Air defence had picked up the flight path, and observers had seen the plane’s occupant bale out before it exploded in flames. A local Scottish farmhand, Donald McLean, was, however, first on the scene. He quickly established that the parachutist, struggling to get out of his harness, was unarmed. Asked whether he was British or German, Heß replied that he was German; his name was Hauptmann Alfred Horn, and he had an important message to give to the Duke of Hamilton. Another local man, the elderly William Craig, had by this time arrived on the scene. While Craig went off to summon assistance, the limping Heß was escorted back to the cottage where McLean lived with his wife and mother, and offered a cup of tea (which he declined in favour of water). Within a short time, a few members of the local Home Guard, already heading for the farm after seeing a parachutist come down near by, entered the cottage. Smelling of whisky and prodding their prisoner with an old First World War pistol, they bundled him into a car and drove him to Home Guard headquarters — a scout-hut in the next village. Police and more Home Guard officers, curious about the German captive as word spread, soon turned up. They were followed a little later by Major Graham Donald, Assistant Group Officer of the Royal Observer Corps, who had seen the course of Heß’s plane charted on his maps before it had disappeared from trace. The prisoner, by now — well after midnight, an hour and a half or more after landing — tired and probably becoming increasingly agitated about the prospects of fulfilling his ‘mission’, impressed upon Donald that he had a vital secret message for the Duke of Hamilton. Donald undertook to contact the Duke. But he was not deceived by ‘Hauptmann Horn’; he said he would tell the Duke of Hamilton that he had Rudolf Heß in his custody. The message was, however, not passed on in this form. When Hamilton was informed in the early hours that a captured German pilot was demanding to speak to him, there was no reference to Heß, and the name of Hauptmann Alfred Horn meant nothing to the Duke. Puzzled, and very tired, Hamilton made arrangements to interview the mysterious airman next day, and went to bed.175
The Duke, a wing-commander in the RAF, arrived from his base to talk to the German captive by mid-morning on 11 May. ‘Hauptmann Horn’ admitted that his true name was Rudolf Heß. The discussion was inconsequential, but convinced Hamilton that he was indeed face to face with Heß. By the evening he had flown south, summoned to report to Churchill at Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire, a palatial eighteenth-century residence in magnificent grounds, frequently used by the British Prime Minister as a weekend headquarters. Churchill was in the midst of a dinner party. A film, the hilarious
By the following day, Monday 12 May, the professionals from the Foreign Office were involved. It was decided to send Ivone Kirkpatrick, from 1933 to 1938 First Secretary at the British Embassy in Berlin and a strong opponent of Appeasement, to interrogate Heß. Kirkpatrick and Hamilton left to fly to Scotland in the early evening. It was after midnight by the time they arrived at Buchanan Castle, near Loch Lomond, to confront the prisoner.177
The first Hitler knew of Heß’s disappearance was in the late morning of Sunday, 11 May, when Karl-Heinz Pintsch, one of the Deputy Führer’s adjutants, turned up at the Berghof. He was carrying an envelope containing a letter which Heß had given him shortly before taking off, entrusting him to deliver it personally to Hitler. With some difficulty, Pintsch managed to make plain to Hitler’s adjutants that it was a matter of the utmost urgency, and that he had to speak personally to the Führer.178 When Hitler read Heßs letter, the colour drained from his face.179 Albert Speer, busying himself with architectural sketches at the time, suddenly heard an ‘almost animal-like scream’. Then Hitler bellowed, ‘Bormann immediately! Where is Bormann?!’180
