Originally Posted by
BEagle
On the 60th anniversary of his death she investigated the shooting down of the Ibis, one of the small fleet of Dakotas based at Whitchurch airfield in Bristol that made regular flights to neutral Portugal. It was the so called spy-flight. On 1 June 1943 Leslie Howard was on board the Ibis, a Dakota aeroplane, rmaking the return journey from Portugal. He was well known for his part in Gone with the Wind and had just starred with David Niven in The First of the Few, the story of the Spitfire.
Howard was noted for his anti-Nazi broadcasts and had gone to Portugal to fight the spread of fascism. The Dakota was heading back to Whitchurch on the outskirts of Bristol.
Since then, conspiracy theories have grown. Were the Germans determined to stop Howard's anti Nazi broadcasts? Did they think there was a spy on board the Ibis? Or, even, did they believe Churchill was one of the passengers?
Leslie Howard also made the film 'Pimpernel Smith', an update of his role in 'The Scarlet Pimpernel', whereby he helped people escape from the NAZIs instead of from French revolutionaries.
By making the NAZIs look fools, he would have been extremely unpopular with them to say the least, so they could have been targetting him.