Bermuda was almost the venue for two key Second World War meetings, including one to plan the D-Day landings in Europe, the conference celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Big Three world leaders summit heard yesterday.

And British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill was almost shot down by RAF fighters while returning from Bermuda at an earlier visit to the Island in January, 1942.

Academics gathered yesterday for the conference to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Cold War meeting of Churchill, US President Dwight Eisenhower and French Prime Minister Joseph Laniel in Bermuda in December, 1953.

But it emerged that Sir Winston proposed his first wartime meeting with US President Franklin Roosevelt in 1941 be held in Bermuda rather than Newfoundland.

And in April ,1944, Churchill suggested meeting Roosevelt on the Island to discuss the D-Day operations in Europe, the most important military offensive of the war.

Roosevelt then put forward a meeting in Bermuda in August, 1944, but Churchill pleaded ?poor climatic conditions? and the meeting was moved to Quebec City.

News of proposed earlier wartime meetings came in a speech from Allen Packwood, Churchill archivist at Churchill College, Cambridge, to the conference at the Fairmont Hamilton Princess Hotel.

?It is fairly clear that without the 1953 summit, Bermuda would merit a few interesting footnotes in the Churchill story but little more,? said Mr. Packwood.

?Yet this small Island did have one thing going for it. Location. Here was a tiny part of the British Empire within 580 miles of North Carolina. To a Prime Minister intent upon forging and maintaining an alliance with the US, Bermuda provided both a useful stepping stone and a local base for entertaining Americans on home soil.?

The conference also heard how Churchill was almost killed while returning to England after a 20 hour flying visit to Bermuda in January, 1942.

Churchill arrived on the Island unannounced after staying in the White House over Christmas just after the Pearl Harbour attack when he addressed the US Congress and the Canadian parliament.

Rather than take the HMS , Churchill elected to fly to England from Bermuda in a flying boat. The plane had to maintain radio silence and the plane was evidently lost for part of the journey and came within five minutes of passing over German batteries at Brest.

Then the plane was identified as an enemy craft and RAF fighters were scrambled to intercept. Due to bad weather, Churchill?s plane was spared from shot down by his own side.

Air Commander Rowley, who scrambled the fighters, wrote: ?By the grace of God and difficult weather conditions, they failed in their mission, for, of course, Mr. Churchill?s Boeing was the ?enemy raid?.?

Describing Sir Winston?s impromptu speech of the House of Assembly during the 1942 visit, Mr. Packwood said his speech was ?a vintage Churchill performance? containing ?echoes of the his great war speeches of the summer of 1940?.

Sir Winston told the House: ?At one time it seemed that we should be alone. We were for a long time alone. We have stood alone all through the summer and the autumn and the winter of 1940 and 1941. But we did not flinch. We did not weaken.

?We did not worry because we could not see our way through. The British people and the peoples of the British Empire said ?we will do our duty, we will do our best?.?

Mr. Packwood added: ?He ends the speech on an upbeat note. He talks about the implications of the entry into the conflict of the US, and he thanks the Bermudian Parliament for making its own unique contribution by approving the presence of an American military base under the terms of the Land Lease arrangements.

?This whirlwind visit must have left his hosts flattered and shocked.?

The actual December, 1953 summit at the Mid Ocean Club reveals the extent of divisions between Churchill and Eisenhower over how to deal with the Soviet Union, and the US president?s willingness to use nuclear weapons in the Korean dispute.

While Churchill favoured with the Russians in the hope they might reform, the US took a hard line.

Eisenhower described the Russians as ?a woman of the streets and whether her dress was new or, or just the old one patched, it was certainly the same whore underneath?.

Churchill?s own anxiety about the failure of the summit to encourage US engagement with the Soviet Union is revealed when he says ?before we reject all hope of a Soviet change of heart, we should convince our peoples that we have done our best?.

Churchill was recovering from a severe stroke during the Bermuda summit and was unhappy at the lack of progress towards peace.

In a card from the Mid Ocean Club to his wife Clementine, he writes: ?Very heavy work here. No sun today. No news from you. Food good.?

In an interesting aside, the first reference in the Churchill papers to Bermuda comes in a letter from the then Governor Sir John Asser in 1922, who writes to Sir Winston: ?Though such a small island, there are many conundrums to be faced. By embarking on a big tourist service, the people have rather got out of their depth.

?Servants are scarce, houses ditto, and land is going out of cultivation. The fleecing of the junket tourist is now the chief occupation of everyone. I have started a campaign against the mosquitoes, which careful, and if we can succeed in eliminating them it will be something.?