Last time, we read the most widely accepted version of the shooting down and killing of Hollywood star, Leslie Howard, by eight Luftwaffe Junkers Ju-88 heavy fighters:
Those two outstanding German authors, Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer, though, tell a much blacker story of the destruction of BOAC’s Dakota DC-3 “Ibis” in their recent book “Soldaten”.
………….During the war, the conversations of German POWs were recorded without their knowledge by their British captors. One of two prisoners in a particular prison camp near London had actually been in one of the Ju88s which had shot down Howard’s Flight 777:
His name was Dock and he said:
“Whatever crossed our path was shot down. Once we shot down – there were all sorts of bigwigs in it: seventeen people, a crew of four and fourteen passengers; they came from London. There was a famous English film-star in it too; Leslie Howard. The English radio announced it in the evening.
Those civil aircraft pilots know something about flying! We stood the aircraft on its head, with the fourteen passengers. They must all have hung on the ceiling! (Laughs) It flew at about 3200 meters. Such a silly dog, instead of flying straight ahead when he saw us, he started to take evasive action. Then we got him. Then we let him have it all right! He wanted to get away from us by putting on speed. Then he started to bank. Then first one of us was after him, and then another. All we had to do was to press the button, quietly and calmly. (…..laughs…)……It crashed…. They were all dead. Those fools don’t try to make a forced landing, even if they can see that it’s all up with them.”
The Allies proclaimed the act a war crime, and so too did a large number of neutral countries. After all, the Germans had shot down an aircraft which belonged to a neutral country (the Netherlands).
Not all of the names of the Ju 88 pilots who carried out this war crime have survived the Nazis’ frenzied burning of their own archives and records, but among the guilty men were:
Oberleutnant Albrecht Bellstedt, Staffelführer Oberleutnant Herbert Heintze, Oberfeldwebel Hans Rakow, Leutnant Max Wittmer-Eigenbrot
Bellstedt and Wittmer-Eigenbrot were both killed in the war, the others I have not been able to trace. No more BOAC daytime flights from Lisbon took place until the end of the war.
The flights which did take place were all at night, over a totally different route, completely beyond the range of a Ju-88. The British authorities responded to the DC-3’s failure to arrive by despatching a Short Sunderland GR3 flying boat to look for it. The aircraft, EJ134, was piloted by the brave Australians of 461 Squadron. The crew was James (Jim) Collier Amiss, Wilbur James Dowling, Alfred Eric Fuller, Ray Marston Goode, Albert Lane, Edward Charles Ernest Miles, Harold Arthur Miller, Kenneth McDonald Simpson, Philip Kelvin Turner, Colin Braidwood Walker and Louis Stanley Watson. Here’s a picture of RAAF 461 Squadron, looking for all the world like a flock of gigantic white geese:
The Australians found nothing whatsoever on the surface of the sea, but they did find the very same group of eight Ju88C-6s that the DC-3 had already met, at more or less the very same place where it had met them. Sunderland EJ134 and its crew then won their place in aviation legend. In a prolonged battle, the flying boat lost one engine and its tail turret. Messrs Dowling, Goode, Miller, Simpson and Walker were all injured and poor Ted Miles (27), one of the two side gunners, was killed. They did manage, though, to shoot down three of the eight German fighters. Of the other five, only two made it all the way back to Bordeaux. The other three were never heard of again. Six out of eight shot down. That should teach them not to attack unarmed airliners flying from neutral countries.
Overall, the Germans were very wary, if not simply afraid, of the Sunderland flying boat. It was an extremely heavily armed aircraft and a formidable opponent.
No wonder they called it
“Das Fliegende Schtachelschwein”, the Flying Porcupine”
This phrase has proved particularly useful in all of my many trips to Germany, especially those to Berlin Zoo. And one day, when I ask for a cocktail called “A Flying Porcupine”, the barman will know how to make it!
John Knifton 