However, the subject of the weather was not why Jim now sat in front of AVM Morrissey. Following his chat with the Prime Minister, the Air Marshal had been considering the potential issues concerning any unpalatable revelations made public by Charles. He didn’t think it important that the men and women under his command realised that some minor historical detail was marginally different to that of their own timeline.
He considered it irrelevant to the task in hand. After all, nothing could be changed now!
However, of course, in reality it was deeply relevant.
What the Air Marshal didn’t appear to understand was the concept of alternate or parallel universes.
Jim Charles did!
‘Well, Jim, have you thought any more about our conversation last week?’
Jim Charles took his opportunity.
‘Yes sir, I have – and if you will permit me I should like to fully clarify the situation we may quickly find ourselves in.’
The AVM gave him some rope.
‘Please go ahead, Jim. You haven’t discussed this with anyone else have you?’
‘No sir. I have obeyed your order. However, I must make you aware of some salient facts. Firstly, I have been following the national newspapers supplied by the local staff and they make interesting reading.’
‘How so?’ enquired the AVM, knowing exactly what Jim was going to say.
‘Well, sir – let's look at just a few of the anomalies that I have uncovered. For a start, the great financial crash of 1926 didn’t happen until 1935. The USA is a shambles and financially a wreck. The President of the USA is Joseph Kennedy – a complete and utter Anglophobe – who publicly states that he will never enter a European war or even lift a finger to help us. Japan and China are fighting a war, which China is winning. Russia has come in on their side and Japanese Empirical expansion is just not happening. Hitler has not invaded Norway yet, and Italy have not yet entered the war because Mussolini was assassinated in 1939.’
The AVM was circumspect:
‘Well, these might be minor and unimportant changes in our known history.’
‘Minor! Minor! You are joking aren't you? Hitler is ruling most of Europe with an iron fist, including Spain and Portugal where Franco is but a mere puppet. And to cap it all, if you plot all of this forwards but a few years, the Nazis will be first to build the Atom Bomb and then we are all doomed. They are already years ahead in the race to jet propulsion and radar. In short, I vehemently believe that we have entered a ‘parallel universe’, and if and when we try to return to our own, it will be impossible to predict where we will be and what we will find. This is not our 1940!’
The AVM realised that he could not mollify this chap any further and would now have to take drastic steps to curb the potential threat he posed.
‘Jim, if I were to accept all this waffle about ‘parallel universes’ then what do you propose?’
‘We need to tell everyone what we have discovered and give them the option. Do they return with us on the eighth of September or do they stay here?’
Jim Charles had now passed his point of no return.
‘Okay, Jim, let me think about this situation carefully. It needs to be handled delicately. Please give me a couple of days to discuss the issues with the PM. I'm sure we’ll come up with something – a compromise. In the meantime, please keep your own counsel. If we just blurt this out, some of our people might over-react – and we wouldn’t want that – would we?’
Jim nodded, thrust his medal into his pocket and left the office.
AVM Morrissey knew that he had a phone call to make. Poor old Jim Charles would shortly be going on a one way trip to his own parallel universe! He had to ‘disappear’ in the interests of the ‘bigger picture.’
However, Morrissey should have paid attention to his research and reading a little more thoroughly. If he accepted that the time-jump had been possible, then he had to seriously consider the theories of parallel or alternate universes, where self-contained ‘separate, yet slightly different’ realities could co-exist alongside one's own.
And there could be hundreds – so finding the one they originally came from on their return was a very, very low probability.
However, in the final analysis, he didn’t really care either way.
***
In fact, there were huge disparities between the two time-lines and a major factor in the Battle of Britain was the development of the Me 262. It was three to four years ahead of 1992 history, and this would play a critical part in the outcome of the war.
As Jim Charles revealed his discoveries to Morrissey, Hermann Goering’s Luftwaffe was taking delivery of thirty six more jets – including Recce, high speed bomber and night-flying variants.
And there were hundreds more in the pipeline.
46
Over the North Sea
12 August 1940
That morning the Luftwaffe launched a fearsome force of fighters and bombers against the British radar stations sited along the south coast. It was a determined and well planned attack which ripped a hundred mile gap in the British radar curtain. As a direct consequence, the fighter controllers were unable to launch Spitfires or Hurricanes to defend the airfields which were the real targets for ‘Adlertag’ or Eagle Day.
Radar towers were attacked by determined and accurate Stukas, and a group of Do-17s smashed into RAF Manston with over one hundred and fifty bombs, taking out hangars, buildings and aircraft on the ground.
The British commanders had to react and do something to combat this threat, so AVM Park, commanding number 12 Group called the Station Commander at Middle Fleckney for assistance.
The six remaining Tornados were armed and scrambled immediately and dispatched towards the south coast with the ECM Canberra lurking above attempting to jam German frequencies with noise.
The 1992 force set up a Combat Air Patrol at thirty thousand feet, waiting for the two ADVs to find targets to attack with their look down – shoot down internal radar. As they transitted southwards, they approached the Isle of Sheppey in the Thames Estuary and the lead ADV spotted a large formation of potential Luftwaffe bombers heading west. The Tornados split into three pairs and following the ADVs down, sped towards the Luftwaffe Do-17s. They swept around the back of the formation and caught up with them at fifteen hundred feet above sea level, just below the thick cloud cover. Luckily the modern equipment in the Tornados allowed them to descend safely below the cloud without crashing into the sea.
As they levelled out, the ADV guiding them towards the bomber force made a brief call:
‘Purple – from Purple Five; contact multi bandits at twelve o’clock, range three miles. Attack in pairs as briefed and when complete climb to three-zero-zero and RV at pre-brief point Charlie. Acknowledge.’
All of the other five pilots checked in and the improvised attack commenced.
The three pairs armed their missiles and guns, closed on the Nazi bombers at the rear of the formation and ripped them to pieces, launching AIM-9s and strafing at will.
Ten Do-17s were destroyed by AIM-9 missiles and a further eight shot down with guns.
Calls of ‘Fox-One’ and ‘Fox-Two’ came thick and fast as the German aircraft scattered and turned for home. It was a superb victory and probably saved a defenceless airfield from a severe battering. The Tornado pairs climbed away after each attack and broke cloud at around ten thousand feet. The lead ADVs were into the clear blue skies first and turned north for Middle Fleckney. The second pair appeared about a minute later and joined up with the aircraft ahead.
Unfortunately, it was not straightforward for the third pair. Unbeknownst to any of the Tornados, the German bombers had had top-cover in the form of a pair of Me 262s. They had been unable to pierce the cloud cover for a controlled descent, so had remained at ten thousand feet, skimming the top of the thick nimbostratus, waiting for an opportunity to join the fight. They were running short of fuel and were about to turn for home.
Th
e Tornado pilot, Moose Davies and his navigator, Hoppy Harris didn’t even see the German jet. It was an incredible piece of devastatingly bad luck. As the Tornado climbed through the cloud and broke out into the clear air it flew straight into one of the Me 262s. The Tornado cockpit smashed into the fuselage of the other aircraft and both exploded in a vast ball of flame. All three aircrew died instantly.
As the flaming wreckage tumbled in a thousand shattered pieces through the cloud and into the sea below, two very surprised and alarmed surviving crews - one German and one British - scanned and searched the skies for potential threats, and spotted each other simultaneously - about one thousand metres apart.
Luckily for both, neither wanted a fight and as the Me 262 turned east and dove into the cloud, the Tornado engaged reheat and zoomed to thirty thousand feet, calling the lead ADV with the shattering news.
‘Roger, Purple Four, return to base on your own. See you on the ground.’
Purple Four acknowledged and the surviving five Tornados made their sorry way home.
Todd, who was in Purple One, was horrified. This was now the third crew he'd lost and including the German colleague he'd been forced to shoot, there had been seven aircrew fatalities.
It also meant that yet another aircraft would not be returning to 1992.
***
As the aircraft recovered to Middle Fleckney, the landings didn’t go completely unnoticed. Of course, the military guard force saw the arrival of five weird looking aircraft – but this was so commonplace now, that they hardly gave them a second glance. They had been told that their short tour of duty in Norfolk would be over on the eighth of September, so most of them were just biding their time until they could go on leave and visit their families. They had little interest in the futuristic jets flying in and out on a daily basis. As far as they were concerned it was just another wartime development.
However, other prying eyes were lurking in the undergrowth around two miles due west of the landing strip. Admiral Canaris had deployed his spies to try and confirm the strange reports he had received, and on this morning their patience was rewarded.
The two people – a young man and woman – were lying under a thick bush in a small copse. Their cover story, should they be discovered, was that they were a courting couple meeting in secret for illicit sex. So they had been engaged in some mild hanky-panky, and as the five Tornados swept over them to land they gained the confirmation that their masters in Berlin required. They daren’t risk a photo, but were able to sketch a fair representation of the aeroplanes when they checked in with their controller.
Within ten minutes, they had readjusted their clothing and were cycling down a lane towards Downham Market. Later that evening the girl had returned to her lodgings, and the man was at home transmitting in code to German Abwehr HQ.
Admiral Canaris had his corroboration, but continued to withhold the intelligence from Goering. He would give it a few more days and perhaps, with any luck, the Luftwaffe attacks on Britain would falter and the invasion be delayed – or even cancelled – which, in his opinion, would be the best outcome for both sides in this stupid war.
47
High over the Baltic
13 August 1940
The 1992 force had been in sombre mood since they learned of the demise of Moose and Hoppy. They were two young first tourists and had been popular amongst groundcrew and aircrew alike. A short service was held that evening and everyone present shed a tear or two.
However, there was still a job to be done, so the following morning, one of the Recce Canberras launched and climbed to nearly fifty-thousand feet en-route to the Baltic States of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. All were occupied by the Nazis, and British sympathisers had passed information back to London concerning a number of small, very fast aircraft which had been observed in Lithuania, near the coast.
This intrigued the intelligence bods searching for the home base and/or the construction factory for the Me 262. Therefore, a Canberra mission was authorised and it was now cruising well above any German threat, and would be virtually invisible to the naked eye from the ground.
Their route took them over Copenhagen and Malmo as they headed for Vilnius in Lithuania. A map with photo runs had been drawn up in advance with twenty stretches of one hundred and fifty mile strips. However, this would require two sorties to complete the task, since the transit time each way was around an hour. The Canberra would have only two hours or so on station for the photography.
The first sortie went smoothly enough and the Canberra PR9 took vertical overlapping photographs of northern Lithuania from forty-thousand feet – this would allow for the PIs to create a series of stereo images, which would help to positively identify the target. They were actually observed from the ground, but there was nothing anyone could do about it, so the Recce jet headed west untroubled towards base, and landed at noon. The film was removed and new cassettes reloaded whilst the crew had lunch. At 1400 the Canberra took off for the afternoon sortie after it had been refuelled and serviced.
The transit was uneventful and the aeroplane was on station by 1515. At the same time the Photographic Interpreters were studying the morning film and some startling discoveries were being made.
At around 1730, the PR9 navigator switched off the vertical camera after the last run was complete, and the pilot began his slow climb to fifty-thousand feet for the journey home. Both men were very tired by now, having been awake for more than twelve hours. Normally, crews are not allowed to exceed strict criteria set for ‘crew duty times.’ However, bearing in mind the unique situation and the urgency of the task – the rules had gone out of the window in the past few weeks.
This was particularly disastrous for Al Norman and Steve Hicks. The other Recce Canberra was employed on similar duties over France and Germany, so there had been no chance of sparing both crews an exceedingly long and fatiguing day.
As the Canberra climbed through forty-five thousand feet, the starboard engine flamed out. One engine was more than enough to keep the aircraft flying and they could nurse it home if they followed the drills. However, a unique problem with the Canberra concerned the position of its engines on the wings. They were several feet outboard of the fuselage and when an engine failed, the aircraft tended to roll towards the dead side.
The standard drill, frequently practiced by crews, was to apply full opposite rudder to compensate for the roll, and thus keep the plane straight and level. There had been several incidents in the nineteen seventies of pilots allegedly applying the ‘wrong’ rudder, and causing the aircraft to roll violently and into a fatal spin. This had happened at RAF Wyton in 1976 and the Canberra spiralled in from one thousand feet and plummeted into a local housing estate – and the crew was killed.
Maybe it was because Al Norman was just tired, or even bored by the monotony of ten hours in the cockpit, that he made the same deadly mistake.
The aircraft went into an instantaneous and unrecoverable spin, and careered towards the ground at a very high rate of knots. The aircraft was about sixty miles north east of Konigsberg (Kaliningrad) – and still over the land. Even if he'd thought about it, there was absolutely no chance to steer the uncontrollable aircraft over the sea to avoid any wreckage falling into enemy hands.
As the aircraft plunged through twenty thousand feet, Al Norman called for his navigator to eject. Steve Hicks reached down and pulled the ejection seat handle. In a controlled and calm ejection he would have normally firstly blown the MDC – miniature detonation cord – which blew a hole in the aircraft skin above his seat in the nose. However, today he had no time for preparation and just pulled the bottom handle as hard as he could. Because the ejection control was set to front, he ejected first, but went crashing through the hatch. No-one has ever survived a PR9 front seat ejection – and Steve was no different. His neck was broken as he thrust through the hatch. His arms were shredded by the metal on both sides of the escape hole, and the pencils in his flying suit pockets were plun
ged deep into both of his arms.
None of this mattered to him as he floated serenely to the ground, where his body was subsequently recovered by local German peasants and immediately handed over to the local authorities, who could make little sense of his uniform and especially his 1992 identity tags. News filtered through to Berlin and eventually the body was transported to the capital for further examination. The discarded ejection seat was a complete mystery!
Al Norman suffered a similar fate. He survived the ejection reasonably well, crashing upwards through the gap in the canopy created by the automatic MDC. He drifted down towards the ground and to his horror, realised that he was going to land in the water to the north of Konigsberg. There was nothing he could do to prevent the inevitable and splashed heavily into the icy water – which was about five degrees centigrade.
The wind caught his parachute and began to drag him violently across the surface of the salty water. He tried to unclip the chute by turning the quick-release-handle, but he just didn’t have the strength. He was fifty years old and wasn’t wearing an immersion suit which would normally have been de rigeur over such cold waters. But because they had left 1992 Britain in summery July, cold weather clothing was not issued or worn.
JET LAG! Page 21
