Daily Express, 13th May 1941, Page 4—
"[Rudolf] Hess used for his dramatic flight a Jaguar high-speed reconnaissance bomber, a version of the Messerschmitt 110. It is chiefly distinguishable by its glazed bomb-aiming nose."
Happy Christmas.
Simon Wood
Hi Iverson,
<snip>
I can't work out how the Daily Express came by this very specific information.
Happy New Year.
Simon
An interesting point is that no photographs exist of the nose and cockpit of Hess's aircraft. That would have sorted it out in an instant. Come to that, no photographs of Hess appear to have been taken while he was in Scotland/England.
And just so you know, I am not a rabid conspiracy theorist.
I would have thought this would not have been a mystery given the werk number of the airframe is known, 3869.
Just good old journalistic flannel, its almost a surprise when a reporter gets the right aircraft given how many mistakes they have made over the years.
Hi Iverson,
I thought so, too.
I found these references to the Bf162 -
"As a disinformation tactic, images of the Bf 162 were widely circulated in the German press captioned as the "Messerschmitt Jaguar", a name never used outside this context."
"The Bf 162 continued to see service as a propaganda tool. Images of the aircraft were widely distributed under the name Bf 162 Jaguar, in the hopes of drawing the attention of Allied intelligence services away from other aircraft programs."
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I can't work out how the Daily Express came by this very specific information.
Happy New Year.
Simon
Hi Newsdeskdan,
Thanks for the photographs. I already have these, but it was interesting to read the reverse of IWM2 and learn who actually took the photo.
The newspaper I was referencing was the Daily Express, 13th May 1941. Here are the last two paragraphs from Page 4.
I'm slowly learning that are more parts of Hess's aircraft than there are pieces of the true cross.
Happy New Year
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It was attached to my last post.
The yellow-tinted box came from this website - http://www.histaviation.com/Messerschmitt__Bf_162.html
I agree with you. British intelligence and the press would not have had any current knowledge of the Bf 162, because, as you rightly point out, it did not actually exist in May 1941.
So, how did the Daily Express get hold of this piece of impossible information?
Sorry, I know nothing about the Me 163. That's news to me.
I doubt we'll ever get to the bottom of the Daily Express story, but it's interesting that other papers identified the aircraft as an Me 110.
Small world. In the 60s I worked for the Press Association at 85 Fleet Street.
Thanks for your interest.
And that's why we should always cite sources when posting. However it was clearly a screenshot from a website, not a scan from a newspaper.
Mind you it was claiming Lightnings and Airacobras on the accompanying illustration of RAF frontline fighters...