LORD ASHCROFT: Did Hitler’s force destroy Flight 777A because they thought Churchill was on board?

It is one of the great enduring mysteries of World War II. Why was Flight 777A, a civilian airliner, shot down by German pilots en route from Portugal to Britain, killing all on board?

On the morning of the fateful flight, June 1, 1943, while Europe was in the midst of the deadliest war it had ever known, civilian aircraft were considered off limits to attack. There was a convention, widely observed by both the Allies and the Axis Powers, to respect the neutrality of civilian aircraft from countries not involved in the hostilities.

Portugal and Spain—both ruled by nationalist dictators who wanted to avoid conflict—had stayed out of the fray, but as usual in all mainland neutral countries, they had become a hotbed of espionage and intrigue. Both sides in the war employed spies in Lisbon. Agents would find ways to review passenger lists and search for names of interest to their paymasters. Could there have been a high-profile target on board – one the Nazis couldn’t safely land in Britain?

Days before the 80th anniversary of the tragedy over the Bay of Biscay in which 13 passengers and four Dutch crew members died, I re-investigated the incident with the help of a relative of one of those killed.

Named after the grandfather he never met, Ivan Sharp has spent more than 30 years researching the tragedy and offers an intriguing insight into what may have happened.

The aircraft was a Douglas DC-3, an American propeller-driven aircraft, chartered by the Dutch airline KLM to the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC). It was part of a service that flew between Portela Airport in Lisbon and a small airport in Whitchurch, near Bristol, delivering mail, newspapers and other goods.

But it was rumored that secret agents, and even escaped POWs, used the same route to get to and from mainland Europe.

The plane, called Ibis, was supposed to leave at 07:30, but was delayed for five minutes because a passenger had to pick up a package at customs.

Whitchurch airfield maintained contact with the aircraft until 10:54 am. About 200 miles northwest of the Spanish coast, the pilot reported that they were being followed and then attacked. Soon after, Ibis crashed into the sea with no survivors.

The following day, BOAC released a brief statement: ‘We are sorry to announce that a civil aircraft in transit between Lisbon and the UK is overdue and presumed lost. The last message received from the aircraft stated that it was attacked by an enemy aircraft. The aircraft was carrying 13 passengers and a crew of four. Relatives have been informed.’

It later emerged that the aircraft had been attacked by eight Junkers Ju 88s. But what had been their motive and who had given the order?

The most famous passenger on the flight that morning — and the person who delayed takeoff to pick up his package — was actor Leslie Howard. The son of a Hungarian Jew, who recently turned 50 and a true film idol, he had made a name for himself playing quintessentially British gentlemen. He starred in pre-war films such as The Scarlet Pimpernel, Pygmalion and Gone With The Wind.

His background had made him vehemently anti-Nazi, and after the outbreak of war, Howard bought himself out of his Hollywood contract so he could return to Britain to play a part in the war effort. Two years earlier, when Howard met Winston Churchill, he shared his outspoken views.

Not only was Howard asked to make propaganda for the Ministry of Information during the war, he also starred in feature films designed to boost morale at home, most notably in “Pimpernel” Smith, as the eponymous character who rescued Jewish refugees of the Nazis, and The First Of The Few, about the designer of the Spitfire.

In May 1943, Howard had made a lecture tour to Spain and Portugal at a time when his wartime work was increasingly irritating Dr. Josef Goebbels, the Nazi Party’s chief propagandist.

The tour also coincided with German efforts to persuade Spanish dictator General Franco to enter the war on the side of the Axis Powers. Hitler especially wanted Spanish troops to attack the British base in Gibraltar and to deprive the Allied navies of access to the Mediterranean.

Was Howard’s “lecturing tour” a smokescreen for a more secretive role in an attempt to get Franco and the Spanish to resist Germany’s diplomatic overtures? Or did Howard even use it as a cover for his role as a real James Bond?

It is highly probable that pro-German agents would have obtained a passenger list showing that Howard was on the flight. News of his death was published in the Times on June 4. But was Howard really the target of the mighty Luftwaffe?

Another intriguing discovery concerns Father AS Holmes, who was on the plane at Lisbon airport, but took off to answer an urgent phone call. Was it luck or something ominous that caused him to miss the flight? The mysterious caller has never been identified. So when the flight took off, there were only 13, not the intended 14, on board – including three women and two children.

One of the 13 was Ivan Sharp, just 41 years old. He is the grandfather and namesake of Ivan Sharp, now 54, a postal worker from Norfolk.

Sharp Jr. still has a copy of the telegram sent to his grandfather’s widow, Minnie, who had two young children at the time. From British Airways’ Passenger Superintendent it says: ‘It is with great regret that I inform you that Mr IH Sharpe [sic] was believed to be traveling in a plane that was lost near England yesterday. It is not yet known if there are survivors. Keep you posted.’

Over the years, the amateur detective has tracked the flight path of the 777A and obtained copies of the flight log and passenger list. Sharp is convinced that his grandfather’s wartime role could have made him a target, or even the target, for the Germans.

“My grandfather was ordered to go to Portugal to buy tungsten – better known as tungsten – which was used in the manufacture of weapons. He often competed with German buyers for the rare metal found in Portugal and Spain, paying for the goods in rough diamonds he brought from Britain.

‘[He] was commonly known as ‘the wolfram man’, but his work was very secretive and even his immediate family didn’t know exactly what he was doing,’ Sharp said.

However, there were other passengers on board who may have been targeted. One of them was Wilfred Israel, a senior member of an Anglo-German Jewish family known to have saved Jews from the Holocaust and with ties to the British government.

Another was Tyrrell Shervington, an executive of the Shell-Mex oil company. Much more important, as the Germans may have discovered, was that he was an intelligence agent – ​​codename Agent ‘H.100′ – in the Iberian Force led by the British Special Operations Executive, the unit created in 1940 to carry out espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance. to be carried out in occupied Europe. But, remarkably, the Nazis’ true prey may have been a lowly taxpayer. Sitting next to Howard was his tax advisor Alfred Chenhalls. The financier was not a man the Germans would usually have taken note of. Other than that – pot-bellied (15st 9lb according to the flight log), balding and smoking cigars – Chenhalls bore more than a passing resemblance to Churchill.

And the prime minister had indeed flown to North Africa at the end of May. Perhaps he was now on his way back to Britain.

Did German agents in Lisbon tip off the Nazis that they thought the British Prime Minister was a passenger? Churchill eventually became aware of the theory and thought it might be true.

In the post-war years, at least four of the eight German pilots who attacked Ibis were interviewed. They claimed to be unaware of the civilian flights between Portugal and the UK and insisted they attacked Ibis by mistake, assuming it was a military aircraft. However, some of those pilots are believed to have made two failed attacks on Ibis in the previous year, and their accounts have been dismissed by experts as attempts to evade war crimes charges.

It has been more than a decade since Ivan Sharp Jnr caused plaques commemorating the 17 dead to be unveiled in Portugal and Britain, close to the two airports.

“I don’t believe we’ll ever know the answer to this war mystery 80 years from now,” he says. He is inclined to believe that the attack was targeted. “It is possible that the German agents received a message saying that it is worth targeting their aircraft because so many important ‘players’ happened to be on board at the same time.”

But even he admits that little is known for certain.

Film critic Barry Norman once wrote that Leslie Howard met a “violent, untimely death which is, and no doubt will be forever, shrouded in mystery.”

Eighty years after the tragedy, we still wonder why the 17 souls of Flight 777A met their end.

Lord Ashcroft KCMG PC is an international businessman, philanthropist, author and pollster. For information visit Lordashcroft. com. For information on his work on bravery, see lordashcroftonbravery.com. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook @Lord Ashcroft.