SWEDEN: Offhand Murder

Winging its way across the dark Skagerrak, the big Swedish airliner Gripen was nearing home shores on its run from Aberdeen to Stockholm.

The U.S.-built Douglas transport was perilously close to the German fighter bases on the northern tip of Jutland. Out of a cloud, like a falcon striking at a swan, came a Nazi pursuit ship, the machine-gun muzzles along its black wings blinking like baleful orange-red eyes. The Swedish pilot sobbed a prayer or a curse, threw the wheel over, kicked his rudder pedals, fought to lose altitude and get down near the water without pulling the wings off. The Nazi pilot took his time, turned smoothly to follow the clumsy transport’s evasive action, made another pass, and another. For ten nightmarish minutes the unequal struggle went on. The Gripen almost made land, crashed instead on rocks just off the coast.

One male passenger and the plane’s steward were thrown clear as the tail cracked off; they were rescued. Among the 13 who died were two women and four children: another victim was a U.S. clergyman, the Rev. Dr. T. C. Hume, of the World Council of Churches.*

Six weeks earlier another transport, the Gladen, had been lost in much the same way. Swedish airline officials suspended service to England, planned to ask for guarantees of safe conduct. The Government was expected to issue an official protest. But the Stockholm newspaper Nya Dagligt Allehanda urged the only technique that has ever been known to work with Nazis: get tough and halt the flying of German courier planes over Swedish territory.

* Next day’s Stockholm rumor, that the Germans had been gunning for Anthony Eden on the plane, made no sense; Eden’s arrival in Moscow had been announced to the world four days before the attack.