The Reichsbank Robbery

by Colin Roderick Fulton

  Meunier agreed and began talking in Spanish, his voice rising and falling and his hands making short, sharp gesticulations to emphasise his wishes and exert the necessary pressure. Unfortunately, it had no effect on the Spaniard. He merely listened with a look of growing annoyance and then shook his head.

  “Why will you not do what we ask?” said Meunier, exasperated more by the man’s attitude than by his refusal to be of assistance.

  “Pero no me hah ordenado hacerle.”

  “He says he does not have the necessary orders,” translated Meunier before suggesting to the Spaniards how illogical it would be for the Boeing’s crew to have made up such a story in the hope of obtaining some gasoline. He explained that Major Lacalle was under orders from his superiors to deliver gasoline to the American general.

  Once more the only response he elicited from Murillo was a shrug, followed by a shake of his head.

  The argument continued. They tried bribery, offering him $20,000 to provide the petrol. The offer had a surprising effect on the Spanish lieutenant.

  His face turned a vivid hue and he became extremely agitated his voice becoming low and menacing.

  “What’s the bastard saying now Conrad?” asked Helmuth Wenck.

  “He says all Americans are the result of a union between a whore and a donkey and he does not want to soil his hands with Yankee money.”

  “For fuck’s sake,” exploded the general in exasperation. “The one Spaniard who I’ve ever met who won’t be bribed and we have to bloody well come across him now. Well, tell him we’re German. Maybe that will change his mind.”

  The diplomat again spoke in Spanish, adding a few words of German to his explanation. The effect of his words were even worse than before. Lieutenant Murillo rounded on one of his own men and spoke rapidly in Spanish, whereupon the man disappeared into the main building. Murillo’s face had turned ugly. His voice dropped to a hoarse shout and he was so angry that his lips began to quiver with rage. Flecks of spittle appeared at his mouth. The Germans stared in amazement, which turned to alarm when the missing Spaniard returned carrying a heavy machine-gun over one shoulder.

  Ignoring the group the man went over to a weapons pit and deftly mounted the weapon on an anti-aircraft mounting and cocked the weapon.

  Meunier walked away, motioning the two pilots to follow. When they were a dozen or so metres away he spoke very quietly in German.

  “I’m afraid Helmuth, Peter that we’re in deep trouble. He hates Germans more than he loathes Americans. Apparently, his father was on the Republican side during the war and was killed by what he terms a Fascist bomb. It’s also because of his father’s Republican leanings that he’s based out here, so he blames Fascists for his troubles. At any rate, what he feels does not matter. He’s adamant he won’t supply us with any gasoline and threatens to open fire on us unless we’re off the base in five minutes.”

  Peter Wenck glanced back at the Spaniards. They had not moved, but Murillo and the man in the weapons pit were smiling.

  “Come on Peter, we’re wasting our time. We had better go.”

  They hurried back to the Boeing and stopped by the forward hatch. Schonewille dropped to the ground and enquired as to what was going on.

  Meunier explained their predicament.

  “Well, what’s our choice, eh? Can we get to the Dominican Republic if we don’t get that petrol?”

  “Ha, ha. Not a fucking hope, Brother. That is unless we swim half the way.”

  The SS officer’s answer was a shock. Not just because of what he said, but the matter-of-fact way he said it. “Well, Kameraden, we have only one choice. We kill the lot of them now and take the petrol. I’ve no intention of giving myself up to the Allies or losing a fortune because of some wogs who are as stupid as the rest of their benighted race.”

  The other three stared at Schonewille for a moment. It was the air force general who made the decision.

  “He’s right, lads. We have no alternative. We either fly away and try to land God knows where, or we stay here and wait for Lacalle … that is if he is still planning to come here. The problem is, neither of those alternatives is exactly rosy, so I agree with Friedrich. Let’s get rid of the bastards.”

  They climbed back into the Boeing and quickly discussed how they were to accomplish the massacre. This time they included Swabisch who nodded his head without comment and climbed up inside the dorsal turret. With Schonewille sitting hunched in the rear turret Peter Wenck fired up the four engines and began to turn the B17 so the two turrets would have a clear line of fire.

  “Well, Father, do we do it?”

  His father’s answer sealed the fate of the Spaniards, so he went aft to the wireless operator’s window and gave the order to fire.

  When the four fifty-calibre machine-guns fell silent, the pilot opened the rear hatch and jumped to the ground. The rush of air from the airscrews tore at his clothes and the dust stung his neck. Thankfully, his father cut the engines and Peter Wenck moved forward, an American forty-five-calibre Colt automatic clutched in his right hand.

  The Spaniards were all dead. The man in the weapons pit was reduced to a mangled bloody mess with most of his entrails spread grotesquely on the ground. There were huge pools of blood soaking the parched, rocky ground and such was the violence of the heavy-calibre bullets that all of the dead had suffered massive wounds.

  Feeling the gorge rise in his throat he turned away and hunched over, trying to breathe deeply and swallow at the same time. After a few seconds he won the battle and his stomach stopped heaving. He straightened up as Schonewille, clutching a Schmeisser machine pistol, ran up.

  “Come on Peter, we’d better check there’s nobody else inside the building,” he urged, completely ignoring the bodies.

  Weapons cocked, the two combed the administrative building, followed by the hangar and the smaller tin sheds. All were empty. Finally the entire party, except for the woman, gathered inside the administration building in what was most likely the office of the late Lieutenant Murillo.

  “All empty?” asked the general

  Schonewille nodded vigorously as Peter Wenck returned the Colt to its holster. The pilot wondered what would have happened if they had found another Spaniard and asked himself whether he would have had the stomach to kill the man if there had been no resistance. He doubted it.

  Like all airmen, he had done his killing from afar and although while in Russia he had seen many dead soldiers and even a few civilians, the violence had never been as close or fresh as this.

  “Fine, fine. Now the petrol,” said Helmuth Wenck, punching a clenched fist into his left palm.

  They located a petrol tanker in the hangar, but found it to be almost empty. Nearby, though, was a fuel dump containing several dozen drums that appeared to be in excellent condition.

  “It looks as if these were meant for us,” said Swabisch. “Although we had better hope it is of good quality. I don’t imagine the Boeing’s engines are used to running on anything but the best.”

  It took two hours to transfer the gasoline from the drums into the petrol tanker and then into the Boeing. At last, with all tanks overflowing, it was time to leave the Spanish base.

  It was Helmuth Wenck who stopped them climbing back into the bomber.

  “Wait, before we disappear we have one more job to do. Peter, you and Leo go to the front of the building and try to find every spent bullet whether it is buried in the wall or in the ground. I’ll pick up the shell casings. Then, you go to the Fiat and set it on fire. With luck, the flames should hide what caused its demise since our bullets will have melted. In the meantime, the rest of us will collect all the bodies, wrap them in canvas and transfer them to our aircraft’s bomb bay. I want no evidence left behind. This airfield is going to be left like the Marie Celeste.”

  Peter Wenck questioned the necessity. As far as he was concerned, the quicker they left the better. “Surely, Lacalle will guess it was us?”

  “He might, cert
ainly. But what can he do or say? He’s hardly likely to admit he’s been involved in a scheme to sell Spanish Air Force gasoline on the side, especially when that scheme has gone wrong and has caused the death of Spanish personnel and the destruction of property.”

  “Therefore, if the Spanish authorities do not know what happened, there is less chance of Lacalle being suspected of any mischief and little chance of him telling anyone.”

  There was no argument to this logic, so the two pilots went about their task while the others started their grizzly job of gathering and packing the bodies and digging up the bloody earth, rock and sand. Since the bomb bay was largely filled with the long-range petrol tanks it proved to be difficult to fit the bodies into the space that remained. They first had to move some of the bullion cases to other areas in the fuselage.

  The job was made even harder since they had first to be dragged inside and then quite literally stuffed down into the bay itself.

  Peter Wenck waited until all had been finalised and they were ready to depart before emptying a five-litre can of solvent into the Fiat’s cockpit and putting two bullets into the petrol tank. The timing was important since the smoke might cause some unwelcome attention and he wanted to be well away before anyone arrived to investigate.

  He threw a lighted rag into the cockpit. The seat readily caught and he had only just climbed into the Boeing when there came a loud whump as the main fuel tank went up.

  He lowered himself wearily into the pilot’s seat and began to go through the pre-flight check. Suddenly, he felt very tired and for a moment leaned back and closed his eyes. A concerned Swabisch mentioned that perhaps it would be better if he took off, a suggestion that was met by a less than polite refusal.

  The runway was a trifle short and the Boeing only just managed to claw itself into the air before the ground deteriorated and the perimeter fence was upon them. The pilot immediately headed south for a few minutes before swinging west to avoid the town of El Aiun. The coast came up quickly and he waited for twenty minutes before ordering the co-pilot to open the bomb bay doors and dump their cargo. Each body had been wrapped in canvas and weighted down with something heavy.

  The bodies dropped away into the sea 200 metres below. The pilot then called up his brother on the intercom and asked him to check the bomb bay to make certain it was empty. Once it was confirmed that their dreadful cargo had gone, he closed the bomb bay doors and began to climb to a much more equitable cruising height. The bullion was then returned to the bomb bay.

  Chapter Thirty

  25 March 1945

  2030 Hours

  An advancing storm was beginning to buffet the Boeing quite severely and Peter Wenck realised he would have to make a decision very quickly about whether to climb for height or stay at this altitude and carry on a running fight with mother nature.

  The decision hinged purely on the question of oxygen. In an effort to save weight they had decided to only carry a small quantity, certainly not enough to cover the whole crew for any extended time. Already the occupants of Miss Nonalee Two were suffering from the effect of the reduced oxygen levels at 5,500 metres. Headaches and chest pains were common, though they were alleviated by the occasional whiffs of oxygen. However, for the pilots oxygen was more of a necessity and they took regular turns to breathe deeply from their face masks while they were flying.

  Peter Wenck handed the controls back to Swabisch and went down to the navigator’s compartment to talk to his father. Despite a nagging headache, he now felt much more alert. Shortly after their last take-off he had at last heeded the advice of his father not to exhaust himself any further and to get some rest. He allowed himself five hours unbroken sleep and it had certainly helped, although his reserves were still dangerously low because of the minimal amount of sleep he had gleaned over the preceding sixty hours.

  His watch told him it was just after ten o’clock at night, yet he realised by taking into account the time difference the local time was probably around about half-past-eight. To a degree they were flying backwards since they had been in the air for six-and-a-half hours since leaving the West African coast.

  At first the flight had been without incident. They had climbed slowly, the bomber heavy like a pregnant sow. Some 500 kilometres out into the Atlantic they had struck the first banks of cumulus clouds that gradually became more concentrated as they continued. By the time they reached 5,500 metres it was quite thick. Worse still, the white had begun to streak and billow with the ominous black of nimbus clouds, though most of the latter were some way below.

  As the flight continued and night began to close in, the rain-bearing clouds became even thicker and the buffeting became severe. Schonewille, Sophia and Meunier all began to suffer with varying degrees from air sickness. The diplomat suffered the least with Schonewille the worst.

  Helmuth Wenck was awake, staring out of the Perspex at the vague shapes created by the dark sky and the broken cloud formation when the pilot joined him. Water was beginning to stream back across the pointed Perspex cone and in the distance there came the odd flash of lightning.

  “Shit, I think we’d better start getting above that lot and quickly,” Peter told his father. “What’s our current position?”

  Helmuth Wenck dragged out one of the charts. It was the same one he had used for the last few hundred kilometres to the Spanish Sahara and showed the Canary Islands and a portion of the African coast on its right hand side.

  He fiddled with a ruler for a few seconds and then, picking up a pencil, he extended a line that already stretched half-way across the map. When the line was almost off the page he made a cross and circled an area that would have covered several hundred square kilometres.

  “Without taking another reading, I guess we’re about here. We’ve travelled about 1,700 kilometres, so we’re a quarter way there.”

  The pilot pursed his lips. God, it’s going to be like the New York mission, never ending, he thought. He wished the Boeing could fly a little faster. They were at the plane’s optimum cruising speed of barely 260 kilometres per hour. Everything was set for the most economical journey. The four Wrights were set at the leanest mixture allowed without damaging the engines and the revs were just marginally above 2,000 per minute.

  Despite these conservative settings and with their huge amount of fuel, the precious liquid could still not be wasted.

  “Look, if we climb above that fug out there it is going to be pretty difficult without oxygen. I suggest we set aside two-thirds of our supply to cover everyone, but it will have to be used sparingly. Whoever is flying will need to keep alert, so either Leo or I must have a constant dose, all right?”

  His father offered no argument, so Peter Wenck returned to the cockpit. He told his co-pilot to go aft and try to get some sleep and asked him to inform the others about his plans to climb above the bad weather and that while they could use some oxygen, they could only do so sparingly.

  Peter Wenck settled himself into the seat and put on his harness. Before tightening the straps he leant down and unclipped a steel thermos flask, unscrewed the lid and poured himself a cup of black, sweet tea. He loved the English drink. It was a legacy of his travelling days and the brew in the thermos was courtesy of the Red Cross, having been purloined from a cache of prisoner-of-war cartons.

  Refreshed, he put the thermos away and pulled the yoke gently back, at the same time increasing the revs and checking two sets of gauges to his right, the manifold pressure gauges and the cylinder head temperature gauges. Miss Nonalee Two hauled her bulk upwards as the storm began to shake her even more. It was as if the elements realised the bomber was trying to escape and were not charitable in letting her do so.

  Finally, at 6,300 metres the aircraft broke through into relatively calm air. Except for some wispy cirrostratus a thousand or so metres above them, the sky was clear. He levelled off 300 metres from the highest cloud peak and checked his instruments again.

  Adjusting the oxygen regulator, he sucked deepl
y, allowing the gas to flow cool and clean through his mouth. As he flew he searched the sky, though he knew the chance of another aircraft being in this same patch was almost zero. Yet, he kept turning his head, methodically checking each corner of his vision. It was an old habit, an instinct that was by now second nature. It was the mark of a successful pilot, one who had survived the war in the air for a long time.

  As his eyes became used to the better light at this greater altitude, he could see through the higher clouds the stars and the moon, the latter’s glow shedding a dim light onto the earth’s upper reaches and giving the carpet of clouds beneath his wings a dull yellow glow. It was an eerie sight and made him feel he was flying in another world.

  He checked the Boeing’s original altimeter: it read just over 21,000 feet. He did not bother checking the metric gauge. Then he noticed how the airspeed indicator showed the plane had gained another thirty miles per hour. They had obviously picked up the upper reaches of the north-east trades that blew almost continuously at these latitudes. This air stream would be a boon in two ways. Not only would they reach their destination quicker, but it would ease their fuel consumption.

  On a whim he set the auto pilot and unclipped his harness. Passing through the flight deck to the catwalk, which ran through the bomb bay, he went to the rear of the plane. In the wireless operator’s compartment Schonewille and Meunier lay tossing fitfully, but he did not stop. Crouching, he let himself through the next bulkhead and came to where the co-pilot and the Jewess were lying in their bunks.

  Sophia was awake, her face ashen in the dim light.

  “Are you not well?” he asked.

  She swallowed a couple of times and licked her lips before answering in a weak voice that she felt awful. He unhooked a mask and, as he had done previously, told her to breathe deeply. He pressed the mask to her face for five minutes and then as her breathing became easier transferred it to his own face. He took a few deep breaths and smiled down at her. The look was cut short as the Boeing gave a slight lurch and then re-adjusted itself under the guidance of the automatic pilot. Despite the device having always worked perfectly, like most pilots he did not trust radical or new technology and the thought of the plane flying itself made him very nervous, so he wanted to get back to the cockpit immediately.