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Bill Vanderkloot, an unassuming, studious American pilot, caught the attention of the Royal Air Force—and became pilot to England’s most cherished leader in World War II.

When he first attracted the personal attention of the Royal Air Force (RAF) top brass in 1942, American William J. “Bill” Vanderkloot could think of no other reason than he was about to be called on the carpet. When he was driven to a backstreet in an RAF car and told to walk down a dark street to a dimly lighted door and knock, he was sure his days as an RAF ferry pilot were numbered.

However, when a man with a familiar round face, wearing a brightly colored dressing gown and blue velvet slippers initialed “P.M.,” smiled and offered him a scotch and soda, he very much needed a drink. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill simply smiled at his befuddled guest and said, “I understand we are going to Cairo.”
“It took about two minutes to pick up my jaw when it dropped to the floor,” recalled Vanderkloot. “Here was the greatest man in the world, and I was going to be associating with him as his pilot. It’s enough to scare you to death.”

For the next three years, Vanderkloot would become the person Churchill called “my young American pilot.” He captained a big, matte-black, converted Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber, called Commando. In it, he flew across dangerous German-held territory to carry the English leader of the Allied powers to secret meetings in faraway places such as Cairo, Moscow, Casablanca, and Algiers.

Skilled and steady
A native of Lake Bluff, Ill., Vanderkloot was a graduate of the best flight school of its day, the Parks Air College in East St. Louis, Ill. By the time World War II broke out in 1939, he was working as a commercial pilot flying DC-2s and DC-3s.

In the early days of the war, England needed American-built planes. These were shipped across the Atlantic, a three-month journey, because it was considered suicidal to fly them across the North Atlantic. The tempestuous ocean was equaled by its temperamental weather. Few dared to forecast aviation meteorology for the North Atlantic; the techniques of the time were regarded as only slightly more reliable than fortunetelling.

Regardless, the British government in 1940 set up the RAF Ferry Command in Montreal to deliver the big planes via the air. In January 1941, civilian pilot Bill Vanderkloot was recruited at the incredible salary of $1,000 a month—in tax-free dollars.

“You’ve got to remember, at that time, everyone thought Europe was going to fall. Almost all of it had, except England. That’s the reason my father volunteered for Ferry Command,” explained William Vanderkloot Jr. “It was a great risk. If you got shot down, there was no protection for you. That was it. Nothing coming to the family, unlike the military, with pensions and death benefits. It was a big chance for civilian pilots to take.”

Vanderkloot considered himself a pilot patriot, not a warrior. Studious and reserved, he decided that to survive flying over great bodies of water, he had to become an expert celestial navigator. His navigation skills were so renowned that he was tapped to map out several routes to England. He also taught navigation in the training school and later wrote a textbook. It was this skill coupled with superior piloting that brought Vanderkloot to the attention of the RAF.

“He was an excellent pilot, an excellent navigator, and a gentleman. I believe that was the combination that made him the choice to fly Churchill,” Vanderkloot Jr. said.
To those who questioned Churchill about his choice of an American, the great statesman simply replied, “He was the best man for the job.”

Ready—and responsible OR The go-ahead
By July 1942, when Vanderkloot met with Air Chief Marshall Sir Charles Portal, head of the RAF, he already had logged more than a million miles and flown a number of VIPs safely to such far-flung locations as Accra, Asmara, and Fiji.

Vanderkloot answered Portal’s questions on how to fly to Cairo. A main concern for the RAF was dragging the aging Churchill through a number of airfields in Africa where no one dared travel without inoculations. Vanderkloot detailed a trip with one stop-off in Gibraltar. Portal was convinced: Vanderkloot and his crew of one American copilot and three Canadian engineers would fly Churchill.

“The plane and crew were my selection. That was some airplane, the Liberator. A fine airplane, built nicely. And the crew was the best; they knew that airplane inside and out,” Vanderkloot said.

According to The Man Who Flew Churchill (Bruce West, McGraw-Hill, 1975), Churchill often sat in the copilot’s seat, a platform from which he could offer all of the direction and advice of a novice pilot. Once, while puffing away on an enormous cigar, the great man turned to the 26-year-old American and said, “You know what Hitler would do to me if ever he got his hands on me, don’t you, Vanderkloot?”
Vanderkloot nodded.

“But you’re not going to let him do that, are you Captain?” Churchill said, with a twinkle in his eye.

Vanderkloot’s nerves were hardly steadied later when his copilot, Jack Ruggles, said, “This fellow is England, and if we ever dunk him in the drink ... .”

“It was a horrible feeling, the thought of losing Churchill,” Vanderkloot recalled. “I would think, here I am, a civilian, and an American civilian at that, with the safety and the very life of the prime minister of Great Britain in my sweaty hands.”

The Liberator flew alone in the skies with silence and darkness its only protection. “It was a mighty peculiar feeling. There was the prime minister getting into the plane after being escorted every foot of the way from 10 Downing Street to the airport. But when the door slammed shut, all those guards got back in their cars and left! It was now our responsibility,” Vanderkloot said. “You could go crazy thinking about it, so I decided not to think about it, any more than I had to.”

Vanderkloot safely guided the Commando into its first stop, Gibraltar. Churchill later described landing there. “It looked very dangerous ... . One could not see a hundred yards ahead, and we were not flying more than 30 feet above the sea. I asked Vanderkloot if all was all right and I said I hoped he would not hit the Rock of Gibraltar. His answers were not particularly reassuring. ...

“Then suddenly we flew into clear air, and up towered the great precipice of Gibraltar ... and the mountain called Queen of Spain’s Chair. After three hours of flying in the mist, Vanderkloot had been exact. We passed the grim rock face a few hundred yards away, without having to alter course, and made a perfect landing.”

“Bringing Churchill into Gibraltar was like landing on an aircraft carrier,” Vanderkloot said. “The runway was only 5,000 feet, and it wasn’t ours.”

In the quiet hours
It became customary for Churchill to take over the copilot’s seat before dawn. Vanderkloot recalled listening to the great man “talk about things that had happened and things that were going to happen. He spoke fluently about what he would do if such and such might happen, but it never did. He had a great deal of concern about the reaction people would have to his actions and how the war was going. He only talked about himself in [one] respect: in that he liked flying. I let him fly some.”

On the morning of Aug. 4, 1942, Vanderkloot and his celebrity copilot flew into Egypt. Churchill wrote, “There in the pale glimmering dawn, the endless winding silver ribbon of the Nile stretched joyously before us. Often had I seen the day break on the Nile. Never had the glint of daylight on its waters been so welcome to me.” One man must have felt an even greater relief: Churchill’s bodyguard, who supposedly had orders to shoot the prime minister should the plane go down in enemy territory.

Churchill had traveled to Cairo to decide on a new commander for the African campaign, and he appointed Gen. Bernard Montgomery. Next stop: Russia, for the first face-to-face meeting with Soviet Premier Josef Stalin.

 

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