The Nazis Got Ashley Wilkes?

It started when the Nazis invaded the low countries in May of 1940.  Several KLM commercial flights were suddenly stranded in foreign airports, unable to return home without flying into an active war zone.  When possible, those planes made their way to England where they were promptly interned by the British government.

 

Prior to the invasion, though England, Germany, and France were at war, regular commercial flights between neutral nations had continued, but after Italy joined the war and the Netherlands were invaded, the only neutral countries in Western Europe were Portugal, Switzerland, Ireland, and Sweden.

 

Eventually, the interned aircraft, along with their crews, were given permission by the Dutch government-in-exile to join BOAC, the British civilian airline service.  (Keeping track of airline names is tough.  British Airways and Imperial Airways combined in 1939 to form British Overseas Airways Corporation, which thirty-five years later combined with three other airlines to create the present-day British Airways.)

 

BOAC was desperate for the aircraft as the Luftwaffe had destroyed much of its fleet during attacks on British airfields.  Flying a motley collection of DC-3, DC-2, and de Havilland Albatross planes, the airline continued to fly regularly scheduled flights to neutral countries, in particular Portugal.  The planes were repainted to indicate they were civilian non-combat planes and restricted to flying during the day and at altitudes less than 3000 feet.

 

Although Portugal was neutral during the war, spies of every country openly operated there, watching each other and filing reports.  One American OSS agent reported “Lisbon was like the movie Casablanca, only twenty-fold more so.”  Portugal was where anyone escaping occupied Europe, be they Jewish refuges or downed Allied pilots, could make their way to safety.

On June 1, 1943, BOAC flight 777 was a DC-3 nicknamed “Ibis” by the KLM crew that still flew her.  She was to take off from Lisbon, fly out to sea to avoid the West coast of France, and then  make her way to Whitchurch, 150 miles north of London.  Even though the flights were usually without incident, on two previous occasions, the DC-3 had been attacked by the Luftwaffe, though on each occasion, the pilot of the DC-3 had taken evasive actions and escaped.  At the beginning of the war, both sides had ignored flights to and from neutral countries in accordance with international law, but by late 1942, the air war over the Bay of Biscay had intensified and the Germans were beginning to ignore the international laws governing neutrality.

On that morning, the plane was carrying Leslie Howard—“Ashley Wilkes” of Gone With the Wind.  Howard was returning to London with his friend and accountant, Alfred T. Chenhalls after a speaking tour through Portugal and Spain.  Also on the plane was Tyrrell Mildmay Shervington, the head of Shell-Mex BP Oil in Lisbon, and ten other passengers, including two small children. 

 

Howard and Chenhalls, who had priority travel orders that had allowed them to bump two passengers from the flight—nanny Dora Rove and her charge, a seven-year-old boy, the son of a British diplomat—were last-minute changes to the flight manifest. 

The plane left at 7:35 AM, established radio contact with Whitchurch, then proceeded northwest while maintaining regular radio contact during the flight.  At 10:54, when the plane was 200 miles off the coast of Spain, the radio operator reported that they were under attack.  Within minutes, the plane crashed into the Bay of Biscay and sank.  It was eventually learned that the slow-moving DC-3 had been attacked by a flight of eight German Ju-88 twin engine fighters.

 

Immediately, several theories emerged to explain the attack on an unarmed civilian aircraft leaving a neutral country and in international airspace.  The most widely publicized was that the Nazis believed that the flight was carrying Winston Churchill, returning from his meeting in Casablanca.  German spies in Lisbon had certainly been ordered to try and locate the British Prime Minister, and had spotted a portly middle-aged man smoking a cigar—a fair description of Chenhalls—boarding the plane.  Churchill stated on several occasions that he believed he was the true target of the attack.

 

A second theory was that Leslie Howard was the target—either because he was a prominent and patriotic Jewish actor who had been drumming up support for the war or the slightly more fantastic claim that Howard was actually a British agent who had been sent to Spain to convince Franco to not enter the war on the side of Germany.  The latter idea, though certainly romantic, has a couple of flaws:  If Franco were going to enter the war, he would have done it in 1940, not wait until the Russians were beginning to make substantial progress against Germany.  In any case, it would not have been necessary to send Howard:  British envoys were already in contact with Franco.

 

Years after the war, it was learned there actually had been a bonafide British agent on board the doomed flight.  Tyrrell Mildmay Shervington, was not only an oil executive, but he was also agent H.100 of the Special Operations Executive's Iberian operations.  Even so, while he might have made an attractive target, there is no evidence that Germany ever broke his cover.

 

The most likely explanation for the attack came from four of the pilots of the squadron of Ju-88 fighters that shot down the plane.  Years after the war, the pilots claimed that they had been sent to escort two U-boats returning to port.  Failing to find the subs, they started a general search and located the gray outline of the DC-3 flying low over the sea, barely discernible in morning haze.  Since the distinctive plane was definitely Allied, they attacked.  Only after the port engine and wing were ablaze did the pilots realize the plane was a civilian passenger flight and broke off the attack.  According to the pilots, three parachutes were seen, but since the chutes were on fire, they failed to open properly. 

 

No one will ever know for sure why the plane was shot down, but there is a little more to the story...a bizarre twist.  Pictured at right is the passenger list.  If you examine it, you will note that it does not include the name of Scottish actress Annette Sutherland and child, the wife and son of actor Raymond Burr (the actor famous for portraying “Perry Mason” in the fifties and sixties). 

Burr on several occasions related the story of his grief-stricken travel to Portugal during the war, hoping in vain to find some trace of his lost family.  It was part of the publicity CBS released while Burr acted in 271 episodes of the legal drama.

 

Annette Sutherland never actually existed, nor did her five-year old son:  both were part of an elaborate cover story invented by Raymond Burr (or possibly by his studio) to help disguise the fact that Burr was a homosexual.  This was, of course, long before the internet, making verification of his claim an almost impossible task for most people.  Burr’s cover story was evidently successful, for the deception was never exposed during his life.

 

One more little tidbit.  You probably don’t remember it, but you have likely seen the British actor Derek Partridge.  He was the guest star in ‘Plato’s Stepchildren’, an episode of the original Star Trek television show.  If you are having trouble remembering it, this was the episode in which Captain Kirk kissed Lieutenant Uhura—the first interracial kiss on American television (and something of a scandal at the time).  If you get a chance to rewatch the show, pay special attention to one of the aliens, Dionyd, played by Partridge.  Though he had a long acting career in England, you will probably remember him from now on as the seven-year-old boy Leslie Howard bumped from the flight that fateful morning in Lisbon.