Artist's impression of G-AGBB |
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| Occurrence summary | |
|---|---|
| Date | 1 June 1943 |
| Type | Attacked by German Junkers Ju 88s, crashed into the sea |
| Site | Bay of Biscay, off the coast of Spain and France |
| Passengers | 13 |
| Crew | 4 |
| Fatalities | 17 |
| Aircraft type | Douglas DC-3-194 |
| Aircraft name | "Ibis" |
| Operator | British Overseas Airways Corporation |
| Tail number | G-AGBB |
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 88s and crashed into the Bay of Biscay, killing 17 "souls on board",[N 1] 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.
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When war broke out in Europe, 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 diplomats, military personnel, VIPs, and anyone else with government approval.[1]
When Germany invaded The Netherlands 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.[2] 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.[2] 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.[1][3] This route had been in service since September 1940 and by June 1943, in over 500 flights, BOAC had carried 4,000 passengers.[4] 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 "Edelvalk" (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).[3]
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".[1]
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 neutrality 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.[1] In 1943, fighting over the area intensified and the RAF and Luftwaffe saw increased losses.[4] This meant increased danger for BOAC aircraft running Lisbon–Whitchurch.
On 15 November 1942, "Ibis", the KLM 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.[3][N 2]
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.[5] 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.[3] Despite these attacks, BOAC continued to fly the Lisbon–Whitchurch route.[6]
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.[5][6] In the afternoon of 9 May 1940, the day before the German invasion of Holland, the DC-3 arrived in Shoreham on a scheduled flight from Amsterdam under captain Quirinus Tepas. After the German invasion the plane and it's crew weren't allowed to return to Holland.[7] On 25 July 1940, the registration number was changed to G-AGBB[6] and the aircraft was camouflaged in the standard brown-green RAF scheme of the time.[2]
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.[8] The crew members fled to Britain during the war and some of them had settled in the Bristol area.[9]
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;[8][9] Wilfrid B. Israel, a prominent Jewish activist working to save Jews from the Holocaust; Francis German Cowlrick; and Gordon Thomas MacLean.[8][10][11][12] 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.[13][N 3]
Flight 777 was full and several people were turned back, including British Squadron Leader Wally Lashbrook.[N 4] 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;[5][14][15] a Catholic priest also left the aircraft after boarding it. To this day the priest's identity remains unknown.[9][N 5]
The most intense intrigue surrounded actor Leslie Howard, 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).[17] 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[5] and that after initial qualms, he received further encouragement from British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden.[5] [N 6] 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.
Another passenger was Wilfrid B. Israel, 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 refugees 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.[10]
The 1 June 1943 British Overseas Airways Corporation flight from Lisbon to Whitchurch was assigned to the "Ibis" and given flight number 777-A.[4] 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.[3] 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.[3][4] At that time, while the DC-3 was roughly 200 miles (320 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.[4]
The following day BOAC released a statement:
The British Overseas Airways Corporation regrets to announce that a civil aircraft on passage between Lisbon and the United Kingdom is overdue and presumed lost. The last message received from the aircraft stated that it was being attacked by an enemy aircraft. The aircraft carried 13 passengers and a crew of four. Next-of-kin have been informed
— The Times[20]
In its 14 June 1943 issue, Time 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."[21]
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.[22]
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.[4]
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;[4] these aircraft belonged to the long-range fighter group known as Gruppe V Kampfgeschwader 40.[5][23] 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.[24]
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";[4] this account of the German pilots and Goss's conclusions are challenged by some authorities.[5]
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.[3][9] In a 2010 interview with the Bristol Evening Post Rosevink stated that he was convinced of the veracity of the German account.[9]
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.[5] [N 7] [N 8]
There are several theories 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.[25]
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.[5]
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.[25] 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.[26] 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.[5] 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.[27]
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."[25] 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.[28]
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 Howard, Leslie's son, 1984), conclude that the Germans were almost certainly out to shoot down the DC-3 in order to kill Howard himself.[29] 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.[30] 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.[29]
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.[26] 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.[29] A 2008 book by Spanish writer José Rey Ximena [31] 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.[32] 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.[32] Further circumstantial background evidence is revealed in Jimmy Burns's 2009 biography of his father, spymaster Tom Burns.[33] 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,[34] 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.[35][N 9]
The theory that Leslie Howard 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".[27] 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",[5] which was a reference to the 1941 film Pimpernel Smith that starred Howard as a professor who rescues victims of Nazi persecution.
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 Few 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?"[1]
The 2010 biography by Estel Eforgan, Leslie Howard: The Lost Actor examines currently available evidence and concludes that Howard was not a specific target,[36] corroborating the claims by German sources that the shootdown was "an error in judgement".[5]
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 crime. 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.[9] 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.[14][15]
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