levo - 1:21 pm on Jun 23, 2012 (gmt 0)

Does the initial response (301) matter or is it the final destination (being 404) that matters?

I've recently battled with this problem as well, and couldn't find any reference or answer. If it is a problem, only solution that I can think of is to redirect via a PHP script that checks the destinations header and redirects if it exists.