Myths & Legends of the Second World War

by James Hayward

  He asked to be sent through the lines near Eindhoven to collect evaders he was sure would be hiding with his resistance friends in that area. The relevant Army Group intelligence section had already checked King Kong’s credentials and had reported ‘nothing known against.’ The Dutch army commander agreed to the mission but the head of their counter-espionage section, Colonel Oreste Pinto, sent me a private warning that he believed it possible that King Kong was a German agent, though as yet he had no proof. For King Kong’s subsequent action I must accept responsibility.

  As we have seen, however, those actions are unlikely to have included an effective betrayal of the Arnhem débâcle. An official enquiry exonerated Langley of any blame on the basis of the security clearance issued by 21st Army Group, although it also found that he should have taken Pinto’s warning more seriously. As to how Lindemans had learned anything of Market Garden:

  Exhaustive enquiries were made into the activities of King Kong during the time he was behind Allied lines, and the indications were that he had been in contact with individuals who knew of plans to use the British and American airborne divisions but that he could not possibly have discovered the actual dropping zones.

  Langley also records an intelligence windfall which tends to confirm the account given by Giskes in 1966:

  Months later I was informed that the relevant German intelligence documents had been captured together with one of the officers who had ‘worked’ King Kong. The latter had reported plans for airborne landings but said that the targets were first Eindhoven and later possibly the bridges across the river Maas at Venlo and Roermond. The German officer stated that King Kong was a very minor agent whose task was to identify Allied units in the immediate battle area and they had not believed his report, putting it down to his boastful imagination.

  Imagination is certainly an apposite word when considering the various theories advanced about betrayal at Dieppe and Arnhem.

  12

  Crash Myths and Foo Fighters

  The most enduring crash legend of the Second World War hinges on the mysterious death of the legendary big band leader Glenn Miller, who disappeared en route to Paris in December 1944. Because his loss was unexpected, and the facts so sparse, several colourful theories developed around Miller’s fate, and the case still features in omnibus collections of unsolved aviation mysteries. Like the deaths of Joseph Kennedy Jnr, Leslie Howard and General Wladyslaw Sikorski, also examined in this chapter, speculation and conjecture continue to flourish, providing a field day for fibbers and fantasists alike.

  The events leading up to the disappearance of Major Glenn Miller are a matter of historical record. On the evening of Tuesday 12 December Miller and his band gave their last live performance at the Queensbury All Services Club in London’s Soho, before preparing to leave for a six-week tour of American bases and field hospitals in France. The weather conditions were terrible, with much of England covered by a heavy fog which grounded most flights across the Channel, including the so-called ‘SHAEF Shuttle’ between Paris and Bovingdon airfield in Hertfordshire. Miller managed to obtain a favour from a friend, Lieutenant-Colonel Norman Baessell, who arranged a private flight to Villacoublay in a small Noorduyn Norseman from an airstrip at Twinwood Farm, three miles north of Bedford. The pilot, a Flight Officer John Morgan, omitted to register a flight plan, and took off into freezing fog at 1.55 pm on Friday 15 December 1944, on a journey which should have lasted approximately three hours. However the aircraft never reached its destination, and Miller was not missed for three days, until his band arrived at Orly on the 18th.

  After taking off, Morgan probably flew west, then south to pass west of Greater London, which at the time was a no-fly zone. The likely flight path would have then crossed the Thames and overflown Sussex, before leaving England above Newhaven or Beachy Head and heading out over the Channel towards France. After Miller was reported missing, both SHAEF and the US Air Force checked with every airfield across the United Kingdom and liberated Europe in the week before Christmas, yet no trace of the missing Norseman was found, save for one report of an unidentified light aircraft flying out over the Sussex coast on 15 December. The USAAF concluded that the Norseman iced up in harsh weather and crashed into the sea, although at an Eighth Air Force inquiry held on 20 January 1945 it was noted that had this occurred, the wings should have detached and remained afloat for up to 18 hours. However, even if the occupants had survived the ditching, they would hardly have lasted long in the freezing water. Indeed on 15 December 1945, precisely one year after they had disappeared, Miller, Morgan and Baessell were officially declared dead.

  Long before, wild rumours began to circulate among American personnel that there had been no crash at all, and that Miller had instead been stabbed to death in a bar fight in a Paris brothel, or shot by an American MP during a similar sordid fracas. Other stories put about in the late 1940s included suggestions that Miller was a German spy, or a black marketeer, or a physical or psychological wreck confined to an ex-servicemen’s home, unable to face the world. Later still it was reported that he had been murdered, or disfigured in a fire, or captured by the Germans and executed by the SS. Most of these lurid Miller myths were substantially debunked by his former executive officer, Don Haynes, in a detailed article printed in the special tribute issue of Down Beat magazine in 1951, although some are still resurrected in the press from time to time. An earlier attempt to correct various falsehoods had been made in 1946 by Paul Dudley, formerly programme director for the AEF Band:

  The following facts are listed to belie the fictions of the many rumour-happy gossipers who have erroneously reported the details surrounding Major Miller’s departure. For those whose carelessly flapping tongues have reported that they witnessed Glenn taking off in a twin-engine Douglas C-47, it was actually a single-engine Norseman C-64, an all-metal plane equipped with a one-way radio, fixed landing gear and a reputation for treachery in bad weather. For those badly informed ‘experts’ who claim that Miller was flying without orders, he was proceeding under official order issued by SHAEF (Rear) to travel via Military Aircraft to the Continent on or about December 15th. For the hundreds of others whose adventuresome imaginations have claimed that ‘they were supposed to have been on the same plane’, it was a seven-passenger ship. It was flown by a pilot who had completed a lengthy tour of combat missions, Flight Officer Johnny Morgan.

  In truth the latter ‘fact’ was itself erroneous, for Morgan was simply a ferry pilot and is said to have been inexperienced at instrument flying. Other Miller myths that have emerged over the years include the claim that the Norseman lacked sufficient range to fly to Paris non-stop (easily refuted by its 1,150-mile range at normal cruising speed), and that the lack of wreckage in the Channel indicates the aircraft crashed in England, either in the Chiltern Hills or South Downs. On several occasions wreckage recovered from the sea bed has been heralded as belonging to Miller’s Norseman, including artefacts discovered by a diver off Calais in 1973, and engine parts trawled up by fishing boat off Newhaven four years later.

  A sensationalist article printed in the German tabloid Bild in 1997 claimed that a British diver named Clive Ward had located the remains of the Norseman off Calais in 1985, that there were no signs of human remains, and that the aircraft was undamaged. The same article claimed that a German journalist named Udo Ulfkotte had uncovered evidence that Miller did arrive in Paris on 14 December, but died of a stroke the following day while visiting a brothel. None of these revelations were backed by documentation, but Bild nevertheless managed to construct an elaborate (if highly unlikely) conspiracy theory involving fake crashes and missing bodies, all for the sake of maintaining American morale. Stranger – and sadder – were a series of bizarre claims made by the bandleader’s younger brother Herb Miller, who stated in 1983 that the Norseman had indeed taken off from Twinwood Farm, but had been forced to land after thirty minutes because his brother was too ill to continue the flight. By this version Glenn Miller died
of lung cancer in a military hospital the following day, after which Herb himself fabricated the story of the Channel crash because his brother had wanted to die a hero, rather than bedridden. The US military authorities politely declined to substantiate the tale, and quite why Herb Miller chose to publicise it remains obscure.

  While it is entirely plausible that Miller’s Norseman iced up above the Channel and dropped like a stone, it is equally possible that it was inadvertently brought down by Allied bombers in the bomb jettison zone north-west of Dieppe. The theory was first put forward in 1984 by a former RAF navigator named Fred Shaw who, in December 1944, was on Lancasters with 149 Squadron. According to Shaw, on the afternoon of 15 December his crew were returning as part of a large force from an aborted raid on the German town of Siegen. In accordance with standard practice, the force was obliged to drop their bombs inside the southern jettison zone before returning to base, and did so just after 1.40 pm. During this operation Shaw saw a small aircraft flying far below them, which was tipped over by blast waves from the bombs and plunged into the sea. Although the type was relatively uncommon in Europe, Shaw recognised the aircraft as a Norseman since he had become familiar with the type while training at Manitoba in Canada.

  Shaw’s claim has been the subject of heated debate ever since, but seems to hold up under scrutiny. While Shaw failed to report the incident on returning to base, it is clear that it was discussed amongst 149 Squadron aircrew at the time, and the Norseman would have needed to deviate from its probable course by only eight degrees to enter the eastern edge of the bomb jettison zone. Given that Morgan was an inexperienced instrument flyer, navigating by magnetic compass alone over featureless water, such an error would have been all too easy to make. For many years the story was dismissed on the ground that the returning bomber force reached the zone at 1.40 pm, when Miller was still on the ground at Twinwood Farm. However, this anomaly was explained by aviation historian Roy Nesbit, who pointed out that in 1944 the Americans used local time when writing up records, whereas the RAF used Greenwich Mean Time – precisely one hour different. Shaw passed away in 1992, although in 1999 his logbook was auctioned by Sotheby’s for a staggering £22,000. The true fate of Miller and his aircraft is never likely to be established with absolute certainly. Ice or bombs, however, there remains little real mystery.

  The death of Lieutenant Joseph P. Kennedy Jnr in August 1944 has also given rise to a latter-day conspiracy theory. Although little known in his own right, Kennedy was the eldest son of the former American Ambassador to Britain, also named Joseph, and brother to Teddy, Bobby and Jack Kennedy, the latter becoming the 35th President of the United States before his assassination in Dallas in 1963. In 1944 Joe Kennedy was an experienced combat pilot in the US Naval Reserve, and had volunteered for a hazardous operation known as Project Anvil, in which stripped down B17 and B24 bombers were refitted as radio-controlled flying bombs for use against German submarine and V-weapon bases. On 12 August Kennedy and another pilot took off from Fersfield in Suffolk in a B24 Liberator call-signed Zootsuit Black, laden with twelve tons of Torpex explosive, intended for launch against a V3 target at Mimoyecques near Calais. Once airborne, the two men took their B24 flying bomb up to 2,000 feet, and once over the Blyth estuary near Southwold, prepared to head south towards a point near RAF Manston in Kent, where they would bale out. However at 6.20 pm, when the radio controller in the escorting Ventura aircraft transmitted a test signal to Zootsuit Black, the aircraft was destroyed by two almighty blasts, and the wreckage spread over a mile-wide area.

  Joseph Kennedy and his co-pilot Wilford Willy were killed instantly, and today his death is often cited as the first in a long line of tragedies to befall the hapless Kennedy family. Nevertheless, in 1986 a former Luftwaffe artillery officer named Karl-Heinz Wehn claimed to have captured Joe Kennedy in France on 14 July, a full month before the drone explosion above Suffolk. According to Wehn, who was then serving with a flak battery near Grimbosq, south-west of Caen, his battery hit an American four-engined bomber which then crashed into the sea near Bayeux. Two crew members baled out of the stricken aircraft and landed close to his gun position, where they were captured by men of the 12th Panzer Division. The two men were then questioned by Wehn:

  The first prisoner said his name was Joe Kennedy, First Lieutenant, US Air Force. ‘I didn’t understand at first,’ Wehn recalled, ‘and asked him to repeat this. He did, adding that he was from Hyannisport, near Boston, Massachusetts, USA. When I asked him what he did before the war, he said he helped his father. When I asked him what his father did, he said he was the American Ambassador in London before the war, then owned a shipping company in Boston.’

  Wehn also claimed that the man’s flight overalls carried an identity tag which confirmed his name, rank and number. Later that day, the two Americans were handed over to a detachment of SS troops, and were shot dead while trying to escape across a river. The bodies were supposedly buried on 15 July just outside the churchyard at St-André-sur-Orne. Assuming Wehn was telling the truth, the simplest explanation would be that he encountered another flier named Joe Kennedy, who thought that by claiming to be the son of a prominent American he might make his period in captivity more comfortable. However, no other pilots called Joe Kennedy appear in American military records, let alone in the US Naval Reserve. If Joe Kennedy Jnr really did die in combat in France in July 1944, it is hard to imagine why his death would have been transposed to Project Anvil, and in the final analysis it is hard to conclude otherwise than that Wehn was mistaken. In closing, many American sources cite Kennedy as having died on a combat mission over the English Channel, but this shorthand description is plainly misleading. And although 147 properties in the Blythburgh area sustained some form of damage, postwar American claims that three complete Suffolk villages were obliterated are somewhat exaggerated.

  A B24 Liberator aircraft also features in the mysterious death of General Wladyslaw Sikorski, leader of the Free Polish forces and the Polish government in exile. On the night of 4 July 1943 a heavily laden RAF Liberator took off from the short airstrip on Gibraltar bound for Britain, only to plunge into the sea half a mile offshore, killing Sikorski and everyone else on board except the Czech pilot, Edward Prchal. Despite several official inquiries and reports the cause of the accident was never established, which in turn gave rise to much speculation and rumour. The common thread running through this conjecture was that Sikorski had been assassinated, although whether the plot was British, Russian or German in origin remained the subject of heated debate, particularly in the late 1960s.

  The least likely candidates are the Germans. On 13 April 1943 Berlin radio had announced the discovery of the bodies of some 10,000 Polish officers in a mass grave in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk, and blamed the Russians for the massacre. Moscow countered that the Germans were responsible for the atrocity, but few were convinced. As early as December 1941 Sikorski had pressed Stalin on the fate of 14,000 missing Polish officers, only to be told they had fled to Manchuria. On 26 April 1943 Moscow broke off diplomatic relations with the Free Polish government, and accused Sikorski of colluding with the Nazis over Katyn. Given that a rift of this kind between Allies was a godsend to Berlin, and that Sikorski was a staunch anti-communist, it seems safe to assume Sikorski was more use to the Germans alive than dead.

  Indeed, when Sikorski was killed in July Goebbels’s propaganda machine wasted no time in broadcasting the news across Europe, and claimed the crash had been engineered by the ‘British Secret Service’ because the Free Polish leader had undermined Allied relations with Stalin. German radio also described Sikorski as ‘the last victim of Katyn’ and wondered whether the pilot, Edward Prchal, would feature in a future Honours List. In their book They Spied on England, published in 1958, Charles Wighton and Gunter Peis offered that General Erwin Lahousen, the head of Abwehr II, confirmed that Abwehr agents caused the crash by putting sugar in the Liberator’s fuel tanks. However, Lahousen’s contemporary diaries make no ment
ion of such an operation, and this supposed claim of sabotage seems highly unlikely.

  While pointing no fingers, the idea that Sikorski’s aircraft was sabotaged was also advanced by the controversial historian David Irving in his book Accident: The Death of General Sikorski, published in 1967. This minutely researched volume remains the definitive account of the events surrounding the crash, and revealed that there had been two previous attempts to kill the Polish leader. In March 1942 a bomb was found in the aircraft carrying Sikorski from Prestwick to Canada, en route for a meeting with President Roosevelt, while in November a Lockheed Hudson carrying him from Montreal to Washington suffered sudden engine failure shortly after take-off, resulting in a crash landing. Irving also established that De Gaulle had also been involved in a suspicious near-accident involving a Wellington bomber in April 1943. Even in wartime these circumstances seem highly suspicious. Indeed, Stalin was apparently fond of repeating the German canard that Sikorski was murdered by British intelligence, yet this seems unlikely, if only because two MI6 men named Pinder and Lock were among the victims on board the general’s Liberator.

  In writing his book Irving ‘failed to obtain the close cooperation’ of the pilot Edward Prchal, who was still alive and well and living in the United States. That Prchal declined to cooperate is hardly surprising. The following year a play by Rolf Hochhuth called Soldaten (translated as Soldiers) was staged in London, which implied that Churchill had arranged the death of Sikorski for political motives. Hochhuth claimed he had based his information on the evidence of an anonymous ‘English colonel who had been in charge of the sabotage team’, now living in Switzerland, who had lodged documentary proof of the operation in a Swiss bank vault. The playwright also let it be known that Prchal had been ‘paid a large amount of money to do the job’, in the mistaken belief that he had been fatally stabbed in a bar brawl in Chicago some years earlier. Unsurprisingly, the undead Edward Prchal sued for libel and was awarded substantial damages.