In the long history of aviation archaeology in the UK (with apologies to Malcolm McKay and JDK for describing it thus!:D) has anyone ever investigated the crash site of the Rudolf Hess Messerschmitt 110? If so; who, when and what did they find?
Whilst I appreciate the crash resulted in a spread of surface wreckage I would doubt that an incident of this nature could have left no tangible trace. In connection with a research/writing project I’d be interested to know.
And before any other smart-alec suggests it, I am interested in any finds at the site that exclude brochures and rservation details for the Stork Hotel!
By: trolleydolly - 10th February 2011 at 13:28
[ATTACH]192583[/ATTACH] Mum was from Busby in Renfrewshire,but she said the plane came down in the goods yard of a railway station,it was taken away and lots of smaller bits were left mixed in with the coal (don`t think people were supposed to be there to take this).The aeroplane had soldiers guarding it to stop people taking bits.
By: Arabella-Cox - 10th February 2011 at 10:17
That looks somehow “right” to me. Do you have more details as to how she got it, when and from where?
Any chance of photos of the other side?
By: trolleydolly - 10th February 2011 at 09:46
[ATTACH]192579[/ATTACH] Bit of aeroplane Mum has,Black and Grey? paint over a light blue undercoat.
By: Skipper - 31st January 2011 at 21:20
Did you get my PM, Andy?
By: Arabella-Cox - 30th January 2011 at 12:11
You have a PM, Thorgil!
By: Thorgil - 30th January 2011 at 11:33
Time to put you all out your misery…….
About 15 years ago my friend ( a very experienced metal detectorist)had permission to detect on the land where Hess’s 110 crashed. All that turned up were some coroded alloy parts and one plate….the makers plate jammy git.
If there was anything left to find beleive me he would have got it as we have a lot of photo’s of the crash plus intel. reports and even Hess’s death certificate.
Alan.
By: Sopwith - 29th January 2011 at 18:53
Before Hess left Britain he was flown into Madley Aerodrome and from there taken to Maindiff Court just outside Abergavenny where he was kept until leaving the country.A bit of trivial information.
By: J Boyle - 29th January 2011 at 18:37
Apropos of hardly anything, my brother was Regular Army and spent some time ‘guarding’ Hess in Spandau.
By then he was the only prisoner in the entire jail, but could not be moved as the Russians would not agree. Something to do with maintaining their rights to base troops at Spandau.
Moggy
My wife when she was a Sister in the QARANC and assigned to the UK military hospital in Berlin, said that Hess was a frequent patient there.
As mentioned above, I recall a portion of airframe being at Duxford. IIRC a good sized chunk of the rear fuselage…perhaps the piece now at the IWW in London?
By: Scouse - 29th January 2011 at 15:03
if we were to find the missing gap in the tunnel somewhere near to where it exits into the basement of the Stork Hotel that would be the icing on the cake so to speak. Thanks in advance.
Alas, the Stork Hotel was demolished in about 1975 for a road scheme in Liverpool.
As the Hess site is also now under a road scheme, are we justified in suspecting a cover-up masterminded by the Ministry of Transport:D
By: trolleydolly - 29th January 2011 at 12:52
My Mum has a piece of this aircraft somewhere or so she says,(it`s one of the stories she comes out with after a tipple)but she told me she got it from the crash site in a coalyard as a little girl?maybe a different aeroplane? she is `knocking on` a bit.Will try and get more details next time I`m up there.
By: Malcolm McKay - 29th January 2011 at 03:56
No need for an apology Andy, if you will do one thing for me. Come up with the elusive entrance to the tunnel that leads to the Stork Hotel. That will put the final piece in place in that great historical jigsaw puzzle called by us aficionados of the darker side of WW2 history –
Rudolf Hess, Douglas Bader: Did Bader use the return half of Hess’s airline ticket to Scotland to return to Germany?.
You see many of us have searched high and low and we can find no evidence in the BOAC archives of a cancelled stub of the return ticket for Douglas Bader’s return flight to Germany in 1943. But the fact that Hess did land in Scotland a year and a half earlier offers possible proof that there is a good argument to suggest that the return portion of his ticket was still valid and he simply gave it to Bader. I know it all sounds very Byzantine in its complexity but this is vital to our understanding of those dark years.
The gap/non-gap in Hess’s teeth is being currently investigated by a crack team of palaeo dentists as we speak and if we were to find the missing gap in the tunnel somewhere near to where it exits into the basement of the Stork Hotel that would be the icing on the cake so to speak. Thanks in advance.
By: Moggy C - 29th January 2011 at 00:47
Apropos of hardly anything, my brother was Regular Army and spent some time ‘guarding’ Hess in Spandau.
By then he was the only prisoner in the entire jail, but could not be moved as the Russians would not agree. Something to do with maintaining their rights to base troops at Spandau.
The guard rotated, UK, US, French, USSR.
Moggy
By: ZRX61 - 29th January 2011 at 00:26
Isn’t part of the vertical stab at Dx?
By: DaveF68 - 28th January 2011 at 22:44
The site has apparently had some development on it to do with the new roads network.
Some years ago, someone put up a commemorative stone at the site, which praised ‘brave Rudolph Hess’ which was promptly smashed up by ‘Anti-Nazi League’ protesters, one of whom is now a prominent solicitor (who couunts amongst his clients Tommy Sheridan).
The fact that they took a BBC film crew with them always raised my suspicions.
Good bit about the site in general here:
http://www.secretscotland.org.uk/index.php/Secrets/RudolfHessFlight
(BTW Googling Rudolph Hess throws up some really wierd sites!!
By: JDK - 28th January 2011 at 21:52
Ah….but it was it really Hess, James? 😀
Wasn’t that “gap” one of the bits of evidence behind the swap theory, it moved or wasn’t there at the Nuremburg trials but it was in pre war pictures? I read a book years ago by one of the doctors of treated him in Spandau who said that the man didn’t match his records.
OK….lets not go there!
Yes. To all of the above. 😎
By: thedawnpatrol - 28th January 2011 at 16:50
Took these about two weeks ago, I bet there are bits of it everywhere, was’nt it taken on a ‘tour’ of citys, it certainly ended up at 50MU Cowley via Oxford high street.
Jules
By: Creaking Door - 28th January 2011 at 16:16
Also at IWM Lambeth (displayed the right way up) last time I was there!
By: DazDaMan - 28th January 2011 at 16:13
I seem to recall there being a section of the rear fuselage surviving somewhere, too.
By: Creaking Door - 28th January 2011 at 15:49
One of the Engines has been displayed at The Museum of Flight at East Fortune for many years.
The other engine is in the IWM Lambeth (displayed ‘upside-down’) so that rules out the big bits!
By: Merlin3945 - 28th January 2011 at 15:38
One of the Engines has been displayed at The Museum of Flight at East Fortune for many years. Dont know if its still there as I havent been down for some time but I cant see them getting rid of it.
I seem to recall there was mention of something off this wreck being at Lennoxlove house near Haddington as Hess had been trying to get there to contact the then Duke of Hamilton.
Thats as much as I know about it.
I am sure one of our lads has the crash site logged somewhere. I suspect there will be fragments like another local site to me that had been picked clean at the time. It was a Heinkel 111 and crash landed pretty much intact but the odd bit twisted metal is still being picked up in that area. However the last piece I seem to remember hearing about was found around 5 years ago and nothing since.
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January 28, 2011 at 10:32 am