80th anniversary of loss of HP42 Hannibal
 

It is 80 years since the unexplained loss of HP 42 'Hannibal' on the 1st Mar 1940. The machine was out of Karachi with 4 crew plus 4 px fuelled at Jiwani and reported over Jask on the final leg to Sharjah. It failed to arrive at Sharjah, and wartime restrictions and secrecy aside no cogent information has ever come to light that gives any indication of the fate of Hannibal other than the usual 'lost over the Gulf of Oman'. Jask was a pre war Imperial Airways landing ground so we can assume that position report was correct, although the terrain between the gulf and Sharjah is quite inhospitable in places. Who knows what recues services were available in that area during the war, and where would they start looking, and why did they assume the aircraft was lost over the Gulf and not over land. We are talking about a machine that only claimed a cruise speed of 100mph when new and did not benefit from navigation equipment that could pinpoint a position without visual reference.
Another factor is the cloud of secrecy that still surrounds this incident, and also a lack of information that has surfaced over the years. No tangible wreckage evidence has ever been reported despite this being a substantial machine albeit a metal one with fabric covered wings. One wonders what modern techniques could be implemented to further explore this mystery and are there some documents still lurking in a secure place that could shed more light .

There's plenty available at the National Archives. What secrecy?

Extensive article here.

IMPERIAL AIRWAYS HP42 'Hannibal' flight CW197

secrecy
 

I refer to wartime secrecy. There are lots of wartime incidents that are still coming to light, but in this case nothing new. CW 197 maintains an 'official crash site' in the Gulf, but in 80 years nothing seems to have changed or evidence exposed.

Have you consulted any of the official records?

When I worked in the UAE from 2000 to 2004 I became very interested in the history of aircraft crashes in the Trucial States during WW2. I wrote up those that I could find and, aware of the story of Hannibal, looked into that event as far as I could. Like others before me, I found nothing more than was known already. I and some friends even traced the possible overland course toward Sharjah in the forlorn (but not really serious) hope of finding some trace in fencing of camel enclosures (!). Of course, nothing. I still find the story tantalising. http://www.adias-uae.com/publication...yergarey04.pdf

Laurence

Laurence, you wrote, “Amazingly, this incident is still classified as secret in the UK…”, which raised an eyebrow. Files are public domain at Kew and have been for many years. So to both you and POBJOY: have you consulted these?

Thanks for that Quemerford. That piece is from 2004 and I haven't taken it any further. I can't get to Kew, so maybe it's worth checking to see if there is anything new, but I doubt it.

Laurence

Well there are on-site researchers who will do work for those who cannot attend in person. It's an interesting file, but doesn't show anything other than a tragic accident, which occurred at a challenging time. A great amount of post-accident searching was done, and a thorough investigation came up with entirely plausible conclusions. No conspiracy. Also no evidence of gold (no idea where that came from, but one should never let facts get in the way of a good story).

However there are a number of statements which are incorrect in various recent analyses of the accident, and these seem to have started people off on a search for some kind of 'mystery/cover-up' hypothesis. One, that passengers were off-loaded and replaced. In fact 'AGX had been u/s prior to 1 March and so there was only off-loading based on that situation. Indeed, the aircraft ended up carrying items which had been offloaded from other flights, so nothing unusual in any event. Another, that folks on board were 'VIP' and therefore targets. Well yes, but it was wartime so everyone was a target. Again nothing exceptional there, as the cases of Isoroku Yamamoto and Leslie Howard show.

Also I saw somewhere a statement that searches were only made in maritime areas and this isn't correct either.

And the file was downgraded from Secret in 1949, so that statement hasn't been correct for more than 70 years!

So, just to be clear - nothing, no part of any report concerning the accident is still classified or secret?

Not wanting to teach granny to suck eggs, but do you understand the file classification system? If so then your question contradicts itself.

It's probably evasive/smirmy answers like this that perpetuate any conspiracy theories that may abound with mysteries such as this one.
Any I'm not a granny !

Well it sounds like an explanation is required- no evasion on my part, but your question only served to confuse. Firstly you are confusing National Archives access rights with security classifications. TNA holds a number of files that are defined as "closed " (until xxx). This is usually for diverse reasons like people and/or relatives still being alive all the way to them containing data which might be useful to certain nefarious parties. These files often won't have a security classification - they'll just be 'Open' or 'Closed'.

Your term ‘classified’ merely means that a file has a security classification: it can/could be Unclassified; Official; Secret, Top Secret etc. There is no classification called ‘Classified’ – the term just indicates that a file may fall into one of the categories above. And because ‘Unclassified’ is a classification, it can mean that a classified file has no security restriction and can be accessed.

What does confuse things is that many TNA files DO have security classifications - as was the case with G-AAGX.

So to maybe clarify things, as far as I know, there are no access restrictions on any of the Hannibal files, and the security classifications were removed many years ago (see above). From memory, the security restrictions were removed around the same time (1949) and all files have been open since the 1970s/80s.

I hope this explains things and maybe save people thinking that files at TNA are 'classified' and not accessible. TNA's search engine is very good at simply explaining whether a file is 'open' or'closed', whatever its classification is/was.



Hence, the statement, “classified or Secret” contradicts itself. It’s like asking “is it a bird or a chicken?”.

Quemerford, that is helpful--very helpful. But you were being a little bit over-precise. In ordinary speech, "classified" means having some classification which restricts access, and common understanding would be that "Confidential" would be one such classification, and "Secret" another, more restrictive one. The "or" in the question is to be read in an inclusive sense: "secret, or with any other restrictive classification." This is doubtless not the strict technical usage, but strict technical language is for getting precise jobs done, not for explaining why a question shows that people don't know the technical language, and so don't deserve an answer. The technical situation in which "Unclassified" can be a classification is frankly a bit of a boggler, and reminds me of the problem of the set of all sets that do not contain themselves.

Perhaps my tone is objectionably pedagogic?

Quite true, but still there it is. My point was to help those who might assume that 'classified' (lower case) means they won't be able to access a file.

Blame James Bond. He can probably also carry the can for the non-existent term "over and out".

"Unclassified"
 

I understood that the classification "Unclassified" meant that the material was freely available to all in the service but was not meant to be available to the general public.