Was George Beurling Murdered?
Was George Beurling, Canada’s highest scoring World War II fighter ace, murdered?
I believe he was and I set out to prove it. I checked my trap lines in Ottawa, Washington, London, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Montreal, Old Chelsea in Quebec, South Woodslee in Ontario, New York, and Rome.
I spoke with Syd Shulemson, Canada’s most decorated Jewish fighter pilot and the man who recruited Beurling to fly for Israel. I spoke with Israeli air attachés in various embassies. I spoke with Eddy Kaplansky who flew with the RCAF in WWII and the nascent Israeli air force. I spoke with fellow Spitfire pilots, Jerry Billing and Robert Hyndman. I spoke with and e-mailed former British Member of Parliament (MP) and espionage writer Nigel West and, last but not least, I was in contact with General Meir Amit, a former head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency. None had conclusive proof that Beurling’s plane had been sabotaged, because any forensic evidence had been destroyed in a crash so hot it melted the plane’s metal frame.
Months later, I received a single sheet of notepaper in a plain brown envelope. There was no signature. It was postmarked Tel Aviv. The mysterious communication re-ignited and added to the mystery surrounding the death of Canada’s greatest fighter ace.
On the morning of 20 May, Beurling and Cohen had taken off from Rome’s Urbe airfield to test Norseman NC79822. Witnesses reported seeing flames coming from its engine as it returned to land and, as it touched down, there was a thunderous explosion. It proved impossible for would-be rescuers to get near to the blazing wreck and both Beurling and Cohen perished in the flames.
Was it a simple accident, as suggested? Was it Arab sabotage, as rumoured?
There remains a further possibility. A Haganah (Jewish military group) operative in Rome suggested later that a British agent had been responsible for the crash. He claimed that the agent had been briefed to do whatever he could to prevent planes and volunteers from reaching Palestine. The Haganah agent added that, following the crash, the British agent was kidnapped and summarily executed. If correct, the agent had obviously exceeded his mandate but the truth will probably never be known.
I suspect the letter was from former Mossad chief, General Meir Amit.
The “official accident investigation” was actually an investigation by the Rome police. It was over in eight days. It concluded that the “fire was due to a backfire caused by the engulfment of the carburetor.” We may never know if Beurling’s plane was sabotaged.
A 2003 reprint of a minor classic of war in the air, Canada’s Fighting Pilots, adds a new dimension to the 1948 death of Canada’s greatest World War II ace. The book was written in 1965 by late CBC newsman, Ed Cosgrove. In it, Cosgrove maintains that Beurling died in Rome in the flaming wreckage of a surplus Canadian-built Norseman he was ferrying to Israel. Beurling and his co-pilot, Leonard Cohen, another World War II fighter pilot, were practising touch-and-go takeoffs and landings at Urbe airport. Just after the awkward Norseman took off, it staggered. Witnesses saw flames shooting along the belly of the plane and heard the engine cut out. Veteran pilots will tell you that a cardinal rule of flying is that, in the event of engine failure, the pilot should use what little flying speed he has to glide straight in. An attempt to bank results in a loss of power and altitude.
George Beurling broke the rule. He tried to turn the aircraft around and return to the field. Ed Cosgrove and Brik Billing believe he sacrificed his life because the doomed plane was headed straight for heavily populated tenement buildings. Others think his control cables may have been burned up.
The Norseman stalled and dropped like a stone. When rescue crew arrived on the scene the metal from the plane was running along the ground like mercury. The bodies of George Beurling and Leonard Cohen were charred beyond recognition.
Syd Shulemson, who lives in Montreal, is highly decorated (the Distinguished Service Order and a Distinguished Flying Cross, flying Beaufighters and Mosquitoes). He is convinced that Beurling’s plane was sabotaged. For one thing, he maintains that both pilots were far too experienced to have attempted to bank a stalled, burning aircraft. Shulemson was also unaware that Beurling’s flight path was on a heading with a densely populated neighbourhood. Both Shulemson and Eddy Kaplansky, a World War II RCAF flyer and an original Israeli air force veteran who now lives in Haifa, believe but cannot prove that a saboteur placed an oily rag under the exhaust manifold and turned the fabric covered aircraft into a flaming coffin. Shulemson says security around the Norseman planes parked at Urbe airfield was non-existent.
After the crash, no autopsies were conducted. The official causes of death are still unknown: impact, fire, or suffocation. The bodies were so badly burned, it was not possible to determine who was flying the aircraft.
Eddie Kaplansky wrote more than 50 years later: “the fact is that the true cause of the crash remains unknown. There was never an official inquiry, neither by the Italian or Israeli authorities. As the five-day old State of Israel was engaged in a struggle for its existence, there were much more pressing things to worry about.”
Syd Shulemson was one of Israel’s main agents in North America. He was instrumental in putting a deal together for Israel to buy 15 Norseman planes for $12,500 each. Israel had an option to buy an additional seven. The United States had an embargo on supplying planes to Israel, but under their very eyes, Shulemson managed to secure a Flying Fortress bomber for the nascent Israeli air force.
Brik Billing’s father, Jerry, flew with Beurling in Malta. Jerry flew more than 250 Spitfire sorties over Malta and Normandy.
“Beurling was on Malta long before me and flew a lot more sorties than I flew. We flew sorties. The Americans flew missions. Missions sounded too evangelical for us.” Jerry Billing also subscribes to the sabotage theory. “It would be so easy to stuff an oily rag under the exhaust manifold. Or, a pin-prick in the gas line would force atomized gas out under pressure as a mist and it would ignite explosively.”
Jerry Billing is also on the record as stating that Beurling’s death could have been an act of Italian revenge. “Remember,” he says, “Beurling shot down a lot of Italian planes over Malta and killed a lot of Italian pilots. He was a deadly shot and he didn’t waste his ammunition. He boasted openly about shooting an Italian pilot in the head and seeing blood streaming down the fuselage. The incident gave him nightmares for years afterwards.”
Beurling was Canada’s leading fighter ace with 31 kills and a share of a 32nd. In a span of 14 days he shot down 27 enemy planes. Beurling was the very first warrior to be awarded four gallantry medals by the king at an investiture at Buckingham Palace. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order, a Distinguished Flying Cross, and a Distinguished Flying Medal and Bar.
George Beurling has gone down in history as “Buzz” Beurling, but Jerry Billing remembers the people who flew with him never referred to him “as anything else but George or Beurl. George was extremely shy and introverted and would rather let a comment stand than correct it. The RAF’s [Royal Air Force] ‘Laddie’ Lucas called him ‘Screwball,’ but Lucas never knew Beurling before Malta, and they were hardly close friends. The nickname ‘Buzz’ was a pure invention of the RCAF public relations machine. It wouldn’t do to have Canada’s leading air ace nicknamed Screwball.”
Only people who knew Beurling called him by his given name. Brik Billing adds: “My father tells me it became an acid test for him. If a person called out ‘Buzz’ or ‘Screwball,’ Beurling knew automatically that they were not known friends.”
George Beurling was only 21 when he dominated the skies over Malta. He was a fearless warrior and survived nine crashes or bailouts. Those who knew him maintain that ice water flowed through his veins. In the air, he was a stone killer. He had perfected the art of deflection shooting on his days off at the Malta dump, taking out rats and lizards with his .38 revolver. His brain rapidly calculated where a plane would be in a second or two, and that’s where his bullets would be, too.
A Spitfire’s wing guns had enough firepower for just 15 seconds. Beurling rationed his “squirts” to two or three seconds. After one sortie, he returned and claimed a probable kill. He said he had fired a five-round burst into the cockpit of an Italian aircraft and described exactly where the bullets had struck home. Cosgrove’s book records that “shortly afterwards, a report came through that an Italian aircraft had crashed during a raid that day. Investigation revealed five cannon holes, just where Beurling had described them.”
Beurling was an unconventional loner. He was a sergeant pilot and resisted promotion until he was ordered to accept a commission. Sergeant Beurling may well have been “put up” for a Victoria Cross had he been a more conventional hero who didn’t go out of his way to alienate the brass. He had few friends because most had been killed in the defence of Malta. Two of his best friends were Flight Sergeant Jean Paradis from Shawinigan and RAF pilot Eric “Heather” Heatherington. Paradis died attacking a formation of over 20 bombers with fighter escorts. His last transmission was: “I see the bombers. I go there.” Heatherington was killed in a Liberator crash off Gibraltar.
When the war was over, Beurling was only 23 and a lost soul. He tried selling life insurance in Montreal, but quit when he didn’t sell a single policy in three months. Beurling barnstormed in air shows and country fairs in his personal Tiger Moth. His flying skills were extraordinary. During a lull in the blitz of Malta, Allied soldiers and airmen paraded down the main streets of Valetta in a morale boosting show of strength for the civilian population. Beurling flew one of three Spitfires at rooftop level. The planes flew so low that people on balconies looked down on the pilots. Beurling, however, wasn’t satisfied with tame low-level flying. He flew down Valetta’s main street, about 15 metres off the deck, upside down. His superiors were not amused.
After the war, Beurling tried to sign up with Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Air Force in China, but the Canadian government denied his application for a visa. In 1948, Syd Shulemson recruited him to fly for Israel:
“I told him there would be no pay, no rank, probably no uniform, and probably no Spitfire. The only pay he would receive would be that of an officer in the Israeli air force.”
Spit and polish were never high on Beurling’s priorities. His boots were never polished and he wore grungy Desert Rats’ shorts and a cast-off New Zealand air force tunic.
Syd Shulemson remembers:
Israel was brand new, and the Israelis may now deny it, but security was not as good as it should have been. I worked my contacts and told them to guard against an Arab attempt to assassinate Beurling. I told our New York agents that, when he arrived, he was to be put on the first available flight to Italy. But Beurling decided to spend a few days in New York and, publicity conscious that he was, he told the press where he was headed. The Arabs knew he was in New York and they knew his next stop was Rome.
Eddy Kaplansky says, “Israel’s man in Rome probably didn’t fully understand the dangers involved or, otherwise, he would not have used a top league fighter pilot for a simple ferrying job.”
Brik Billing’s postscript is: “Personally, I agree with Syd about the sabotage angle. Beurling on his own was a formidable adversary. If he had the chance to pass on his skills to a new crop of pilots, well, that’s reason for sabotage right there.”
The Canadian government ignored the death of Canada’s greatest hero because of the political implications of Beurling’s involvement in the Palestine question. The lone entry in the External Affairs telex traffic between Rome and Ottawa concerned payment for Beurling’s funeral expenses. The cheap funeral Canada paid for never took place. Beurling was thought to have been buried in Rome’s Verano Catholic cemetery.
Beurling’s lady friend, Vivi Stokes, travelled to Rome to visit the grave of her lover. She was outraged when she learned his coffin had not been interred but, instead, was stored in a dingy warehouse waiting to be claimed. She arranged for his remains to be buried in a graveyard in Rome between the graves of Keats and Shelley. A funeral coach, drawn by two black stallions, carried his remains through the streets of Rome.
Beurling’s family, followers of an offshoot of the Plymouth Brethren, was appalled that their son was laid to rest in “the ungodly city of Rome.” Syd Shulemson was given permission to have the coffin exhumed and taken to Israel for burial. Beurling’s coffin was flown to Haifa in a military plane. His casket lay in state covered with an Israeli flag, and an honour guard stood watch, resting on their arms reversed. As the funeral cortege wound its way through the streets of Haifa, Israeli warplanes streaked low overhead.
Beurling and Leonard Cohen were both buried in Haifa’s Zabal cemetery near the cave of Elijah the Prophet. His simple gravestone carries only his name, rank, and serial number.