The Churchill Series - Nov. 28, 2005

(One of a series of daily posts about the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

Most Churchill Series posts are narratives to which I sometimes add a brief comment.

Today’s post is different: I mean to knock down nonsense some British newspapers are spreading about Churchill.

Example: The Nov. 21 London Daily Telegraph online headlined: Churchill 'had his plane sabotaged to protect code secret.'

If you're not familiar with the British press, the Telegraph in not a London tabloid; it styles itself "a serious newspaper."

The Telegraph begins its Churchill "sabotaged" story:

Winston Churchill told his bodyguard deliberately to sabotage his aircraft to foil a Luftwaffe assassination plot, according to a television documentary.

Churchill's order instructing Walter Thompson, the detective who was his constant companion for 18 years, to immobilise his private aeroplane has remained secret until now.

But the makers of a documentary, Churchill's Bodyguard, believe that they have uncovered new evidence suggesting that Churchill dreamt up the elaborate scheme, because the cracking of the enigma code had provided him with intelligence saying there was to be an attempt on his life.

What new evidence? The Telegraph informs us the program:

is based on newly discovered memoirs written by Thompson recounting Churchill's numerous brushes with death.

So the new evidence is a claim by Thompson that Churchill told him “ to deliberately sabotage his aircraft, etc., etc?”

That’s a reasonable conclusion given how the Telegraph reports, especially it’s “Churchill's order instructing" statement.

But the Telegraph story is really puff-and-powder makeup. Thompson didn't claim that Churchill ordered any sabotage.

For its story, the Telegraph relies on a claim by Thompson's 90 year old son, that his father :

told me he took the rotor from the distributor cap. I have no doubt he did it. Dad knew his engines.''

The Telegraph apparently did not ask Harold Thompson why he is only telling his tale now, just as a 13-part TV series based on his father's memoirs begins its run on British television. Or ask why his father didn't mention the episode in his memoirs.

There's much else the Telegraph doesn't call to readers attention.

For instance, while on the ground at any time during WWII, Churchill's plane would have been heavily guarded. That was especially true in Feb. 1943 in Algiers, where a few weeks before a French leader, Admiral Darlan, had been assassinated(Churchill stayed in what had been Darlan's villa). Anyone tampering with any of the plane’s four engines (it was a converted B-24 Liberator bomber) would have been visible to the guards; and drawn immediate and intense attention.

I think the Telegraph and the documentary producers are hyping. I'm sorry the son's involved.