Commercial Aviation?

Jboldman · #1 (**permalink**) April 16th, 2008, 04:13 PM

Hi, I'm working on a project and wondering if there was still commercial avaition happening during the war. For example, how could someone get from London to Switzerland? Thanks.

PzJgr · #2 (**permalink**) April 16th, 2008, 04:44 PM

Howdy and welcome to the forum Jboldman. In the years prior to World War II, the company developed into one of the world's leading airlines, pioneering routes to the Far East and across the North and South Atlantic, using a large fleet of mostly Dornier, Junkers, Heinkel, Focke-Wulf and other German-designed aircraft. After the outbreak of war in 1939, Lufthansa was only able to maintain service to neutral countries, and suspended service following Germany's defeat in 1945. Early in the war, along with the Italian Transcontinental Airline (Linee Aeree Transcontinentali Italiane, or LATI), the company competed vigorously in South America. There was a Lufthansa service from Lisbon to Buenos Aires using FW200 Condors.

Internationally, Pan Am and Lufthansa were the top two airlines. Swiss Air suspended their scheduled flights on Aug 1940 and resumed after the surrender of Germany

I don't believe there were any Neutral airlines flying into any German held countries. Only way to go form London to Switzerland would be to take a British Airways Ltd (not the current British Airways) service into Lisbon, Portugal and then a train to Switzerland.

Good luck on your project

Lufthansa - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lufthansa <DeutscheLufthansa>
British Airways Ltd. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Jboldman · #3 (**permalink**) April 16th, 2008, 05:19 PM

Train to Switzerland? Wouldn't there be a problem going through Spain and France with Documents?

Za Rodinu · #4 (**permalink**) April 16th, 2008, 05:19 PM

British Airways? Wasn't it BOAC and BEA then? Or British Imperial?

Yes, if you were a British subject you would have to cross into occupied territory or Vichy France, so it was a no-no. You'd need a passport from a Neutral country, like Portugal or Spain.

PzJgr · #5 (**permalink**) April 16th, 2008, 05:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Za Rodinu

British Airways? Wasn't it BOAC and BEA then? Or British Imperial?

Yes, if you were a British subject you would have to cross into occupied territory or Vichy France, so it was a no-no.

It became BOAC after British Airways Ltd.

British Airways Ltd. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

British Airways Ltd was a private airline company operating in Europe formed in 1935. First called Allied British Airways, it was formed in October, 1935 by the merger of Spartan Air Lines and United Airways (no relation to the US carrier United Airlines). It rapidly acquired Hillman's Airways, adopted its definitive name, and transferred its UK base to Heston (Gatwick was not ready). Its corporate emblem was a winged lion.

Initially equipped with a mixture of aircraft including the DH84, DH86A and Spartan Cruisers, the competitive nature of European aviation forced it to look to importing modern aircraft from overseas to maintain its position. Acquiring the Dutch-built Fokker F.XII and German Junkers Ju 52 planes, it rapidly established services to Paris, Lille, Cologne, Amsterdam, Hanover, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Malmö and Stockholm.

It later bought the new all-metal American Lockheed L-10 Electra and extended its routes to Hungary and Poland. Under contract to the Air Ministry, a survey flight was made to Bathurst WA in order to open up a south Atlantic service. A service to Lisbon was started in May 1939; a problem was that Franco would not grant landing rights at Madrid.

British Airways Ltd was not intended to compete with Imperial Airways which flew to far-flung parts of the British Empire, enjoyed state subsidy, and used British-built aircraft, often antiquated. Shortly after the outbreak of World War II, Imperial Airways and British Airways Ltd were merged into a single state-owned national carrier - British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC). British Airways had built up a reputation for efficiency in its short life.

Perhaps British Airways Limited's best-remembered action was that it was on one of the airline's Lockheeds that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain flew to meet Adolf Hitler for the discussions that concluded with the Munich Agreement. Photographs of Chamberlain emerging from his plane at Heston clearly display the "British Airways" logo around the aircraft door.

The British Airways name was to re-appear 35 years later when BOAC was re-merged with its 1946 spin-off, British European Airways.

Here at the beginning of the video clip, you can see "British Airways" stenciled across the top of the door.

YouTube - Chamberlain in Germany WW2

PzJgr · #6 (**permalink**) April 16th, 2008, 05:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jboldman

Train to Switzerland? Wouldn't there be a problem going through Spain and France with Documents?

There was train service between those countries with heavy customs and security as expected

Jboldman · #7 (**permalink**) April 16th, 2008, 05:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PzJgr

There was train service between those countries with heavy customs and security as expected

So I guess I need to refine my question as to how could an Englishman travel between the countries? Or would he need to have a Swiss Passport?

PzJgr · #8 (**permalink**) April 16th, 2008, 07:06 PM

An Englishman would not be able to travel to Switzerland since it involved, as Za noted, traveling through German held/allied territory, even Vichy France.

PzJgr · #9 (**permalink**) April 16th, 2008, 07:10 PM

Maybe this will help:

Switzerland during WWII

Quote:

No European country remained truly neutral during WWII. Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland all worked to some extent with the Axis. In Switzerland, the people who lived through the war wanted to believe that it was their army and fortifications that kept the Nazis out. Historical research and documents clearly show that if the Nazis wanted to invade Switzerland, it would have been quick and relatively easy. The reason Germany spared its tiny neighbor to the south was because Switzerland proved much more useful as an independent state than as a satellite. The Swiss made many useful weapon components (aluminium for the Luftwaffe, spark plugs for jeeps taken from the Russians, timing devices for bombs, among other things), and thus their factories were not bombed every night. The Swiss National bank bought gold from the Reichsbank, the Reichsbank was given Swiss francs in exchange, and used them to buy cobalt, nickel and tungsten from the other “neutral” countries. The Turks, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish, who were all under heavy pressure from the Allies not to accept direct gold payment from the Reichsbank, then exchanged the Swiss francs for gold. The problem was that the German gold came from the Belgian National bank reserves (not from concentration camps as some sensationalists would have it) and the neutrals knew it. Finally, the Swiss allowed trains to carry food and non-weapon supplies from Germany to Italy, with dozens of trains every day on their way to Africa. But did Switzerland have any other choice? Probably not. Totally surrounded by the Axis, most of its coal supply came from Germany every week, and all of its exports had to go through Axis controlled territory. For a landlocked country with no natural resources, this meant the Swiss had to work out some form of accomodation with their neighbors. The problem is that the postwar generations have been raised to believe that it was the Swiss army, and not the country’s usefulness to the Germans, that protected it from the wrath of war. The Swiss are now coming to terms with this part of their history, as for example the people of France and Japan have. As a foreigner, it is best to avoid passing judgment on them and giving lessons, at the risk of offending your hosts.

So pretty much travel to and from Switzerland, whether people or commerce, was dependent on good relations with Germany.

Za Rodinu · #10 (**permalink**) April 16th, 2008, 07:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PzJgr

It became BOAC after British Airways Ltd.

Excellent, thanks

PzJgr · #11 (**permalink**) April 16th, 2008, 07:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Za Rodinu

Excellent, thanks

Did I pass the test

Za Rodinu · #12 (**permalink**) April 17th, 2008, 11:50 AM

domherr · #13 (**permalink**) April 18th, 2008, 09:17 PM

A flight Norway - Germany
44-45
I can confirm with lufthansa.

A German passport greed tierarzt - with the best usgestattet securities.

I hope it helped a little .

LG

Domherr

( ok not the same air line )

macajay · #14 (**permalink**) April 19th, 2008, 12:54 AM

One interesting, and tragic, case of commericial operations during WWII was Flight 777 from Lisbon, Portugal to Whitchurch, England - a regular route at the time.

The flight, a DC3 operated by BOAC but crewed by KLM (it had been evacuated to England at the outbreak of the war), was shot down in June 1943 by German aircraft over the Bay of Biscay.

The regular flight was usually left alone because its civilian nature and Portugal's neutrality. On this case though it was attacked by Luftwaffe Ju88s and crashed, killing all on board including the famous British actor Leslie Howard - who incidentally played Spitfire designer RJ Mitchell in "The First of the Few".

Various theories exist about the flight's fate and you'll find a good hitsory at wikipedia.

Jboldman · #15 (**permalink**) April 21st, 2008, 04:51 AM

Okay, let me see if I can sort this out. An English civilian could quite easily get from England to Lisbon via BOAC. Getting from Lisbon to Switzerland would be a problem. What if the person in question had a Swiss Passport and traveled as a Swiss citizen? Thanks for the info, btw. Just trying to figure how someone was able to get from London to Switzerland in mid 1942....

Za Rodinu · #16 (**permalink**) April 21st, 2008, 12:55 PM

Then possibly the route would be rail from Portugal through Spain, Vichy France then Switzerland, always travelling with no difficulty with your Neutral Country passport, provided you took the time to go to the appropriate embassys to get your visas beforehand.

macajay · #17 (**permalink**) April 22nd, 2008, 11:38 PM

Za Rodino seems to have hit the nail on the head. Most countries maintained full diplomatic relations with Switzerland, Portugal and Spain throughout the war.

In the case of Vichy France, nations including Canada, Australia and the US held full diplomatic relations until at least the end of November 1942 when German forces moved to occupy much of Vichy territory in the south of France.

The key for the British appears to be Canada. Although diplomatic relations between Vichy France and Britain collapsed after the Royal Navy's destruction of the French fleet in Algeria in 1940, Britain encouraged Canada to maintain full diplomatic relations to keep a communication channel open with the French and others.

It would therefore be relatively easy for the British personnel, diplomats, secret service etc - and perhaps civilians - to travel to Lisbon by BOAC, then through neutral Spain, into "neutral" Vichy France and across the Vichy France border with Switzerland, all under Canadian passports supplied by Canada, Britain's Commonwealth territory.

However, there appears to be little commercial aviation involved. It seems Switzerland's only carrier at the time Swissair suspended all commercial flights during WWII, Iberia Airlines of Spain operated at most a domestic service and Air France had relocated to Casablanca in Morroco. The last commercial link between the Allied countries and Europe appears to be BOAC to Lisbon.