At 19.15 hours on Thursday, 20 April, Challe accompanied by his fellow five-star general, André Zeller, and Colonel Broizat, took off for Algiers in an air force plane. The aircraft had been "purloined" by General Bigot, a pied noir who had had a brilliant war career flying Marauder bombers with Challe, and who now commanded the Fifth Air Region in Algeria. His superior, General Nicot, Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force, turned a blind eye, but sent Challe off with the caution: "I am convinced that you are committing a stupidity…." Lying on their stomachs under packages marked service cinématographique de l'armée, and flying at 150 feet to evade the French radar screen, the former Commander-in-Chief was smuggled indecorously out of France.

QUESTION: How deliberately did the air force chain of command — Bigot, Nicot — enable the movement of a rebellious general, and what does Nicot's "blind eye" amid his warning reveal about divisions within the officer corps?

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 1362