Funeral

Main article: Death and state funeral of Winston Churchill

Churchill's grave at St Martin's Church, Bladon

Churchill's funeral plan had been initiated in 1953 under the name Operation Hope Not.[555] The
largest state funeral in history, it featured representatives from 112 nations. In Europe, 350
million people, including 25 million in Britain, watched the funeral on television.[556] Churchill's
body lay in state in Westminster Hall for three days and a state funeral service was held at St
Paul's Cathedral on 30 January 1965.[557] One of the largest assemblages of statesmen in the
world was gathered for the service. Unusually, the Queen attended the funeral because Churchill
was the first commoner since William Gladstone to lie-in-State.[558] As Churchill's lead-lined coffin
passed up the River Thames from Tower Pier to Festival Pier on the MV Havengore, dockers
lowered their crane jibs in a salute.[559]
The Royal Artillery fired the 19-gun salute due a head of government, and the RAF staged a fly-
by of 16 English Electric Lightning fighters. The coffin was then taken the short distance
to Waterloo station where it was loaded onto a specially prepared and painted carriage as part of
the funeral train for its rail journey to Hanborough,[560] seven miles northwest of Oxford.
The funeral train of Pullman coaches carrying his family mourners was hauled by Battle of Britain
class steam locomotive No. 34051 Winston Churchill. In the fields along the route, and at the
stations through which the train passed, thousands stood in silence to pay their last respects. At
Churchill's request, he was buried in the family plot at St Martin's Church, Bladon, near
Woodstock, not far from his birthplace at Blenheim Palace. Churchill's funeral van—former
Southern Railway van S2464S—is now part of a preservation project with the Swanage Railway,
having been repatriated to the UK in 2007 from the US, to where it had been exported in 1965.[561]