This week in the War, 31 May–6 June 1943: Death of Leslie Howard

This week in the war, on 1 June 1943, British actor Leslie Howard died when his plane was shot down over the Bay of Biscay.

Howard was a star of both stage and screen and famous for playing the title role in the film The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) and for playing Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind (1939). He was actively engaged in anti-German propaganda.

Leslie Howard was on board a KLM/BOAC civilian airliner, flying between Britain and Lisbon, in neutral Portugal, when the plane was attacked by a German fighter.

Theories explaining the attack include: (i) the Germans believed that Howard was working for British intelligence and so the Luftwaffe was ordered to intercept his plane, (ii) the Germans believed that Winston Churchill was on board the flight.

The latter theory was supported by Churchill himself who claimed that German agents, who were watching passengers board the plane, had noticed ‘a thickset man smoking a cigar’ [Winston S. Churchill: The Second World War, Abridged One-Volume Edition (Cassell & Company, 1959), page 671].