Here, they could alert the coastguard to Loewenstein’s disappearance. Inglevert airstrip which lay between Calais and Dunkirk. Alfred Lowenstein had disappeared into thin air.Īn obvious course of action would have been for the plane to divert to St. Worried that Loewenstein might have been taken ill, he forced open the door. Baxter grew concerned and knocked on the toilet door. Then, as the plane headed out over the Channel, he went to the toilet compartment at the rear.Īccording to statements later made by Baxter, his valet, ten minutes passed and he had still not returned to his seat. Loewenstein spent the first half of the flight making notes. It took two strong men to open in mid-air, due to the slipstream pressing against it. The door was clearly marked EXIT and was equipped with a spring-loaded latch controlled from inside. This room also had an exterior door – the only means of entrance and exit to the plane. A minute or so later, they were flying over the English Channel.Īt the rear of the Fokker’s cabin there was a windowless door that led into a small toilet. Within minutes the plane was airborne and climbing to its cruising altitude of 4,000 feet.īefore long, everyone on board could see the Kent coastline below. Shortly after 6pm, the Fokker FVII, a small monoplane, set off down the grass runway. There were also two women, Eileen Clarke and Paula Bidalon, his stenographers. The other people on board included Fred Baxter, Loewenstein’s loyal valet, who accompanied him everywhere, and Arthur Hodgson, his male secretary. Once the Fokker had taken off, Drew and Little had no access to the cabin. The cockpit was a sealed unit with no connecting door to the rest of the plane. He was joined in the cockpit by Robert Little, the mechanic. The pilot, Donald Drew, stood by the doorway of the plane as the passengers boarded. There were a total of six people on that ill-fated flight in addition to Loewenstein himself. Some 85 years after Loewenstein’s disappearance, the jury is still undecided. He was to vanish in mid-flight and mid-air, one of the strangest disappearing acts in history. It was to prove smooth for everyone except Alfred Loewenstein himself.
The pilot, Donald Drew, was able to assure him that it would be a smooth flight.
It was a fine evening for flying with scarcely a cloud in the sky. Loewenstein was pleased to be flying home on that July day in 1928. By 1928, these investors wanted some return on their money. that raised huge amounts of capital from wealthy investors. In 1926, he established International Holdings and Investments Ltd. It was a routine flight that would take him across the English and French coastlines before landing at Brussels, where Loewenstein lived with his wife, Madeleine.īut he also had many enemies. In the early evening of 4 July, 1928, a fabulously wealthy businessman named Alfred Loewenstein boarded his private plane at Croydon Airport.
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