JET LAG! (9 page)

              ‘I copy, Yellow, but just for the record, I wish to make it clear that….’

              Todd never finished his sentence.

              There was a huge crescendo of noise closely followed by an enormous blinding flash. It filled the entire cockpit. Todd looked down at his instruments to find that they all read zero.

‘Fucking hell!’ shouted Todd – ‘just what I told him!’

‘Lightning strike!’

11

Kretinga, Germany

21 September 1939

              The Herr Professor was anxiously chewing at the fingernails on his right hand. Not normally given to nerves, today was something completely different. The project had gone exceedingly well since that threatening phone call from Goering the previous summer. To give the Party it's credit, they had given him everything he had asked for. The best engineering minds in the Reich, equipment and a never ending supply of forced labour. However, there had been complicated engineering difficulties which Messerschmitt and his team had struggled to overcome. One particularly acute problem arose with the lack of a suitable alloy with a melting point high enough to endure the high temperatures involved with running a jet engine, a problem that even by the end of the war had not been adequately resolved. Two of the prototypes had already been lost in engine associated accidents and two experienced pilots killed. (The ejection seat had not yet been invented!)

Consequently, the Herr Professor was extremely apprehensive. He could not guarantee immediate or unconditional success – today’s demonstration flight for the Fuhrer was a calculated risk!

The Me 262’s development had been fraught with problems. The first jet powered flight of the Me 262 was not the triumph that Messerschmitt had hoped and prayed for. The aircraft finally flew on the twenty-fifth of March 1939 – three full years ahead of his initial proposed schedule. The production and design team had, by necessity, to cut corners and were forced to install engines which were just not up to the job. BMW had been heavily pressurised by Goering to provide the ‘Projekt’ with jet engines in a very short timeframe, and consequently sub-standard examples ended up in Kretinga with the Herr Professor.

He complained bitterly, but was consistently ignored by Berlin.

However, he was eventually proved right and the inaugural flight was a catastrophe. Both engines flamed-out during the take-off run and the jet slithered off the edge of the runway and into a tree, exploding on impact, killing the pilot. They tried again five days later with the same result, but luckily the test pilot, Fritz Wendel, was skilled enough to recover the aircraft and land it safely.

A new engine – the Jumo 004 – became available several months later and Wendel took up the third prototype on the eighteenth of June 1939. This aircraft also crashed, but subsequently other, better, engines went into another prototype and – joy of joys – it was a success. On the second of August 1939, Adolf Galland, the famous German General of Fighters, flew the aircraft himself and was extremely impressed.

Although this demonstration was in Autumn 1939,  the date set by Goering for first flight had already been met by Messerschmitt, so the Herr Doktor Goebbles and the German propaganda machine had been happy enough to brag about superior German engineering and intellect. The world had been fully informed of this impressive German manufacturing achievement. RAF chief Dowding had watched with an increasing sense of helplessness.

Hitler had been happy to invade Poland without an operational jet fighter, and was content to wait until his planned invasion of England for the ‘Blaue-Tot’ to prove it's worth.

              Today was the first practical demonstration of the Kretinga Projekt 1065. Hitler himself was due to arrive within the hour. Oh yes, they’d had over a dozen test flights – mostly successful – before today, but this was the crunch. The aircraft must perform – and perform well. The Fuhrer would not be amused to witness failure after coming all the way from Berlin to this God-forsaken shit-hole in deepest Lithuania.

              The professor started on the fingernails on his left hand and immediately rebuked himself.

Of course it would work. Of course it would fly. Of course it would be a success.

Of course it would. Of course?

It must!

***

              The party witnessing the demonstration was small. It comprised of Hitler himself with two evil looking minders from his personal SS bodyguard, Goering with his ADC, six engineers, a dozen or so labourers and the pilot.

And of course, hero or scapegoat – Herr Professor Willy Messerschmitt himself.

              Hitler was unusually quiet – England had recently declared War and his mind was probably elsewhere. He led the party to the control tower, shouldered by his two guards. Goering kept the conversation going with his usual buffoonery. However, Messerschmitt was not in the mood for false jollity. This was finally it – if this demo failed he would go down with it. Hitler was basing his invasion plans for England on the success of this project. If this failed – so might the invasion.

              ‘Well, Herr Professor – shall we begin?’ Hitler was impatient and it showed. ‘I have been anticipating the flight of our ‘Schwalbe’ for too long.’ (Schwalbe meant ‘Swallow’ in German – some reckoned that the 262 resembled the sleek bird.)

              ‘Jawohl, mein Fuhrer,’ came the automatic response from the professor. He was now physically trembling.

              He picked up the microphone and called the pilot.

              ‘Alpha one – c - clear to start engine.’

              ‘Clear to start,’ was the immediate reply.

              The observers in the tower remained silent. Two interminable minutes passed. And then the radio blasted into life.

              ‘Alpha one, engine start complete, request taxy clearance?’

              Before he replied, Messerschmitt picked up another phone and made a short call to the military controller above them in the small ATC tower.

              ‘Major Kleiner’, is the area clear?’

              ‘Yes, Herr Professor, all clear.’

              The entire area for a thirty mile radius was manned by troops to ensure that no nosy onlookers got anywhere near the airfield. Over one thousand men had been guarding this airfield – night and day – seven days a week since flight trials had begun. Local residents had been rounded up and ‘re-located’ A leak concerning the advanced stage of their progress to the British at this juncture would be catastrophic. However, as far as they knew, all was secure.

              ‘Alpha one, clear to taxy – runway two-three, wind calm, pressure one-zero-two-zero.’ Messerschmitt gave his permission for the flight to progress.

              ‘Ja, Alpha one taxying.’

              The professor turned to Adolf Hitler and pointed to a large concrete hangar about two hundred metres away. The doors were slowly opening as four thin and wretched labourers weakly turned huge handles to operate the mechanism. After about two minutes they stopped and ran inside an adjacent building. Another man was standing outside the hangar slowly waving his arms to and fro over his shoulders.

And then it appeared. Slowly but surely the lustrous Me 262 inched it's way outside of the hangar. When it was fully in the open, the man guiding it out ran to one side, and waved the aircraft on its way. It picked up speed to about five knots and turned right towards the runway.

Hitler picked up the field glasses from the table in front of him and focussed on the marvel before his eyes. This aircraft had no propeller. Instead, it had two large cylindrical engines – one under the middle of each wing, with circular openings at the front and rear. The aircraft was painted a very pale blue underneath and battleship grey and white on the upper surfaces, in a sort of disruptive pattern. It was slick, clean and like nothing he had witnessed before. Of course he had seen photographs – but they didn’t do justice to this marvellous machine.

‘I hope it performs as good as it looks Herr Professor?’

‘So do I, ’whispered Messerschmitt under his breath.

The aircraft continued to the end of the runway and called for take-off permission.

Once again Messerschmitt called Wendel with his heart in his mouth.

‘Clear for take-off – and good luck Fritz.’

‘Clear for take-off,’ came back the reply and almost instantly the volume of noise in the control tower grew to ear piercing levels.

‘Mein Gott!’ shouted the Fuhrer as he placed his fingers in his ears.

‘I am so sorry, I forgot, Mein Fuhrer, the ear defenders – please take them and put them on.’

Instantly, everyone in the tower reached for a pair of ear defenders from the box on the table behind them. By the time they turned back to face the runway the aircraft was moving. Slowly at first but it's pace increased rapidly. As the aircraft passed the control tower Goering shouted in panic.

‘When will it get airborne – it will run out of runway!’

‘This is normal, Herr Reichsmarschall, the aircraft needs a much longer take off run than a conventional aeroplane, as it is much heavier and it's engine takes longer to react.’ The Professor was careful to use Goering’s new title recently bestowed by Hitler in Nuremberg.

Hitler nodded in agreement. He had read the operating data concerning this prototype even if Goering had not!

The aircraft continued on its take-off run and just as everyone expected the new jet to run off the end of the runway, it's nosewheel lifted off the concrete, quickly followed by the main wheels.

It was airborne!

Almost immediately, the pilot retracted the undercarriage, pulled back on the stick and started a zoom climb. This was impressive indeed. It was a bright, clear day with only the odd puff of cumulus cloud drifting along the coast. The audience in the control tower were awe-struck. Within sixty seconds the pilot was transmitting;

‘Five thousand metres out – commencing attack run.’

The spectators had briefly lost sight of the aircraft so the pilot flicked on the white smoke - a temporary gadget thought up and installed by Messerschmitt purely for this demonstration. The onlookers picked up the distant aircraft at once. The trail of white smoke was high up and they could see that the pilot was heading in their general direction.

Goering looked over at the professor in some alarm.

‘What is happening, will the Fuhrer be safe?’

‘Of course,’ replied Messerschmitt, ‘the pilot is aiming for the target over there.’ His tone was contemptuous, driven by growing confidence.

Their eyes were drawn to a convoy of six trucks on the unused taxiway on the far side of the runway. They were immobile and unmanned.  The aircraft continued with its attack run.

‘Two thousand metres, fifteen hundred, one thousand, two hundred metres,’ transmitted the pilot as he closed on the target.

And then,              ‘Firing!’

Adolph Hitler stepped back in surprise, almost sending his unwitting guard tumbling down the stairs behind him. He had been totally amazed at what he had already seen.

A crescendo of noise came from the aircraft as it strafed, and the six trucks were blown to smithereens by the Me 262.

It was all over in two seconds – and the aircraft – this marvellous aircraft - swept away at high speed to the other end of the airfield.

Hitler looked back at the targets. They were ablaze and totally unrecognisable as military vehicles. Mangled beyond belief.

He turned his eyes towards the fast re-approaching aircraft and followed it as it swept viciously and victoriously past the tower, Wendel waggling its wings as pilots do in triumph.