Varhaug, Sonne and Elektra: The Rudolf Hess Flight Book

By John Harris and Richard Wilbourn

May 11th 1941 - Berchtesgaden. The day after Rudolf Hess took off from Augsburg and hadn't yet returned or sent any signal, Adolf Hitler had to say something to justify Hess' so far unexplained disappearance. Not least for the benefit of the German nation and his then trading ally, Soviet Russia.
Consequently he authorised a statement saying that Hess was suffering from a mental derangement and had succeeded in obtaining an aeroplane against the strict orders of the Fuhrer. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth, but an explanation had at least been proffered before British propaganda commenced. The unlikely explanation has however proven durable, some still believing it to be true 80 years later.
In this, their eighth book on the affair, Harris and Wilbourn demonstrate that far from being a random act, the flight had been meticulously planned, using state of the art German radio technology. Using contemporary equipment, maps and charts they demonstrate the true nature and character of the flight and explain what went wrong, leading to the sensational and very public arrival of Rudolf Hess in Scotland at 23.09hrs on May 10th 1941.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Uniform
• Release date: Jan 10, 2024
• ISBN: 9781916846128

John Harris

John Harris, author of Britpop!: Cool Britannia and the Spectacular Demise of English Rock, has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo, Q, The Independent, NME, Select, and New Statesmen. He lives in Hay on Wye, England.

Book preview

viii

Introduction

On 12 February 1950, Rudolf Hess was incarcerated and languishing in the old Prussian prison, situated in Spandau, Berlin. When not planning the finer details of a new Fourth Reich, he dutifully chose to write home to his wife Ilse, who was then living in the Allgaü, southern Germany. They had not seen each other since the lunchtime of 10 May 1941. After the usual pleasantries the former Deputy Führer chose to describe, for some reason, certain aspects of his sensational flight to Scotland, which, by then, was some nine years earlier.¹

The reader may recall that at the time (in 1941) the said flight was described by the German news department as the act of a delusional madman who had stolen an aircraft and flown to the enemy. Hess and his entourage were effectively disowned in public and various associates arrested (though later quietly released). After the war had ended, the 1945–6 Nuremberg trials had provided no further clarification as to either motive or methodology of the flight, and so the content of this much later letter was to prove significant, especially as it was also allowed to be published in book form in 1954.² It was the first time that any form of first-hand explanation would be available subsequent to the nonsensical, but with hindsight, quite understandable, 1941 communiqué. (Adolf Hitler wished to distance himself from the flight that had just gone disastrously wrong and consequently had to keep Stalin guessing as to what had really happened. Barbarossa was then just over a month away.)

However, rather than describe the theft of the Bf 110 and how he had fortuitously managed to get as far as Scotland, instead the ixformer Deputy Führer complained to his wife as to how his radio navigational system had let him down at the ‘decisive moment’. This was surely the beginning of a very different story – one that we have spent the past thirty-five years trying to understand and research. This book details our findings and explains precisely how Rudolf Hess managed to fly one of the world’s then fastest planes from Augsburg in Bavaria to Floors Farm, Eaglesham, just to the south of Glasgow in Scotland.

Delusional he certainly was not, nor was the plane stolen …x

Notes

1 Ilse Hess, Prisoner of Peace (Germany, 1954)

2 Ibid.

1

Chapter 1

The Technology: Aerial Navigation and the Harsh Truth

Aerial navigation has never been easy. Were it so this book would not have been necessary, as in May 1941 the Deputy Führer of Germany would no doubt have made his way without incident to RAF Dundonald in Ayrshire, Scotland, and the course of world history from that point forward may well have been very different. However, just how difficult accurate wartime aerial navigation remained in 1941 was amply illustrated by David Bensusan-Butt (1914–1994) who was commissioned by his employer, Frederick Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell,³ to write a report on the effectiveness of the early British bombing raids over Germany. Butt, a peacetime economist and statistician, duly reported the damning conclusion that only 5 per cent of all Allied bombs were dropped within 5 miles of their target. This report was issued in August 1941, only three months after the Hess flight, and clearly demonstrates the difficulty of precise wartime aerial navigation – all factors considered.⁴

In wartime there are obviously more factors and diversions to consider than simply navigation – anti-aircraft fire and enemy fighters to name but two very persuasive ones. There are various reasons as to why a target may not be reached.

Admittedly, up to 1941, Britain had been more concerned about defence than attack for obvious reasons, but at this early stage of the Second World War, and as a direct reflection of the war to date, Britain and the Allies were certainly well ahead of the Germans in terms of defensive radar capability. The Chain Home system and 2its synergy with the Royal Observer Corps had proven its efficiency and worth throughout the long hot summer of 1940. Conversely, the Germans were certainly well ahead in terms of radio navigation on account of their perceived and apparent need to bomb British cities accurately. Two very differing needs and priorities, but as the old saying goes, ‘necessity is the mother of invention’.

So, let’s briefly look at the development of air navigation up to the start of 1941, and then look at the precise technology that was available to Rudolf Hess when planning his flight.

The first Zeppelin took to the skies in July 1900 and the Wright brothers precariously took to the air three years later in December 1903. Prior to those dates navigation was very much the preserve of the naval navigators (and perhaps a few very intrepid balloonists), but many of the fundamental issues that have to be at least appreciated are common to both disciplines. By way of illustration, we have acquired a 1942 copy of Teach Yourself Air Navigation.⁵ While not specifically aimed at helping flights such as those of the Deputy Führer’s a year before its publication, it does indeed illustrate the basic problems that all air navigators have to face, war or peace notwithstanding. We should say that the book was aimed very much at the Air Training Corps’ (ATC) candidate and so does not even contemplate what radio navigational methods were then available. That particular technology remained very much top secret in 1942, on both sides of the English Channel, and so the finer details were certainly not available to the typical British ATC student trying to pass their introductory exams. They would quite properly have to learn navigation the hard way from the basics.

The chapters in Teach Yourself Air Navigation are as follows:

Direction and Distance on the earth’s surface

Map projections 3

Variation of magnetic compasses

Deviation of the compass

The effect of wind on an aircraft

Map reading

Fixing and reporting position

Aircraft magnetic compasses

Elementary meteorology

Air speed indicators and calibration

Ground flight

Figure 1.1. The 1942 ‘Teach yourself Air navigation’ 4

We hope the reader can see the relevance of the above in the context of the Hess flight. Rudolf Hess had learned how to fly at the very end of the First World War in Bavaria, though had never actually experienced deadly aerial combat. However, he would have been taught the basics (just like the much later ATC student), such as those listed above and, indeed, the flight map that he brought with him in 1941 (and now resides at Lennoxlove House, Haddington) was commented upon as ‘being marked in accordance with the practices of the last war’.⁶ While we do not wholly subscribe to this viewpoint it is certainly the case that the major physical landmarks, visible from the air, such as railways and hilltops, were indeed meticulously marked up.

This comes as no surprise and many of the later advancements in navigation were no more than Hess’s and man’s attempts at mechanical and electrical solutions to some of the above issues. Modern-day Global Positioning System (GPS) is of course a continuation of the process. Hess was certainly no fool and realised that in planning the substantial journey from Bavaria to Scotland he would have to be mindful of all the above factors. However, and in particular, he could no longer rely on purely visual recognition, typically his and the main First World War technique, as he would now have to fly a long leg up the North Sea, where, of course, there were no unique visual markers. He also needed to avoid, as best he could, the other key anti-aircraft measures, such as the British RAF Coastal Command and the fledgling Home Chain radar system (though it is possible that he was not even aware of its existence – the Luftwaffe had earlier discounted the Chain Home Low towers as mere radio towers). That is where his life would start to get especially tricky. Planning would be key.

It is the planning aspect of the flight that this book concentrates on, clearly demonstrating that the flight was certainly not the act of a madman. It is our contention that Hess had meticulously planned 5his flight, but despite the planning (or some might say because of its radio navigational aspects) it went dramatically wrong. His eventual recovery from a near catastrophic event certainly shows that Hess was not delusional. In fact, this recovery was just as impressive as the initial planning and his attempted use of the then cutting-edge technology.

Notes

3 Viscount Cherwell was the British government’s leading scientific advisor during the Second World War

4 The Butt Report – Air 14/1218

5 ‘Kaspar’, Teach Yourself Air Navigation (London, 1942)

6 Letter, R.H. Melville to the Duke of Hamilton, 22 May 1941. On display at Lennoxlove House.

6

Chapter 2

Solution Number One: The Siemens K4ü: Autopilot: The Ability to Fly on a Fixed Compass Bearing

The increasingly battered eighty-one-year-old fuselage of BF110 – VJ+OQ currently resides at the Imperial War Museum (IWM) Duxford in Cambridge, in the AirSpace hangar. (Turn left when exiting the ticketing hall.) It has been passed from pillar to post since its arrival from IWM Bedlam in London in 2012, and we are far from sure if the present curators understand the true significance of the absolute jewel that they are the custodians of. If they did it most likely would be in the British Museum (or, cynically, more likely be hidden away, its existence completely secreted) – not consigned to an inconspicuous corridor in a Cambridgeshire museum, complete with full public access.

Of particular note is, first, there is no auxiliary oil tank supply (being clearly tapped off by way of a substantial brass nut), which simply means that Hess could not have flown from Bavaria to Scotland – his engines would have been starved of oil (not fuel) and would most likely have seized somewhere over the North Sea. This revelation, which has been the subject of our previous books, has already been well covered and the implications explored and explained. It would be very unlikely indeed that a sensible Bf 110 pilot, anticipating such a long flight, would simply leave to chance that he would have enough oil to complete the journey. This could in extremis effectively amount to suicide. An auxiliary oil tank, or an en route landing, would be the only options, and we know for sure there was no auxiliary oil tank fitted. Please check the details for yourself.⁷ 7

Secondly, and as far as we can ascertain, there are the major remnants of a Siemens K4ü in the forward section of the fuselage, though again badly damaged, demonstrating that Hess had the ability to fly on a set bearing. However, it is important to note that the machinery would not automatically fully adjust for the effect of wind drift. This problem has bedevilled the navigator since flight began, and most early aviators used ‘dead reckoning’ as the usual method of accounting for (or trying to account for) the effect of wind on a particular course. The method was and is always fraught, especially if trying to plan over a long distance, which is of course exactly what Hess was attempting to do,