I refer to David Leask's article and would comment that the piece of silk rope in Mrs Daphne Harkness's possession may well have been part of the parachute belonging to Rudolph Hess, but it most certainly wasn't used when his plane landed at Eaglesham (June 23).
On May 10, 1941, Corporal Jack McKenzie, my late father, was duty corporal of the Royal Signals Unit based in Eaglesham House, their duty being to alert the anti-aircraft guns around Glasgow of any incoming German bombing raids. They had earlier been notified of a lone Me 110 heading towards Scotland but, as it was almost at the limit of its fuel range, they had been told not to bring the guns to action stations, they had to continue to plot the plane's course and see where it eventually landed or crashed .
Later that day the Me 110 crash-landed in a field just behind Eaglesham House, so my father turned out two of his guard and they ran to the crash site. On arrival they found the pilot trapped in the cockpit and as they helped him out of the crashed plane they found he had sustained an ankle injury. He said he was Flight Lieutenant Alfred Horn of the Luftwaffe and surrendered his Luger pistol and torch to my father.
One guardsman was sent back to Eaglesham House to get the detachment's lorry to take the injured airman to the unit's sick bay but the Officer of the Day would not release the duty driver for this task, so on his return the three members of the guard helped their prisoner to the nearby cottage of David MacLean. Here, Mrs MacLean made him a cup of tea and the Home Guard was summoned.
When the Home Guard arrived the prisoner was formally handed over to them and my father gave his pistol to their commanding officer but kept his torch. Next day my father was rather surprised when he learned of the true identity of Flight Lt Horn.
The Royal Signals Unit never received any credit for their part in this notable wartime episode for they were probably censored out for following reasons: (i) at the time the unit had no weapons, their officer had a pistol but corporal and guards were armed only with pickaxe handles (ii) no publicity could be given to the fact that the lone aeroplane had been tracked for the length of Britain. Obviously, neither of these facts could be released into the public domain.
So it was Mr and Mrs MacLean and the Home Guard, who did have rifles, who got all the front-page publicity and newspaper coverage of the capture of this important German.
Like Mrs Harkness's piece of silk rope, we had a bit of Me 110 which had been "liberated" from the wreckage, but unfortunately, like my father's part in this saga, it disappeared or got thrown out in one of our house moves. However, every time the Hess saga resurfaced, my late father would get annoyed with the "expert" theories put forward about his parachute landing in Scotland when it was he and his two guards who helped the injured airman from his crashed aeroplane, albeit that the airman was, in fact, Hitler's deputy.
George B McKenzie, Rubha nan Gall, 48 Ardbeg Road, Rothesay, Isle of Bute. I read with interest your feature regarding the Hess parachute fragment. The Glasgow Police Museum has on display a small underwing inspection panel from Hess's crashed plane which was donated by Tom Kirsop, the son of the late PC Alan Kirsop who was village constable at Waterfoot, Renfrewshire, where the plane came down. The artefact has since been authenticated by the RAF Museum at Hendon.
It may also interest your readers, given the recent Stone of Destiny publicity, that the "stolen" Stone, after being recovered at Arbroath Abbey on April 10, 1951, was taken to Glasgow's Central Police Office where it was guarded and thereafter transported to London on Friday, April 13, in a convoy of police cars.
It was therefore fitting that the film company which made the Stone of Destiny film last year gave the prop Stone used in the film to the Glasgow Police Museum.
Alastair Dinsmor, Curator, Glasgow Police Museum, 68 St Andrew's Square, Glasgow.
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