Last time we were looking at how the airliner in which Leslie Howard, the film star, was returning to England, was shot down in the Bay of Biscay by the German Luftwaffe, resulting in the deaths of every single person on board, including the children. Here is some of Leslie Howard’s best work, taken from the now controversial “Gone with the Wind” :
Since that first day of June 1943, there have been literally scores of theories put forward as to why Leslie Howard and the rest of the civilian passengers and crew of the DC-3 “Ibis” were all murdered in this callous fashion. Shot down into the waters of the cold Atlantic Ocean, while travelling to England in an aircraft which was unarmed and the property of a neutral country, namely the Netherlands. And this attack was clearly directed at somebody, because the attackers were eight Junkers Heavy Fighters, armed to the teeth and clearly, sent specifically to destroy this inoffensive DC-3 Dakota.
Leslie Howard’s business manager, Alfred Chenhalls was a fat, bald man who loved to smoke cigars and who occasionally drank alcohol in sensible quantities. It was extremely easy to mistake him for Winston Churchill. What do you think ? Did a German spy see Chenhalls get on the plane and immediatelyt telephone the German Embassy in Lisbon?
Which one is this? Churchill or Chenhalls?
And is this the Prime Minister or a party going bon viveur, who liked nothing better than drinking the very best whisky in large quantities?
“Two bottles for each of us, barman !!! “
As we have seen elsewhere, Leslie Howard was not an English landowning gentleman, but a Hungarian Jew. He supposedly resembled Churchill’s bodyguard, Detective Inspector Walter Thompson. Similarly, Detective Inspector Thompson had the air of an archetypal English gentleman, self assured, self confident, upper class and, most of all, slim. Here’s Leslie Howard:
And here’s Walter Thompson, on the right:
There are other theories, of course.
How valid is the theory, though, that Leslie Howard was supposedly the virtual double of Sir Anthony Eden, England’s Foreign Secretary at the time? Here’s Eden at the age of around twenty, as a student at Oxford University……….
There is though, a bit of a giveaway which is tremendously helpful in any “Pick-out-Anthony-Eden” competition. The real Anthony Eden, for his entire adult life, had that stonking great moustache which he fixed into his nostrils at seven o’clock every morning and then didn’t take off until midnight.
And what about the idea, quite widespread at the time apparently, that the Germans thought that Leslie Howard and Reginald Mitchell, designer of the legendary Spitfire, were one and the same man? Leslie Howard we have already seen, and here’s the designer of what began its life as the Supermarine Shrew :
In my mind, the best fit is “Churchill and Thompson v Howard and Chenhalls”. And we must not forget that the only images of Churchill or Leslie Howard seen by most of the attendees of the Dakota’s take-off from London would have been either crudely printed photographs from newspapers or perhaps slightly better quality pictures from magazines. Moving pictures would have been from Howard’s films, or for Churchill , the two minute Pathé News films shown in cinemas during the interval. In other words, confusion was a great deal easier in 1943 than it was in 2023.
It was by no means a completely ridiculous idea, therefore, to suggest that “Churchill–Chenhalls” was on that plane from Lisbon. And for the Germans, it was well worth organising an attempt to shoot down the plane, even if the Prime Minister was supposedly at an important conference in Algiers.
How easy it would have been to alert Berlin, who could then have contacted the fighter base, probably at Mérignac near Bordeaux in southern France, and then telling those eight Junkers Ju88C-6 heavy fighters to take off and intercept the DC-3. Such attacks were in actual fact very rare in the Bay of Biscay, so this particular Luftwaffe operation must surely have been for a specific reason, and for a specific and important target.
And now a whole second level of conspiracy theories swings into action. Perhaps British Intelligence invented the entire story of Churchill’s being on board “Ibis” that day, so that he could fly back home to England in his own private aeroplane, an Avro York. Here’s an excellent short film giving you all the relevant facts about the Avro York, which was basically a different fuselage, set on a pair of Lancaster wings:
There were plenty of people who believed this story that British Intelligence had told the Germans that Churchill was returning to England in the DC-3 that particular day, and that he would be refuelling near Lisbon. In this way, his Avro York would be able to return to London in peace, even if the Dakota finished up in pieces.
And so it goes on, round and round in ever decreasing circles with very little beyond well informed guesswork and random supposition. These are certainly very far from being guaranteed truths.
In 1943, the earliest rumours to surface were that “bon viveur” Alfred Chenhalls had actually been mistaken for Churchill by German agents as he walked out to the plane in Lisbon. Furthermore, this explanation is known to have been the one favoured by Churchill himself. At the same time, though, Churchill was certainly puzzled as to how German intelligence could possibly believe that he, with all the resources of the British Empire’s armed forces and those of the United States at his fingertips, should be reduced to travelling in an unarmed, relatively slow and vulnerable commercial airliner.
John Knifton 
Your fit is certainly the most intriguing
I’m glad you have such faith in me, Derrick! There is quite a long way to go yet though, with a lot of evidence that it was indeed Leslie Howard that the Germans were after rather than Churchill. On the other hand, there were other passengers in that aircraft whose activities also were designed to put paid to the Fuhrer’s plans for a “judenfrei” Europe.
A wait for the next one
I had no idea until you started talking about Howard. Stranger things have happened, but your theory seems a perfect fit.
As I said in my reply to Derrick, I’m pleased that you have such faith in me, but there are a lot of more people on that plane who were involved in activities which harmed Hitler’s Germany, particularly in the area of the production ot steel that had been hardened by the addition of such exotic metals as molybdenum.
Fascinating.
There must be very few events in history with as many possible reasons behind them!
What happened to Glen Miller?
There are about four or five explanations on offer, some of them fairly discredited. I go for a new one, which is mundane enough to be true. He was flying in a Norrduyn Norseman and a note had been sent round all the users of this Canadian aircraft that there was an update needed to the carburettor system, I think it was. Squadron records showed that nobody did it with the aircraft he was in, and I think that it cost all of them their lives.
I also favor your theory that the best fit is “Churchill and Thompson v Howard and Chenhalls.” Whatever the true reason, mistaken identity can have fatal consequences.
The combination you quote was the one favoured the most, and it was the one that Churchill himself favoured.
But don’t forget that we still have the role played by Howard in atacing Fascism, and the activities of the fifteen or so other people in the plane.
The mystery deepens.
Wow, what a great story! I hadn’t heard any of this, beyond casually knowing Leslie Howard was on the list of celebrities who didn’t survive the War.
I might question the point of the plane belonging to a “Neutral” power, the Netherlands had been over-run by Nazi Germany and a government-in-exile continued to function in London and support a War effort. But to the point, shooting down an airliner that departed a neutral airport (Lisbon) is clearly an unusually aggressive act.
Someone sighting and reporting who they thought was Churchill sounds like a perfectly valid theory. Although as you suggested, a number of people on that aircraft might have been interesting in their own way. But it almost reads like the Yamamoto shoot down, except it went all wrong…
The Churchill comment about the chances of him riding such a slow moving, unarmed plane at that date seems right on. Even Yamamoto was in a bomber, with fighter escort.
Don’t forget, though, that there were other people on the plane too who they might well have been after, and that Howard himself was a huge thorn in the flesh of the Third Reich.
There are more posts to come and more ideas to speculate about!
Incidentally I did read in a book about Enigma that the Yamamoto mission was based on a message the British picked up and deciphered. They passed on the news, and after a little hesitation by the Americans, they decided to give it a go. Because Enigma was involved, other explanations had to be provided until the mid-1970s, when Bletchley Park and Enigma were revealed to amazed historians, who had had no idea of its existence.
The likeness between them are quite strong and possibly the cause of such an attack. People like Churchill would have been a major coup for any pilot to claim.
He certainly would! I think that the strongest plank in this argument is the fact that people had no televisions and were not familiar with Churchill as we might be familiar with our politicians today.
Very true John.
As I have said before, I was vaguely aware of the death of Leslie Howard but had assumed it was an accident. Until you told this story I was not aware that it was due to enemy action. I am inclined on the balance of probabilities to favour your explanation.
You still need to wait for all the other considerations, Chris! Hitler and Goebbels hated Howard for his love of democracy, enough to have him murdered. And the other passengers in the plane did some things which were guaranteed to irritate the Fuhrer. One of them orgnised the mass buying of iron ore, something the Germns were always short of. Another conveyed hundreds, if not thousands, of Jews from the Continent to Palestine as it then was.
Many of these activities will be mentioned in future blog posts!
Thank you for sharing a interesting part of history!!.. perhaps because it were a British aircraft, with the possibilities of important people on board, they simply shot the plane down to send a message to Britain and it’s allies… 🙂
Hope all is well and until we meet again…..
Your blessings be more
And nothing but happiness
Come through your door
(Irish Saying)
It could well have been that, but I suppose that when somebody as famous as a film star is murdered, we all want a really important reason for it happening, rather than something trivial. If you stick with me, in the future, you’ll see a good few possible reasons for Howard’s demise…..and that of the other passengers.
These are very plausible possibilities, sir, in keeping with anything W.E.B. Griffin could manufacture. Well done!
Thank you very much, but I’m afraid we shall see that Churchill and Chenhalls are far from being the only possibilities!
Thank you for a fascinating post. About thirty years ago, a relative of a friend was murdered while he was jogging in the morning. Later it was confirmed that it was a case of mistaken identity.
Tragically, such outcomes to violence are by no means uncommon in England either. What a shocking waste of our most precious resource…..life itself.