Crooks came prepared for violence... and they got it at bloody battle of Heathrow
100 YEARS OF THE SWEENEY: BULLION RAID SWOOP
THE Met’s Flying Squad is 100 years old but few remember a spectacular early success in 1948 – the Battle of Heathrow – where “the Sweeney” cracked a gold bullion robbery plot, as a book by Dick Kirby recalls.
As he drove through the night towards Staines police station, Donald Fish was a worried man and justifiably so. It was July 1948 and the former Scotland Yard detective was the head of British Overseas Airways Corporation security at newly opened London Airport.
And the only repository for bullion and other valuables flown into what is now known as Heathrow Airport was nothing more than a corrugated iron converted aircraft hangar.
Worse, a warehouseman called Anthony Walsh had informed him he had been approached by a notorious criminal who wanted his assistance to steal a shipment of gold bullion from South America.
Fish was losing no time getting to the local police station, where the senior officer reached for his telephone and asked to be connected to Scotland Yard’s elite crimebusting unit, the Flying Squad.
The gang had information a quarter-of-a-million pounds of bullion was to be flown into Heathrow. Whilst planning the job in a pub close to the airport, who should walk in but Walsh – and gang member Alfred Roome, known as Big Alfie, recognised him as a former fellow World War Two PoW from a German camp at Genshagen.
Roome suggested Walsh would drug the coffee for the three guards with phenobarbitone tablets. This Walsh agreed to do but later decided to inform his employers.
On the evening of the raid, July 28, Walsh came on duty, having accepted the tablets from the gang.
When the BOAC bullion van arrived, the gang were confident all was going to plan. But the container unloaded into the warehouse was empty. Instead, out of view, 14 Flying Squad officers clambered out and secreted themselves behind packing cases inside the warehouse. Outside were other detectives disguised as BOAC personnel.
For their own safety, the three guards had been whisked away, their places taken by Detective Sergeants Charlie Hewett, George Draper and John Matthews of the Flying Squad.
Eventually, just before midnight, the mobile canteen arrived and Walsh obtained a jug full of coffee which he brought back in to the three officers. The coffee was poured into three cups, which were tipped into a corner of the warehouse, in case the gang had doped the coffee themselves.
The officers knew – because Walsh had told them – the gang anticipated the drug would take 20 minutes to work. The three sprawled across the table, feigning unconsciousness, and Walsh slid open the hangar’s giant double doors. The light from the warehouse was the signal for the robbers to move in.
Sidney Cook from Stratford drove the lorry up to the warehouse doors. Dressed in BOAC uniform, he looked round the hangar. Obviously satisfied, the rest of the thieves, 11 in all, trooped in. All had their hands covered. But most unusual was all of them (save Cook) were wearing stockings over their heads – the first time this disguise had been used.
Roome surveyed the three supposedly unconscious guards. DS Charlie Hewett had posed as the security officer carrying the safe keys, and Roome slapped him across the face. Satisfied Hewett was unconscious, Roome relieved him of the safe keys and kicked him twice, after which Hewett and the two other officers had adhesive tape placed over their mouths and were tied up.
One of the other “drugged” officers – John Matthews – failed to fully convince the gang and was promptly cracked over the head.
As another of the gang produced a carafe of water and proceeded to wash out the coffee cups, Roome inserted the key into the safe. As soon as an audible “click” had been heard, satisfying the requirements of the Larceny Act, the cry went up: “We are police officers of the Flying Squad – stay where you are!”
The Flying Squad emerged from their hiding places, the gang leader replied, “Bring the guns out and let them have it – kill the bastards!’ and
a battle commenced. In fact, the gang had no guns – what they did have was a variety of other murderous weapons.
Flying Squad second-in-command DCI Bob Lee had his scalp split open with an iron bar wielded by Roome, while the gang member who had been washing out the cups now smashed the carafe and ground the jagged ends into DS Fred Allen’s thigh. Allen cracked his opponent over the head with his truncheon and both men fell. Allen was grievously injured but conscious, his opponent was out cold.
Draper had been untied and he now released Charlie Hewett, who tore into Roome, inflicting serious injuries.
Fifty years after the event, Hewett wrote: “I did not feel guilty about what I did to Big Alfie.”
DS Donald MacMillan had his nose broken as he defended Hewett. DS Mickey Dowse waded into the fray: first he was hit with a giant pair of wire cutters, then as one of the gang went to cosh him and Dowse put up his arm to ward off the blow, his hand was shattered. In a similar way, DI Peter Sinclair suffered a broken arm.
As the fight spilled out of the warehouse, so the waiting Squad men rushed forward and eight of the gang soon lay unconscious.
Not all were caught. Billy Benstead and Bertie Saphir escaped. Teddy Machin was chased by officers and in the darkness lost both them and his balance. He fell into a ditch, passed out and was overlooked. (He was not quite so overlooked in 1970 when he received both barrels of a sawn-off shotgun through the window of his Canning Town home.)
Franny Daniels, a well-respected thief, managed to crawl under a lorry and cling on as it moved off. He had intended to drop off at the first set of traffic lights; instead the lorry conveyed him to the yard at Harlington police station from where he made his escape.
After some muchneeded sleep, food and hospital treatment, the officers accompanied the robbers to Uxbridge magistrates court where the incredulous magistrate heard brief evidence of arrest before remanding the gang in custody.
On September 17, the gang appeared at the Old Bailey. They had previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to rob but not guilty to assaulting the police. Now, they pleaded guilty to robbing DS Charlie Hewett of four keys, whilst armed. After listening to unconvincing mitigation, the Recorder of London, Sir Gerald Dodson, told them: “One can only describe this as the battle of the BOAC, for that is what it degenerated into. It is a thing honest people regard with terror and great abhorrence. You went prepared for violence and you got it. You got the worst of it and you can hardly complain about that.” Seven of the gang were sentenced to between five and 12 years.
And what of hard-man Alfred Roome? As the Recorder sentenced him to 10 years, Roome broke down and sobbed. It was to have a farreaching effect. Roome was ostracised in prison. Upon his release his former associates continued this exclusion and after his wife started an affair with a younger man, Roome became so unbalanced he blamed the pair for everything. He launched a frenzied attack on them and then took poison. They survived – Roome did not.
It was a time of celebration for the Flying Squad; all of them were commended by the commissioner and the case passed into Squad folklore.
The Sweeney: The First Sixty Years of Scotland Yard’s Crimebusting Flying Squad 1919-1978 by Dick Kirby is published by Wharncliffe Books.