Issue No 21 THE AVIATION HISTORIAN 23
’BAHD to Montaudran, near Toulouse, where the
airline’s maintenance workshops were located.
Air France hurriedly withdrew it, along with an
Amiot 354 and 370, Farman 2233 and Dewoitine
338, to Toulouse (a Dewoitine 338 and a Bloch 220
went to Vichy) on November 11, 1942, marking
the Ensign’s last flight.
Nevertheless, the Germans quickly managed to
get their hands on it, formally taking the aircraft
on strength in December 1942, the machine
appearing on the list of 1,876 aircraft seized by the
Germans after the invasion of southern France.
Germany’s Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM —
Air Ministry) tasked German airline Lufthansa
with undertaking a study of the Air France fleet
in order to determine what could be used by
the Luftwaffe and/or Lufthansa. The Ensign is
mentioned specifically in a letter from Lufthansa
to the RLM dated March 2, 1943:
“The concerned aircraft is a British airliner of
an obsolete model, requisitioned by the French
in West Africa and restored there. If the German
authorities are not interested in the aircraft,
Lufthansa is very interested in the allocation of
the four Cyclone engines, which it urgently needs
to maintain an adequate stock of spare engines to
keep its fleet of DC-3s operational.”
As a result, the four precious Wright engines
were dismounted and transported to Berlin on
June 1, 1943, and the airframe was abandoned
at Montaudran, where the German authorities
ordered its scrapping on site in December 1943,
deeming the aircraft to be too visible from the air.
An Air France report of May 31, 1944, confirms
that the order had been completed.
Some sources, including Armstrong Whitworth
Aircraft Since 1913 by Oliver Tapper (Putnam,
1973), claim that at least one Ensign was recovered
by the Germans and fitted with Daimler-Benz
engines as a VIP transport. This would have
involved intensive testing in order to satisfy the
RLM. Reportedly used by the Luftwaffe, one was
allegedly seen in Finland, but there the trail ends.
What we do know is that it was definitely not
Enterprise/Nouakchott, which was destroyed on
French territory without flying again. The only
other possibilities are G-ADSZ Elysian, burnt
out at Merville in May 1940 or G-ADSX Ettrick,
damaged at Le Bourget the following month.
Newly discovered photographs taken by German
soldiers at the time clearly show that both were
completely destroyed. The story of a supposed re-
engined Ensign in German service remains,
perhaps disappointingly, just a myth.ABOVE Showing its shapely fuselage to good advantage, the Ensign sits on the ramp beside the hangar at
Marignane, near Marseille, in 1942. That November the Ensign was moved for the final time to Montaudran, near
Toulouse. BELOW Another of the German photographs showing the mangled remains of G-ADSX at Le Bourget.
TAH