In his six-volume memoir of World War II Sir Winston Churchill delineated a number of instances in which World War Two could easily have swung in favor of the axis powers. But in every case, it seems that Divine Providence somehow intervened. One such story begins on Sunday evening, December 7, 1941. Churchill was at Chequers, the country retreat for British prime ministers, like Camp David is for American presidents. His butler informed him that the Japanese had just bombed Pearl Harbor.
Churchill immediately went to his office and asked that a call be placed to President Roosevelt. Two minutes later Roosevelt came on the line.
“Mr. President, what’s this about Japan?”
“It’s quite true. They have attacked us at Pearl Harbor. We are all in the same boat now.”
“This certainly simplifies things. God be with you.”
At that moment Churchill knew that with America at England’s side, they would win the war. He recalled a remark from his friend Edward Grey. “The United States is like a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it, there is no limit to the power it can generate.”
On December 12 Churchill and a number of his war advisors sailed for America aboard the new British battleship HMS Duke of York. On December 22 he arrived in Washington, where he and his advisors met with President Roosevelt and his advisors to hash out a joint strategy for winning the war. Much to Churchill’s pleasure, it was agreed that Germany, being the most dangerous of the three axis powers, had to be defeated first.
From the White House balcony on Christmas Eve, Roosevelt and Churchill made brief speeches and wished a Merry Christmas to a huge throng of Americans that had gathered. Then on December 26 Churchill addressed a joint session of congress. That evening in the White House he suffered a mild heart attack, which was kept secret.
On December 28 he traveled by train to Ottawa to meet with the Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King. He returned to Washington on New Year’s Eve, where he continued planning the prosecution of the war with President Roosevelt and other allied nations. On January 6 he flew to Palm Beach, Florida for a rest. Then on January 12 he returned to Washington to finalize the plans.
Finally, on January 14 he flew from Norfolk, Virginia aboard a British owned four engine Boeing 314 Clipper flying boat called Berwick to the British naval base in Bermuda. There HMS Duke of York and several escorting destroyers were waiting to take him home.
The Boeing 314s were the wonder of the day, with a range of some 3,685 miles at a cruising speed of 188mph. When fully loaded they weighed close to forty tons and could comfortably carry up to seventy-two passengers.
On the flight to Bermuda Churchill befriended the pilot, Captain John Cecil Kelly-Rogers, “who seemed a man of high quality and experience.” Churchill was allowed to assume the controls of the giant aircraft and made a couple of slightly banked turns. So impressed was he with the plane that he asked, “What about flying from Bermuda to England? Can she carry enough petrol?”
“Of course, we can do it,” Captain Kelly answered. “The present weather forecast would give a forty-miles an hour wind behind us.”
“How far is it?”
“About thirty-five hundred miles.”
After considerable debate with his military advisors, Churchill decided to take the flying boat to England. There were pressing matters at home that needed his attention. It was also feared that German U-boats might be aware that Churchill was heading home via the Duke of York andmight “gun for the ship.” On January 15 he set off for England from Bermuda.
“There is no doubt about the comfort of these great flying-boats,” wrote Churchill. “I had a good broad bed in the bridal suite at the stern, with large windows on either side. It was quite a long walk, thirty or forty feet, downhill through the various compartments to the saloon and dining room, where nothing was lacking in food or drink. The motion was smooth, the vibration not unpleasant, and we passed an agreeable afternoon and had a merry dinner…. Darkness had fallen and all the reports were good. We were now flying through dense mist at about seven thousand feet….I went to bed and slept soundly for several hours.”
Just before dawn Churchill awakened and went to the cockpit. Beneath the plane was an almost unbroken floor of clouds. Above was the same. After an hour of sitting in the co-pilot’s seat he began to sense anxiety around him. The Scilly Islands should have been spotted by then, through some of the breaks in the clouds. The cloud ceiling above had only given the crew one opportunity to navigate on the north star. It was feared that they had veered slightly off course. Air Chief Marshall Sir Charles Portal, who was accompanying Churchill on the flight, had a discussion with Captain Kelly. Suddenly he announced, “We are going to turn north at once.”
“After another half-hour in and out of the clouds we sighted England, and soon arrived over Plymouth, where, avoiding the balloons, which were all shining, we landed comfortably.”
As Churchill left the aircraft Captain Kelly told him, “I never felt so much relieved in my life as when I landed you safely in the harbor.”
Sometime later Churchill learned that they had come within five minutes of the German anti-aircraft batteries at Brest, France. At 7,000 feet, the huge aircraft would have been an easy target. But the correction that was made brought Berwick in from the southeast instead of the southwest, from the direction of German occupied northern France, making it appear hostile.
Six Hurricane fighters had been scrambled to shoot down the intruder. “However, they failed in their mission,” wrote Churchill. Thus, by a fortuitous course correction and an equally fortuitous failure by British fighter command, or Divine intervention, England was spared the loss of its irreplaceable leader and several high-ranking military officers.
Addendum to the story:
That the Germans were “gunning” for Winston Churchill throughout the war, there can be no doubt. On June 3, 1943 he flew home to England from a conference in Algiers, via Gibraltar. The Germans knew that he had been in Algiers, but did not know his route or method of returning home.
During the war regular commercial airline service between Lisbon, Portugal and London, England continued. The Germans had never before interfered with this service. Portugal at the time was a neutral country. The Germans did not wish to add Portugal to the list of nations opposing them.
But shortly after the Algiers conference German agents at a Lisbon airfield spotted a cigar smoking man who resembled Churchill boarding one of the commercial planes. A Luftwaffe fighter was sent out to shoot it down. The mission was accomplished and thirteen people aboard the plane perished. The cigar smoking man was not Winston Churchill. But one of the thirteen victims was the famous British actor Leslie Howard, best known to Americans as the man who portrayed Ashley Wilkes in the 1939 film Gone with the Wind.
