Today in History—July 28: The Battle of London Airport

On a sultry summer night in 1948, an audacious robbery attempt happened at the newly opened London Airport. (We know it better as Heathrow.) The plot was simple—and very British. An inside man—a warehouse security guard—would drug the tea (or coffee) of his coworkers to knock them out. While his colleagues slept, the robbers would make their move.

The goods belonged to the British Overseas Airways Corporation and the British South American Airways Corporation, and they were spread throughout a customs warehouse. Recently built, the warehouses amounted to little more than converted aircraft hangars—not exactly the most secure place to store, among other prizes, at least a thousand pounds’ worth of gold bullion arriving on this day from South America. The total purse—including jewelry and other treasures—would be valued at more than £10 million today.

But things didn’t go according to plan. (Things rarely do in these stories.)

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Some 10 men armed with clubs and crowbars crept into the warehouse, unaware that their inside man had changed his mind and ratted them out. The “sleeping” security guards were actually members of Scotland Yard’s elite Flying Squad. More officers were stashed throughout the dim warehouse, and still more waited miles down the road for the signal.

The “drowsy” guards put up little resistance while the robbers searched them for the keys to the safes.

But the moment the key clicked into the lock—the instant the crime became larceny in the eyes of the law—the “sleepy” security guards leaped to their feet and announced their true identities. The thieves quickly found themselves surrounded.

Then the bloody battle began. Wire cutters, car starters, broken coffee mugs—anything at hand became a weapon. The robbers fought with murderous determination, and the police answered with their truncheons. Many men were seriously injured, but none were killed. Eight robbers were captured.

They were sentenced to between 5 and 12 years of hard labor by an unsympathetic judge: “You went prepared for violence and you got it. You got the worst of it and you can hardly complain about that.”

One of the Scotland Yard detectives later commemorated the melee in song, “’Twas a marvellous fight—while it lasted.”

Famous Birthdays

1165: Ibn al-ʿArabī—Muslim mystic and philosopher

1840: Edward Drinker Cope—American paleontologist who discovered 1,000 extinct vertebrates

1879: Lucy Burns—American suffragist

1936: Garfield Sobers—West Indian cricketer