Among
documents disclosed by David Irving for
his libel action against Hungarian born
Gitta Sereny is this five page
typescript memoir by the former
governor of Gibraltar,
Lieutenant-General Sir Noel
Mason-Macfarlane, on the events of July
4, 1943. He wrote it on
July 18, 1945, as Mr Churchill, now his
enemy,
dined in
Potsdam with
Stalin.
Mr Irving discovered it among the
general's family papers in Scotland in
1966. | Plaintiff's
Discovery | 1858 |
Illustrations
provided by and © FPP Website 1998
| 18.7.45.The
morning of the fateful day on which Sikorsky
[sic] met his tragic end dawned in an
atmosphere of pure comedy. As has so often been
the case and probably without being itself aware
of what it had done, the Foreign Office was
responsible. General
Sikorsky, with several members of his staff,
were staying with me in The Convent on their way
back from the Middle East, and were not due to
leave for England until late that night. They
occupied all the guest accommodation in the
house. In
spite of the fact that Russia and Poland had
broken off diplomatic relations, I received a
message late on the previous evening telling me
that Mr. Maisky would be arriving at Gibraltar
by air in the early morning, on his way to
Moscow, and asking me to extend to him my
hospitality. In
the normal course of events, Mr. Maisky's
aircraft would not have left Gibraltar for
Algiers until about 3 p.m. The difficulty of the
situation was all too obvious and I did a quick
think as to how to meet it! A
certain amount of subterfuge was obviously
necessary, and I arranged with my A.O.C. that
Maisky's aircraft should leave for Algiers at 11
a.m. on the grounds that bad weather was
anticipated at Algiers later in the day. I then
explained the whole situation to General
Sikorsky and asked him to arrange that he and
all his Party remained in bed until 11 a.m. I
cleared out of my own set of rooms at the far
end of the house, and after meeting Mr. Maisky
at about 7 a.m., installed him in these rooms
and breakfasted with him there. During
breakfast, a messenger arrived from the Air
Force to say that Mr Maisky would have to
proceed on his voyage at 11, and without any
untoward incidence occurring, I saw him off with
considerable relief at that hour, returning to
the house to find Sikorsky and the Poles rising
from their beds in considerable
amusement. I
heard later that when Maisky was told in Cairo
that Sikorsky had been killed taking off from
Gibraltar late that night, his only comment was
"That is really most interesting. It explains
why Macfarlane was in such a frightful hurry to
get me off the Rock." Sikorsky's
last day in Gibraltar was a busy one!
He |  Picture: The submerged
wreckage of the RAF Liberator bomber in which
Sikorski died (from David Irving:
ACCIDENT). -
2 -inspected
quite a large contingent of Polish escapees who
looked very smart in their battledress, and
after lunch, accompanied by Sir James Greig, who
was also on his way home from the Middle East, I
took him for a tour of the Rock's defences and
of other tunneling work done since
1940. We
had a very cheerful dinner, during which four
pipers from the Royal Scots played their way
round the dining room in customary
fashion. We
all set out for the aerodrome in very good
spirits at about 10 p.m., and found Sikorsky's
Liberator all ready for him, with engines nicely
warmed up. We saw the whole party on board,
including Brigadier Whiteley, M.P., and Col.
Victor Cazelet, M.P. In the last board was
Sikorsky's daughter, booking extremely
attractive in battledress with a Polish
cap. I
knew the pilot -- a Czech named Perzl
[sic] -- quite well, having flown with
him on two or three previous occasions and while
the second pilot was finishing warming up the
engines and doing preliminary cockpit checks, I
had at least 5 minutes talk with him outside the
aircraft. He was absolutely normal, and in fact,
the best type of prewar civilian airline pilot,
which we had always known him to be. Finally,
he climbed aboard and while he taxied to the
Western end of the runway, Simpson, my A.O.C. ,
and I walked down to the edge of the runway to
give them a parting wave as they went by. Having
turned his aircraft at the end of the runway,
the pilot again reved up each of his engines in
turn and then started his take off run. The
runway was 1800 yards long and he took off
easily with at least 500 yards in hand. In fact,
by the time he was over the eastern end of the
runway, he had reached an altitude of at least 2
-- 300 ft. It
was a pitch dark night and the searchlights with
which the whole aerodrome area was normally
illuminated all night had been switched off, as
was always the case during the take off of a
machine , so as to avoid glare interfering with
the pilot. In effect, by the time she reached
the end of the runway, all that we could see
of |
-
3 -the
aircraft was her navigation lights. We were just
turning away saying to ourselves "well there's
another valuable cargo safely on its way" when
we suddenly noticed the navigation lights
ceasing to rise and start slowly to descend.
Simpson and I both made the same remark: anyone
could tell that it is Perzl who is flying that
aircraft, as, after gaining a little height he
always put his nose down to get up rather more
speed before starting his initial climb to
cruising height. We waited a moment expecting to
see the lights start to rise again. But they
never did! In fact, the aircraft flew on a level
keel and apparently in perfect shape straight
into the sea at an angle of about 10�, and hit
the water with a sickening crash about 3/4 mile
from the shore. A split second before she hit
the water, the pilot cut out his engines, which
had apparently been running
perfectly. The
next few minutes was a period during which I
have seldom felt so helpless. Owing to the
exposed nature of the coast, it was not possible
to keep any air-sea rescue craft on the east
side of the Rock, except for one small dinghy,
which was quickly manned and started to pull out
to the wreck, part of which remained floating in
the light of the searchlights which had come on
at once after the crash for several minutes. We
knew that it would take the high-speed launch at
least 5 or 6 minutes to reach the scene of the
wreck from their moorings in the harbour on the
west side of the Rock, and there was simply
nothing to be done, except wait. Before the
first high-speed launch reached the scene, what
was left of the wreck had all sunk out of sight.
Within a very few minutes, the first h.s.l.
started back, and I drove down at once to the
waterport to discover what they had found. They
had three bodies on board, Sikorsky, and his
Chief of Staff, Klemnizky [sic], and the
pilot. The first two were dead and had both
suffered head injuries which must have resulted
in instantaneous death. The pilot was still
breathing and he was rushed off to
hospital. During
that night and in the course of the following
days, the bodies of all who had been in the
aircraft were recovered, with the exception of
four; Sikorsky's daughter, and secretary, and
two of the crew were never found. Eighteen
bodies in all were recovered, and |
-
4 -in
every case, as in the case of Sikorsky and his
Chief of Staff, they had obviously been killed
by the impact of the crash. A
very searching Court of Enquiry was held into
the whole affair. The pilot, who was little more
than badly knocked out, except for a cut face
and one broken bone in his right arm, was soon
able to give evidence, and stuck stoutly to his
story that, having, as was his habit, put his
nose down to gain speed, when he tried to pull
back the stick and start his climb, the stick
somehow became stuck and would not move, and he
thus flew straight into the sea. We recovered
all the aircraft which was lying in only about
25 ft. of water, and in spite of detailed
investigations by experts of every description,
we were unable to determine how or why the
joystick could have become stuck. The aircraft
was definitely not overloaded, and we
experimented with other similar aircraft by
loading baggage in every conceivable position,
but it was clear that any hold up in the
joystick or its mechanism could not possibly
have occurred through badly packed baggage
shifting. The Court of Enquiry finally arrived
at the conclusion that the accident was to all
intents and purposes inexplicable, and ruled out
any possibility of sabotage as the machine had a
Commando and R.A.F. guard on her during the
whole stay on Gibraltar aerodrome, while
Sikorsky was on the Rock. There
was one very extraordinary fact. The pilot, like
nearly all pilots, had his idiosyncrasies, and
he never, under any circumstances, wore his mae
west, either taking off or landing. He had his
mae west hung over the back of his seat where it
would be handy, if required. He stoutly
maintained in evidence that he had not departed
from his usual practice, and that when he
started his take off run, he was not wearing his
mae west. The fact remains that when he was
picked up out of the water he was found to be
not only wearing his mae west, but every tape
and fastening had been properly put on and done
up. Personally,
I am reasonably convinced that the accident was
definitely one which falls into the category of
the human element. Although when I said
'goodbye' to Perzl just before he climbed aboard
he appeared absolutely normal, I think that he
must have had some form of mental abhoration
[sic] which led him, for the first time
in years, to |
-
5 -put
on his mae west. I think that this mental
abhoration [sic] ceased while he was
actually taking off , but that it came on again
almost at once, that in the darkness he lost his
horizon. and that in fact he flew the aircraft
inexorably straight into the sea without
realising what he was doing until the very last
second when it was too late to do anything
except switch off his engines. All this is
further corroborated by the fact that, when the
aircraft hit the water, the undercarriage was
still down and locked in the 'down' position,
whereas, normally, any pilot would pull up his
undercarriage within a matter of seconds of
becoming airborne. Many of us on the Rock
indulged in a great deal of thought and
speculation regarding how such an inexplicable
crash should have occurred, and all those whose
judgement I value, including my A.O.C. finally
agreed with me that the disaster was clearly due
either to an error of judgement, or, more
likely, a temporary blackout on the part of the
pilot. |
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