BOAC Flight 777
Encyclopedia
BOAC Flight 777-A, a scheduled British Overseas Airways Corporation
civilian airline
flight on 1 June 1943 from Portela Airport
in Lisbon
, Portugal
, to Whitchurch Airport
near Bristol
, United Kingdom
, was attacked by eight German
Junkers Ju 88
s and crashed into the Bay of Biscay
, killing 17 "souls on board", including several notable passengers, most prominent being actor Leslie Howard
.
Theories abound that the aircraft, a Douglas DC-3
, was attacked because the Germans believed that British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill
was aboard. Other theories suggest the DC-3 was targeted because several passengers, including Howard, were British spies. During the Second World War
, British and German civilian aircraft operated out of the same facilities at Portela and the incoming and outgoing traffic was watched by Allied
and Axis
spies. The Lisbon–Whitchurch route frequently carried agents and escaped POWs to Britain.
While aircraft flying the Lisbon–Whitchurch route had been left unmolested at the beginning of the war, and both Allied and Axis powers respected the neutrality of Portugal, the air war
over the Bay of Biscay, north of Spain and off the west coast of France, had begun to heat up in 1942, and the Douglas DC-3 lost in this attack had twice survived attacks by Luftwaffe
fighters in November 1942 and April 1943.
, the British Air Ministry
banned all domestic and private airline traffic except those flown by the British Overseas Airways Corporation
(BOAC). Domestic flights moved from Hendon Aerodrome
, London, to an airstrip at Whitchurch
, outside Bristol
. During the war, BOAC routinely flew from Britain to North America
and Portugal. All aircraft were restricted to between 1,000 and 3,000 feet (300 and 910 m) and could only fly during daylight to ease identification. The British government also restricted flights to diplomat
s, military personnel, VIPs
, and anyone else with government approval.
in May 1940, the KLM (the Royal Dutch Airlines) had several airliners en route outside The Netherlands. Some managed to fly to England while others ended up in the Australia-Indonesia region. The British government interned the Dutch aircraft at Southham and assigned their crews to BOAC. The Air Ministry and the Dutch government-in-exile agreed to use the former KLM aircraft and crews on a scheduled service between England and Portugal. On 20 September 1940, the KLM contingent was assigned to Whitchurch, where four times a week, they flew round trip flights to an airfield at Portela
, outside Lisbon, Portugal. This route had been in service since September 1940 and by June 1943, in over 500 flights, BOAC had carried 4,000 passengers. Originally, five DC-3s and one DC-2 were available but with the loss of a DC-3 on 20 September 1940 in a landing accident at Heston
and the destruction of another DC-3 in November 1940 by Luftwaffe bombing at Whitchurch, only four aircraft remained: DC-2 G-AGBH "Edelvelk" (ex-PH-ALE), DC-3 G-AGBD "Buizerd"(ex-PH-ARB), DC-3 G-AGBE "Zilverreiger" (ex-PH-ARZ) and DC-3 G-AGBB "Ibis" (ex-PH-ALI).
British and German civilian aircraft operated from the same facilities at Portela and traffic was watched by Allied
and Axis
spies, including British, German, Soviet
and American
. This was especially the case for the Lisbon–Whitchurch route, which frequently carried agents and escaped POWs to Britain. German spies were posted at terminals to record who was boarding and departing flights on the Lisbon–Whitchurch route. Harry Pusey, BOAC's operations officer in Lisbon between 1943 and 1944 described the area as "like Casablanca
, but twentyfold".
of countries such as Portugal, Sweden
and Switzerland
and refrained from attacking flights into and out of those nations. However, the war over the Bay of Biscay
, north of Spain
and off the west coast of France
, began to heat up in 1942.
The Germans opened the Atlantic Command at Merignac
near Bordeaux
and Lorient
to attack Allied shipping. In 1943, fighting over the area intensified and the RAF
and Luftwaffe
saw increased losses. This meant increased danger for BOAC aircraft running Lisbon–Whitchurch.
On 15 November 1942, "Ibis", the BOAC aircraft later destroyed in the downing of Flight 777-A, was attacked by a single Messerschmitt Bf 110
fighter, but she was able to limp on to Lisbon where repairs were carried out. The damage sustained by cannon and machine gun fire included the port wing, engine nacelle and fuselage.
On 19 April 1943, the same aircraft was again attacked at coordinates 46 North, 9 West, by a schwarm of six Bf 110 fighters. Captain Koene Dirk Parmentier evaded the attackers by dropping to 50 feet above the ocean and then climbing steeply into the clouds. The "Ibis" again sustained damage to the port aileron, shrapnel to the fuselage and a holed fuel tank. A new wingtip was flown to Lisbon to complete repairs. Despite these attacks, BOAC continued to fly the Lisbon–Whitchurch route.
The Douglas DC-3-194
was delivered to KLM on 21 September 1936 and originally carried the registration number PH-ALI and was named "Ibis
", the bird venerated in the ancient world
. On 10 May 1940, the DC-3 was flown to England after the German invasion of the Netherlands. On 25 July 1940, the registration number was changed to G-AGBB and the aircraft was camouflaged in the standard grey-green RAF scheme of the time.
There were four Dutch crew on the flight: Captain Quirinus Tepas O.B.E.; first officer, Dirk de Koning; wireless operator, Cornelis van Brugge (also known from the London-Melbourne race
) and flight engineer Engbertus Rosevink. The crew members fled to Britain during the war and some of them had settled in the Bristol area.
The passenger list included stage and film actor Leslie Howard
; Alfred T. Chenhalls, Howard's friend and accountant; Kenneth Stonehouse
, Washington correspondent of Reuters
news agency
, and his wife Evelyn Peggy Stonehouse; Mrs. Rotha Hutcheon and her daughters, Petra, 11, and Carolina, 18 months; Mrs. Cecelia Emilia Falla Paton; Tyrrell Mildmay Shervington, director of Shell-Mex Oil Company
in Lisbon; Mr. Ivan James Sharp, a senior official of the United Kingdom Commercial Corporation (UKCC) who attended meetings on Tuesday mornings at the Ministry of Economic Warfare and was commissioned by the government to purchase tungsten
for the war effort; Wilfrid B. Israel
, a prominent Jewish activist working to save Jews from the Holocaust; Francis German Cowlrick; and Gordon Thomas MacLean. Newspaper reports indicated that Annette Sutherland Burr, wife of actor Raymond Burr
, also perished on Flight 777. However, Burr's biographer Ona L. Hill writes that "no one by the name of Annette Sutherland Burr was listed as a passenger on the plane" and that Sutherland was on a separate commercial flight between Lisbon
and London
around the same time as Flight 777, which was also shot down by the Germans.
Flight 777 was full and several people were turned back, including British Squadron Leader
Wally Lashbrook. Three passengers seated on the DC-3 disembarked before departure. The young son of a British diplomat, Derek Partridge
, and Dora Rove, his nanny were "bumped" to make room for Howard and Chenhalls, who had only confirmed their tickets at 5 pm the night before the flight and whose priority status allowed them to take precedence over other passengers; a Catholic priest
also left the aircraft after boarding it. To this day the priest's identity remains unknown.
, who was at the peak of his career and had world fame after such cinematic classics as The Scarlet Pimpernel
(1934) and Gone with the Wind
(1939). Aside from screen accolades Howard was prized by the British government for his anti-Nazi propaganda
and a number of films produced in support of the war effort
, notably Pimpernel Smith (1941). During the weeks before his death, Howard had been in Spain and Portugal on a lecture tour promoting The Lamp Still Burns
. What is known about this trip is that the British Council
invited Howard on the tour and that after initial qualms, he received further encouragement from British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden
. A catering reception was being set up for Leslie Howard at Whitchurch aerodrome for his arrival; the chief of KLM instructed the caterers to halt preparation as notice had come through that the aircraft had been attacked by German fighters over the Bay of Biscay.
, member of an important British Jewish family and a supporter of Zionism
who had close connections to the British government. On 26 March 1943, he left Britain for Portugal and spent two months investigating the situation of Jews in Spain
and Portugal. By the end of his trip Israel had found as many as 1,500 Jewish refugee
s in Spain, many of whom he aided in obtaining Palestine
certificates. Before Israel left the peninsula he had proposed a plan to the British government to aid Jewish refugees
in Spain.
777-A. The flight was originally scheduled to take off at 0730, but was delayed when Howard left the aircraft to pick up a package he had left at customs. At 0735 GMT, Flight 777-A departed from Portela Airport at Lisbon. Whitchurch received a departure message and continued regular radio contact until 1054 GMT. At that time, while the DC-3 was roughly 200 miles (321.9 km) northwest of the coast of Spain, Whitchurch received a message that the DC-3 was being followed and that it was fired upon at 46.54N, 09.37W. Shortly afterwards, the aircraft crashed and sank into the Bay of Biscay.
The following day BOAC released a statement:
magazine carried a brief story on the downing of BOAC Flight 777. The most valuable information from that article was the details of the final radio broadcast from the Dutch pilot. "I am being followed by strange aircraft. Putting on best speed. ...we are being attacked. Cannon shells and tracers are going through the fuselage. Wave-hopping and doing my best."
The news of Howard's death was published in the same issue of The Times
that reported the "death" of Major William Martin, the red herring used for the ruse involved in Operation Mincemeat
.
One of the most detailed versions of the attack was revealed in Bloody Biscay: The History of V Gruppe/Kampfgeschwader 40 by Christopher H. Goss. This book states that BOAC Flight 777 was not intentionally targeted and was instead accidentally shot down when it was mistaken for an Allied military aircraft. The account is composed of the author's analysis of events and interviews, conducted decades after the war ended, with some of the German pilots involved in the attack.
According to this account, eight Junkers Ju 88 C6s from the 14th Staffel
of the Luftwaffe's main maritime bomber wing, Kampfgeschwader 40, took off from Bordeaux at 1000 hrs local time to find and escort two U-boats; these aircraft belonged to the long-range fighter group known as Gruppe V Kampfgeschwader 40. The names of four of the eight pilots are known: Staffelführer Oberleutnant
(Oblt) Herbert Hintze, Leutnant Max Wittmer-Eigenbrot, Oblt Albrecht Bellstedt, and Oberfeldwebel (Ofw) Hans Rakow. The pilots claim that before setting out they were unaware of the presence of the Lisbon to Whitchurch flights. Due to bad weather the search for the U-boats was called off and fighters continued a general search. At 1245 hrs BOAC Flight 777 was spotted in P/Q 24W/1785 heading north. Approximately five minutes later the Ju 88s attacked. Hintze retold his account for Goss as the following: "A 'grey silhouette' of a plane was spotted from 2,000–3,000 metres (6,600–9,800 ft) and no markings could be made out, but by the shape and construction of the plane it was obviously enemy." Bellstedt radioed: "Indians at 11 o'clock, AA (code for enemy aircraft ahead slightly to left, attack, attack)." BOAC Flight 777 was attacked from above and below by the two Ju 88s assigned to a high position over the flight, and the port engine and wing caught fire. At this point flight leader Heintze, at the head of the remaining six Ju 88s, caught up to the DC-3 and recognized the aircraft as civilian, immediately calling off the attack, but the burning DC-3 had already been severely damaged with the port engine out. Three parachutists exited the burning aircraft, but their chutes did not open as they were on fire. The aircraft then crashed into the ocean where it floated and then sank. There were no signs of survivors.
Hintze states that all of the German pilots involved expressed regret for shooting down a civilian aircraft and were "rather angry" with their superiors for not informing them that there had been a scheduled flight between Lisbon and Britain. Goss writes that official German records back up Hintze's account that Staffel 14/KG 40 was carrying out normal operations and that the day's events occurred because the U-boats could not be found; he concludes that "there is nothing to prove that [the German pilots] were deliberately aiming to shoot down the unarmed DC-3"; this account of the German pilots and Goss's conclusions are challenged by some authorities.
Hintze's version is supplemented by the research of Ben Rosevink, a retired research technician at the University of Bristol
, and son of BOAC Flight 777 flight engineer Engbertus Rosevink. In the 1980s, Rosevink tracked down and interviewed three of the German pilots involved in the attack, including the individual responsible for opening fire on BOAC Flight 777. In a 2010 interview with the Bristol Evening Post
Rosevink stated that he was convinced of the veracity of the German account.
The following day, a search of the Bay of Biscay was undertaken by "N/461", a Short Sunderland
flying boat from the Royal Australian Air Force's 461 Squadron
. Near the same coordinates where the DC-3 was downed, the Sunderland was attacked by eight V/KG40 Ju 88s and after a furious battle, managed to shoot down three of the attackers, scoring an additional three "possibles," before crash-landing at Penzance
. In the aftermath of these two actions, all BOAC flights from Lisbon were subsequently re-routed and operated only under the cover of the darkness.
as to why BOAC Flight 777 was shot down by the German pilots. All of these contradict the claims by the German pilots that they were not ordered to shoot down the airliner, either because the theories were formulated before the testimonies of the German pilots were recorded in the 1990s or because the authors disbelieve the German accounts.
The most popular theory surrounding the downing of BOAC Flight 777 is that German intelligence mistakenly believed Winston Churchill
was on the flight. This theory appeared in the press within days of the incident and is supported by Churchill himself. In late May 1943, Churchill and Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden
had travelled to North Africa
for a meeting with United States
general Dwight D. Eisenhower
.
The German government was eager to assassinate Churchill on his return flight home and monitored flights in and out of the region in case the Prime Minister
tried to sneak home aboard a civilian airliner. This scenario was plausible as Churchill had flown to Britain from Bermuda
in January 1942 aboard a scheduled commercial airline flight. Rumors had circulated since early May that Churchill might fly home from Lisbon. Some have speculated that these rumors were planted by Britain's Secret Intelligence Service
in order to mask Churchill's travel itinerary.
According to the Churchill assassination theory, as passengers were boarding BOAC Flight 777, German agents spotted what Churchill described in his memoirs as "a thick-set man smoking a cigar", whom they mistook for the Prime Minister. This man was later identified as Alfred T. Chenhalls, Howard's accountant and portly travel companion. In addition, some have speculated that the tall and thin Howard may have been mistaken for Detective Inspector Walter H. Thompson
, Churchill's personal bodyguard who had a similar physical appearance. There is an even more elaborate version of this theory that posits Chenhalls was employed by the British government as Churchill's "deliberate double" and that he and Howard boarded BOAC Flight 777 knowing they were going to die. An alternative version of this is that the British government had intercepted German messages via the Ultra
code breaking operations, but failed to notify the BOAC Flight 777 for fear of compromising the use of Ultra decrypted messages. Both Flight 777 (1957), a book by Ian Colvin
about the incident, and In Search of My Father (1981), by Leslie Howard's son Ronald Howard
, lend credence to the idea that BOAC Flight 777 was downed because the Germans thought Churchill was on the flight.
Churchill appeared to accept this theory in his memoirs, although he is extremely critical of the poor German intelligence that led to the disaster. He wrote, "The brutality of the Germans was only matched by the stupidity of their agents. It is difficult to understand how anyone could imagine that with all the resources of Great Britain
at my disposal I should have booked a passage in an unarmed and unescorted plane from Lisbon and flown home in broad daylight." As it was, Churchill travelled back to Britain via Gibraltar
, departing on the evening of 4 June 1943 in a converted Consolidated B-24 Liberator transport and arriving in Britain the next morning.
In the BBC television series Churchill‘s Bodyguard (original broadcast 2006), it is suggested that (Abwehr) German intelligence
agents were in contact with members of the merchant navy in Britain and had been informed of Churchill’s departure and route. German spies watching the airfields of neutral countries may have mistaken Howard and his manager, as they boarded their aircraft, for Churchill and his bodyguard. Churchill’s Bodyguard noted that Thompson had written that Winston Churchill at times seemed clairvoyant about suspected threats to his safety, and acting on a premonition, he changed his departure to the following day. The crux of the theory posited that Churchill had asked one of his men to tamper with an engine on his aircraft, giving him an excuse not to travel at that time. Speculation by historians has also centred on whether the British code breakers had decrypted several top secret Enigma messages
that detailed the assassination plan. Churchill wanted to protect any information that had been uncovered by the code breakers so that the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
would not suspect that their Enigma machines were compromised. Although the overwhelming majority of published documentation of the case, repudiates this theory, it remains a possibility. Coincidentally, the timing of Howard's takeoff and the flight path was similar to Churchill's, making it easy for the Germans to mistake the two flights.
, Leslie's son, 1984), conclude that the Germans were almost certainly out to shoot down the DC-3 in order to kill Howard himself. Howard had been traveling through Spain and Portugal, ostensibly lecturing on film, but also meeting with local propagandists and shoring up support for the Allied
cause. The Germans in all probability suspected even more surreptitious activities since German agents were active throughout Spain and Portugal, which, like Switzerland, was a crossroads for persons from both sides of the conflict, but even more accessible to Allied citizens. James Oglethorpe, a British historian specialising in the Second World War, has investigated Leslie's connection to the secret services. Ronald Howard's book, in particular, explores in great detail written German orders to the Ju 88 Staffel based in France, assigned to intercept the aircraft, as well as communiqués on the British side that verify intelligence reports of the time indicating a deliberate attack on Howard. These accounts also indicate that the Germans were aware of Churchill's whereabouts at the time and were not so naïve as to believe he would be travelling alone on board an unescorted and unarmed civilian aircraft, which Churchill also acknowledged as improbable. Howard and Chenhalls were not originally booked on the flight, and used their priority status to have passengers removed from the fully booked airliner. Of the 13 travellers on board, most of them were either British executives with corporate ties to Portugal, or comparatively lower-ranked British government civil servants
. There were also two or three children of British military personnel.
While ostensibly on "entertainer goodwill" tours at the behest of the British Council, Howard's intelligence-gathering activities had attracted German interest. The chance to demoralise Britain with the loss of one of its most outspokenly patriotic figures, may have been behind the Luftwaffe attack. Ronald Howard was convinced the order to shoot down Howard's airliner came directly from Joseph Goebbels
, Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
in Nazi Germany
, who had been ridiculed in one of Howard's films and who believed Howard to be the most dangerous British propagandist. A 2008 book by Spanish writer José Rey Ximena claims that Howard was on a top-secret mission for Churchill to dissuade Francisco Franco
, Spain's authoritarian dictator
and head of state
, from joining the Axis powers
. Via an old girlfriend (Conchita Montenegro
), Howard had contacts with Ricardo Giménez-Arnau, who at the time was a young and very humble diplomat in the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Further circumstantial background evidence is revealed in Jimmy Burns's 2009 biography of his father, spymaster Tom Burns. According to author William Stevenson
in A Man called Intrepid, his biography of Sir William Samuel Stephenson
(no relation), the senior representative of British Intelligence for the western hemisphere during the Second World War, Stephenson postulated that the Germans knew about Howard's mission and ordered the aircraft shot down. Stephenson further claimed that Churchill knew in advance of the German intention to shoot down the aircraft, but decided to allow it to proceed to protect the fact that the British had broken the German Enigma code.
was targeted for assassination because of his role as an anti-Nazi propaganda
figure is supported by journalist
and law professor Donald E. Wilkes. Wilkes writes that Joseph Goebbels
could have orchestrated the downing of BOAC Flight 777 because he was "enraged" by Howard's propaganda and was Howard's "bitterest enemy". The fact that Howard was Jewish
would only further buttress this theory. In fact, Germany's propaganda machine boasted at Howard's death and Joseph Goebbels' propagandist newspaper Der Angriff
("The Attack") ran the headline "Pimpernel Howard has made his last trip", which was a reference to the 1941 film Pimpernel Smith
that starred Howard as a professor who rescues victims of Nazi persecution.
about the life of R. J. Mitchell
, the engineer behind the Supermarine Spitfire
, was playing widely in Lisbon cinemas and had starred Howard as Mitchell. The gossip on the streets of Lisbon was that German agents had mistakenly thought Howard was Mitchell and ordered the downing of BOAC Flight-777. Pusey debunked this theory: "But you would have thought someone in German Intelligence would have known that Mitchell had died in 1937, wouldn't you?"
The 2010 biography by Estel Eforgan, Leslie Howard: The Lost Actor examines currently available evidence and concludes that Howard was not a specific target, corroborating the claims by German sources that the shootdown was "an error in judgement".
. The public's attention shifted focus as other events occurred. Nonetheless, two authoritative works examined the circumstances of the downing of BOAC Flight 777: in 1957, journalist Ian Colvin's book on the disaster entitled Flight 777: The Mystery of Leslie Howard and in 1984, Howard's son, Ronald Howard
, wrote a biography of his father, including an account of his father's death.
In 2003, on the 60th anniversary of the downing of Flight 777, a pair of television documentaries on the subject was released. The BBC
series Inside Out produced a significant document, as did the History Channel, which broadcast a documentary entitled: Vanishings! Leslie Howard — Movie Star or Spy? In 2009 the grandson of Ivan Sharp, who lives in Norwich
and has the same name as his grandfather, arranged for a memorial plaque for the crew and passengers of BOAC Flight 777 to be dedicated at the Lisbon Airport. On 1 June 2010, a similar plaque, paid for by Mr. Sharp, was unveiled at Whitchurch Airport in Bristol and a brief memorial was held by friends and family of the those killed on the flight. Currently production in 2010 is finishing on the documentary film “Leslie Howard: A Quite Remarkable Life”, which includes commentary on the ill-fated flight and is narrated by Derek Partridge, who at the age of seven gave up his seat on BOAC Flight 777 for Leslie Howard and Alfred T. Chenhalls and later in life, became a television and screen actor.
46.116667°N 10.25°W
British Overseas Airways Corporation
The British Overseas Airways Corporation was the British state airline from 1939 until 1946 and the long-haul British state airline from 1946 to 1974. The company started life with a merger between Imperial Airways Ltd. and British Airways Ltd...
civilian airline
Airline
An airline provides air transport services for traveling passengers and freight. Airlines lease or own their aircraft with which to supply these services and may form partnerships or alliances with other airlines for mutual benefit...
flight on 1 June 1943 from Portela Airport
Portela Airport
Lisbon Portela Airport, also known as Lisbon Airport , is an international airport located north of Castle of São Jorge in the city of Lisbon, the capital of Portugal...
in Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
, Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
, to Whitchurch Airport
Bristol (Whitchurch) Airport
Bristol Airport, also known as Whitchurch Airport, was a municipal airport in Bristol, England, three miles south of the city centre, from 1930 to 1957. It was the main airport for Bristol and area...
near Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
, United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, was attacked by eight German
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
Junkers Ju 88
Junkers Ju 88
The Junkers Ju 88 was a World War II German Luftwaffe twin-engine, multi-role aircraft. Designed by Hugo Junkers' company through the services of two American aviation engineers in the mid-1930s, it suffered from a number of technical problems during the later stages of its development and early...
s and crashed into the Bay of Biscay
Bay of Biscay
The Bay of Biscay is a gulf of the northeast Atlantic Ocean located south of the Celtic Sea. It lies along the western coast of France from Brest south to the Spanish border, and the northern coast of Spain west to Cape Ortegal, and is named in English after the province of Biscay, in the Spanish...
, killing 17 "souls on board", including several notable passengers, most prominent being actor Leslie Howard
Leslie Howard (actor)
Leslie Howard was an English stage and film actor, director, and producer. Among his best-known roles was Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind and roles in Berkeley Square , Of Human Bondage , The Scarlet Pimpernel , The Petrified Forest , Pygmalion , Intermezzo , Pimpernel Smith...
.
Theories abound that the aircraft, a Douglas DC-3
Douglas DC-3
The Douglas DC-3 is an American fixed-wing propeller-driven aircraft whose speed and range revolutionized air transport in the 1930s and 1940s. Its lasting impact on the airline industry and World War II makes it one of the most significant transport aircraft ever made...
, was attacked because the Germans believed that British Prime Minister
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
was aboard. Other theories suggest the DC-3 was targeted because several passengers, including Howard, were British spies. During the Second World War
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, British and German civilian aircraft operated out of the same facilities at Portela and the incoming and outgoing traffic was watched by Allied
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
and Axis
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
spies. The Lisbon–Whitchurch route frequently carried agents and escaped POWs to Britain.
While aircraft flying the Lisbon–Whitchurch route had been left unmolested at the beginning of the war, and both Allied and Axis powers respected the neutrality of Portugal, the air war
Aerial warfare
Aerial warfare is the use of military aircraft and other flying machines in warfare, including military airlift of cargo to further the national interests as was demonstrated in the Berlin Airlift...
over the Bay of Biscay, north of Spain and off the west coast of France, had begun to heat up in 1942, and the Douglas DC-3 lost in this attack had twice survived attacks by Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....
fighters in November 1942 and April 1943.
BOAC flights
When war broke out in EuropeEurope
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, the British Air Ministry
Air Ministry
The Air Ministry was a department of the British Government with the responsibility of managing the affairs of the Royal Air Force, that existed from 1918 to 1964...
banned all domestic and private airline traffic except those flown by the British Overseas Airways Corporation
British Overseas Airways Corporation
The British Overseas Airways Corporation was the British state airline from 1939 until 1946 and the long-haul British state airline from 1946 to 1974. The company started life with a merger between Imperial Airways Ltd. and British Airways Ltd...
(BOAC). Domestic flights moved from Hendon Aerodrome
Hendon Aerodrome
Hendon Aerodrome was an aerodrome in Hendon, north London, England that, between 1908 and 1968, was an important centre for aviation.It was situated in Colindale, seven miles north west of Charing Cross. It nearly became "the Charing Cross of the UK's international air routes", but for the...
, London, to an airstrip at Whitchurch
Whitchurch, Bristol
Whitchurch is a village in north Somerset, England and an adjoining suburb of south eastern Bristol, bounded by Hartcliffe to the west and Hengrove and Knowle to the north. The suburb was initially developed during the 1930s....
, outside Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
. During the war, BOAC routinely flew from Britain to North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
and Portugal. All aircraft were restricted to between 1,000 and 3,000 feet (300 and 910 m) and could only fly during daylight to ease identification. The British government also restricted flights to diplomat
Diplomat
A diplomat is a person appointed by a state to conduct diplomacy with another state or international organization. The main functions of diplomats revolve around the representation and protection of the interests and nationals of the sending state, as well as the promotion of information and...
s, military personnel, VIPs
Very Important Person
A Very Important Person, or VIP is a person who is accorded special privileges due to his or her status or importance.Examples include celebrities, heads of state/heads of government, major employers, high rollers, politicians, high-level corporate officers, wealthy individuals, or any other...
, and anyone else with government approval.
KLM pilots and aircraft
When Germany invaded The NetherlandsNetherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
in May 1940, the KLM (the Royal Dutch Airlines) had several airliners en route outside The Netherlands. Some managed to fly to England while others ended up in the Australia-Indonesia region. The British government interned the Dutch aircraft at Southham and assigned their crews to BOAC. The Air Ministry and the Dutch government-in-exile agreed to use the former KLM aircraft and crews on a scheduled service between England and Portugal. On 20 September 1940, the KLM contingent was assigned to Whitchurch, where four times a week, they flew round trip flights to an airfield at Portela
Portela Airport
Lisbon Portela Airport, also known as Lisbon Airport , is an international airport located north of Castle of São Jorge in the city of Lisbon, the capital of Portugal...
, outside Lisbon, Portugal. This route had been in service since September 1940 and by June 1943, in over 500 flights, BOAC had carried 4,000 passengers. Originally, five DC-3s and one DC-2 were available but with the loss of a DC-3 on 20 September 1940 in a landing accident at Heston
Heston Aerodrome
Heston Aerodrome was a 1930s airfield located to the west of London, UK, operational between 1929 and 1947. It was situated on the border of the Heston and Cranford areas of Hounslow, Middlesex...
and the destruction of another DC-3 in November 1940 by Luftwaffe bombing at Whitchurch, only four aircraft remained: DC-2 G-AGBH "Edelvelk" (ex-PH-ALE), DC-3 G-AGBD "Buizerd"(ex-PH-ARB), DC-3 G-AGBE "Zilverreiger" (ex-PH-ARZ) and DC-3 G-AGBB "Ibis" (ex-PH-ALI).
British and German civilian aircraft operated from the same facilities at Portela and traffic was watched by Allied
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
and Axis
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
spies, including British, German, Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
and American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. This was especially the case for the Lisbon–Whitchurch route, which frequently carried agents and escaped POWs to Britain. German spies were posted at terminals to record who was boarding and departing flights on the Lisbon–Whitchurch route. Harry Pusey, BOAC's operations officer in Lisbon between 1943 and 1944 described the area as "like Casablanca
Casablanca (film)
Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid, and featuring Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Dooley Wilson. Set during World War II, it focuses on a man torn between, in...
, but twentyfold".
Attacks on BOAC aircraft
Most of the aircraft flying the Lisbon–Whitchurch route had been left unmolested since the beginning of the war. Both Allied and Axis powers respected the neutralityNeutral country
A neutral power in a particular war is a sovereign state which declares itself to be neutral towards the belligerents. A non-belligerent state does not need to be neutral. The rights and duties of a neutral power are defined in Sections 5 and 13 of the Hague Convention of 1907...
of countries such as Portugal, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
and Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
and refrained from attacking flights into and out of those nations. However, the war over the Bay of Biscay
Bay of Biscay
The Bay of Biscay is a gulf of the northeast Atlantic Ocean located south of the Celtic Sea. It lies along the western coast of France from Brest south to the Spanish border, and the northern coast of Spain west to Cape Ortegal, and is named in English after the province of Biscay, in the Spanish...
, north of Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
and off the west coast of France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, began to heat up in 1942.
The Germans opened the Atlantic Command at Merignac
Bordeaux-Merignac Air Base
Bordeaux-Mérignac Air Base is a former United States Air Force base in France. It is located in the Gironde département, 6 miles west of the city of Bordeaux....
near Bordeaux
Bordeaux
Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...
and Lorient
Lorient
Lorient, or L'Orient, is a commune and a seaport in the Morbihan department in Brittany in north-western France.-History:At the beginning of the 17th century, merchants who were trading with India had established warehouses in Port-Louis...
to attack Allied shipping. In 1943, fighting over the area intensified and the RAF
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...
and Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....
saw increased losses. This meant increased danger for BOAC aircraft running Lisbon–Whitchurch.
On 15 November 1942, "Ibis", the BOAC aircraft later destroyed in the downing of Flight 777-A, was attacked by a single Messerschmitt Bf 110
Messerschmitt Bf 110
The Messerschmitt Bf 110, often called Me 110, was a twin-engine heavy fighter in the service of the Luftwaffe during World War II. Hermann Göring was a proponent of the Bf 110, and nicknamed it his Eisenseiten...
fighter, but she was able to limp on to Lisbon where repairs were carried out. The damage sustained by cannon and machine gun fire included the port wing, engine nacelle and fuselage.
On 19 April 1943, the same aircraft was again attacked at coordinates 46 North, 9 West, by a schwarm of six Bf 110 fighters. Captain Koene Dirk Parmentier evaded the attackers by dropping to 50 feet above the ocean and then climbing steeply into the clouds. The "Ibis" again sustained damage to the port aileron, shrapnel to the fuselage and a holed fuel tank. A new wingtip was flown to Lisbon to complete repairs. Despite these attacks, BOAC continued to fly the Lisbon–Whitchurch route.
Aircraft and crew
Douglas DC-3
The Douglas DC-3 is an American fixed-wing propeller-driven aircraft whose speed and range revolutionized air transport in the 1930s and 1940s. Its lasting impact on the airline industry and World War II makes it one of the most significant transport aircraft ever made...
was delivered to KLM on 21 September 1936 and originally carried the registration number PH-ALI and was named "Ibis
Ibis
The ibises are a group of long-legged wading birds in the family Threskiornithidae....
", the bird venerated in the ancient world
Ancient history
Ancient history is the study of the written past from the beginning of recorded human history to the Early Middle Ages. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, with Cuneiform script, the oldest discovered form of coherent writing, from the protoliterate period around the 30th century BC...
. On 10 May 1940, the DC-3 was flown to England after the German invasion of the Netherlands. On 25 July 1940, the registration number was changed to G-AGBB and the aircraft was camouflaged in the standard grey-green RAF scheme of the time.
There were four Dutch crew on the flight: Captain Quirinus Tepas O.B.E.; first officer, Dirk de Koning; wireless operator, Cornelis van Brugge (also known from the London-Melbourne race
MacRobertson Air Race
The MacRobertson Trophy Air Race took place October, 1934 as part of the Melbourne Centenary celebrations. The idea of the race was devised by the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, and a prize fund of $75,000 was put up by Sir Macpherson Robertson, a wealthy Australian confectionery manufacturer, on the...
) and flight engineer Engbertus Rosevink. The crew members fled to Britain during the war and some of them had settled in the Bristol area.
Passenger list
Leslie Howard (actor)
Leslie Howard was an English stage and film actor, director, and producer. Among his best-known roles was Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind and roles in Berkeley Square , Of Human Bondage , The Scarlet Pimpernel , The Petrified Forest , Pygmalion , Intermezzo , Pimpernel Smith...
; Alfred T. Chenhalls, Howard's friend and accountant; Kenneth Stonehouse
Kenneth Stonehouse
Kenneth Stonehouse was a British journalist who worked with the Reuters news agency in the United States and Europe. He was killed in the downing of BOAC Flight 777.-Life:...
, Washington correspondent of Reuters
Reuters
Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
news agency
News agency
A news agency is an organization of journalists established to supply news reports to news organizations: newspapers, magazines, and radio and television broadcasters. Such an agency may also be referred to as a wire service, newswire or news service.-History:The oldest news agency is Agence...
, and his wife Evelyn Peggy Stonehouse; Mrs. Rotha Hutcheon and her daughters, Petra, 11, and Carolina, 18 months; Mrs. Cecelia Emilia Falla Paton; Tyrrell Mildmay Shervington, director of Shell-Mex Oil Company
Shell-Mex and BP
Shell-Mex and BP Ltd was a British joint marketing venture between Shell and British Petroleum. It was formed in 1932 when both companies decided to merge their United Kingdom marketing operations, partly in response to the difficult economic conditions of the times.The parent organisations...
in Lisbon; Mr. Ivan James Sharp, a senior official of the United Kingdom Commercial Corporation (UKCC) who attended meetings on Tuesday mornings at the Ministry of Economic Warfare and was commissioned by the government to purchase tungsten
Tungsten
Tungsten , also known as wolfram , is a chemical element with the chemical symbol W and atomic number 74.A hard, rare metal under standard conditions when uncombined, tungsten is found naturally on Earth only in chemical compounds. It was identified as a new element in 1781, and first isolated as...
for the war effort; Wilfrid B. Israel
Wilfrid B. Israel
Wilfrid B. Israel was a German-born Jew who played an important role in the Kindertransport and the rescue of Jews in the Holocaust. He was killed when his plane was shot down by the Nazis. -Biography:...
, a prominent Jewish activist working to save Jews from the Holocaust; Francis German Cowlrick; and Gordon Thomas MacLean. Newspaper reports indicated that Annette Sutherland Burr, wife of actor Raymond Burr
Raymond Burr
Raymond William Stacey Burr was a Canadian actor, primarily known for his title roles in the television dramas Perry Mason and Ironside. His early acting career included roles on Broadway, radio, television and in film, usually as the villain...
, also perished on Flight 777. However, Burr's biographer Ona L. Hill writes that "no one by the name of Annette Sutherland Burr was listed as a passenger on the plane" and that Sutherland was on a separate commercial flight between Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
and London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
around the same time as Flight 777, which was also shot down by the Germans.
Flight 777 was full and several people were turned back, including British Squadron Leader
Squadron Leader
Squadron Leader is a commissioned rank in the Royal Air Force and the air forces of many countries which have historical British influence. It is also sometimes used as the English translation of an equivalent rank in countries which have a non-English air force-specific rank structure. In these...
Wally Lashbrook. Three passengers seated on the DC-3 disembarked before departure. The young son of a British diplomat, Derek Partridge
Derek Partridge
-Life:Partridge’s father was a diplomat in the British Foreign Service. In 1943, when he was only seven years old, Partridge and his nanny in Lisbon, Portugal boarded BOAC Flight 777 bound for Bristol, England. Before the flight took off Partridge and his nanny were forced to give up their seats...
, and Dora Rove, his nanny were "bumped" to make room for Howard and Chenhalls, who had only confirmed their tickets at 5 pm the night before the flight and whose priority status allowed them to take precedence over other passengers; a Catholic priest
Holy Orders
The term Holy Orders is used by many Christian churches to refer to ordination or to those individuals ordained for a special role or ministry....
also left the aircraft after boarding it. To this day the priest's identity remains unknown.
Leslie Howard
The most intense intrigue surrounded actor Leslie HowardLeslie Howard (actor)
Leslie Howard was an English stage and film actor, director, and producer. Among his best-known roles was Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind and roles in Berkeley Square , Of Human Bondage , The Scarlet Pimpernel , The Petrified Forest , Pygmalion , Intermezzo , Pimpernel Smith...
, who was at the peak of his career and had world fame after such cinematic classics as The Scarlet Pimpernel
The Scarlet Pimpernel
The Scarlet Pimpernel is a play and adventure novel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, set during the Reign of Terror following the start of the French Revolution. The story is a precursor to the "disguised superhero" tales such as Zorro and Batman....
(1934) and Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind (film)
Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American historical epic film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel of the same name. It was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Victor Fleming from a screenplay by Sidney Howard...
(1939). Aside from screen accolades Howard was prized by the British government for his anti-Nazi propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
and a number of films produced in support of the war effort
War effort
In politics and military planning, a war effort refers to a coordinated mobilization of society's resources—both industrial and human—towards the support of a military force...
, notably Pimpernel Smith (1941). During the weeks before his death, Howard had been in Spain and Portugal on a lecture tour promoting The Lamp Still Burns
The Lamp Still Burns
The Lamp Still Burns is a 1943 British drama film directed by Maurice Elvey and starring Rosamund John, Stewart Granger, Godfrey Tearle and Sophie Stewart. An architect retrains as a nurse...
. What is known about this trip is that the British Council
British Council
The British Council is a United Kingdom-based organisation specialising in international educational and cultural opportunities. It is registered as a charity both in England and Wales, and in Scotland...
invited Howard on the tour and that after initial qualms, he received further encouragement from British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden
Anthony Eden
Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, KG, MC, PC was a British Conservative politician, who was Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957...
. A catering reception was being set up for Leslie Howard at Whitchurch aerodrome for his arrival; the chief of KLM instructed the caterers to halt preparation as notice had come through that the aircraft had been attacked by German fighters over the Bay of Biscay.
Wilfrid B. Israel
Another passenger was Wilfrid B. IsraelWilfrid B. Israel
Wilfrid B. Israel was a German-born Jew who played an important role in the Kindertransport and the rescue of Jews in the Holocaust. He was killed when his plane was shot down by the Nazis. -Biography:...
, member of an important British Jewish family and a supporter of Zionism
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
who had close connections to the British government. On 26 March 1943, he left Britain for Portugal and spent two months investigating the situation of Jews in Spain
History of the Jews in Spain
Spanish Jews once constituted one of the largest and most prosperous Jewish communities under Muslim and Christian rule in Spain, before the majority, together with resident Muslims, were forced to convert to Catholicism, be expelled or be killed when Spain became united under the Catholic Monarchs...
and Portugal. By the end of his trip Israel had found as many as 1,500 Jewish refugee
Refugee
A refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...
s in Spain, many of whom he aided in obtaining Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
certificates. Before Israel left the peninsula he had proposed a plan to the British government to aid Jewish refugees
Jewish refugees
In the course of history, Jewish populations have been expelled or ostracised by various local authorities and have sought asylum from antisemitism numerous times...
in Spain.
7:35–10:54 am: Takeoff and flight
The 1 June 1943 British Overseas Airways Corporation flight from Lisbon to Whitchurch was assigned to the "Ibis" and given flight numberFlight number
A flight number, when combined with the name of the airline and the date, identifies a particular flight. This callsign should not be confused with the tail number of the aircraft, although both can be used as a call-sign as used in general aviation...
777-A. The flight was originally scheduled to take off at 0730, but was delayed when Howard left the aircraft to pick up a package he had left at customs. At 0735 GMT, Flight 777-A departed from Portela Airport at Lisbon. Whitchurch received a departure message and continued regular radio contact until 1054 GMT. At that time, while the DC-3 was roughly 200 miles (321.9 km) northwest of the coast of Spain, Whitchurch received a message that the DC-3 was being followed and that it was fired upon at 46.54N, 09.37W. Shortly afterwards, the aircraft crashed and sank into the Bay of Biscay.
The following day BOAC released a statement:
Time magazine account
In its 14 June 1943 issue, TimeTime (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine carried a brief story on the downing of BOAC Flight 777. The most valuable information from that article was the details of the final radio broadcast from the Dutch pilot. "I am being followed by strange aircraft. Putting on best speed. ...we are being attacked. Cannon shells and tracers are going through the fuselage. Wave-hopping and doing my best."
The news of Howard's death was published in the same issue of The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
that reported the "death" of Major William Martin, the red herring used for the ruse involved in Operation Mincemeat
Operation Mincemeat
Operation Mincemeat was a successful British deception plan during World War II. As part of the widespread deception plan Operation Barclay to cover the intended invasion of Italy from North Africa, Mincemeat helped to convince the German high command that the Allies planned to invade Greece and...
.
German pilots' account
According to this account, eight Junkers Ju 88 C6s from the 14th Staffel
Luftwaffe Organization
Between 1933 and 1945, the organization of the Luftwaffe underwent several changes. Originally, the German military high command decided to use an organizational structure similar to the army and navy, treating the branch as a strategic weapon of war...
of the Luftwaffe's main maritime bomber wing, Kampfgeschwader 40, took off from Bordeaux at 1000 hrs local time to find and escort two U-boats; these aircraft belonged to the long-range fighter group known as Gruppe V Kampfgeschwader 40. The names of four of the eight pilots are known: Staffelführer Oberleutnant
Oberleutnant
Oberleutnant is a junior officer rank in the militaries of Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In the German Army, it dates from the early 19th century. Translated as "Senior Lieutenant", the rank is typically bestowed upon commissioned officers after five to six years of active duty...
(Oblt) Herbert Hintze, Leutnant Max Wittmer-Eigenbrot, Oblt Albrecht Bellstedt, and Oberfeldwebel (Ofw) Hans Rakow. The pilots claim that before setting out they were unaware of the presence of the Lisbon to Whitchurch flights. Due to bad weather the search for the U-boats was called off and fighters continued a general search. At 1245 hrs BOAC Flight 777 was spotted in P/Q 24W/1785 heading north. Approximately five minutes later the Ju 88s attacked. Hintze retold his account for Goss as the following: "A 'grey silhouette' of a plane was spotted from 2,000–3,000 metres (6,600–9,800 ft) and no markings could be made out, but by the shape and construction of the plane it was obviously enemy." Bellstedt radioed: "Indians at 11 o'clock, AA (code for enemy aircraft ahead slightly to left, attack, attack)." BOAC Flight 777 was attacked from above and below by the two Ju 88s assigned to a high position over the flight, and the port engine and wing caught fire. At this point flight leader Heintze, at the head of the remaining six Ju 88s, caught up to the DC-3 and recognized the aircraft as civilian, immediately calling off the attack, but the burning DC-3 had already been severely damaged with the port engine out. Three parachutists exited the burning aircraft, but their chutes did not open as they were on fire. The aircraft then crashed into the ocean where it floated and then sank. There were no signs of survivors.
Hintze states that all of the German pilots involved expressed regret for shooting down a civilian aircraft and were "rather angry" with their superiors for not informing them that there had been a scheduled flight between Lisbon and Britain. Goss writes that official German records back up Hintze's account that Staffel 14/KG 40 was carrying out normal operations and that the day's events occurred because the U-boats could not be found; he concludes that "there is nothing to prove that [the German pilots] were deliberately aiming to shoot down the unarmed DC-3"; this account of the German pilots and Goss's conclusions are challenged by some authorities.
Hintze's version is supplemented by the research of Ben Rosevink, a retired research technician at the University of Bristol
University of Bristol
The University of Bristol is a public research university located in Bristol, United Kingdom. One of the so-called "red brick" universities, it received its Royal Charter in 1909, although its predecessor institution, University College, Bristol, had been in existence since 1876.The University is...
, and son of BOAC Flight 777 flight engineer Engbertus Rosevink. In the 1980s, Rosevink tracked down and interviewed three of the German pilots involved in the attack, including the individual responsible for opening fire on BOAC Flight 777. In a 2010 interview with the Bristol Evening Post
Bristol Evening Post
The Bristol Evening Post is a newspaper covering news in the city of Bristol, including stories from the whole of Greater Bristol, Northern Somerset and South Gloucestershire....
Rosevink stated that he was convinced of the veracity of the German account.
The following day, a search of the Bay of Biscay was undertaken by "N/461", a Short Sunderland
Short Sunderland
The Short S.25 Sunderland was a British flying boat patrol bomber developed for the Royal Air Force by Short Brothers. It took its service name from the town and port of Sunderland in northeast England....
flying boat from the Royal Australian Air Force's 461 Squadron
No. 461 Squadron RAAF
No. 461 Squadron was a Royal Australian Air Force maritime patrol squadron of World War II which operated under Royal Air Force control flying in Europe and over the Atlantic. The Squadron was formed in 1942 and was disbanded in 1945.-Squadron history:...
. Near the same coordinates where the DC-3 was downed, the Sunderland was attacked by eight V/KG40 Ju 88s and after a furious battle, managed to shoot down three of the attackers, scoring an additional three "possibles," before crash-landing at Penzance
Penzance
Penzance is a town, civil parish, and port in Cornwall, England, in the United Kingdom. It is the most westerly major town in Cornwall and is approximately 75 miles west of Plymouth and 300 miles west-southwest of London...
. In the aftermath of these two actions, all BOAC flights from Lisbon were subsequently re-routed and operated only under the cover of the darkness.
Theories for the attack
There are several theoriesTheory
The English word theory was derived from a technical term in Ancient Greek philosophy. The word theoria, , meant "a looking at, viewing, beholding", and referring to contemplation or speculation, as opposed to action...
as to why BOAC Flight 777 was shot down by the German pilots. All of these contradict the claims by the German pilots that they were not ordered to shoot down the airliner, either because the theories were formulated before the testimonies of the German pilots were recorded in the 1990s or because the authors disbelieve the German accounts.
Churchill assassination attempt
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
was on the flight. This theory appeared in the press within days of the incident and is supported by Churchill himself. In late May 1943, Churchill and Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden
Anthony Eden
Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, KG, MC, PC was a British Conservative politician, who was Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957...
had travelled to North Africa
North Africa
North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...
for a meeting with United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
general Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
.
The German government was eager to assassinate Churchill on his return flight home and monitored flights in and out of the region in case the Prime Minister
Prime minister
A prime minister is the most senior minister of cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. In many systems, the prime minister selects and may dismiss other members of the cabinet, and allocates posts to members within the government. In most systems, the prime...
tried to sneak home aboard a civilian airliner. This scenario was plausible as Churchill had flown to Britain from Bermuda
Bermuda
Bermuda is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. It is about south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and northeast of Miami, Florida...
in January 1942 aboard a scheduled commercial airline flight. Rumors had circulated since early May that Churchill might fly home from Lisbon. Some have speculated that these rumors were planted by Britain's Secret Intelligence Service
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...
in order to mask Churchill's travel itinerary.
According to the Churchill assassination theory, as passengers were boarding BOAC Flight 777, German agents spotted what Churchill described in his memoirs as "a thick-set man smoking a cigar", whom they mistook for the Prime Minister. This man was later identified as Alfred T. Chenhalls, Howard's accountant and portly travel companion. In addition, some have speculated that the tall and thin Howard may have been mistaken for Detective Inspector Walter H. Thompson
Walter H. Thompson
Detective Inspector Walter Henry Thompson BEM was the bodyguard of Winston Churchill for eighteen years between 1921 and 1945, being recalled from semi-retirement running two grocer's shops by a telegram from Churchill on 22 August 1939 reading "Meet me Croydon Airport 4.30pm Wednesday." Although...
, Churchill's personal bodyguard who had a similar physical appearance. There is an even more elaborate version of this theory that posits Chenhalls was employed by the British government as Churchill's "deliberate double" and that he and Howard boarded BOAC Flight 777 knowing they were going to die. An alternative version of this is that the British government had intercepted German messages via the Ultra
Ultra
Ultra was the designation adopted by British military intelligence in June 1941 for wartime signals intelligence obtained by "breaking" high-level encrypted enemy radio and teleprinter communications at the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. "Ultra" eventually became the standard...
code breaking operations, but failed to notify the BOAC Flight 777 for fear of compromising the use of Ultra decrypted messages. Both Flight 777 (1957), a book by Ian Colvin
Ian Colvin
Ian Duncan Colvin was a British journalist and historian.From 1909 he was a leader writer for The Morning Post. In 1915 he published The Germans in England, 1066–1598 in which he claimed the Hanseatic League tried to control Europe through a mixture of peaceful and violent means.In 1929 he...
about the incident, and In Search of My Father (1981), by Leslie Howard's son Ronald Howard
Ronald Howard (British actor)
Ronald Howard was an English actor and writer best known in the U.S. for starring in a weekly Sherlock Holmes television series in 1954. He was the son of actor Leslie Howard.- Life and work :...
, lend credence to the idea that BOAC Flight 777 was downed because the Germans thought Churchill was on the flight.
Churchill appeared to accept this theory in his memoirs, although he is extremely critical of the poor German intelligence that led to the disaster. He wrote, "The brutality of the Germans was only matched by the stupidity of their agents. It is difficult to understand how anyone could imagine that with all the resources of Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
at my disposal I should have booked a passage in an unarmed and unescorted plane from Lisbon and flown home in broad daylight." As it was, Churchill travelled back to Britain via Gibraltar
Gibraltar
Gibraltar is a British overseas territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance of the Mediterranean. A peninsula with an area of , it has a northern border with Andalusia, Spain. The Rock of Gibraltar is the major landmark of the region...
, departing on the evening of 4 June 1943 in a converted Consolidated B-24 Liberator transport and arriving in Britain the next morning.
In the BBC television series Churchill‘s Bodyguard (original broadcast 2006), it is suggested that (Abwehr) German intelligence
Abwehr
The Abwehr was a German military intelligence organisation from 1921 to 1944. The term Abwehr was used as a concession to Allied demands that Germany's post-World War I intelligence activities be for "defensive" purposes only...
agents were in contact with members of the merchant navy in Britain and had been informed of Churchill’s departure and route. German spies watching the airfields of neutral countries may have mistaken Howard and his manager, as they boarded their aircraft, for Churchill and his bodyguard. Churchill’s Bodyguard noted that Thompson had written that Winston Churchill at times seemed clairvoyant about suspected threats to his safety, and acting on a premonition, he changed his departure to the following day. The crux of the theory posited that Churchill had asked one of his men to tamper with an engine on his aircraft, giving him an excuse not to travel at that time. Speculation by historians has also centred on whether the British code breakers had decrypted several top secret Enigma messages
Enigma machine
An Enigma machine is any of a family of related electro-mechanical rotor cipher machines used for the encryption and decryption of secret messages. Enigma was invented by German engineer Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I...
that detailed the assassination plan. Churchill wanted to protect any information that had been uncovered by the code breakers so that the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht was part of the command structure of the armed forces of Nazi Germany during World War II.- Genesis :...
would not suspect that their Enigma machines were compromised. Although the overwhelming majority of published documentation of the case, repudiates this theory, it remains a possibility. Coincidentally, the timing of Howard's takeoff and the flight path was similar to Churchill's, making it easy for the Germans to mistake the two flights.
Leslie Howard: Spy
Several exhaustively researched books focus on the Flight 777, including: Flight 777 (Ian Colvin, 1957), and In Search of My Father: A Portrait of Leslie Howard (Ronald HowardRonald Howard (British actor)
Ronald Howard was an English actor and writer best known in the U.S. for starring in a weekly Sherlock Holmes television series in 1954. He was the son of actor Leslie Howard.- Life and work :...
, Leslie's son, 1984), conclude that the Germans were almost certainly out to shoot down the DC-3 in order to kill Howard himself. Howard had been traveling through Spain and Portugal, ostensibly lecturing on film, but also meeting with local propagandists and shoring up support for the Allied
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
cause. The Germans in all probability suspected even more surreptitious activities since German agents were active throughout Spain and Portugal, which, like Switzerland, was a crossroads for persons from both sides of the conflict, but even more accessible to Allied citizens. James Oglethorpe, a British historian specialising in the Second World War, has investigated Leslie's connection to the secret services. Ronald Howard's book, in particular, explores in great detail written German orders to the Ju 88 Staffel based in France, assigned to intercept the aircraft, as well as communiqués on the British side that verify intelligence reports of the time indicating a deliberate attack on Howard. These accounts also indicate that the Germans were aware of Churchill's whereabouts at the time and were not so naïve as to believe he would be travelling alone on board an unescorted and unarmed civilian aircraft, which Churchill also acknowledged as improbable. Howard and Chenhalls were not originally booked on the flight, and used their priority status to have passengers removed from the fully booked airliner. Of the 13 travellers on board, most of them were either British executives with corporate ties to Portugal, or comparatively lower-ranked British government civil servants
Civil service
The term civil service has two distinct meanings:* A branch of governmental service in which individuals are employed on the basis of professional merit as proven by competitive examinations....
. There were also two or three children of British military personnel.
While ostensibly on "entertainer goodwill" tours at the behest of the British Council, Howard's intelligence-gathering activities had attracted German interest. The chance to demoralise Britain with the loss of one of its most outspokenly patriotic figures, may have been behind the Luftwaffe attack. Ronald Howard was convinced the order to shoot down Howard's airliner came directly from Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
, Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
The Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda was Nazi Germany's ministry that enforced Nazi Party ideology in Germany and regulated its culture and society. Founded on March 13, 1933, by Adolf Hitler's new National Socialist government, the Ministry was headed by Dr...
in Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
, who had been ridiculed in one of Howard's films and who believed Howard to be the most dangerous British propagandist. A 2008 book by Spanish writer José Rey Ximena claims that Howard was on a top-secret mission for Churchill to dissuade Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
, Spain's authoritarian dictator
Dictator
A dictator is a ruler who assumes sole and absolute power but without hereditary ascension such as an absolute monarch. When other states call the head of state of a particular state a dictator, that state is called a dictatorship...
and head of state
Head of State
A head of state is the individual that serves as the chief public representative of a monarchy, republic, federation, commonwealth or other kind of state. His or her role generally includes legitimizing the state and exercising the political powers, functions, and duties granted to the head of...
, from joining the Axis powers
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
. Via an old girlfriend (Conchita Montenegro
Conchita Montenegro
Conchita Montenegro was a Spanish model, dancer, stage and screen actress. She was educated in a convent in Madrid, Spain. Montenegro had browneyes, wavy black hair, and an olive complexion...
), Howard had contacts with Ricardo Giménez-Arnau, who at the time was a young and very humble diplomat in the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Further circumstantial background evidence is revealed in Jimmy Burns's 2009 biography of his father, spymaster Tom Burns. According to author William Stevenson
William Stevenson (Canadian writer)
William Stevenson is a British-born Canadian author and journalist.His 1976 book A Man Called Intrepid was about William Stephenson and was a best-seller...
in A Man called Intrepid, his biography of Sir William Samuel Stephenson
William Stephenson
Sir William Samuel Stephenson, CC, MC, DFC was a Canadian soldier, airman, businessman, inventor, spymaster, and the senior representative of British intelligence for the entire western hemisphere during World War II. He is best known by his wartime intelligence codename Intrepid...
(no relation), the senior representative of British Intelligence for the western hemisphere during the Second World War, Stephenson postulated that the Germans knew about Howard's mission and ordered the aircraft shot down. Stephenson further claimed that Churchill knew in advance of the German intention to shoot down the aircraft, but decided to allow it to proceed to protect the fact that the British had broken the German Enigma code.
Assassination of Leslie Howard, the propaganda figure
The theory that Leslie HowardLeslie Howard (actor)
Leslie Howard was an English stage and film actor, director, and producer. Among his best-known roles was Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind and roles in Berkeley Square , Of Human Bondage , The Scarlet Pimpernel , The Petrified Forest , Pygmalion , Intermezzo , Pimpernel Smith...
was targeted for assassination because of his role as an anti-Nazi propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
figure is supported by journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
and law professor Donald E. Wilkes. Wilkes writes that Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
could have orchestrated the downing of BOAC Flight 777 because he was "enraged" by Howard's propaganda and was Howard's "bitterest enemy". The fact that Howard was Jewish
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
would only further buttress this theory. In fact, Germany's propaganda machine boasted at Howard's death and Joseph Goebbels' propagandist newspaper Der Angriff
Der Angriff
Der Angriff was a German language newspaper founded in 1927 by the Berlin Gau of the Nazi Party.The newspaper was set up by Joseph Goebbels, who in 1926 had become the Nazi Party leader in Berlin, and the party provided most of the money needed to ensure publication...
("The Attack") ran the headline "Pimpernel Howard has made his last trip", which was a reference to the 1941 film Pimpernel Smith
Pimpernel Smith
"Pimpernel" Smith is a British 1941 anti-Nazi thriller, produced and directed by its star Leslie Howard, which updates his role in the 1934 The Scarlet Pimpernel from Revolutionary France to pre-World War II Europe. The British Film Yearbook for 1945 described his work as "one of the most valuable...
that starred Howard as a professor who rescues victims of Nazi persecution.
Howard mistaken for R. J. Mitchell
One of the less credible theories that circulated at the time was reported by Harry Pusey. Before the attack on BOAC Flight 777, the film The First of the FewThe First of the Few
The First of the Few, known as Spitfire in the United States, is a 1942 British film directed by and starring Leslie Howard as R.J. Mitchell, the designer of the Supermarine Spitfire, alongside co-star David Niven. The film's score was written by William Walton...
about the life of R. J. Mitchell
R. J. Mitchell
Reginald Joseph Mitchell CBE, FRAeS, was an aeronautical engineer, best known for his design of the Supermarine Spitfire.-Early years:...
, the engineer behind the Supermarine Spitfire
Supermarine Spitfire
The Supermarine Spitfire is a British single-seat fighter aircraft that was used by the Royal Air Force and many other Allied countries throughout the Second World War. The Spitfire continued to be used as a front line fighter and in secondary roles into the 1950s...
, was playing widely in Lisbon cinemas and had starred Howard as Mitchell. The gossip on the streets of Lisbon was that German agents had mistakenly thought Howard was Mitchell and ordered the downing of BOAC Flight-777. Pusey debunked this theory: "But you would have thought someone in German Intelligence would have known that Mitchell had died in 1937, wouldn't you?"
The 2010 biography by Estel Eforgan, Leslie Howard: The Lost Actor examines currently available evidence and concludes that Howard was not a specific target, corroborating the claims by German sources that the shootdown was "an error in judgement".
Legacy of the disaster
The downing of BOAC Flight 777 elicited headlines around the world and there was widespread public grief, especially for the loss of Leslie Howard, who was championed as a martyr. The British government condemned the downing of BOAC Flight 777 as a war crimeWar crime
War crimes are serious violations of the laws applicable in armed conflict giving rise to individual criminal responsibility...
. The public's attention shifted focus as other events occurred. Nonetheless, two authoritative works examined the circumstances of the downing of BOAC Flight 777: in 1957, journalist Ian Colvin's book on the disaster entitled Flight 777: The Mystery of Leslie Howard and in 1984, Howard's son, Ronald Howard
Ronald Howard (British actor)
Ronald Howard was an English actor and writer best known in the U.S. for starring in a weekly Sherlock Holmes television series in 1954. He was the son of actor Leslie Howard.- Life and work :...
, wrote a biography of his father, including an account of his father's death.
In 2003, on the 60th anniversary of the downing of Flight 777, a pair of television documentaries on the subject was released. The BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
series Inside Out produced a significant document, as did the History Channel, which broadcast a documentary entitled: Vanishings! Leslie Howard — Movie Star or Spy? In 2009 the grandson of Ivan Sharp, who lives in Norwich
Norwich
Norwich is a city in England. It is the regional administrative centre and county town of Norfolk. During the 11th century, Norwich was the largest city in England after London, and one of the most important places in the kingdom...
and has the same name as his grandfather, arranged for a memorial plaque for the crew and passengers of BOAC Flight 777 to be dedicated at the Lisbon Airport. On 1 June 2010, a similar plaque, paid for by Mr. Sharp, was unveiled at Whitchurch Airport in Bristol and a brief memorial was held by friends and family of the those killed on the flight. Currently production in 2010 is finishing on the documentary film “Leslie Howard: A Quite Remarkable Life”, which includes commentary on the ill-fated flight and is narrated by Derek Partridge, who at the age of seven gave up his seat on BOAC Flight 777 for Leslie Howard and Alfred T. Chenhalls and later in life, became a television and screen actor.
See also
- Accidents and incidents in aviation
- List of accidents and incidents involving commercial aircraft
External links
- Inside out documentary on BOAC Flight 777
- The History Channel – VANISHINGS: Leslie Howard – Movie Star Or Spy?
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