PETER HANSEN (251-LIFE-1987) continues with his data on strange situations at the end of the war. We had heard rumors of a landing strip on one of the islands in the Canary Islands, which was supposedly used as a stopping off point for "special' passengers to South America as the Reich, crumbled. PETER says:

"Of any landing strip on the Isla Fuerteventura. in the Canaries, I know nothing myself In order to land a Ju-88, though depending upon the type involved and also the load too, might be possible on rough dirt ground or grass rather than concrete runways but a Condor Fw 200, I would have doubts.

As you know, they were actually constructed for civilian passenger and mail service but they were grabbed by Fatty Goring and he ordered continued construction but they had weak points in their bodies. The retractable wheels were very fragile and accident-prone. They had enough problems with smooth, strong and even runways like in Bordeaux Meriac Airfield but perhaps only one final landing was required and made, without need for further takeoffs and landings elsewhere. 3,000 meters is a pretty long runway however, with light loads?

I liked flying them only if it could not be avoided and stuck to either Lisbon or Madrid, Stockholm occasionally; not further south. Too many of these transport aircraft were shot down or crashed in one way or another. U-boats were bad enough for me!!!"

Perhaps we should clarify why we asked PETER about this island, resulting in his comments in column one of this page. One of our S.E.I.G. Agents (Agent Be 566) had learned of an old German place on this island with such an airfield at the end of the war and it was owned by a German named Gustav Winter. He was purported to have been the highest German spy in Spain during the war, and that he worked for Admiral Donitz and BdU (U-boat Command) in the Canary Islands. Agent Be 566 learned that in the late days of April 1945, a Ju 88 and an Fw 200 CONDOR came to this airfield. He further reported that, after the way, many former German military men came through this area from 1945 until 1952 for their escape to South America.

Way back in 1989, Captain BOB THEW (333-+-1987) confirmed that a lot of high-ranking people from the Reich including Abwehr, SS and other Party officials did indeed make their way to South America and BOB specifically mentioned 1945 through 1952 as the time frame of their movements. BOB was with Naval Intelligence during the war, then switched over to NSA, America's most secret agency. He confirmed that the intelligence community was looking for these high-ranking people from the Reich, including Bormann and Hitler himself, until the middle 1950's.

Truth can be - and often is - stranger than fiction. The Intelligence Page will be continued in KTB #152 next month.