On the evening of 10 May 1941, the third most powerful man in Nazi Germany climbed into a Messerschmitt Bf 110 fighter, alone, and pointed it at Scotland. No orders. No co-pilot. No authorisation from Hitler. Just Rudolf Hess, the Deputy Führer, on a self-appointed mission to end the war in the west.

For nearly six hours he flew across the North Sea at low level, dodging radar and fighters, hunting for the estate of a Scottish duke he had never actually met. When his fuel ran low over Renfrewshire, he bailed out into the darkness and floated down into a farmer’s field.

It remains one of the strangest episodes of the Second World War — a one-man peace mission so bizarre that Stalin suspected a British plot, and Hitler declared his own deputy insane.

A deputy running out of purpose

By 1941 Hess had been steadily sidelined. Martin Bormann had absorbed much of his authority, and Hess — long fascinated by aviation and the occult — was increasingly on the outside of Hitler’s inner circle.

Alarmed at the prospect of Germany fighting Britain and the Soviet Union simultaneously, Hess convinced himself he could personally broker peace. He fixed on the Duke of Hamilton, wrongly believing the duke led a British faction open to a deal. The two men had never actually spoken. From October 1940 Hess trained on the Bf 110 and had a long-range aircraft with extra fuel tanks held in reserve for his personal use.

Six hours to Scotland

Hess took off from Augsburg-Haunstetten at 17:45 on 10 May 1941, carrying maps, money, a torch, a camera and a collection of medicines and homeopathic remedies. Using landmarks and dead reckoning, he crossed the North Sea mostly at 5,000 ft, then dropped to wave-top height over the Scottish coast.

Chain Home radar tracked him as “Raid 42”; fighters were scrambled but none could catch the low, fast intruder in the dark. Unable to find Dungavel House and nearly out of fuel, Hess climbed and parachuted out at 23:06, injuring his foot as he left the aircraft. The Bf 110 crashed minutes later, about 12 miles west of the duke’s home.

“Hauptmann Alfred Horn”

Hess came down near Eaglesham, south of Glasgow, where ploughman David McLean found him tangled in his parachute. Giving the false name “Hauptmann Alfred Horn,” Hess said he had an urgent message for the Duke of Hamilton. McLean took him to his cottage and called the Home Guard.

Hamilton, on duty as an RAF officer nearby, met the prisoner the next morning, where Hess admitted his true identity. Hitler, blindsided, stripped Hess of his offices and had German radio brand him a deluded madman.

Prisoner, defendant, prisoner again

Hess spent the rest of the war a British prisoner. Stalin, convinced the flight masked a secret Anglo-German deal, never fully trusted the story. Hess was convicted of crimes against peace at Nuremberg in 1946 and sentenced to life imprisonment.

He died in Spandau Prison in 1987, its last inmate. Pieces of his Messerschmitt survive to this day: one of its Daimler-Benz engines is held by the RAF Museum, and part of the fuselage by the Imperial War Museum — scattered relics of the war’s most inexplicable flight.

Sources: Wikipedia; Smithsonian Magazine; Key.Aero; The History Press; Churchill, “The Grand Alliance” (1950); Speer, “Inside the Third Reich” (1971).