CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Altgarten was an awe-inspiring display that could be seen by airmen a hundred miles away. A flare crackled loudly and left a crooked trail of white smoke. It painted one side of the Liebefrau’s steeple gleaming white and made a knife-like shadow across the Platz. Five of Jammy’s 4-lb incendiaries had gone through the church roof and twelve others had straddled Frenzel’s Stube opposite, some falling harmlessly in the roadway and others burning insidiously in neighbouring attics. Seen from the air all the fires were soft elongated red blobs. They were shaped by the direction of the speeding bombers from whose bellies hundreds of incendiary sticks tumbled, ignited and burned until the fires joined. Once there was a great mauve flash as an electricity line short-circuited.
In spite of the flak, Redenbacher followed the stream, judging its direction from the shape of the fires. He knew the Radar Controller would be annoyed with him for not keeping to his assigned Würzburg zone, but if he bagged a Tommi there would be no complaint. There, and another. Fast, very fast. He was in the stream. They were all around him: plump brown Tommis, full of fuel and explosive.
Major Redenbacher turned slightly to starboard to bring himself under and behind the nearest of them. A thump and a judder told him that he’d passed through its slipstream turbulence. A Stirling. He was so close that he decided to attack horizontally from behind and low instead of attacking under it. Here over the target the Stirling’s rear gunners would mistake him for another Tommi. Redenbacher reached back with his left hand and switched on the Revi sight. He turned the illumination low. He had modified the sight with strips of gummed paper so that the rangeestimator ring surmounted with a cross was merely four dull red T shapes pointing inwards. He was so close that two of the Ts cut the wingtips off the plane ahead. Skilfully he adjusted his speed to that of his target and switched his guns to ‘fire’. He pressed the gun-button and the cannons and machine guns hammered away like road drills, their trails scratching the sooty night sky.
Redenbacher watched the shells entering the bomber with a detached interest that frightened even himself. The light from his gunfire illuminated the tail of the Stirling. The rear turret revolved and a piece of it became dislodged. It sped towards him, growing larger at a frightening speed until it filled his windscreen and with a terrible thump that shook the Junkers it turned the windscreen glass black. Unable to see, Redenbacher’s flyer’s instinct took control. He climbed steeply up through the stream. More shapes, that might have been bombers, were seen as dim blurs through the dark dribbling fog that eclipsed his forward vision. ‘Oh my God!’ said Redenbacher.
There were several thumps and a vibration from the prop and a rattle against the fuselage. The engine-temperature needle crept towards the danger mark. That was the trouble with the air-cooled BMWs.
In the Stirling, Flying Officer Ian Munro, on his fourth operation, pulled the bomb-jettison lever. The port outer was vibrating and it felt as though an aileron had been ripped up. Coolly he pulled back the pitch control, closed the throttle and pushed the feathering button. The broken propeller blades turned until they were edge-on to the airstream and thus wouldn’t be forcibly revolved by it. The propeller stopped. If they got back that engine would be salvageable. He called up the crew. There was no reply from the rear gunner.
‘Captain to rear gunner. I repeat, are you OK?’
‘This is Monty, sir. I’m back at the rear turret now. It’s been rotated and is empty.’
‘You mean Chris fell out?’
‘Baled out, I’d guess, sir.’
‘Bad show, I thought he was a bit edgy tonight. Can you get into the turret?’
‘Afraid not, sir. It’s fully rotated with the rear doors flapping open. I can see into it but I can’t move it.’
‘Leave it Monty. We’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed, chaps.’
Not far away Flight Lieutenant Sweet’s Lancaster began its bombing run.
‘Left, left. Steady. Steady. Steady.’ Sweet put his head into the transparent blister that enabled him to see the ground below. ‘I don’t want them there, bomb aimer. I want them in the dark patch to the west. Let’s shake up his fire fighters. You know the drill.’
‘Very good, sir,’ said the bomb aimer hurriedly. ‘I think I can still make it. Right?’
‘Nothing doing. We’ll go round again. We’ve come all this way, now let’s do it according to the book, eh?’
Sweet put the plane into a steep bank. ‘And don’t let’s have any moaning, chaps. Moaning gets me down. Do the job properly and then we can go home and not come back to this one again.’
Sweet cautiously watched the Lancaster ahead of him as he pulled across the stream to go round in a circle. There was enough light from the fires and photoflashes exploding below them to see other aircraft quite clearly; flickering like an old silent film.
Enviously Pip Speke, Sweet’s bomb aimer, watched the exhausts of other planes now going home. Sweet continued a flat turn across the farmland to the south of the fires. It was silent and dark here, but a few miles away he could still see the fires and sticks of bombs flashing, one after the other, in little straight lines like some prize-winning score on a pin-table. The light threw shadows of Pip’s head upon the inside formers of the aircraft. He watched anxiously as the explosions and fires came round to the front, levelled off and began to creep towards him like lava. None of the other crewmen realized how much more vulnerable a man felt lying full-length, watching the gunfire come slicing at his belly. Speke moved his parachute pack so that it covered his genitals. It was stupid, he knew that, but he always did it.
‘You know where I mean now?’ Sweet asked him.
‘Yes, sir, the dark patch to the west.’
‘Exactly. Fuse switches on? Salvo selected? We’re coming in from the west this time.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Very well, bomb aimer. See if you can’t do a very good job this time.’
The compressed air, released by electro-pneumatic valves, made a noise like a sharp intake of breath and there was a slight jar as the breech blocks of three Oerlikon cannons and the three MG17 machine guns retracted and cocked.
He turned the safety switch to select ‘All guns’. The red panel lights winked.
‘Kettle drums,’ said Himmel. There ahead of him was an aeroplane.
The hammering of cannon shells interrupted Sweet’s conversation. Himmel had placed himself beautifully. His assigned Würzburg patrol area came right up to Altgarten and a sharp Controller seeing Sweet’s blip had guessed he was going round again to bomb.
Sweet’s rear gunner fired only 146 machine-gun bullets before the power supply to the turret ceased. A damaged engine supplied its power. Slowly the gunner began to turn it, using the hand control. He tried to see the Junkers through the glare from the incendiary bullets and shells coming at him. The turret’s Perspex shattered into sharp angular pieces and sparks flew from the gun barrels. The rear gunner was the first to die.
Himmel’s incendiary shells also hit S Sweet’s port outer engine and its coolant burst into flame with an audible spasm. Sweet flipped the throttle forward and then fully back. ‘Close mastercock for port outer,’ he told Murphy.
‘It’s off,’ said Murphy.
Sweet pushed the control column forward to maintain airspeed but there was no response. He pressed the feathering button and closed the radiator. They waited for the propeller to stop turning. There was enough light from the fire to see it clearly.
Sweet struggled with the controls. The ailerons were badly shredded, which tipped the Lancaster fifteen degrees from level, and bent rudders caused it to steer to port. All the while there was an awful vibration threatening to shake the plane apart. Sweet joggled each of the throttles and found that the vibration slowed with the starboard outer’s one.
‘Close master fuelcock for starboard outer,’ ordered Sweet.
‘Starboard outer off,’ said Murphy. The vibration slowed but only a little.
‘It won’t feather and I can’t get her to fly level.’
‘We’re losing fuel from the port tanks. That’s unbalancing the trim,’ said Murphy. ‘A broken blade is causing the vibration.’ The two men looked out at the fire. It began in a perfectly straight line along the wing near the trailing edge and ended in a wispy ragged edge far behind. So far only the petrol spray leaking from the broken fuel tank was alight. Sweet pushed the button to operate the Graviner extinguishers but there was no visible difference.
Sweet leaned forward on the control column and gradually the nose dropped. ‘Don’t dive, Skipper,’ said Murphy, but Sweet had heard too many pilots boast of dousing an engine fire by diving to be persuaded against it. Unfortunately many pilots had found that increased speed only fanned the flames and sometimes the metal itself caught fire. But these pilots did not return to the Mess to relate their stories.
Micky Murphy stared at the blazing engine with a fearful attention. He’d seen alloy burn and now he watched for the intense white glare that heralded it. Using the toe of his boot he pulled his parachute bundle nearer to him. The airstream, speeded up by the dive, was spreading the fire from the exhausts smoothly across the upper surface of the wing in a fantail that flicked sometimes towards the cockpit.
It was a steep dive: the air-speed needle jumped to 390 mph without warning. Sweet wound the elevator tab control back and heaved at the stick but only managed to move it after Murphy added his weight. The aeroplane gradually flattened out and then rose a little. The air-speed needle fell back drunkenly to a dangerous 100 mph and then flicked between 80 and 120.
‘I’d not be trusting the air-speed. The pitot tube is likely bent or perhaps its heater’s gone and it’s icing.’
‘The heater’s gone,’ grunted Sweet, ‘that’s a laugh.’ There was so much noise from the engines that, now they could spare a hand, they were both pressing their phones to their ears to converse. The altimeter showed a height loss of two thousand feet but Murphy no longer believed any of the dials. The bottom of the ‘turn and bank’ was fixed to one side and did not move.
Sweet had got her straight and level now but at the lower speed the vibration increased. The engine cowling glowed dull red. The alloy weld on a clip gave way and the cowling began to bounce violently in the slipstream. Each bounce gave them a chance to glimpse the bright yellow furnace inside. The gap provided a superfast channel of air that fanned the flames to a lighter colour until a second clip-weld gave way. For a terrible moment the whole cowling flapped above the burning engine like the bright red wings of a bird of prey. It bent backwards, slammed against the leading edge of the wing three times, broke free, lifted, slammed down heavily upon the upper surface of the wing and then, lifted clear by the aerodynamics of the airflow, it flew off over the tail flapping gently.
‘A piece of wing. Jesus, it’s fallen off. It just went past me like a vampire,’ called the wireless operator.
‘Calm down, everyone,’ said Sweet. ‘I can handle it.’ To Murphy he calmly said, ‘Cowlings are your check, engineer. Did you inspect that one before take-off?’
Murphy looked at him. There was plenty of bright yellow light in the cockpit and Murphy could see Sweet’s face glistening with sweat as he fought the controls. ‘It was fine, sir,’ answered Murphy, ‘and the port outer wasn’t afire either.’
‘I don’t want any of your damned sarcasm,’ said Sweet. Now that the cowling had gone the engine flames had lessened a fraction but the missing cowling caused a braking and spoiling effect upon the airflow which made the Lancaster buffet and bounce. Sweet had both feet on one rudder bar trying to prevent it yawing sideways across the sky.
There was a sharp crack, a whine and a smell of cordite as a shell burst nearby. They were attracting flak now. ‘The flame on the trailing edge is looking very nasty, Mr Sweet, sir. She might explode her tanks.’
‘Scientifically impossible, engineer,’ said Sweet smiling. ‘Even in an empty tank the fuel-air mixture is too rich to ignite and explode.’
‘I’ve seen it happen,’ persisted Murphy.
Sweet looked back over his shoulder and then gave Murphy a prim shake of the head to calm him. He was holding her now and, although the flames were just as bad, they weren’t getting worse as far as he could decide.
‘And Murphy,’ said Sweet. ‘You’ll remove that name from your helmet. My crew don’t steal each other’s equipment.’
Murphy called to the rear gunner to ask if the night fighter was still there. ‘See him, rear gunner?’ Murphy asked.
‘David’s dead,’ said the Canadian upper gunner.
‘Can you see him from your turret, Kit?’
‘The fire’s so bright I can see the tail all right but bugger-all beyond it. It’s dazzling from here. But how the Christ could he miss us, Micky? We’re blazing like a bonfire. Both rudders are shot up and the port one is leaning sideways.’
‘We are going in to bomb,’ said Sweet. ‘Bomb-doors open.’
‘You mad berk,’ said Kit Pepper the mid-upper gunner, ‘haven’t you jettisoned those bloody eggs yet?’
‘Bombs gone,’ said Speke. The aircraft lurched to confirm his words.
‘You stupid fool,’ said Sweet. ‘Who told you to jettison?’
Murphy watched the feathered airscrew blade come to a stop. ‘Port outer ignition off, sir.’
‘It won’t count towards your tour,’ warned Sweet primly. ‘Jettison is the same as an abort trip.’
‘Who said we jettisoned?’ said Kit Pepper.
‘I aimed at the target,’ said the bomb aimer obligingly.
‘Liar,’ said Sweet. ‘We’re miles off target.’ There was no reply. ‘That was sabotage and I’m going to put you on a charge when we get back.’
‘If we get bloody back,’ said Speke, ‘I’ll not complain.’
‘Bomb-doors closed,’ announced Sweet.
‘Navigator, give me a course for Warley. Since you’re all too frightened to do your job properly, we may as well go home.’
‘Steer 283, sir,’ said Billy Pace, the quiet ex-architect who was their navigator.
‘The compass is dead, sir,’ said Micky Murphy.
Sweet noticed that for the first time. ‘I’ll steer by the stars then.’ He leaned over for a better view of the bomb aimer. ‘What the devil are you doing down there, bomb aimer?’
‘Getting bloody out,’ replied Speke, struggling to undo the forward escape hatch. ‘They may give the Victoria bleeding Cross to pilots who press on in flaming Lancasters, but not to bomb-aimers they don’t.’
‘And you’ll be dead,’ said Speke. Murphy watched him. Once hit, these Lancs had a bad reputation for escaping crews: only eleven per cent of aircrew survived compared with twenty-nine per cent of escaping Halifax crewmen. Pip Speke got the hatch open and, as if frightened that Sweet might leave the controls and grab him, he dived head-first through the hatch. There was a thump as his legs hit the side of it and one flying boot remained inside the nose. A rush of wind coming through the hatch jolted Sweet.
Towards the rear of the Lancaster the wireless operator and Kit Pepper the upper gunner were unable to open the entrance door. Bravely they had struggled to dump hot flares and signal cartridges down the flare chute. One of Himmel’s cannon shells had bent the door-lock but they hammered at it with the fire axe and kicked it open a little. Axe blows vibrated through the fuselage. Sweet had felt the weight of the two men move back towards the tail and had revolved the trim wheel to compensate. He guessed what they might be doing. ‘No one leaves the aircraft, and that’s an order. I don’t care if I court-martial all of you.’
‘OK, Cap,’ said Kit Pepper, but he didn’t pause in his efforts to open the fuselage door. Kit signalled to the wireless operator that he was going to squeeze himself out through the bent door. The other boy nodded agreement. The plane lurched under his feet so that he grabbed at the nearby turret to steady himself while he carefully clipped his chute to the chest of his harness.
‘We are going to make it, chaps,’ said Sweet. There were sparks from the starboard outer as he spoke. ‘I’m holding it on 283.’
‘The compass is u/s,’ said Murphy. ‘We are going round in circles. That’s the target coming up to starboard. The rudders are warped. We’ll never get her home. She’s well alight too. Can’t you see.’ They were lower now and the Altgarten fires seemed both fiercer and larger. Most were lemon or pink in colour, but now there were deep red ones too where the fire had got out of control.
Himmel came in for another pass. The explosions of the cannon shells echoed inside the Lancaster’s metal fuselage like a cricket ball in a biscuit tin. Three of Sweet’s windows starred and the engine fire was seen through them as only a pink glow. Near Murphy’s feet there were three black discs like bent gramophone records. Wondering what they were, Murphy saw a searchlight beam pass each in succession and realized they were gaping cannon-shell holes in the aircraft’s stressed metal side.
Still the shells were exploding. Murphy heard someone scream and there was a whine of flying metal fragments. To the starboard side, high, at about four o’clock he saw another Lancaster flying straight and level. The flaming port outer of S Sweet illuminated the other bomber from underneath in an unnatural way that made it like a model used in a film. It kept too still and flew too perfectly straight to be real, thought Murphy. The flames shone on its propeller blades like four silver discs and Murphy could see the little white patch that was the nose and eyes of its pilot and he knew he was saying, ‘It’s them that are about to die and not us and I thank you truly O Mother of God.’
Murphy tapped the oil gauges: eighty-nine degrees, not too bad, and seventy-pounds-per-square-inch pressure was normal. The temperature and pressure readings for the windmilling outer starboard was almost normal too, but that was just a momentary mechanical freak. He expected it to seize up very soon and that would put even more strain on Sweet’s abilities, both physical and mental. Bang, bang. There were more hits; he could feel each one shake the metal floor. He decided it was hopeless, but he’d always had this petrifying terror of parachuting and even now it didn’t leave him.
Fighter pilots either made a kill soon after being assigned to a squadron (as Himmel had downed a Polish bomber near Lodz) and then went on chalking up kill after kill, or else they never even damaged the paint on an enemy plane, no matter how often they went into combat. For this second sort of flyer just staying alive for fifty sorties was a notable achievement.
The Experten were easily recognized: they were alert and had remarkable reaction speeds. They were excellent gunners who were able to aim off correctly for deflection shots, estimating the enemy’s speed and predicting his course. An Experte could control his aircraft to get very, very close to the enemy and hold that gun platform rock-steady long enough to kill. Three seconds could be enough.
Himmel was an Experte, while pilots like Beer would never make it. Driving his racing car had called for boldness but not this degree of judgement. Beer hosepiped his fire all over the sky while his plane was yawing and skidding. By the time he’d corrected his flying, the enemy was already into another evasive manoeuvre. Given an enemy flying straight and level ahead of him, then Beer might have shot him down, except that he probably wouldn’t allow his plane to get close enough for more than ten per cent of his gunfire to strike home. But unfortunately for Sweet and Murphy it wasn’t Beer who was attacking them, it was Himmel.
He watched the Lancaster growing in his gunsight as he came in as steady as a freight train. As if seeking its own destruction the target’s wingtips reached out for the rangerings.
Bang. Bang. Bang. During the four-second burst forty-seven pounds of steel and high explosive left Himmel’s guns and much of it hit S for Sugar.
Both the men levering at the exit door saw Himmel’s Junkers closing upon them from the starboard quarter for his third pass. Kit switched on his microphone to warn Sweet, but all anyone heard was the beginning of a scream. A shell hit his belly and blew his shoulders from his legs. It atomized his trunk into a spray of red foam that covered the inside of the fuselage as far as the rear spar. The wireless operator standing beside him regained a brief consciousness drifting through the air under a parachute canopy. He felt cold and sleepy and a little drunk. His femoral artery was severed and he was losing blood as fast as his wildly beating heart could pump it into the night air. He died four thousand feet above Altgarten.
The plane gave an agonizing lurch. Until that moment Billy Pace the navigator had not been frightened, but, having survived Himmel’s third pass, he urgently needed the reassurance of a solid, earth-like, well-built platform under his feet. But Sugar sagged and dropped fifty terrifying feet through space before regaining stability in a sickening groan of straining metal. The rear part of the fuselage was being wrenched from side to side by the airstream over the badly bent rudder. Each waggle made more rivets ping loose. Air rushing across the torn metal edges of two dozen holes in the fuselage made a loud and constant flute-like scream.
Billy Pace tried to climb out through the escape hatch on the roof above the main spar even before he had consciously decided to jump. He had clipped his parachute to the metal clips on the chest of his harness but could not get through the small hatch. Patiently Pace eased his shoulders back inside the aircraft and unclipped the parachute. Then he climbed out through the roof holding the parachute bundle in his hand. The airstream hit him like a hammer. It smashed against his face and chest at 230 mph and pinned his legs against the edge of the hatch. Inch by inch he dragged himself into its overwhelming force. It crushed his body and prevented him from inhaling properly. Suddenly the airstream overcame the strength of his arms and threw his upper body hard against the fuselage, twisting his knees in doing so. Then it plucked him out of the hatch.
The fire from the port outer enabled him to see as if it were daylight. He grabbed for a handhold but there was none. The slipsteam slid him along the rough paintwork like a shove-ha’penny. He hit the upper turret hard and grazed both knees badly before tumbling off the fuselage top with his parachute bundle still in his hand. Beyond there was just space and into that he fell. He dropped, bowling over and over, and saw the aeroplane, and then the moon, pass over him. The tail wheel was only a yard away from his face, and because for a moment his speed was almost equal to that of the aeroplane, it seemed to move very slowly. He knew that his parachute was useless unless fixed on to the clips and cried tears of desperate rage as he fumbled for the metal rings. He had fallen four thousand five hundred feet before he realized that he could look down at his hands to see what he was doing. Then he was able to affix one hook with no difficulty, but he could not get the other one fastened. He did not dare look towards the ground but out of the corner of his eye he noticed the searchlights and the Altgarten fires circling slowly around his feet and growing bigger every second. He decided to hold the parachute across his body with one hand and pull the rip-cord, depending upon the single clip. When he pulled it there was a jerk that spun him sideways suspended from one strap. The canopy opened with a slap of air and Billy Pace, whole and unharmed, drifted gently into the zephyr-like warm winds of Altgarten.
Only Sweet and Murphy remained alive in the aircraft now. After the bomb aimer went, a gale of great intensity blew through the open hatch into the cockpit.
‘Abandon,’ said Sweet. ‘Clear off, Murphy. I know you are only waiting for me to say it.’
Micky Murphy nodded. Sweet said, ‘Use the forward hatch. Wait for my command.’
Murphy took an oxygen bottle and edged his way forward. He gripped the underside of the pilot’s instrument panel and swung himself under it. He had to use all his strength to move against the 200-mph wind coming in. He got down on to the step and then straddled the open hatch. Through it he saw fires and searchlights. He plugged into the intercom and said, ‘I’m ready to go, sir.’ Sweet grunted.
The aircraft rolled alarmingly as the starboard-side aileron trim cable snapped and wrapped itself round the aileron hinge, locking it in a tangle of shredded wire. She kept rolling now until the starboard wing was tilted upward at forty degrees. Uncertain whether to jump, and devoid of his intercom, Murphy poked his head low and saw Sweet with his shoulders against the fuselage side red-faced and straining at the control column. It was only after he gave up the struggle that the coiled trim wire fell from the released aileron to droop in the slipstream. The controls were free again. Aware that some miracle had saved the plane from rolling over and over all the way to the ground, Sweet corrected the bank. Infinitely slowly the Lancaster came back to straight and level flight.
Murphy slammed his intercom plug into the bomb aimer’s station and said, ‘Aren’t you going too, sir?’
‘I took it up and I’m taking it down.’
‘Not to Warley?’
‘On to the deck somewhere.’
‘You’ll not do it alone.’
Sweet grunted again. ‘You might be of use, I suppose.’
Murphy was frightened to jump out through the hatch. The burning aeroplane was almost like home to him. ‘Better the devil you know…’ said Murphy. He turned to climb up on the step and the airstream blew him back to his engineer’s position. He clamped his huge hand around a metal girder ‘Use the hand trim.’
‘I was just going to,’ said Sweet.
‘And bring the revs up. We’ll not be trying to save fuel.’
‘Shall I detonate the secret gear?’
‘I’ve done that,’ said Murphy.
‘What shall I do now?’
‘Can you remember what the wind was?’
‘No, I’m sorry. It’s that bloody navigator. He’s gone, I suppose. He was always bloody useless.’
‘Never mind him, there’s just the two of us left.’
‘What about the night fighter?’ asked Sweet nervously.
‘Ah, I was forgetting him,’ said Murphy drily. ‘Yes, there’s three of us really.’
Himmel was very close to them, watching the blazing bomber with a fear and fascination. ‘Poor fellows,’ said the observer. It was clear that the crew were struggling to keep her flying.
‘They burn our cities and bury our people alive,’ said Himmel. He moved into position for the coup de grâce. He had come up a few points to starboard now and was dazzled by the burning engine. A flak shell burst near the Lanc’s starboard wingtip and both aeroplanes jolted.
‘The flak will probably claim her,’ said the observer.
‘They claim everything,’ said Himmel. He still did not open fire on the stricken bomber. He throttled back and suddenly there were bright blue-and-yellow flashes from his own exhaust.
Himmel knew the revs were dropping before he looked down at the gauge. Perhaps it was the vibration through the control column or a slight modulation of the engine’s sound as the plugs began to oil up. Just the starboard motor: boost and oil pressure too. The valve was seating badly and again the mixture ignited in the exhaust manifold and gushed flame. That damned motor, if Kugel had changed the engine instead of trying to save Luftwaffe money by fobbing him off with a new set of piston rings there would be another Tommi downed.
‘Tighten your straps,’ said Himmel. ‘It’s a piano out of the fifth floor.’ So as not to alarm his crew he used the slang term for a forced landing. Neither of them replied, but he saw the observer touch his parachute as if he could not depend upon his eyes to tell him it was to hand. She would cut at any moment. And when she does, that radar array will grant her the aerodynamic perfection of a broken brick. He put the nose down steeply, for he needed every bit of air-speed he could muster if he was to get them down in one piece. The variometer needle sank. Above them the blazing Tommi was straightening out and flying level again.
‘Butterbrot from Katze Nine. Butterbrot from Katze Nine. SOS engine failure. Map reference…’
‘Ludwig Nordpol Six,’ supplied Himmel’s radar operator hurriedly from the rear seat.
‘Ludwig Nordpol Six,’ said Himmel.
‘Order: steer 180,’ came the reply. Himmel was already heading that way; he knew they would want to take him as far away from the route of the enemy as they could. Anxiously he watched the cloud patches. To port the Ruhr was under its usual blanket of smog, although here and there he could see the dull red smudge of a steel furnace. He steered away towards the flat, open country.
The Liaison Officer at Deelen was referring to his distress map. On it airfields with blind-landing apparatus were distinguished from emergency strips. High ground, obstacles and high-tension cables that would prove a hazard to a crippled plane were all indicated. Quickly he chose an airfield. Selected searchlights over which Himmel was flying tipped their beams almost flat along the surface of the ground. From 15,000 feet they were like grey roads, all of them pointing to the distress airfield.
‘I can see them now,’ said Himmel.
‘Announcement: radishes and shroud too,’ promised the Liaison Officer.
‘Yes,’ said the observer.
‘We see it,’ said Himmel. The starboard engine coughed twice and cut. Himmel feathered it and switched it off. Ahead of him a searchlight beam held upon a piece of cloud. That was the promised shroud, then came the radishes: white rockets and red rockets exploding above an airfield where ambulances and fitters, fuel bowsers and ammunition supply lorries were waiting for him.
‘Shall I fire a red?’ asked the observer.
‘Why not?’ said Himmel. ‘We’d better contribute something to the party.’ He tuned in to the blind-landing frequency and heard a single high note. They were exactly on course. Himmel was about to lower his flaps but on impulse he defeathered the propeller and switched on the ignition. The airstream spun the blades and it fired and roared into life.
‘You bastard,’ said Himmel. Neither of his crew spoke; they could almost taste the hot coffee that was awaiting them. He pulled the stick back and turned towards the bombing to look for the aeroplane he had half killed.