OPERATION ROCKING HORSE
The top-secret plan to smuggle Royals to a country mansion ... and foil Hitler’s kidnap squads
DETAILS of a remarkable wartime plan to save the Royal Family from being kidnapped by Nazi paratroopers have been unveiled for the first time.
Under the plan, codenamed Rocking Horse, 200 elite Coldstream Guardsmen were retrained as bodyguards and drivers, ready to whisk the Royals to safety at a moment’s notice. And the Royals themselves were ordered to each keep a suitcase packed to aid their speedy departure.
Under Operation Rocking Horse, King George VI, Queen Elizabeth and their daughters Elizabeth and Margaret would have been smuggled from Buckingham Palace to Madresfield Court, a 12th Century mansion in Worcestershire – chosen as a bolthole as the property was owned by friends of former Coldstream officers. The nearby River Severn offered an escape route if their cover was blown.
Rocking Horse was drawn up to thwart a plan by Adolf Hitler to kidnap members of the Royal Family and force Britain to surrender.
Author Andrew Stewart, whose new book, called The King’s Private Army, reveals details of Rocking Horse, told The Mail on Sunday: ‘According to German sources, Hitler devised a plan for bombers to launch a dive-bomb attack on Central London.
‘Then paratroopers, dropped from low-flying aircraft, would land in the grounds of Buckingham Palace and capture any members of the Royal Family they could find.
‘Great emphasis was placed upon the German “Royal Unit” taking its hostages alive as Hitler apparently believed that capturing the King and his immediate family could force Britain’s surrender. Fears that such an operation would be mounted led to the King’s private army, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel James Coats.
‘No written orders were given and, such was the sense of urgency surrounding the security of the Royal Family, his troops were often on only five minutes’ notice to move,’ said Mr Stewart. ‘The destinations were only ever referred to by codewords contained in sealed envelopes.’
In the event of the Royal Family being smuggled to Madresfield Court, the house would have been defended by troops from the King’s private army and auxiliary units made up of local farmers who were trained to assassinate Germans and blow up vehicles.
The King’s private army was also equipped with high-powered armoured vehicles, such as Daimler scout cars and bulletproof limousines to escort the Royals.
Food and ammunition supplies were secretly stockpiled in the 120-room house, thought to have been the inspiration for the Evelyn Waugh novel Brideshead Revisited. To maintain an appearance of normality, no additional defences were built on the 4,000 acres of land. The main house was already protected by a moat.
King George VI took Nazi threats to his personal security seriously and spent hours every week on a firing range at Buckingham Palace practising shooting a revolver.
He also insisted that when he left the Palace by car, he brought a Sten sub-machine gun in his briefcase, apparently telling his chauffeur that if they were attacked by German spies, he should be left behind to fight the enemy to the death.
Rocking Horse also included plans for the evacuation of the British government to Stratford-upon-Avon.
But the plans were never put into action, after Hitler turned his attention to invading Russia following his defeat in the Battle of Britain.
Though the Royal Archives are believed to contain references to Rocking Horse, many of the documents remain classified. But Stewart interviewed one of the senior Coldstream officers involved in the plan, Brigadier Sir Jeffrey Darell, who agreed to speak about the King’s private army on the insistence that none of the material was published while he was alive.
His death in 2013 allowed Stewart to work on the book, which has now been published.