A secretly taped account of one of the pilots involved appears in Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer's "Soldiers: Germans POW's on Fighting Killing, and Dying". In a recently declassified transcript of a surreptitiously recorded conversation by two German Luftwaffe prisoners of war talking about the shooting down of Howard's flight, one seems to express pride in his accomplishment, but states clearly he knew nothing of the passenger's identities or importance until hearing an English broadcast later that evening. Asked why he shot down a civil aircraft, he states it was one of four such planes he shot down: "Whatever crossed our path was shot down."