JET LAG! (29 page)

He was devastated. Now it was nine of his new friends who had died as part of this terrible experience. He was fast losing all patience with the entire fucking situation. None of the Flypast Formation Team had signed up for this, and he decided to confront his father first thing in the morning.

If Todd has his way there would be no more sorties until the eighth of September.

No-one else was going to die because of him – or because of his scheming, deceitful and heartless father.

However, in his grief no-one could explain exactly what happened to the Canberra. There were several options suggested:

They could have landed somewhere following an emergency and were now prisoners of the Nazis, and the PR9 was in enemy hands. He didn’t go for that alternative – he didn’t want to believe that Al and Steve would give themselves up so easily. However, he wasn’t sure how willing they were to die for the cause?

Secondly, they could have simply crashed or ejected into the sea after a catastrophic failure. If that was the case, then sadly, the team at Middle Fleckney would hear no more.

They couldn’t have been shot down – it just wasn’t possible….was it? The Me 262 didn’t have the ability to climb that high. Jim Charles had already accurately furnished them with the 262’s operating ceiling and the PR9 was at fifty thousand feet – way above the reach of anything on earth.

Finally, they may have ejected over land and were now prisoners – or dead - and the enemy had a valuable wreck to examine, and two valuable captives to interrogate and possibly use as hostages.

Todd preferred the last option. However, whatever the fate of the luckless Canberra, the Force ’92 presence at Middle Fleckney was now certainly compromised.

And by the next morning, it seemed certain that Al and Steve were gone forever.

However, three days later an intelligence officer by the name of Colonel Blunt came up from London with copies of the ‘Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung’ and the ‘Munchener Beobachter.’ Featured on page six of these Nazi newspapers were photos of Al Norman and Steve Hicks. Both were clearly dead and the article was translated by the Colonel for Todd and his father.

‘Dr Goebbles has set his propaganda machine into overdrive. He claims that the British have attacked Germany with a secret and terrible weapon of mass destruction. He claims that the dead men were dressed in specialized uniforms with non-standard insignia. The Fuhrer would be taking full and uncompromising revenge for this vicious and unprecedented attack.’

Todd was greatly relieved in some ways. At least he knew for certain that Al and Steve were not prisoners and would not suffer at the hands of Gestapo torturers. However, that didn’t fully mitigate any of the utter distress he felt.

‘Well, that's that then. They are gone. What about the Canberra – is there any mention of that, Colonel?’ The AVM was matter-of-fact, his conscience untroubled as usual.

‘Actually, no. Which is strange really. The Hun would be eager to display such a terrible weapon for all to see. However, they may be secretly dissecting the wreckage as we speak to gain some insight into the more advanced technology.’

‘Well, they won't get much,’ stated the AVM tersely, ‘the Canberra is based on late nineteen-forties expertise - although the jet engines might be useful – if they weren’t completely destroyed in a crash. But their Me 262 proves that they are well ahead on that road.’

The Colonel took his leave but left the newspapers with the AVM, who quickly locked them in his office desk.

‘I'm sorry Todd, but these are casualties of war.’

‘But it's not our war, father. We've lost eleven good men now – and mother. When is all going to end? Are we really going to get home in September?’

The Air Marshal was non-committal.

‘The death of your mother distresses me as much as it does you, Todd, but she had a mission in life and died a happy and contented woman. I do not regret bringing her – or any of you here for one minute.’

‘But it wasn’t your bloody decision to make, father. You should have accorded the men the respect they deserve and given them a choice.’

The AVM was not for changing his attitude.

‘It never was a matter of choice, Todd. If we hadn’t come back, then we wouldn't have been there in 1992 in the first place.’

‘Oh no, not the Star Trek rubbish again, dad. Please, spare me. I can see that I can never win this argument. If you’ll excuse me I've got work to do.’

‘Exactly, Todd, we have work to do, despite the tragic deaths of our comrades. Make sure you do the job properly. Our lives depend on it.’

Todd looked at his father and left a parting shot for him to ponder:

‘That is not going to placate the families of the men already killed, is it?

After Todd had vacated the office, the AVM considered his options and possible future actions. He might have more than one problem with personnel.

48

Norfolk, Berlin and Lithuania

August 1940

Rosie Cartwright dug her own grave.

The attractive, twenty-eight year old, blond barmaid worked at the Red Bull public house in Swaffham. She was an amiable and buxom lass and, if the truth was told, just a little bit too friendly with any soldier, sailor or airman who happened to drop into the pub. She was always game for a laugh and ‘knee tremblers’ out the back of the pub were not an infrequent occurrence.

She listened carefully to the young  military men and sympathised with their sob-stories. She picked up many snippets of interesting information which she duly passed on to her contact. This had been going on since 1938, when she had moved in from London. She lived above the pub in a small room provided by the landlord, and she paid her rent with the occasional blow-job when his missus was out.

In fact she wasn’t from London at all. She was from Augsburg, near Munich, and had moved to London as a young child of four years straight after the First World War in 1915. Her father grew violently anti-British, and had joined the Nazi party as soon as he could. Rosie went to school in London and became indoctrinated by her father. She was eventually planted as a sleeper in 1938 in Swaffham, where she was now pumping soldiers for as much information as she could.

Unluckily for Rosie, she was shagging two military policemen from Middle Fleckney at the same time. They discovered the deception whilst working on the early morning shift, and by chance they were patrolling the same section of fence. The conversation got round to sex, as it usually does on these occasions, and Rosie’s name came up. Both men realised that they were being used and abused by the voluptuous barmaid, and it wasn’t long before they realised that Rosie had been asking both men for information about the airfield.

They vengefully reported their suspicions to their officer, who informed the appropriate authority in London. Rosie became a person of interest, and an agent disguised as an airman from Middle Fleckney visited the Red Bull. Rosie fell for the ploy and was allowing her oversized breasts to be fondled in the pub courtyard just after closing time, whilst showing just a little too much interest in the aircraft at the RAF station.

As a result she was followed and watched for a week during early September and led the security services to her male controller in Downham Market. This led eventually to the radio operator in Norwich – and the entire ring was exposed and arrested.

On October the sixteenth, after a brief trial, Rosie and her two Nazi colleagues were hanged by Albert Pierrepoint at Wormwood Scrubs.

***

In Berlin, it was time for Admiral Canaris, head of the Abwehr, to inform Hermann Goering that he had determined the location of the British jet base in Norfolk. He could delay no longer without arousing suspicion. He could not fully trust any of his subordinates.

The Reichsmarschall was joyous and enormously relieved, but couldn’t prevent himself from sniping at Canaris.

‘Not a minute too soon either!’ he snapped.

Within an hour Goering was onto Luftwaffe OGW to order an immediate and devastating raid on the airfield – for the next morning – the eighteenth of August.

***

The Reichsmarschall had received other good news – the Herr Professor Messerschmitt had confirmed that another fifty Me 262s were ready for delivery.

He had received a telephone message from Kretinga, and positive confirmation that ferry pilots had started to transfer the new and shiny jets to their forward operating bases in France and Holland. By the seventeenth of August, the Luftwaffe had three new squadrons in situ. One fighter, one bomber and one Recce/night fighter fully manned and fully operational.

Britain would soon suffer the full wrath of the invincible ‘Blaue-Tod,’ and in addition, the British jet base would be bombed out of existence.

Indeed life was good, and he could not wait to tell the Fuhrer.

***

At Middle Fleckney, the photography from the first sortie over Lithuania by the ill-fated Canberra PR9 was proving to be extremely illuminating. By the sixteenth of August, the PI’s had examined all of the processed film, having viewed it for what seemed endless hours on improvised light tables with modern stereoscopes, and to their delight eventually found what they had been looking for.

Near a smallish town on the coast in the north-west of the country, an airfield with three large hangars was spotted by a 1940’s PI. The photos were blown-up to triple size and the British airmen could clearly see ME 262s on the ground; one on the runway and several parked in a line outside a hangar.

This was certainly the right place.

There were barrack blocks, guard towers, barbed wire fencing and all of the paraphernalia associated with a flying station.

Kretinga was to be their next target.

A mission was planned for three hundred bombers on the night of the seventeenth/eighteenth of August.

Manchesters, Whitleys, Halifaxes, Hampdens and Wellingtons all lined up, fully armed with five-hundred pound incendiary bombs, at Bomber Command stations throughout East Anglia. They all took off and then formed up at sixteen thousand feet shortly after midnight. The three hundred aircraft set off towards their distant target, and although they had fighter cover until the Dutch coast, after that point the Germans knew that there were rich pickings to be had.

The Messerschmitt Bf110Gs, Junkers Ju-88s and additionally the wonderful new Me 262 night fighters soared into the air, guided by the excellent German radars.

It was not a fair fight.

The fighters struck fast and hard and by the time the British force reached Kretinga for their attack runs, they had lost twenty percent of their aircraft, shot to pieces by the Luftwaffe.

Nevertheless, the British crews pushed on bravely and over two hundred and forty bombers dropped their loads onto Kretinga airfield. It was a devastating attack. The main hangars took serious damage and essentially all Me 262 construction facilities were rendered useless and beyond repair. At first glance it was a fabulous success.

However, as the Recce Tornado discovered when it overflew the airfield twenty minutes after the last bomb fell, it appeared that most of the actual Me 262 aircraft had already flown the coop.

The PI’s could find no trace on the film of any aircraft caught in the open, and even after closely examining the bombed-out hangars, they could discover no collateral Me 262 wreckage.

‘The bastards have moved them out already. Shit!’ exclaimed Todd, after getting the bad news.

‘We also lost forty-three percent of the three hundred bombers sent on the raid – that's one hundred and twenty nine aircraft and nearly six hundred men. And all for nothing.’ The Station Commander was equally disappointed – it was a terrible night for the RAF.