Mosquito Squadron (15 page)

They took their seats, and the civilian began to run through a series of slides. The first depicted a well-equipped airfield, with a good runway complex, permanent hangars and clusters of adjacent buildings.

That is Peenemünde, on the Baltic coast,’ the civilian explained. This reconnaissance photograph was taken last July, and if you examine it closely, concentrating on a point immediately below the large hangar on the extreme right, you will see some very curious aeroplanes indeed.’

The two seated men leaned forward, focusing on the spot indicated by the civilian. It was occupied by a pair of weirdlooking machines. They appeared to be virtually all wing, which had swept surfaces, and they were very small, it was not difficult to obtain an idea of their size, for a Junkers 88 bomber parked close by dwarfed them.

‘We think that they may be rocket-powered,’ the civilian said, ‘because the dark streaks you can see on the concrete near them have been interpreted by our experts as scorch marks. As yet, we know nothing about them except their approximate wingspan, which is about thirty feet.

‘We had known for a long time that the Germans were developing secret weapons at Peenemünde,’ he went on, ‘which is why Bomber Command mounted a heavy attack on the place in August. It looks somewhat different now.’ Another slide flicked on the screen, and Yeoman let out a low whistle. The scene was one of total devastation, with the skeletal ruins of buildings standing amid a cratered lunar landscape. The stark black-and-white photograph captured, with awful clarity, the devastating effect of a concentrated attack by seven hundred heavy bombers.

‘Now,’ the civilian continued, ‘take a close look at this one.’

Once again, the next slide depicted two aircraft. Like the previous photographs, this was a vertical shot, taken from many thousands of feet. The enemy machines, their outlines blurred because the picture had been greatly blown up, had swept wings and twin engines.

‘This was taken over the Messerschmitt test field at Rechlin four days ago,’ the civilian said. ‘The aircraft are powered by reaction engines and, as you will note from the shadows under them, appear to have tricycle undercarriages. They are similar in size to the Gloster aircraft you saw a few minutes ago and may well be the type our intelligence sources have listed under the designation Messerschmitt 262, although we are not certain about that.

‘This, however, is the photograph that immediately concerns us.’

Again it was a shot of an airfield, taken from high altitude. It showed several aircraft, identifiable as Junkers 88s, Heinkel IIIs and a couple of Junkers 52 transports — and four of the bat-winged aircraft previously photographed at Peenemünde.

‘The airfield you see here is Bad Zwischenahn, near Oldenburg. It is very heavily defended, and the pilot who secured these photographs very narrowly escaped with his life. But let him tell you the story himself.’

He pressed a buzzer, and a few moments later a door opened, admitting another civilian followed by a tall, gingerhaired flying officer. The latter appeared slightly nervous, as though he didn’t know what this was all about, but then he relaxed, lit up a cigarette given to him by Rothbury, and told what he knew. He was one of that small band of intrepid men who, flying stripped-down Spitfires and Mosquitos, roved across Europe and deep into Germany, their cameras uncovering the enemy’s secrets. Operating at altitudes of up to 40,000 feet, they had little to fear from enemy fighters. If one was sighted, the reconnaissance pilot usually had only to open his throttle and climb away out of range. That was the recipe for survival, for the reconnaissance aircraft carried no defensive armament.

‘It was two days ago,’ the ginger-haired pilot said. ‘November the twentieth. I was briefed to fly a circular route over western Germany, photographing three airfields: Rheine, Ahlhorn and Zwishenahn. It was a fairly routine show until I got over the last one.

‘I’d just completed my photo run when I saw a thick contrail, about a mile away horizontally and maybe seven or eight thousand feet lower down. It curved towards me and then disappeared, so I opened the taps and climbed as hard as I could. Three minutes later I was up to 42,000 feet. When I looked back, I saw that the other aircraft was closing fast. I don’t mind telling you, it nearly gave me heart failure.

‘I could see it clearly now, and it was the funniest-looking damn thing I’ve ever come across. It was all wing, and looked just like one of those paper aeroplanes we used to make when we were kids.

‘It came straight towards me, going like a bat out of hell. Christ, it must have been doing 600 mph! It opened fire, and I did the only thing possible under the circumstances — I started turning like hell, knowing that nothing could out-turn a Spit at this altitude.

‘Anyhow, he missed, thank God, and shot underneath me. I lost sight of him a minute later; he was heading back towards the deck, pretty fast.’

The reconnaissance pilot’s brow furrowed. ‘Funny thing, though,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘It wasn’t leaving a contrail any more. Can’t understand that. It frightened me fartless, though. If that thing had been scrambled to intercept me, it must have climbed to 40,000 feet in five minutes flat. But that’s impossible, isn’t it?’ He looked questioningly at Rothbury and Yeoman, as though searching for some reassurance.

‘Thank you, Flying Officer,’ the civilian said. ‘We’ll be in touch with you again, if we need any further information from you.’ He opened the door and the ginger-haired pilot left, looking more perplexed than ever.

After the pilot had gone, the civilian said to Yeoman and Rothbury: ‘There you have it, gentlemen. That’s all we know; the rest is conjecture. What we believe, however, is that these aircraft are the prototypes of a radical new interceptor, and the reconnaissance pilot’s account tends to substantiate the theory that it is rocket-powered and very, very fast. We think that the story of the enemy aircraft’s vapour trail suddenly disappearing is significant; if it is indeed rocket-powered, its motor is likely to have enough fuel for only a few minutes under full power — in other words, enough time for it to climb to altitude. After that, it is probably designed to make its attack in a fast glide. If the reconnaissance pilot’s estimate of a speed of 600 mph is accurate, you may imagine what a threat several squadrons of these machines would pose to the Allied bombing offensive, and to the American daylight bombers in particular.’

He paused, toying with a pen for a few moments. Then he continued:

‘As I said earlier, this is only conjecture — but we think that the Germans have set up an experimental unit at Zwischenahn to test these new aircraft in action. The reconnaissance photographs revealed four of them; there may be more. Because of its revolutionary nature, however, it is unlikely that the enemy will order the new machine into mass production until it has been proven under operational conditions.’

He looked meaningfully at the two pilots. ‘If those prototypes can be destroyed,’ he said slowly, ‘it could buy time for us. Several months of time — enough to enable us to build some form of effective countermeasures against them.

‘Before long,’ the civilian went on, ‘the Americans will have brought into service several squadrons of a new long-range escort fighter, the P-51 Mustang. The type has already been operational for some time, but as a ground-attack and reconnaissance machine. The new escort version, however, will be able to accompany the daylight bomber formations as far as Berlin and back; it will also be able to keep the Luftwaffe’s fighter airfields in a constant state of harassment by day, complementing the RAP’s long-range intruder effort by night. If the enemy brings his new fighter types into large-scale service, our only chance will be to keep them pinned on the ground, to seek them out and destroy them wherever they can be found, for we will have little hope of meeting them on equal terms in the air until aircraft such as the Meteor become available.’

The civilian looked hard at Yeoman. ‘Do you think, Squadron Leader, that your squadron will be capable of carrying out an attack on Zwischenahn — an attack in broad daylight, to ensure the destruction of the new prototypes?’

Yeoman removed his unlit pipe from his mouth and gave a non-committal grunt. ‘That’s hard to say,’ he commented, bringing a rather disapproving sideways look from Rothbury. ‘What I mean to say is, we can knock out these new Hun aircraft all right, so long as we know where to look for them — and provided we can get through to them. It will take some planning, and we’d need some back-up: diversionary attacks, and all that sort of thing. The weather might be in our favour, though; plenty of cloud cover at this time of year.’

He tapped the stem of his pipe thoughtfully against his teeth, his keen and experienced mind already turning over the beginnings of several attack plans. Fighters might not present too much of a problem, especially if the Mosquitos could retain a fair element of surprise and a diversion could be laid on. Flak would be the main worry; if Zwischenahn was important to the enemy, the place would be stiff with it.

His fears were confirmed that afternoon, during a fuller briefing held elsewhere in the building. This was a purely RAF affair, presided over by Group Captain Sampson. Together, they pored over all available reconnaissance photographs of Zwischenahn, taken during the past weeks. The enemy gun positions were indicated by arrows, and there were a lot of them. Yeoman also noted that the Germans had set up flak lanes, extending for as much as two miles outwards from the ends of the runways, so that anything attempting to shoot up a German aircraft as it approached to land would have to negotiate a savage curtain of anti-aircraft fire.

Apart from the rocket fighters, several other Luftwaffe units were based on Zwischenahn. There was a transport squadron, and what appeared to be a communications flight, but Yeoman was not interested in them. What captured his attention, and increased his grim determination to make a success of this mission, was the information that two squadrons of fighters — one of Focke-Wulf 190s and the other of Messerschmitt 109Gs — had recently been moved to Zwischenahn from Holland, presumably to undertake the primary role of airfield defence.

They had been identified as belonging to Fighter Wing 301.

Chapter Ten

Joachim Richter was feeling far from confident. His breakfast felt like lead in his stomach, he had slept badly and he was surrounded by an aura of impending disaster which he found quite impossible to shake off.

He had been attached to Special Commando 16 for a month now, and it was entirely his own fault. At the beginning of November, quite out of the blue, he had been summoned to the Reich Air Ministry in Berlin, where a lieutenant-general had asked him if he would like to volunteer for special duties. He would not have to relinquish his command of Fighter Wing 301, but simply be detached from it for a while.

The general explained that experienced fighter pilots were being brought in from all over the Luftwaffe and given the opportunity to participate in what he called an Advanced Fighter Course. It would, he said, involve one of Germany’s new secret weapons — one which, if successful, would smash the American bomber formations from the sky. So Richter had agreed, and now he was wishing that he had not.

For a start, he had been virtually sent back to school, spending nearly three weeks in the classroom while a mixture of Luftwaffe specialists and scientists explained the peculiarities of the Messerschmitt Me 163A rocket fighter in minute detail. They had sounded convincing enough, but Richter had soon come to realize that the 163 had an awful lot of peculiarities, quite apart from its radical appearance. Its handling characteristics were different from those of an orthodox aircraft and it sat on a trolley-type undercarriage which was jettisoned after take-off, the landing being made on a retractable skid. One had to get the landing right first time, too, for the technique was to glide in once the rocket fuel had been exhausted.

Then there was the rocket motor itself, and the fuel that powered it. The Me 163’s tanks were filled with hydrogen peroxide and water and a catalyst, hydrazine hydrate and methyl alcohol, a lethal combination which, when blended, exploded in the rocket’s combustion chamber to produce several thousand pounds of thrust. If anything went wrong, however … one of the instructors had made the point better than any words by pouring a thimbleful of one fuel into a similar quantity of the other. There had been a loud bang and a searing flame had shot right across the room.

Their heads spinning with mathematical formulae, the volunteers had then made several flights in a glider version of the Me 163, called the Hawk. They had been towed into the air behind a Messerschmitt 110 and then released, gliding down to land. Each volunteer had also learned how to work the controls of the rocket motor on a special static rig, and then had come the big day when they were to start their powered flying.

One of the instructors had gone up first, just to show them how it should be done. They had watched carefully as his aircraft was fuelled, had seen him climb into the tiny cockpit with its screwed-down canopy. Dragging a long streamer of flame, the 163 had shrieked down the runway and pulled up in a dizzying climb, dwindling with incredible speed at the tip of an arrow-straight smoke trail.

The trail had ended abruptly, at a height of seven thousand feet, in a black bubble that burst across the sky. The sound of the explosion reached the watchers a few seconds later.

Another instructor had made a successful flight, however, and so had the first of the volunteers. Now, the next morning, it was Richter’s turn.

Johnny Schumacher, now a captain and in command of JG 301’s No. 1 Squadron, had come over from the other side of the airfield to watch the fun. He was cheerfully cynical about Richter’s chances of survival.

‘School for Advanced Suicide,’ he remarked, as he watched Richter struggle into the specially-impregnated PC flying overall, designed to protect him if he was splashed accidentally by any of the rocket fuel.

‘Can I have your collection of pipes, if you don’t come back?’

Richter glared at him, although his friend’s presence had the effect of steadying his nerves. ‘No, you can’t,’ he grunted. ‘They’re for big men to smoke, not little boys.’

An instructor poked his head round the door of the crew room, indicating that it was time to go. Richter nodded at Schumacher, grinning, and walked outside.

‘Break your neck and legs,’ Schumacher called after him, wishing him good fortune in the traditional Luftwaffe manner.

Richter and the instructor walked out to the waiting Me 163. It looked deceptively innocent as it stood at the end of the runway, painted the colour of the pale blue December sky, with darker patches of grey on the upper surfaces of its wings and fuselage. On its nose, within a white shield, was painted a man in red hunting jacket and black riding boots, seated astride a flaming cannonball: the legendary Baron Munchausen, whose fictitious ride through the sky had become the well-chosen symbol of Special Commando 16.

Richter climbed into the cockpit, did up his harness and intercom leads and switched on the electrics. Standing on the wing, his instructor bent over him with a few final words of advice.

‘Remember, Herr Major, keep the stick in the neutral position during the take-off. There is no need for any movement; the aircraft will fly itself off the ground. Drop your wheels at ten metres, no lower, or they might bounce up again and hit you. Wait until the speed reaches 800 km/h, then pull back steadily on the stick. Remember to report as you pass each thousand metres. Hold the climb until the motor cuts, then level out.’

He tapped Richter encouragingly on the shoulder. ‘Right, that’s all. You’re on your own.’

The broad cockpit canopy slammed down into position over him and he locked it into place. He made sure that his oxygen mask was firmly fixed over his face, checked the instruments and then signalled to the mechanics who were standing by the accumulator. A moment later, there was a low whistle as the fuel pump turbine began to revolve; it swelled to a whine and then to a piercing howl. Richter gave another signal and the mechanics unplugged the accumulator, hastily moving back to a safe distance.

Taking a deep breath, Richter opened the throttle, allowing the two volatile rocket fuels to mix. There was a thump as the first of the rocket chambers ignited, a two-second delay that seemed like an eternity, and then, as Richter threw a pair of switches, the motor blasted into full roaring life.

With a will of its own the Me 163 hurtled down the runway with an acceleration that pressed him back into his seat. He had the weirdest feeling of being nothing more than a spectator, with no control over his destiny or that of the speeding machine. He needed to make no control movements at all; the 163 sped along the blurring tarmac like a bullet.

At nearly 300 km/h it left the ground. Richter forced himself to wait for a moment, then threw the switch that jettisoned the undercarriage. There was the briefest of jolts, and now the needle of the air speed indicator wound round the dial with phenomenal speed. The ground was a green streak, flowing past him, barely glimpsed at the periphery of his vision.

The ASI needle approached 800 km/h and he eased back the stick, ever so gently. The 163’s nose came up and suddenly he was lying almost on his back as the little aircraft raced into the blue vault of the sky on its long pillar of smoke. The thunder of its engine came to him only as a faint rumble, but he knew that in the little lakeside town of Bad Zwischenahn its fearsome crescendo would be rattling the rooftops.

Two thousand metres already! Remembering his instructions, he hastily pressed the R/T button.

‘Bat to Tulip. Rak-wagons Two.’

The controller at Zwischenahn acknowledged curtly. Richter, his earlier fears forgotten, was seized by a sudden wild exhilaration as the 163 continued straight up in that seemingly endless climb, with the whole of space ahead of it. They called the little aircraft the Komet, and how apt it was! What would old Munchausen have made of this!

‘Rak-wagons six … Rak-wagons eight …’ The thousands of metres unrolled in his wake. He was master of the world, of the sky. ‘Rak-wagons nine … Rak-wagons ten … eleven …’

At 36,500 feet, 11,000 metres, the rocket motor finally cut out; its fuel exhausted. The acceleration dropped away sharply and the seat harness began to tug at Richter as gravity reasserted itself. He polled the throttle back and levelled out, calling up control to report his peak altitude, then decided to spend a few minutes trying out the 163’s controls.

The little rocket plane handled beautifully. He eased the stick right back to induce a stall, but there was no abrupt nose-down pitch; instead, the Komet remained in a level attitude, losing height.

He was still above 9,000 metres, so he pushed forward the stick to investigate the 163’s behaviour in a dive. The speed built up again rapidly until the ASI showed nearly 1,000 km/h and the needle of the adjacent Machmeter, measuring the aircraft’s speed in relation to the speed of sound, showed .83.

As he levelled out, he realized with a profound shock that he had just joined a small and select band of pilots who were the fastest men in the world. He had reached a speed that was a good one-third higher than that of the fastest piston-engined fighter.

He zoomed up and dived again, the speed falling away slowly as he brought the Komet down towards Zwischenahn, trying out various manoeuvres. There were no snags, no control problems at all.

Visibility was good, and he had no trouble in picking out the glittering lake beside which the town and its nearby airfield nestled. In a steady glide now, he brought the Komet down to fifteen hundred metres and lined up with the runway.

There was no need for any turns to shed excess height; the approach was perfect. He pointed the nose at the big white cross on the runway that indicated his touch-down point, holding the Komet steady as it dropped through the last five hundred metres, lowering the skid and the flaps as he came up to the airfield boundary.

He misjudged the last phase of the landing slightly, but it didn’t matter.

He raised the nose very slightly as the white cross flashed underneath him, and an instant later there was a slight crunch as the Komet’s skid made contact with the runway. He held the wings level as the aircraft skidded along the surface for several hundred metres and then, as it slid to a stop, he allowed the port wingtip to settle gently on the ground.

The ground crew support vehicle drew up alongside, pulling the trailer on which the Komet would be removed, and the mechanics helped Richter from the cockpit. His instructor, a Messerschmitt test pilot attached to the Luftwaffe, came up to him and smiled broadly.

‘Well, Herr Major, what did you think of it?’

Richter’s enthusiasm was boundless. ‘Fantastic! I can’t begin to describe it — the speed, the sheer exhilaration!’

His brain was working overtime. ‘Just imagine what we could do with a few hundred of these machines, a thousand even, all armed with a battery of air-to-air rockets and cannon … why, we’d rip the Amis to shreds. Nothing they have could touch us!’

He became suddenly serious and gripped the other man’s arm. They stopped in their tracks and looked at one another.

‘But it has to be now, Dolimer. There’ no time to be lost.’ He lowered his voice, glancing around rapidly to make sure that no one else could hear. He had known the test pilot for some time, and the two men were in agreement on many matters, some of which were best left unspoken.

‘You know as well as I do, Dorner, that things are not going well for us. Italy is out of the war, and we are having to divert more and more divisions to hold the Allies there; disaster after disaster confronts us in Russia; and it can only be a question of time before the British and Americans attempt an invasion on the Western Front. Two years ago, we believed that Japan’s offensives in the Pacific would keep the Americans occupied while we dealt with the British and the Russians, but now it is the Japanese who are being defeated.’ The other nodded slowly. ‘We cannot fight the whole world,’ he said, ‘and hope to win. The best we can hope for now is to force the Allies into an armistice. There is talk of a new secret weapon, something so devastating that it could end the war overnight. Perhaps if —’

Richter cut him short with the wave of a hand. ‘I don’t believe in things I can’t see,’ he said contemptuously. ‘Now this’ — he indicated the Me 163 — ‘this is different. Here we have a weapon which will make the Allies think twice. Just think, Dorner! With a thousand of these, and a thousand of the new Me 262 jet fighters, we could sweep the Allies from our skies in six months! Our war industries could function again without interruption … there would no longer be any fear of an Allied invasion in the west, and we could devote all our attentions to smashing the Soviets.’

His face became grim, and a shadow passed over his eyes. ‘There is our real enemy, Dorner. Soviet Russia. In that, I agree implicitly with the Führer. I have served there, and I know. The sights I have seen …’

He came back to the present with a visible effort. ‘Time, Dorner. Time is running out for the Fatherland. So we must buy some more, with aircraft such as these.’

He looked back once more at the little rocket fighter, then up at the sky. Softly, he said: ‘We are here to prove ourselves, Dorner, and we must do it quickly. We must have these weapons in sufficient numbers before the summer of next year; that will be the critical time. Otherwise it will be too late. For all of us.’