Originally Posted by
lasernigel
Excuse my ignorance or naivety. Re the Comet line, I understand that these brave souls got down to Gibraltar courageously assisted by the French resistance and Spanish sympathisers. But the flight back to England over the Bay of Biscay with occupied France on the starboard side must have been a pretty dangerous flight. Were many of these shot down? What aircraft was the preferred choice?
Nothing to excuse LN - the evaders were driven down to the Embassy at Madrid first (for initial debriefing, clothing, money) in a diplomatic car (reportedly a large Merc!) before onward travel to Gib (where the evaders were stuffed in the boot as they crossed the frontier). Not sure where telegrams home were sent from.
There weren't many sympathisers on the Spanish side - but that's probably because many weren't needed. Paco Iriarte was one notable - he and his Basque family at
Sarobe Farm (at Ergoien, near Oiartzun) were one of the very few (<5) active Comet sympathisers. Paco Jr (he was 7 years old at the time) welcomes us each time we arrive there with the same nourishment as was provided to the wartime evaders - soup, tortillas, spicy sausage and rioja..
For the trip to the UK, air travel was frequently used via anything that was available that had the legs - Catalinas, Sunderlands, Hudson, DC-3s were all used. I'm not aware of any shoot-downs involving Comet evaders. Some evaders returned by surface ship - George Duffee, for example, returned by merchant ship from Seville (I'd not known before that it was a
port)