16. Both the Luftwaffe and the Royal Air Force scrambled to intercept Churchill’s airplane
During the flight from Bermuda, Kelly-Rogers’s navigation left something to be desired. Or perhaps it was Churchill’s piloting. For approximately twenty minutes of the return flight, Churchill took the controls of the airplane. At least, that is what he later claimed. A photograph exists which shows Churchill seated in the left-hand pilot’s seat, cigar clenched in his mouth, the wheel clenched in his hands. Churchill himself later declared the decision to return home by air, rather than aboard Duke of York, to have been rash. Considering the others of his party, he wrote, “I thought perhaps I had done a rash thing in that there were too many eggs in one basket”. As the plane drew closer to England, it appeared on German radar at the port of Brest, where an important submarine base and naval installation stood.
German Luftwaffe fighters were scrambled to intercept the airplane, though the Germans had no idea it was carrying Winston Churchill and several highly-ranked British officials. Regardless, the fighters failed to find the airplane before running short of fuel and returning to base. The aircraft flew on, maintaining radio silence. Churchill later wrote that in addition to the Germans, six Royal Air Force Hurricane fighters also scrambled to intercept the flying boat, and they too failed to spot the large aircraft. Given the state of the British radar and command and control system, which had contributed so much to the success of the RAF in the Battle of Britain, this seems unlikely. Shortly before ten o’clock in the morning of January 17, 1942, and after an eighteen-hour flight, Berwick landed in Plymouth. Winston Churchill’s American adventure had come to an end. He would have more as the war went on.
