22nd June 1937
'Deutschland' incident
Cover sent by 'El Interventor' (Chief Accounting Officer, from the town council at Palma de Mallorca) to Kurt Haffeneier (?) (a 'Feuerwerker - Ordinance Technician) on board the 'Panzerschiff Deutschland', moored at Wilhelmshaven. The correspondence arrives a month from when the heavy cruiser had disembarked from Mallorca and subsequent bombing by Soviet aircraft on the 29th May 1937. Note about the cover: a postage stamp has been cut from the upper right corner. Ref: 22.06.1937 - 3/138
The 'Deutschland' incident
The Deutschland incident of 1937 occurred in May of that year, during the Spanish Civil War.
On 29th May 1937, a pair of Tupolev SB Soviet bombers attached to the Spanish Republican Air Force raided Nationalist air bases and the port of Ibiza, in the Mediterranean Sea. The aircraft departed from the airbase of Los Alcázares, near Cartagena. The German heavy cruiser Deutschland, which was part of the International Non-Intervention Committee patrol, was anchored off Ibiza and was allegedly misidentified by the bombers' crew as the Nationalist heavy cruiser Canarias. Two Soviet pilots, Captain Anton Progrorin and Lieutenant Vassily Schmidt, dropped their bombs on Deutschland, causing large fires on the ship and killing 31 sailors and wounding 74.
The following day German naval forces shelled the Republican held city of AlmerÃa in retaliation for the Republican air attacks on Deutschland.
(See 14.06.1937 postcard from 'Seeadler')
Because of the Deutschland incident, Germany and Italy left the meetings of the Non-Intervention Committee. The heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer shelled the port and the city of AlmerÃa with 200 rounds, resulting in 19 deaths, 55 wounded, and the destruction of 35 buildings.
Source: Wikipedia
Notes:
29th May - Bombed
30th May - British dockyard at Gibraltar
31st May - In the Mediterranean
11th June - Return to Gibraltar to pick up wounded sailors
16th June - Arrives back in Wilhelmshaven
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