Howell’s New Year emergency landing in Portugal

On December 31, 1943 Don Howell was the navigator of Lockheed Hudson FK761 on the way from England to Egypt.

Over the Bay of Biscay they were attacked by a Luftwaffe patrol. One of their engines was hit, but they were able to escape and reach Portugal, where they made a emergency landing.

 In 2000 Don came to Portugal and we made a trip to the Grândola area in search for the place where 60 years earlier he and his friends ended their trip to Egypt.

We found witnesses of the event and also the exact place where the Lockheed crash-landed and burned.

I made a couple of images at the location and a friend of mine – Jorge Belo – helped me recording a interview with Don.

Don Howell at the left and the two witnesses of the crash-landing - José and Julio Pereira. The son of one the men is also in the picture. 

The images I collected are not in the best shape, as I used a friend camera that I did not knew how to use. In 2007 from the one hour interview and the pictures I collected I made a 20 minute movie for a English class of the University of the Algarve, where I was studying.

My English is not always the best but I hope everybody understands it. The Portuguese witnesses are not translated, and I’m sorry for that…




Unfortunately Don was not more between us when the movie was finished.

This is also in his memory…

Best regards and a happy New year…
Carlos Guerreiro

Lecture Portugal and the refugees 1940-1942

The video is about 36 minutes long and is a lecture from pelo professor Neill Lochery in UCL Hebrew and jewish Studies.

The refugee invasion that happened in Portugal in the begining of 1940 is the theme of this lecture.

It is interesting and very complete... I thank my friend patrick Gerrassi for calling my attention to this lecture...



Carlos Guerreiro

Good bye Bill

My friend Bill Littlejohn has passed away last November. He is one of the persons I refer in my book and one of the great helpers in this project.

He landed in Lisbon in the end of 1942 and was interned for a time. In 2008 he was invited back to see the book release were he is refered. Unfortunatly he could not come, but he made a video with his son where he tells his story.

Thank you Bill for everything, where ever you are....

Derek Partridge, the accidental survivor

His voice is well known in the movie industry, in television, in documentaries. He also made journalism, presented programs and whatever. In the last decades Derek Partridge was a constant presence in the houses of most of us, and that has only been possible because a famous actor took his place in Flight 777.

Derek Partridge, a well known voice and face. To know him beter you can go to his site were he has a video and tells his story in Flight 777. Click here













When the actor Leslie Howard entered the aircraft with his manager, Alfred Channels, in that morning of June 1, 1943 all seats were taken. Opposite to the door was seven year old Derek Partridge, with his nanny Dora Rowe, that was “escorting” him home, in the UK, and had already crossed the Atlantic Ocean on board of the Portuguese passenger ship “Serpa Pinto”.

“The reason I thought we had been taken off, was because we happened to be sitting opposite the entrance door and I figured we were simply the nearest and easiest to remove. It wasn’t until I met Leslie’s son Ronald (just finishing his book “In Search of my Father”), that I realized it was just a matter of priority and being the least important”, explains Derek Partdridge.

In fact he does not remember much about that day. He knows that he was inside the plane and then had to come out. “I then spent about 5 days in a hotel in Estoril and my only memories are of a beautiful beach, where I found many, exquisitely patterned, tiny sea shells”, refers Derek.

His father had not such delightful moments, especially in the first hours after the shooting of flight 777. Involved in the intelligence world, a specialist in the Middle East, Derek’s Father had suddenly a impossible new mission in front of him: “My father was in MI6 and so was one of the first people to learn of 777 being shot down… he spent 24 hours wondering how to tell my mother, before he received the news that I wasn’t on the flight”.

Five days latter Derek and Dora were back on a plane. “My only memory of the flight back is that - following the Luftwaffe shooting down of Flight 777 - the windows had been covered with several layers of muslin, to prevent lights being seen from outside. It was disappointing, not being able to see anything on my first flight. I had no idea that Flight 777 had been shot down”.

“If it’s a strange feeling knowing that my whole life has only been possible through pure chance… and fate”, concludes Derek, and in fact he might have had a big protecting hand covering his life.

Whit five he was on his way to the United States, send by his family to his aunt in order to be away from England that was under siege and bombardment by the German forces. Two years later – and even before arriving in Lisbon – he almost fell from the ship on the way back.

Derek Partridge with seven years old, the age he returned to Europe from the USA.












“I was talking to a crew member and I was leaning against the rails… unfortunately where I was leaning was where the pilot comes on board and someone had forgotten to close it properly. It opened and I started to fall backwards into the ocean when—fortunately--the crewman grabbed me!”

To know more about Flight 777, click here.

Carlos Guerreiro

Prisoner exchange in Lisbon

A RAF sergeant leaving the train. 

(Século Ilustrado/ Arquivo Histórico de Portimão)

The transports carrying more than 800 Italian and British war prisoners made the activity start at 9 in the morning in the Alcântara Maritime Station, at the Tagus River, Lisbon. It was at that time that the hospital ship “Newfoundland” arrived. It had left the UK and was waiting for two days on the entrance of the Tagus, for news about two trains, coming for Italy, and that should arrive there also.

On the ship were 409 Italian prisoners while on the train travelled 448 British. On the 18 April 1943, Lisbon, under the surveillance of the International Red Cross, was the stage for the exchange of 857 prisoners, mostly sick or incapacitated men.

The newspaper descriptions of the time leave no doubts about the health situation of those expected that morning in Portugal. Between the Italians, a group of 33 officers (two of them chaplains) and 376 sergeants and soldiers, were, as the newspaper “Diário de Lisboa” states, “11 madmen, 84 mental affected and nervous, some with tuberculosis and many mutilated”. They were being accompanied by one team of 135 doctors, nurses and stretch carriers.

The hospital ship “Newfoundland”, that brought the Italian prisoners (on the back) and one of the trains, that brought the British (on the front). 

(Século Ilustrado/ Arquivo Histórico de Portimão)

In the trains, between the British prisoners, were “289 that could not walk, 3 blinds, 2 madmen and 2 seriously wounded, explains the “Século Ilustrado” another Portuguese newspaper. Between them was a General Willis captured by the Italians in North Africa.

The “Newfoundland” was received by the Portuguese authorities, and representatives from the Italian and the German governments. The ambassador from Mussolini in Lisbon made a welcome speech and so did the German representative, in the building of the Portuguese Cod Fish Comission, where the prisoners lunched.

The newspaper “Século Ilustrado” dedicated two pages to the prisoner exchange, in his 4th April 1943 edition. The title is “Portugal, Europe’s Oasis”. 

(Século Ilustrado/ Arquivo Histórico de Portimão)

The first train with British prisoners arrived before mid-day and the other one hour latter. The most serious cases were transported directly to the ship and those “that could walk were sent to different British organizations”, explains the “Século Ilustrado”. The “Diário de Lisboa” is more specific and writes that they went “in busses to the English Club, to the Seamen Institute and the British Repatriation Office, for lunch”.

By the end of the afternoon the Italians were sent to the trains, for home, with a package containing “cognac, vermouth, chocolate, tobacco, soap” and other products offered by the Italian colony in Portugal.

Italian prisoners leaving the “Newfoundland”. 

(Século Ilustrado/ Arquivo Histórico de Portimão)

Another British soldier leaving the train in a stretcher.
(Século Ilustrado/ Arquivo Histórico de Portimão)





The British ex-prisoners, with “sweets and tobacco” offered by the British community, sailed in the “Newfoundland” at 22 hours, ending – as the Diário de Lisboa called it – “one more admirable chapter of the humanitarian action of Portugal and the Red Cross in this war”.

Carlos Guerreiro

RAF men remembered in Sagres, Portugal

Two RAF sergeants were remembered on the 9th April “Combatant day” in Sagres, Portugal, where they are buried after their Catalina exploded in the air.

Sergeants Orton and Gibson were members of a Catalina that – as local witnesses remembered a couple of years ago – almost crashed in the small village. In the last minute the aircraft gained some altitude, was able to climb a cliff, but suddenly exploded over the water. Only these two men were recovered from the entire crew (if you want to know more about this event click here).

It was on this day that in 1918 the Portuguese positions in Flanders were overrun by overwhelming German forces loosing thousands of men as prisoners, killed or missing. Since that date Portugal pays homage to all his combatants one this day.

Besides the two RAF men the ceremony also paid homage to five local soldiers that lost their lives in two wars that involved Portugal during the 20th century.

Carlos Sequeira e José Joaquim Abelum died on World War I, in the 9th and in the 12th April 1918. Both were members of the 1st Infantry Regiment, that curiously was at the cemetery as Guard of Honor.

Henrique José de Freitas (1962), Joaquim Pereira Dias Leite e Joaquim António Conceição (both in 1966) died during the portuguese colonial war that killed thousands of men during the sixties and the beginning of the 70’s. Angola, Mozambique, East Timor, Guinea and parts of India were part of the Portuguese empire until 1974.

About one hundred persons were at the cemetery paying homage to these combatants.

The British Consul in Portimão, Clive Jewell, and Major Oliveira pay homage to the Portuguese soldiers that fall in the two wars.

Local veterans put flowers on the graves of the two RAF airmen. Sargeant Correia and the local presidente of the veteran association, Bernardino Martins (on the back), prepare do pay homage to those men.

Major Oliveira (1st Infantry Regiment) pays homage to the RAF Sargeants.

The British Consul in Portimão pays tribute to the two RAF men. Standing beside him is the local Mayor (Sagres belongs to Vila do Bispo), Adelino Soares.

Guard of honour

The graves from RAF sergeants Orton and Gibson.

The first “escape”

The tugboat left the Leixões Harbour under the cover of the night e, about four miles from the Portuguese coast, she waited. The meeting – that she didn’t want to miss – had been arranged between two and four in the morning.

On board were 13 passengers. Eleven were Royal Air Force (RAF) men expecting that they could finally reach home. That dawn of 26 march 1941 should be the last moments from one operation that involved diplomacy, secret services, people with no name and a planning… in the Portuguese way: few resources, but lots of good will.

It had begun one month before. The night from 14 to 15 February turned the country upside down. A violent cyclone destroyed cultures, houses, ships and many other things. More than one hundred persons died and the wounded largely surpassed half thousand…

It was one the biggest natural tragedies that hit the country in the last century.
Caught by this phenomenon was also one Sunderland aircraft from the RAF, destined to Africa.

The Sunderland in Setúbal, Portugal (Picture Olinda Couceiro)

They had started just before midnight near Plymouth, expecting weak winds. About five in the morning the aircraft was being violently shacked. “The navigator, Jack Banfield, decided to measure the wind velocity and we could not believe the readings that showed wind speeds above 90 miles per hour”, explained Roy Booth, one of the crewmembers in 2001 in a interview to Neil Owen, involved in telling the stories of the men and aircraft that went through Oban - his hometown – during WWII.

There where winds that sometimes blew at more than 150 miles per hour and it was impossible to stay airborne. They had to land also because flying against the wind they had almost finished the gas reserves.

A fast look at the maps showed that Portugal was the nearest place they could reach.
“The waves were 30 feet high and the pilot “Shorty” Evison made a real miracle landing the plane. We thought that the best he would achieve would be a landfall before the inevitable crash in the weather conditions”, explained Roy Booth that had a vivid image from the pilot’s face after the landing, when he “emerged from the cockpit, tears streaming from his face from the nervous tension”.

The big mess

The aircraft beached approximately midday, but they would not receive any help the rest of the day or during the night, because of the storm that was tearing the country apart. Only on the next morning they would be taken to Setúbal.

They were the first allied crew to land in Portugal. The “Laws of War”, although not very clear, suggested the possibility that they could be interned for the duration of the war. It seems although that the Portuguese authorities were never very interested in that.

Several British documents assure that they were lightly guarded. It was almost one invitation to evasion, but it found many obstacles on the way. The letters changed between several british services show a puzzling scenario.

The secret services proposed a rescue operation using the fact that the crew – already in Figueira da Foz – was lightly guarded. They would be transported by car to one of the ships that patrolled the Portuguese coast.

They even suggest that the operation should take place in the Algarve, a more deserted area when we talk about boat traffic.

The British Embassy in Lisbon does not disagree, but does not want to know anything about the operation. They fear the reaction of Salazar – Portuguese ruler and also a fascist – and the implications in the relationship with the Portuguese government. If they know nothing they would not need to lie latter.

The Foreign Office does not want any operation to take place. They don’t even want to make a official request to free them. It would open a precedent that could be used latter in other neutral countries by the enemy.

There is also a note pointing out that it was not advisable to involve any national in the operation, but it would be a Portuguese officer to take care of everything.

A help request

Major António Dias Leite, from the Portuguese Aeronáutica Militar (army air arm), was known to be one enthusiast “of the allied cause”, so he was not surprised to receive one invitation from the British Embassy for a cocktail. Between the persons at the party was someone he knew from somewhere, but he could not locate where.

That man went over and talked to him. It was Squadron Leader Lombard, commander of 95 Squadron, to wish the Sunderland belonged, and one of the internees himself, as he had been a passenger on the flight.

The crew from the Sunderland in the house of Dr. Augusto Cunha in Aveiro. Ten members of the crew are in the back- I was not able to identify them. In the front, on the left, is the owner of the house, his mother and S/Ldr Lombard. On the right is Major Dias Leite and Olinda Couceiro. (Picture Olinda Couceiro)

They had met in 1938 in one RAF advanced instructor course in the United Kingdom. Lombard asked him to find a way out.

A German crew from a FW200 that had landed in Alentejo had already escaped through the Spanish border. That was not a solution for them as Spain was not a friend of the british.

Dias Leite understood the problem but he explained him that he couldn’t do much. He was just a Major in the Aeronáutica Militar. They talked a little, but nothing further was discussed. A few days later he was contacted again by Embassy people. He decided to try something…

In a four page document, preserved by the family of Dias Leite, he recount’s some of the details. He contacted “Someone” (the capital letter is so in the original) to explain the problem. It was certainly “Someone” high ranked in the government, because he got a green light for the operation under some rules: the authorities would look to the other side, but if something went wrong the Major had to assume all responsibilities.

Dias Leite agreed. He contacted some friends that had boats and they prepared a plan. One of the British ships based in Gibraltar would guarantee a “rendezvous” with the Portuguese.

The evasion

Some days before the date the airmen escaped from Figueira da Foz to Aveiro. In his interview Roy Booth reports a car chase and shootings conducted by local Gestapo members.

António Dias Leite on the other hand assures that everything went as planned and the men arrived in groups to the house of a friendly doctor, Augusto da Cunha.
“My uncle warned my mother and my grandmother that some British airmen would arrive, but that nobody could know about it. My grandmother was appalled when he told her that the Germans would cut our throats if this became public”, explains Olinda Couceiro laughing, niece from the house owner.

Olinda Couceira remembers many stories related with the presence of those men in the house, especially the fact that fear was always present. “The backer started to make questions, because suddenly we were buying bread for more eleven persons, and there was also someone playing the piano”.

On the evening of the 25 March the group went to Leixões and during the night they jumped into the tugboat. Besides the eleven RAF men, Dias Leite and Augusto da Cunha were also on board.

Around four in the morning one British ship enlighten himself right in front of the tugboat. The first “escape” – a word used many times in documents and newspapers of the time – had taken place.

This ceremonial dagger was offered to Major Dias Leite by one of the crewmembers.

(Picture Maria Leite)

There was still time for a glass of Port Wine. One unlucky bottle fell into the floor and broke itself. A “big loss” everybody agreed, although the times they were living.

This route would be used by dozens of other airmen in the following years. Dias Leite assures that about 300 “escaped” this way.

The daughter, Maria Leite, still keeps some objects the airmen left behind as thank you gifts. Dias Leite also met one of those men latter when, after the war, the Queen of England visited Portugal.


(I thank the cooperation of Neil Owen, Maria Dias Leite and Olinda Couceiro)

Carlos Guerreiro

Proud saviours from the “Sines”

By Carlos Guerreiro

The picture was published on the 23 March edition of the Portuguese newspaper “Século Ilustrado”, with some other pictures and a very simple note: “The crew from the steamer Sines that saved 71 shipwreked men from one American ship torpedoed in the Atlantic”.

It was a small note in a conflict that brought to the Portuguese ports hundreds of shipwrecked men from all nationalities. It was not by chance that, already in April 1940, a delegation of the “British Seaman Institute”, was created in Lisbon, in order to support those arrived in the Lisbon port but also, and especially, to support those that came to Portugal, brought by different kinds of ships, after seeing their own sunk.

In fact the 71 men saved by the Sines never arrived in Lisbon, as they were delivered in the port of Horta (Azores), one island much nearer from the place where they were torpedoed by the German submarine U-172, about 450 miles west from the islands.

They belonged to the “Keystone” a 5.5 Ton ship that was part of a convoy with 45 ships (named UGS-6) that started from the USA (on 12 March) on the way to Gibraltar (Arrived on 19 March).

The “Keystone” was the first victim of this convoy from a U-boat pack that was patrolling the area in the vicinity of the Azores. The ship had problems from the start in the engine room and, after a while, he was alone, away from the rest of the ships. When the first torpedo hit her –at 22.28 hours of the 13th – she was already 50 miles behind.

The first explosion killed two of the crew and left the ship incapacitated. After the rest of the men left, the “Keystone” was hit by another torpedo that broke her in two.

She would not be the only victim of this confrontation. Between 13 and 18 March the U-Boats would claim three more ships and damage another, continually escaping the eight American destroyers that were escorting the convoy.

The crew of the “Sines” found the survivors seven hours after the sinking and made their duty as seamen, taking them on board.

They would not be the first or the only Portuguese crew to do it during the war… but they certainly deserve the proud look in the picture.

To know more about convoy UGS-6 click here.

To know more about the “Keystone” click here.

Sources: www.uboat.net / Século Ilustrado - Arquivo Municipal de Portimão / War Diaries 1942-1945 – NARA – Footnote.com

A few questions to Robert Wilson

By Carlos Guerreiro

(Pictures from Robert Wilson oficial site)

Robert Wilson is a British author living in Portugal for many years. At this moment he lives in Redondo, a small village in Alentejo, and it is there that his latest books have been written. From the ten he already published two are related with Portugal: “A SMALL DEATH IN LISBON” (1999) and “THE COMPANY OF STRANGERS” (2001). Both of them center one important part of their action in the Portuguese WWII era, and that is the reason for a couple of questions to the author.

In the center of this conversation is specially the first book that focus on the badly known “wolfram war”, that only in the last years has been better revealed even in Portugal. Also this is one of the most important books from Wilson as he received the “1999 CWA Gold Dagger” award the “2003 International Deutsche Krimi Prize”.

Land in Portugal: Part of the action of the books you wrote about Portugal is taking place in the WWII period. Why have you choose that era and subject?

Robert Wilson: I had written four books set in Africa, and at that time Africa was not a very popular place for people to read about.

When I finished those books I was already living in Portugal for ten years. I thought: people knew more about Portugal; they felt more identified with the country, so maybe I should write something about it.

As I was already living here for a couple of years, I felt more comfortable writing about the place. I knew something about the people and the language.

It was then just a question to find the right subject. These were the 1990’s and I was reading a lot about Nazi Gold in the newspapers. I believed that maybe there could be a story for me related with the way it was coming from Germany, trough Spain, into Portugal and then mysteriously ending up in South America.

But as I thought more about it, gold did not looked such one exciting subject, strangely enough. My wife was doing some research with me in London and I told her to cross-reference gold and Portugal, and see what would come out.

She came back, very quickly, and told me that the gold was coming into the country during the period of Salazar, during WWII, because of wolfram.

What is Wolfram? - I asked, and she answered: “I don’t know”.

We found out that wolfram was tungsten, and when Hitler invaded Russia he cut himself off from the biggest supply of wolfram in the world that is China. That meant that – because he was fighting a particular kind of war, a tank war – it demanded lots of hardened steel, and the way you harden steel is using the alloy tungsten, so he had to find one alternative supply.

There was a little bit in Sweden – only about 300 tons - and most of it was in Portugal. At that time there were probably around 3000 tons in the country. So I thought here was one interesting possibility…

Land in Portugal: You searched and talked with Portuguese people trying to understand what was happening at the time. What’s the image you have of the country in the forties?

Robert Wilson: In England people write diaries and they keep records all the time, of what is happening. There are personal accounts and that sort of things. In Portugal this was the time of Salazar and people were afraid and so they didn’t keep that kind of accounts. That was the most difficult thing, finding information about what was happening.

When I went up to Fundão, for example, I met one journalist there and I asked for some newspapers from the 1940’s for research. He told me he could give them to me, but it would help me much because of the censorship of the time.

It was necessary to find people that had been around at that time. Meeting one or two people was enough to have one impression of what was going on: entire villages in Alentejo were just leaving their fields and coming up to the Beira, because a rock of Wolfram was worth a month’s money. There was this fever that went through Portugal. Suddenly there was a chance for everybody to make their fortune.

Land in Portugal: When you start digging into this period you get contradictory information. This was a fascist country with a big control over the population. But on this particular period it looks as if there was a loose of that control. It was at least a strange period.

Robert Wilson: That was certainly the first impression I had.

You see that there were centers of control, like Lisbon. You felt that that the city was under control. I remember some research I was making on people commenting the noise that people were making every night, at nine o’clock. It sounded like gunshots. But when asked you were told you that people were only allowed to beat their carpets at night. You realize that this was a very controlled society.

But in Beira suddenly there was not such control.

You also had lots of influences there. You had British there. You had Germans there. You had Portuguese and Spanish business people there.

There was also lots of smuggling going on also.

In the area there was not such control and there was money, and money makes people do things that they ordinarily would not do.

I remember trying to decide, just looking at a map, where the smuggling would have taken place. To me, looking, it looked that the Serra da Malcata, would be a good place for that to happen. I went up there and I verified that there is still smuggling going on there. Not Wolfram, but cigarettes.

They dump the cigarettes of the coast near Aveiro and then they are transporting trough that place…

Land in Portugal: What has surprised you more in your research?

Robert Wilson: It was surprising to me and I was very impressed by Salazar. He had a very difficult game to play.

He was between the Allies and the Axis. They were both applying pressure on him. The Axis was threatening him, basically saying we will cause trouble for you, we will attack your shipping, unless you do as you are told.

The Allies were saying we have the longest peace treaty ever, since 1386, so let’s be friends.

What Salazar did was just play this careful game. He tried to satisfy both sides, and in doing so, he made a tremendous amount of money ob Wolfram.

That was probably the most surprising thing. Salazar came out of WWII as a success story, and I did not expected that. He was a fascist, a great supporter and admirer of Mussolini. I thought he would have been tarnished with that association. But I don’t think he was. He came out of WWII looking very good. 

Oficial synopsis from "A small death in Lisbon"

1941. Berlin. Klaus Felsen, businessman and chancer, is drafted into the SS for a special entrepreneurial mission to Portugal. Reluctant to leave his successful, comfortable life in Berlin, the SS shows him he has no choice. And so he arrives in Lisbon and the strangest party in history, where Nazis and Allies, refugees and entrepreneurs dance to the strains of opportunism and despair. Felsen's war takes him to mines in the moutainous north where a brutal battle is being fought for an alloy vital to Hitler's blitzkrieg. There he meets the man who makes the first turn of the wheel of greed and revenge, which rolls through to the century's end.
Late 1990s. Lisbon. Inspector Zé Coelho, a widower with a young daughter, is investigating the murder of a troubled teenage girl. As he digs deeper into all levels of Lisbon society he overturns the dark soil of history and unearths old bones. The 1974 revolution has left some injustices of Salazar's fascist regime unresolved. But there's and older, greater injustice, for which this small death in Lisbon is horrific compensation, and in his final push for the truth Zé must face the most chilling of opposition.

Oficial synopsis  from "The company of strangers"

Lisbon 1944. In the torrid summer heat the streets of the Portuguese capital seethe with spies and informers while the endgame of the Intelligence war is silently being fought.
Andrea Aspinall, mathematician and spy, enters this sophisticated, dangerous world as a secretary for an oil company. She stays in the magnificent mansion of a sinister Irish businessman above the casino in Estoril.
Karl Voss, military attaché to the German Legation, arrives from the Eastern front on a secret mission to rescue Germany from complete annihilation.
In the lethal tranquillity of this corrupted paradise the two meet and attempt to find love in a world where no-one can be believed.
After a night of terrible violence, Andrea is left with a lifelong addiction to the clandestine world that takes her from the understated brutality of Salazar's fascist regime, to the paranoia of Cold War Berlin, where she is forced to make the final and the hardest choice.  

You can find the oficial site from Robert Wilson here 

Lisbon… International mail office

It is well known that Portugal was, during WWII, a door to get in and out of Europe. Many cases related with refugees or spies are often remembered, and truth is that Lisbon was a base used by both sides in conflict for many different things.

Many of the so called parcels from the Red Cross that were delivered to the allied prisoners passed through Lisbon. They arrived on ships from the USA and from Britain and were delivered in this country to the International Red Cross (IRC), that would take them by train to the prisoner camps. This parcels usually had food, candies and cigarettes between other things. Also the mail between the prisoners and their families used channels that crossed Lisbon and other neutral countries.

So it no news that Portugal was a big mail office to the allied forces.

 

The Dornier DO 18. About 170 of this aircraft were produced.

The German flight magazine “Flieger Revue”, from last March, brings more information that ads more importance to Lisbon and Portugal on those days: the Germans also tried to establish a “post office” to ling their prisoners – many sent to the USA – to the mother country.

One article signed by Hand-Heiri Satpfer states that it was already known that IRC, with the headquarters in Geneva, had explored this possibility. New is the fact that recently discovered documents in the Swiss archives reveal a slightly different story.

It were the Germans that made the proposition to the IRC and not the contrary. And it was a very concrete approach, as the German regime were ready to offer two DO 18 so that the IRC could cross the Atlantic.

The contact was made in the Spring of 1943 with the objective to deliver food and mail to 250 thousand German prisoner soldiers and some more thousands civilian internees.

In the end of 1942 the Germans had suffered the first defeats on the hands of the western powers. First Montgomery had sustained and defeated the Africa Corps in El Alemein. Soon after, in November, British and American forces landed in the Moroccan and Argelian coast.

In the beginning of 1943 about 130 thousand Germans were imprisoned by the western allies. In the Spring, with the total defeat of the axis forces in North Africa, that number grew to a quarter of million men.

The allied had already decided to take those prisoners to a place where they could be easy to keep and there were no possibilities for them to cause problems. Reason enough to transport them to the USA. The US had about 155 main camps and 511 secondary camps for German prisoners in 44 of the American states.

German prisoners in 1944

(Picture Nara)














With no other way to make mail and other things reach those men – the allied would never make direct negotiations – the nazi regime searched for another option. It was on thos occasion that the Luftwaffe put the two DO 18 planes at the disposal of the organization.

They had the “Werknummer’s” 866 and 869. They would be painted with the colors of the IRC and would be based in the Tagus River, in Lisbon. The voyage would include stop in the Azores for refueling, as it already happened with the Clippers that connected the Portuguese capital with New York.

Hans Stapfer reveals some curious information’s ,although. Even with the refueling operation it would be difficult for such one airplane to complete the voyage between the two coasts. A little stronger contrary wind would immediately jeopardize the three crew members of the plane.

The installation of a reserve tank would reduce the transport capability of the aircraft. Besides the volume of the tank that had to be mounted inside the fuselage, you had also to count the weight of that extra fuel. The calculation points out that about 50 thousand letters had to be kept behind so you could install all those extras.

Problems that were never discussed. For reasons unknown to the author the process never went a step further and the Lisbon Axis Mail post was never created either.

The Dorniers DO 18 would return to the Luftwaffe and the final destiny of the two planes is not known.

Certain is the fact that by May 1945, when V day arrived, there were about half a million German prisoners in the USA…

The story from the SS Quanza

Portugal, and especially Lisbon, was during WWII one of the safe ports where tens of thousands of refugees found one open door to get to the United States and other countries. It is still difficult today to know how many refugees – most of them Jews, but not only – crossed the border to Portugal in those years.

Here is a small video that talks about the fate of some 317 of them. They Left Lisbon hoping to find a new future and suddenly – some – were faced with the possibility of having to return to Portugal after being so near the Promised Land…



This is just one of thousand stories related with refugees in Portugal in those years….

First moments of the Brit's in Lagens Airfield, Azores

After a book that tells the story about the B-17 Fortress in the Azores, nothing better than see a cine-report from the “British Pathé”, made on the first days after the arrival of the Allied forces in the island. You can see the arrival of the engineers and other forces and also the landing of a B-17 (it looks made for this Forum). The film was released on 23 December 1943…

AZORES - FIRST PICTURES

To see other precious images you can click on the homepage from “British Pathé”

WWII in Portugal is on-line

From now on the site about the men and aircraft that landed or crashed in Portugal is on-line.
Be welcomed to visit


www.landinportugal.org

This blog will, from now on, bring the news about the updates and other material related with WWII in Portugal. The language used will be English. There a portuguese version of it in


www.aterrememportugal.blogspot.com

Compliments
Carlos Guerreiro