Layout 8 - Winston Churchill

Above: Always liking to make an entrance,
the Prime Minister seemed quite at home
climbing up and down Commando’s metal
ladder. Here he is alighting in Moscow,
where he would receive a chilly reception
from a Stalin anxious for a second front,
August 1942. Below: Ever ready for a turn
at the wheel (see also pages 10-11), WSC
enjoys a stint as Commando’s pilot.
(Photos courtesy the author.) Right:
Captain Bill Vanderkloot, circa 1942.
MEMORIES OF COMMANDO...
The Prime Minister clambered up the metal ladder
into the black converted bomber along with a dozen officials.
Just after midnight, Commando took off toward a
destination known but to a very few.
Reaching the safety of Gibraltar at dawn, they refueled
and waited for nightfall to make their way toward Cairo.
The Germans had information that an important flight was
heading to Egypt that night. The unarmed bomber would
be an easy target, if they could find her. But Commando
slipped unseen through the night sky and approached the
Nile at dawn.
“It was my practice on these journeys to sit in the copilot’s
seat before sunrise,” Churchill wrote later, “and when
I reached it on this morning of August 4, there in the pale,
glimmering dawn, the endless winding silver ribbon of the
Nile stretched joyously before us. Often had I seen the day
break on the Nile. In war and peace I had traversed by land
or water almost its whole length, except the ‘Dongola
Loop,’ from Lake Victoria to the sea. Never had the glint of
daylight on its waters been so welcome.”
Winston Churchill surprised many when he arrived
personally to review operations and deliver his own brand of
encouragement. This included sacking General Claude
Auchinleck, which he personally regretted, and ultimately
installing General Sir Bernard Montgomery as head of the
British Eighth Army.
A few days later Commando took off again, en route to
Moscow with an additional passenger, Roosevelt’s envoy to
Stalin, Averell Harriman. Churchill, as he wrote, was
bearing unwelcome news: “General Wavell, who had literary
inclinations, summed it all up in a poem. There were several
verses, and the last line of each was, ‘No Second Front in
nineteen forty-two.’ It was like carrying a large lump of ice
to the North Pole.”
Their route took them first to Teheran, to refuel and
pick up two Soviet military guides, who would help them
through Russian air space, which was on constant high
alert. As Churchill stepped from Commando onto Soviet
soil, the event was recorded in worldwide newsreels. Seventy
years later it is hard to imagine how dumbfounded the
world was at a 68-year-old Prime Minister flying more than
6000 miles through enemy-infested airspace, all in secret.
Parting Company
As Christopher Sterling has related, Commando’s crew
flew Churchill and other VIPs to a number of wartime conferences
and meetings. But once they had become minor
celebrities for their exploits, they asked to be reassigned,
because they feared they would attract unwanted attention
to their secret flights.
The crew split up, but continued to fly for Ferry
Command throughout the War. My father was awarded a
CBE for flying Churchill and for setting up air routes across
the Atlantic and the Pacific.
Churchill never forgot Bill Vanderkloot’s contributions.
In 1946 when he visited the United States for his
famous speech at Fulton, Missouri, and speaking engagements
in Virginia and New York, he invited my parents to
join him and Mrs. Churchill for dinner in their suite at the
Waldorf Astoria. Before parting, Churchill gave my father
the personally inscribed photo which I later took to my
sixth grade history class.
The complete story is told in a documentary film I
produced and directed, “Flying in the Secret Sky: The Story
of the RAF Ferry Command,” which has been broadcast on
PBS and distributed by PBS and the National Geographic
Channels (www.flyingthesecretsky.com) and is available on
DVD through amazon.com. ,
FINEST HOUR 148 / 22