Len Deighton 3-Book War Collection Volume 1: Bomber, XPD, Goodbye Mickey Mouse. Len Deighton
damned impressive,’ said August.
‘It’s not always as calm as this, I’m afraid. On a real raid things get more hectic. I’ve seen them shouting at each other down there.’
‘And those little white lights don’t disappear so quickly,’ said August.
‘Ah,’ said the Leutnant. ‘That’s the real difference, I’m afraid.’ He spoke like a man who knew how big the sky was on a dark night.
They watched the ‘air raid’ proceed for a few more minutes. Still the white T lights that represented the bombers kept on their narrow line. The controllers practised dealing with the ‘stream tactics’ that the RAF had developed as a way of overwhelming the radar defences of just one zone instead of presenting single targets piecemeal to several radar sets and accompanying night fighters.
‘What about the Mosquito they send in to mark the target? If our planes could get up high enough to knock that down, the stream wouldn’t know where to drop their bombs.’
‘Exactly,’ said the Leutnant. He swung lightly round on his toes with his arm stiffly akimbo, giving him a curious effeminate stance. He eyed Bach speculatively and then decided to confide a secret.
‘Tonight we have a surprise awaiting them.’
‘The Ju88s supercharged with nitrous oxide?’
‘“Ha-ha” they call them – laughing gas, you see – you’ve heard about them, eh?’
‘What idiot thought of that code name?’
‘And 12.8 guns on railway mountings, we are going to try everything we know tonight. I don’t know, some fool in Air Ministry, I suppose.’
‘If they cooperate by flying over the railway guns,’ said August doubtfully.
‘They always come in from north to south, and always towards the Ruhr because – we think – that’s the limit of the electronic range. So we can make a guess at it. We’ll be more or less in position.’
‘Radio intercept predict a big one tonight,’ said August. He looked at his own radar station on the glass map, its range indicated by a dull lit circle. It was exactly placed between the RAF bomber airfields of East Anglia and the Ruhr. ‘I’m at Ermine,’ said August.
‘I know, sir,’ said the Leutnant. ‘I don’t think you’ll have much sleep before morning.’ Now August could see that the young Leutnant’s stiff left arm was artificial.
Like all such depressions, this one had been born when moist air from the Azores met the cold dry air of the Arctic. The resulting muddled air mass moved eastwards over Britain until it reached the sea area to the west of Denmark which was called Heligoland. Here the centre of the depression paused. Hinged upon this depression, the cloud-marked cold front, like a thousand-mile-wide door, swung across Europe at twenty miles an hour. The front curved because its southern edge couldn’t keep up the pace. That southern end had only reached Bilbao in Spain when the centre was darkening the skies of Lyon and the northern sector was deluging the streets of Esbjerg with torrential rain.
In the high-pressure region that followed the front the heavy air subsided, warming by compression as it dropped. There was no more than the lightest of breezes, the clouds shrank even as you watched them, and the sun shone.
England had had its thunderstorms during the night and a morning of sunshine, but already a little cumulus had appeared over Wales and parts of the West Country. At Kroonsdijk, however, where the cold front had only recently passed, the skies were blue and the sun warmed the wet grass.
Unteroffizier Himmel eased himself into the pilot’s seat of his Ju88 parked at the end of the dispersal. The sun had been upon the metal fuselage for several hours and now the seat and controls were hot to touch and the smell of warmed fuel was as powerful as Glühwein. It was a luxury to be alone for a moment and apart from the sounds of the ground crewmen doing their pre-flight inspection it was as peaceful as a country graveyard. Himmel looked at the wet grass where an oil-patch made a rainbow pattern of red, yellow and mauve. A sandpiper landed and bobbed around the brightly coloured grass looking for worms until a mechanic closed the dinghy stowage hatch forcibly enough to frighten it back into the air.
The old piece of fuselage that the fire section had set alight sent a quill of white smoke into the still air. At its nib, Leutnant Beer in overalls was wielding a fire extinguisher under the command of Horst Knoll, the senior NCO of the fire section. Horst was a bad-tempered fellow who hated officers and did his best to make their lives as uncomfortable as his legitimate duties permitted.
‘On to the base of the flame,’ he was shouting to Beer, who was reluctantly closing in upon the foul-smelling wreckage and cursing. Horst Knoll, knowing exactly what the moving lips were saying, smiled and urged him forward all the more. ‘Don’t be afraid of the smoke, Herr Leutnant, get much closer and put the jet on to the base of the flame. Much closer, Herr Leutnant, much, much closer.’
At the far end of the line of matt-black aircraft Major Redenbacher’s aeroplane poked its snout from the dark hangar. Most of the spare mechanics were working on it. Suddenly the peace was shattered by the sound of engines. A Junkers with Leutnant Kokke at the controls was also preparing for an air test. Its chocks were pulled aside. Kokke gave a blip of throttle to start it moving around the perimeter. It moved away beyond the Alert Hut where the aircrew spent so much time. Outside it a dozen aircrew – air tests completed – sat sunning themselves. Most of them were younger than Himmel and few had been in the Luftwaffe as long as he had, but they’d come from all manner of units as their clothing showed. They’d seen service on war fronts from Finland to Egypt: British Army bush shirts, Czech flying boots, old Hitler Jugend shorts and Swedish leather jackets. Some sat shirtless, eyes closed in the deck-chairs, two played chess and some sprawled full-length on the wet grass arguing about engines and firepower and girls and promotion and medals.
No matter how much Löwenherz disapproved of their unsoldierly appearance it was a standing order of Major Redenbacher that at their Alert Huts the aircrews could ‘dress informally, always providing that the regulations concerning the wearing of identity tags around the neck are not disobeyed’.
Three flyers were standing in the hut doorway. Himmel looked at his watch and guessed that they were listening to the BBC, for this was the time that they broadcast the flyers’ programme. The carefully written technical talks always ended with a list of Luftwaffe personnel newly captured and newly dead.
Suddenly there was a loud thunder of cannon-fire and they all swung round to the firing butts. Above it a thin veil of blue smoke showed where Löwenherz’s plane was having its guns harmonized by the armourers. Someone made a joke, and then Himmel saw them all laugh and relax. It was the long wait for nightfall that built up the tension. That’s why Himmel always left his air test as late as possible.
One of Himmel’s ground crew removed the rudder lock and then walked round the aeroplane to check the ailerons and control surfaces. Himmel slipped his toes under the rudder-bar loops and fastened his seat straps. He ran his hand down his oxygen-lead connection to check it and then moved the control column forward and back and twisted the antlers to be sure that the controls were free of obstruction. Old Krugelheim, the chief mechanic, was getting a little impatient. Under his black overalls he was shirtless and without trousers, but still he sweated as he paced about under the nose of Himmel’s machine. He kept looking across to the hangar and Major Redenbacher’s aircraft. The cowling had been removed from its port motor and its most intimate parts bared to the oily inquiring hands of the fitters. The black-garbed men stood on a platform, arrayed around the disembowelled motor like witch-doctors at a Black Mass. One of them, chanting a line from a textbook, bent low into its entrails and flashed a torch deep inside. His open hand appeared and worldlessly a spanner was put into it.
Krugelheim looked up to where Himmel sat in the cockpit high above