The sun was already setting when the huge plane passed at low altitude over the bow of the Portuguese trawler “Cabo de São Vicente”. In 1942, the presence of planes on the Portuguese coast was no longer a novelty, but they rarely made such aggressive movements towards Portuguese vessels, which is why everyone on board was on alert and even the men who were having dinner went up on deck to see what was happening.

In full view of everyone, the plane headed west for about two miles before turning back and, with the sun behind it, it flew in a nosedive, dropped two bombs and raked the deck with its machine guns. Luckily, the shots did not hit anyone. The bombs exploded in the water, but so close that they caused significant damage to the hull, dooming the trawler.

Captain José Ethelredo Morais had no choice but to send his eighteen men to the lifeboat. While the ship was being abandoned, he tried to warn land by radio, but he was unable to do it because it was broken.

The attack began shortly after 6:30 p.m. on March 10, 1942. Twenty minutes later, the "Cabo de São Vicente" disappeared beneath the water, 26 miles northwest of Roca cape.

The speed of the attack and perhaps the lack of light prevented the fishermen from identifying the national markings of the plane. They were only able to see that it was a four-engine aircraft, painted dark gray and that "it was a good speedy plane”.

We know today that the aircraft, which headed south after the attack, was piloted by Bernhard Jope, a captain in the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) and commander of Squadron 3 of KG40, based in Cognac, France. The identification of the German protagonists of this operation was only possible thanks to the cooperation of Günther Ott, archivist of Squadron KG40, who sent us the details of this patrol.

A spy ship

Jope's plane - a FW200 Condor - took off from its French base at 16:02 hours, accompanied by Lieutenant Scheld's aircraft, with the aim of carrying out a patrol along the Spanish and Portuguese coasts. The attack on the Portuguese trawler with the machine guns and two 250-kilo bombs was not a coincidence or a mistake. According to Günther Ott, the "Cabo de São Vicente" was suspected of passing information about German activity at sea to the British services and for this reason it was scheduled to be sunk.

Jope knew that his bombs had fallen short, but steam was seen coming out of the hull of the small ship, so it was certain that it had been seriously hit. At about the same time there is a report of a German attack on the British patrol boat "Loch Oskaig" off Oporto, but without results..The patrol ended shortly before five in the morning when the two planes returned to Cognac.

An hour earlier, the 19 Portuguese had also reached a safety. They had rowed for almost nine hours towards land and after travelling six miles they had encountered another trawler, the "Açor", which interrupted its work to take them to Lisbon, where they arrived in the early hours of the morning.

Interestingly, the captain of the "Açor" - Samuel Damas - had seen a large plane pass by at an altitude of about 150 meters, shortly before 6 pm, but he also did not know its nationality "because, being very used to seeing them pass by, (...) he does not attach much importance to them".

Searching for answers

The conversation with Günther Ott took place in February 2021, when I also got in touch with Richard Souza to find out more about the memories he had of his grandfather José Morais - the captain of the "Cabo de São Vicente". What his family said about this event, decades later, was also discussed. Both conversations can be heard in a podcast that was published at the time and which can be heard below. Unfortunately for English only-speakers it is in Portuguese.

Unlike other sunken Portuguese ships, the mystery about the nationality of the plane and the reasons for this attack continued long after the end of the conflict.

“Why would this plane have passed by Açor without disturbing it, and then (…) attacked S. Vicente. And why did it turn to the West and only then (…) attacked it in a perpendicular direction, when the bombing is more accurate (…) along the line of course to the target? Wasn’t it looking for S. Vicente for reasons impossible to foresee?”, asked a report sent by the Ministry of the Navy to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the end of March 1942.

The press lamented yet another attack on the Portuguese neutrality. The Diário de Lisboa recalled that the number of ships that had sunk as a result of attacks since the beginning of the war had risen to six. On 11 March, they wrote: “We cannot fail to express our vehement protest against yet another useless and brutal act of violence against a defenceless ship manned by humble workers who were earning their families’ bread, while at the same time contributing to the population’s food supply, which was already difficult due to the crisis caused by the war.”

Carlos Guerreiro