In May 1941 Hess, Adolf Hitler’s deputy führer, created a sensation by flying himself across the North Sea in
an Me-110 and parachuting into Scotland, apparently seeking to negotiate peace terms between Germany and the British government. Hess was eventually accommodated as a prisoner of war at Mytchett Place, Aldershot, where he was interrogated by a succession of British intelligence officers, who concluded that he was deranged. He stood trial at Nuremburg accused of war crimes in 1945 and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He died, apparently by his own hand, having hanged himself with an electrical cord in the garden of Spandau Prison in Berlin in August 1987.