Heston Airport

Heston Airport is where Neville Chamberlain’s journey to meet Adolf Hitler becomes a public departure rather than a private diplomatic errand. Seen largely through Hugh Legat’s experience, the airfield gathers the Prime Minister, his Cabinet colleagues, newsreel crews and ordinary spectators into a single scene of farewell, before the aircraft carries them above the crowd and into the clouds.

Arrival and preparations

Legat reaches Downing Street early, carrying a suitcase after a night of little sleep. The weather has broken into drizzle; the pavements shine, and barely visible barrage balloons hang against the grey sky. Sandbags have been built around the British Foreign Office entrance, while six black cars wait in a line from 10 Downing Street toward Whitehall, ready to take the Prime Minister’s party to Heston Airport. The details place the journey against a city already preparing for danger, even as its immediate purpose is negotiation.

At the airport, the convoy first meets spectators blocking the road. Beyond a chain-link fence and low white buildings, two large planes stand beside the concrete apron, illuminated by newsreel lights and surrounded by several hundred people beneath open umbrellas. The cars pass saluting policemen and circle behind the terminal and hangar before stopping on the airfield. Chamberlain emerges to cheers. The arrival of the party is thus staged before a crowd that has gathered to see not simply an aircraft, but the leader setting out on a consequential mission.

A public farewell

Legat and Lord Dunglass collect their suitcases and the red boxes they are carrying for the journey. Legat is surprised to find Lord Halifax, Sir John Simon, Sam Hoare and other Cabinet colleagues there as well. Dunglass explains that their presence was not on the schedule: the Chancellor had arranged the surprise, and the group had come to share Chamberlain’s public moment. The unexpected gathering changes the scene from a formal send-off by a small party into a collective show of support.

Chamberlain shakes hands with his colleagues as the crowd presses against the policemen’s line. Reporters, airport workers, local people, schoolboys and a mother holding a baby follow his progress while the newsreel cameras turn toward him. At the microphones, he invokes a childhood maxim about trying again and recalls Hotspur’s image of safety plucked from danger. He consults a small piece of paper, then looks up to address the crowd. Their cheers, and his repeated waving of his hat, give the departure the character of a public performance as well as a political journey.

Take-off and narrative significance

The suitcases are handed to the aircrew, but Legat keeps possession of one of the red boxes. Chamberlain boards the plane, briefly reappears for one last round of cheers, and disappears inside. Legat follows Lord Dunglass toward the aircraft, which seems unexpectedly small and fragile at close range: the Lockheed is only about forty feet long. At the bottom step, Legat looks back at the enthusiastic faces and finds himself feeling intrepid too. The airport’s crowd has made the risk of the flight tangible, while the smallness of the plane sharpens the contrast between the scale of the political stakes and the machinery carrying the negotiators.

After taxiing over the rough grass, the aircraft accelerates past the terminal. Legat grips the armrests as it races toward the fence; only at the last moment does it lift, banking above green fields, red roofs and slick grey streets. Below the Great West Road, people have come out into their gardens and wave with both arms as the plane climbs into low cloud and the view disappears. After several minutes in grey mist, it breaks into sunshine above a landscape of cloud peaks and ravines. Heston Airport is left behind, but the farewell remains the scene’s defining image: a diplomatic mission departing under public eyes, with the people below reduced to waving figures as the aircraft vanishes overhead.