BOAC Flight 777

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" 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.

Historical background

BOAC flights

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.

KLM pilots and aircraft

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. 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. 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). 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.

Flight details

Aircraft and crew

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. The crew members fled to Britain during the war and some of them had settled in the Bristol area.

Passenger list

was the most notable of the 17 crew and passengers aboard BOAC Flight 777.]] 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; 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. 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

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.

German pilots' account

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. 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";

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 the British Secret Intelligence Service in order to mask Churchill's travel itinerary. 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.

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."

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 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. 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. 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, 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, Conchita Montenegro. 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.

Assassination of Leslie Howard, the propaganda figure

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". 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 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. 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

References

;Notes ;Citations ;Bibliography

Burns, Jimmy. Papa Spy: Love, Faith and Betrayal in Wartime Spain. London: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2009. ISBN 978-0747595205.

Churchill, Winston S. The Hinge of Fate. New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 1950.

Churchill, Winston. Memoirs of the Second World War: An Abridgement of the Six Volumes of the Second World War. New York: Houghton Mifflin Books, 1991. ISBN 0-395-59968-7.

Colvin Ian. Admiral Canaris: Chief of Intelligence. London: Colvin Press, 2007. ISBN 978-1406758214.

Colvin Ian. Flight 777: The Mystery Of Leslie Howard. London: Evans Brothers, 1957.

Eforgan, Estel. Leslie Howard: The Lost Actor. London: Vallentine Mitchell Publishers, 2010. ISBN 978-0-85303-941-9.

Goss, Chris. Bloody Biscay: The Story of the Luftwaffe's Only Long Range Maritime Fighter Unit, V Gruppe/Kampfgeschwader 40, and Its Adversaries 1942-1944. London: Crécy Publishing, 2001. ISBN 0-947554-87-4.

Hill, Ona L. Raymond Burr: A Film, Radio and Television Biography. New York: Hill McFarland & Company, 1999. ISBN 0-7864-0833-2.

Howard, Leslie Ruth. A Quite Remarkable Father: A Biography of Leslie Howard. New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1959.

Howard, Ronald. In Search of My Father: A Portrait of Leslie Howard. London: St. Martin's Press, 1984. ISBN 0-312-41161-8.

Macdonald, Bill. The True Intrepid: Sir William Stephenson and the Unknown Agents. Vancouver, BC: Raincoast Books 2002, ISBN 1-55192-418-8.

Rey Ximena, José. El Vuolo de Ibis [The Flight of the Ibis] (in Spanish). Madrid: Facta Ediciones SL, 2008. ISBN 978-8493487515.

Rosevink, Ben and Lt Col Herbert Hintze. "Flight 777." FlyPast, Issue #120, July 1991.

Southall, Ivan. They Shall Not Pass Unseen. London: Angus and Robertson, 1956.

Stevenson, William. A Man Called Intrepid: The Incredible WWII Narrative of the Hero Whose Spy Network and Secret Diplomacy Changed the Course of History. Guilford, Delaware: Lyons Press, 1976, reissued in 2000. ISBN 1-58574-154-X.

Verrier, Anthony. Assassination in Algiers: Churchill, Roosevelt, De Gaulle, and the Murder of Admiral Darlan. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1st edition, 1991. ISBN 978-0393028287.

External links

Inside out documentary on BOAC Flight 777

The History Channel – VANISHINGS: Leslie Howard – Movie Star Or Spy?

Category:Airliner shootdowns Category:Individual aircraft of World War II Category:Aviation accidents and incidents in France Category:Aviation accidents and incidents in Spain Category:Aviation accidents and incidents in 1943 Category:Accidents and incidents involving the Douglas DC-3 Flight 777 Category:BOAC accidents and incidents