Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that can help answer the question.
Query: What type of aircraft was used for BOAC flight 777-A?
BOAC Flight 777-A was a scheduled British Overseas Airways Corporation civilian airline flight from Portela Airport in Lisbon, Portugal to Whitchurch Airport near Bristol, England. On 1 June 1943, the Douglas DC-3 serving the flight was attacked by eight German Junkers Ju 88 fighter planes and crashed into the Bay of Biscay, killing all 17 on board. There were several notable passengers, among them actor Leslie Howard.
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.[5] This meant increased danger for BOAC aircraft flying between Lisbon and Whitchurch.
Howard died in 1943 when flying to Bristol, UK, from Lisbon, Portugal, on KLM Royal Dutch Airlines/BOAC Flight 777. The aircraft, "G-AGBB" a Douglas DC-3, was shot down by "Luftwaffe" Junkers Ju 88C6 maritime fighter aircraft over the Bay of Biscay (in Cedeira, A Coruña). Howard was among the 17 fatalities, including four ex-KLM flight crew.
After the war, actor Raymond Burr said that he was briefly married to Scottish actress Annette Sutherland who was killed on Flight 777. 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."[22]
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's biography of his father.
Although there were still two other KLM DC-3's and one KLM DC-2 in use by BOAC on the same route, only the G-AGBB Ibis was attacked three times.
While the Brabazon's flight tests were being performed, BOAC became increasingly disinterested with the prospects for operating the type. Bristol had been subject to financial hardship, while development of the Proteus engine intended to power the envisioned and improved Brabazon Mark II was proving troublesome. Flight tests of the aircraft itself had revealed some fatigue issues in the inner wingbox area, while the projected operating costs for the Brabazon had been revised upwards as the programme had proceeded. BOAC, being unconvinced of the aircraft's merits, ultimately chose to decline to place any order for the type. Gibb stated of the situation: "the spec wasn't correct for post-war flying. The people who wrote the specs... conceived of an aeroplane with all this comfort, bunks, and a great dining room to eat in. And, of course, come the day, that wasn't what the airlines wanted. They wanted to ram as many passengers as possible into the tube and give 'em lunch on their laps.
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.[33] 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.[34] 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.[7] 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.[35]
After the initial reservations about using Dutch crews were overcome, all-Dutch crews were used, although the flights used BOAC flight numbers and passenger handling. The KLM contingent was housed at BOAC's Whitchurch base.
Aviation accidents and incidents List of accidents and incidents involving commercial aircraft List of airliner shootdown incidents
Originally, five Douglas DC-3s and one Douglas DC-2 airliner 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).[4] In 1939, with war tensions in Europe increasing, KLM had painted their DC-2s and DC-3s bright orange to mark them clearly as civilian aircraft. BOAC repainted the aircraft in camouflage, with British civil markings and red/white/blue stripes like all BOAC aircraft, but without the Union Flag. They were later marked with their Dutch bird names under the cockpit windows. The interiors remained in KLM colours and markings.
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 Churchill himself supported it. In late May 1943, Churchill and Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden travelled to North Africa for a meeting with United States General Dwight D. Eisenhower.[33]
The following day, BOAC released a statement:
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 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.[28]
When war broke out in Europe, the British Air Ministry prohibited private flying and most domestic air services. Imperial Airways and British Airways Ltd, in the process of being merged and nationalised as BOAC, were evacuated from Croydon Aerodrome and Heston Aerodrome to Whitchurch Airport, outside Bristol. After the fall of Norway, and the entry of the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Italy into the war, only neutral Sweden, Ireland, and Portugal remained as European destinations for BOAC (the US was just within range of BOAC's Empire flying boats by refuelling in Newfoundland). Over the UK, civil aircraft were restricted to between 1,000 feet (300m) and 3,000 feet (910m) and could fly only during daylight to ease identification. The British government also restricted flights to diplomats, military personnel, VIPs, and those with government approval.[1]
The aircraft flying the Lisbon–Whitchurch route were left unmolested after 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. The war over the Bay of Biscay, which is north of Spain and off the west coast of France, began to heat up in 1942.
The research of Ben Rosevink, a retired research technician at the University of Bristol, and son of BOAC Flight 777 flight engineer Engbertus Rosevink supplements Hintze's version. In the 1980s, Rosevink tracked down and interviewed three of the German pilots involved in the attack, including the one who fired on BOAC Flight 777.[4][11] In a 2010 interview with the Bristol Evening Post, Rosevink stated that he was convinced of the veracity of the German account.[11]
On 19 April 1943, the aircraft was again attacked at coordinates 46 North, 9 West, by six Bf 110 fighters. Captain Koene Dirk Parmentier evaded the attackers by dropping to 50 feet (15m) above the ocean and then climbing steeply into the clouds.[7] The Ibis again sustained damage to the port aileron, shrapnel to the fuselage, and a punctured fuel tank. A new wingtip was flown to Lisbon to complete repairs.[4] Despite these attacks, KLM and BOAC continued to fly the Lisbon–Whitchurch route.[8]
For several weeks prior to the German invasion of the Netherlands, Dutch airline KLM, operated a direct, over-water, twice-weekly DC-3 service from Amsterdam to Portugal avoiding French, British, and Spanish airspace to connect with the new Pan American flying boat service from the US to Lisbon. When Germany invaded in May 1940, KLM had several airliners en route outside the Netherlands.[2] Some managed to fly to Britain while others stranded east of Italy continued to link British and Dutch territories from Palestine to Indonesia and Australia. The British government interned the Dutch aircraft at Shoreham Airport. After negotiations, the Air Ministry and the Dutch government-in-exile contracted to use the KLM aircraft and crews to replace de Havilland Albatross aircraft on a scheduled service between Britain and Portugal, which BOAC started in June 1940 from Heston Aerodrome.[3][N 1]
The crash was followed in less than a year by two more fatal accidents involving structural failure of Comet aircraft: BOAC Flight 781 and South African Airways Flight 201, after which the entire fleet was grounded until extensive redesign of the type was carried out, leading to the development of the Comet 2 version.
According to this account, eight Junkers Ju 88C-6 heavy fighters (Zerstörer) from the 14th Staffel of the Luftwaffe's main maritime bomber wing, Kampfgeschwader 40, took off from Bordeaux at 10:00 hrs local time to find and escort two U-boats;[5] these aircraft belonged to the long-range fighter group known as Gruppe V Kampfgeschwader 40.[7][31] 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 the fighters continued a general search. At 12:45 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 follows: "A 'grey silhouette' of a plane was spotted from 2,000–3,000metres (6,600–9,800ft) 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)." 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 Hintze, at the head of the remaining six Ju 88s, caught up to the DC-3 and recognised the aircraft as civilian, immediately calling off the attack, but the burning DC-3 was already 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 briefly before sinking. There were no signs of survivors.[32]
On 1 June 1943, the BOAC flight from Lisbon to Whitchurch was assigned to the Ibis and given flight number 777-A.[5] It was originally scheduled to take off at 7:30 am but was delayed when Howard got off to pick up a package that he had left at customs;[4] it departed at 7:35 GMT. Whitchurch received a departure message and continued regular radio contact until 10:54.[4][5] The flight was roughly 200 miles (320km) northwest of the coast of Spain when Whitchurch received a message from wireless operator van Brugge that they were being followed and fired upon at 46°30'N, 009°37'W.[27] Shortly afterwards, the aircraft crashed and sank in the Bay of Biscay.[5]
A documentary film Leslie Howard: The Man Who Gave A Damn (2016),[45] which includes commentary on the ill-fated flight, was 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.[19][20]
Bloody Biscay: The History of V Gruppe/Kampfgeschwader 40 by Christopher H. Goss revealed one of the most detailed versions of the attack. The book states that BOAC Flight 777 was not intentionally targeted and was 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.[5]