London. A full moon rose on the night of 10 May 1941. It happened to be a Saturday. Luftwaffe bomber crews ate an early supper on their bases across the Channel and hours later the first wave of Heinkels and Dorniers lined up for take-off as the last glimmers of daylight died on the western horizon. Past ten o’clock, radar stations on the south coast were warning about the imminence of a major raid and within minutes ground observers in Kent and Essex reported enemy aircraft in sight. German aircrew peered down at the Thames estuary, silver in the moonlight, as RAF controllers scrambled night fighters and air raid sirens in the capital emptied the pubs.
One of the first bombs to hit the Palace of Westminster was an incendiary. The Victoria Tower was already under repair and a police sergeant climbed a tangle of scaffolding to extinguish the burning magnesium with a sandbag. Minutes later, high explosive bombs killed two auxiliary policemen, shattered windows and brought down a wall.
By midnight, with the bombs still falling, firemen were battling to save the House of Commons and Westminster Hall. Fifty fire pumps struggled to contain the blaze, hosing water directly from the Thames, but by daybreak both the Commons chamber and the Members’ Lobby had been destroyed. The Speaker’s chair was a pile of ashes and the padded green leather seats in the chamber, famous worldwide, were charred beyond recognition. Onlookers that Sunday morning stared at the drifts of smoking rubble, uncomprehending. The mother of parliaments had survived months of savage bombing throughout the blitz. Now this.
*
That same night, 340 miles to the north, a lone Me-110 appeared on another set of radar screens. It roared over the tiny coastal town of Bamburgh and disappeared into the darkness towards the west. Three Spitfires and a Defiant night fighter were ordered to intercept but failed to find the enemy aircraft. Thirty-four minutes later, his fuel tanks close to empty, the lone pilot baled out.
Word of the fast-developing raid on London had already reached Scotland but no one suspected that the two events might be linked. By now, radar controllers in the north had assigned the mystery intruder a codename.
Raid 42.