttle pilots believed that this had been the cause of the crashes.

Alf Seymour was survived by his wife Mrs. R. E. E. Seymour of Bay View Flats, 5

Windsor Road, Kalk Bay.

Sources: Cape Times 12, 13, & 14 July 1945; SA Archives; Des Cochran; Austen Hannay-

Robertson.

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