“I sometimes think I must be mad,” Ritter said dryly, shaking his head and almost grinning. “When I first saw that grey aircraft before me, I believed I’d suddenly fallen into some grand hallucination.” Thorne laughed at those words… something he’d not been able to do two days before when faced with the loss of the Raptor and the damage the raid had inflicted.
“That ‘hallucination’ turned into a fireball and some pretty big pieces of wreckage after you shot it down though… There’s an American pilot back at the base who’s certainly crossed you off his Christmas list!”
“I — I do not understand what is this ‘Christmas list’,” Ritter grinned, pride rising faintly within him at what he recognised to be a vague compliment, “but I understand what you’re saying. That was a lucky shot, I think… yes? Yes…” he added, not waiting for Thorne to answer “Yes, I was very lucky, I suspect.” His mind changed tack at that moment. “This means the Americans will enter the war against us? I did see American markings on that aircraft as it passed.”
“‘That aircraft’ was called a Raptor, but it’s probably not appropriate to discuss the plans of the Americans at the moment.”
“‘Raptor’…? That is a bird of prey, ja…?” Ritter mused thoughtfully, accepting the rebuttal with grace. “An excellent description for such an aircraft.”
“It appears the aircraft of your unit were also excellent, if a little outmatched on this occasion.”
“They are, yes, Ritter agreed, thinking he finally saw the direction of Thorne’s conversation. He was a little amused to think the officer had gone to all that trouble merely to find out something as petty as details of a new type of Luftwaffe aircraft. What the hell? He thought. Why not humour him? England was doomed anyway. Although no one knew the exact date, everyone knew that an invasion was coming soon. “They’re a very capable aircraft from Messerschmitt called a Löwe… a ‘Lion’.”
They’re called a ‘Skyraider’… they’re a bloody fantastic aircraft for their time… and if Ed Heinmann and the boys at Douglas Aircraft ever had any idea of where you guys got the plans from and thought they could prove it, there’d be a law suit the size of the fuckin’ Hindenburg on Willi Messerschmitt’s doorstep the next morning! Thorne thought with dry sarcasm, unlikely as that idea was.
Despite the revised type of cockpit canopy, he’d recognised the aircraft immediately from Mustang gun camera film and the wreckage they’d recovered, and had no illusions as to where Messerschmitt had obtained the plans to the Douglas A-1H Skyraider. The New Eagles had indirectly purchased a full set of declassified engineer’s blueprints in 2007from the corporation that owned the rights to Douglas’ old plans. In Realtime, the incredibly versatile aircraft had actually been conceived of by designer Ed Heinmann at the very end of the Second World War, and had gone on to serve admirably for more than thirty years with the US Navy and Marine Corps, along with many other air forces around the world.
“I’m sorry,” Ritter continued, almost feeling honestly apologetic, “but I of course cannot give you any more information about the aircraft than I already have…”
“You think I’m trying to get some ‘dirt’ on your bloody aircraft?” Thorne actually laughed out loud at the idea. “Shall I tell you about your bloody aircraft, mate?” Without waiting for an answer from the surprised German pilot, Thorne searched his memory for what he’d re-read the day before regarding the Douglas A-1H Skyraider.
“The ‘Messerschmitt Lion attack aircraft, as you call it,” he began, giving emphasis to the title. Powered by one radial engine of around two thousand kilowatts… about twenty-seven hundred horsepower — pferdestärke — or thereabouts. Powerplant probably manufactured by BMW or Junkers, as I’m informed they’re the more prevalent engine manufacturers, but more likely BMW considering it’s a radial. Aircraft’s maximum speed would be about five hundred and fifteen kilometres per hour, with a cruising speed of just over three hundred. Wingspan of around fifteen and a half metres, and a length of just under twelve… it can carry up to three and a half thousand kilograms of weaponry on fifteen underwing and fuselage hardpoints. All this along with what appear to be four twenty-millimetre cannon, all firing outside the disc of the propeller, and one twin thirteen millimetre machine gun in the rear cockpit. Without auxiliary tanks, it should have a range of around fifteen hundred kilometres.” He gave the astounded Ritter a casual grin. “That about sum it up?”
“How can you know all this?” Ritter demanded as he stood stock still. “The armaments and dimensions you could possibly work out from the wreckage, but the range… the speeds! How can you know all these things?”
“That’ll become clear at a later date… there are a few things I’m considering showing you in the next few days that might give you a few new insights into life as you know it in Grossdeutschland!”
Back in his cell that evening, Ritter found himself left with a great deal to consider regarding Thorne’s comments of that day, and of his own imprisonment at Scapa Flow. Although his capture was pure chance — of that there could be no doubt — he was filled with the uncanny feeling that this Australian officer somehow knew him… or at least knew of him. It was a sensation that promoted some highly unwanted uncertainty, and the overall level of complexity in his life had taken a turn for the worse when, in his mind, it’d become far too complex already. How did this Australian have so much information regarding the aircraft he flew — information that should’ve been top secret? How was it this man seemed to know things about him? That was the worst of it… Thorne, a man whom he’d never before met… an officer of the Royal Air Force — the enemy — had intimated he knew a great deal more about Ritter than he was revealing. There was a riddle here that would require solving… if for no other reason than to allow some simplicity to creep back into the pilot’s life.
At the same time Ritter was sitting in private reflection in his cell, Thorne was at Alternate on Eday, seated at the PC on the Galaxy’s upper deck and working on the idea for a presentation he could put before Carl Ritter. He’d originally intended to use an audio-visual piece prepared specifically for display to Allied military personnel at the Hindsight Unit, similar to the one he’d shown Trumbull. A well produced sixty-minute documentary, it’d taken two months to put together using stock and archival footage alone, and a leading, international director had compiled it with the full assistance of the BBC, the Imperial War Museum, the Smithsonian Institute in the United States, and the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. The production of the documentary was extremely important, as it was intended purely for use in convincing uninformed military personnel of the present — the 1940s — of the existence of the Hindsight Unit and of the correct path for history.
Television as a medium was still extremely rare in the Nineteen-Forties — the first prototype unit had been developed just twelve years before, and the idea was still in its infancy. Audio-visual media had been chosen for this very reason to best convey what Hindsight was trying to accomplish. Television’s power as a tool of learning — and of propaganda — was well known in a time where it was a readily accepted norm in almost every home, and it’d been reasonably deduced that well-compiled images and a concise narrative could have a devastating impact on an audience with no idea of the capabilities of a 21st Century production studio. Just as the unscrupulous might utilise such production techniques to lie and deceive a nation’s population — or an individual — the truth could also be as effectively and graphically put forward.
Thorne decided against that particular piece at the last moment however, as it was decidedly biased in its undertones and dialogue, having been produced for a ‘target audience’ of Allied personnel. Germany was the main aggressor in the European Theatre to be sure — there was no possibility that could be denied — but there were different ways in which one might convey the message intended. To all intents and purposes, what Thorne was intending to do was to convince a man of high principle to betray his own country. That was somet
hing that came far more easily in Thorne’s era than Ritter’s, particularly within so loyal and regimented an environment as the German Officer Corps. Something much more graphic and powerful was required than the standard ‘tell it like it is’ video, and to that end the Australian had delved into Hindsight’s DVD library for something else they’d brought along with them.
Part of that collection was the entire ‘World At War’ series produced at the end of the Realtime 1970s. Narrated by Sir Lawrence Olivier, it’d been acclaimed internationally for its in-depth chronicling of the history of the Second World War, and of the twenty-five fifty-minute episodes, the one chosen by Thorne was one he’d always felt to be both the most painful and most powerful. As detached a student of history as he generally was, he’d only been able to bring himself to watch that particular episode once despite the high regard he accorded the entire series.
Thorne grimaced as he realised he still thought of the shows’ narrator as the ‘late’ Lawrence Olivier. In that reality, Lawrence Olivier was still very much alive, yet to be knighted, and had only just completed probably his greatest acclaimed work the year before… Wuthering Heights… assuming of course that within this altered timeline, the film had even been made. With some mild trepidation, Thorne nevertheless felt that particular episode would have the right effect on Ritter. If the passages in the man’s diary could be believed, the pilot was a man of principle — a man who’d in no way support the atrocities committed by the Nazis throughout the Realtime Second World War. There could be no way he might support the much greater atrocities yet to be committed by a Nazi-led Grossdeutschland that was victorious in Europe.
Thorne’s mouth was dry as he ran the back of his hand across it and shut down the DVD playing software on the PC. He badly wanted a drink, but managed to find the strength to refrain for the second evening in as many days. It took a great deal of effort, that was certain, but the mere fact that at least one other person now knew about his problem provided just that little extra willpower he required: that and the other consideration that if one person knew, it was almost certain others as yet unknown to him also either knew or suspected.
15. A Few Good Men
Home Fleet Naval Anchorage at HMS Proserpine
Scapa Flow, Orkney Islands
Tuesday
August 20, 1940
Thorne, Donelson, Kransky and Trumbull all stood at one of the piers of the anchorage early that morning as a warrant officer and a pair of privates loaded a large wooden crate was loaded onto a small motor launch. Eoin Kelly stood with them, waiting for the men to finish so he could be taken out to an RAF Sunderland floating out on the water a few hundred metres away.
“The flying boat will take you as far as Belfast,” Thorne advised as the boat crew secured the load in preparation to cast off. “From there, a truck will be waiting to take you wherever you need to go. Warrant Officer Standish will also accompany you as far as you require, and he’ll carry enough authorisation to get both of you through any checkpoint or roadblock.”
“You’ve me thanks, Mister Thorne,” Kelly replied with sincerity, shaking the man’s hand. Despite having developed a great deal of respect for the Australian, he still couldn’t bring himself to call him by his first name. “I can’t promise you answers I can’t give, but I do promise to put your case to the Council. What happens from there is up to them.”
“I understand,” Thorne replied, nodding, “and I appreciate what you are doing… and have done. You didn’t have to help us during the raid… not the way you did.”
“Well now… you know I just can’t help m’self… I have t’ be the centre of attention after all…” Neither the self-deprecating grin nor the matching tone was enough to convince them, but the group respected the man’s fall back upon humility. “Farewell to the rest o’ you fine gentlemen,” he continued as his eyes moved along the line of men. “Stay safe, and have a few drinks for me now ‘n’ then.” His gaze finally came to rest on Eileen Donelson’s face “Farewell t’ you too, missus… try not to think too harshly of me.”
“Thank you again for what you’ve done,” she said softly, the concession a difficult one to make.
“You’re welcome, ma’am,” Kelly replied simply, deciding honesty was more important than false humility under the circumstances. “I appreciate your sayin’ so… that can’t have been easy.” He took a breath, then added: “Mister Thorne told me a little of what some of my people did to your father, and for what its worth, I’m sorry for that… it’s not the way I’d be fightin’ a war.” There was a substantial pause before she finally nodded in recognition of the sentiment, and he knew that was about as close as they’d probably ever come to common ground. Kelly would miss some of the crew there at the base, and he thought it a shame those people were technically his enemies.
“Take care, missus,” he said finally, tipping a finger to the brim of the flat cap he wore to match the ill-fitting brown suit he’d been given on arrival. In another moment he was aboard the launch and it was chugging slowly out to the Coastal Command aircraft with his escort. Thorne stared up at the sky above for a few moments before turning to walk away, thinking there might be rain on the way.
Hal Markowicz arrived back from London just after noon that day, his Avro Anson transport having taken him on a long and arduous detour to the west, at tree-top height most of the way to avoid Luftwaffe fighters that patrolled the skies of Southern England with impunity. Fighter command was all but shattered now as a coherent fighting force, and anti-aircraft gun crews had already learned the hard way that firing on enemy aircraft would almost invariably bring an attack down upon them in retaliation; the Luftwaffe was now basically given free reign during daylight hours as a result.
The Anson was light enough that it didn’t require a full-length runway (which had in any case been destroyed), and it instead touched down on an open stretch of flat grassland near the ruins of what was left of the concrete airstrip, close to the parked rows of newly-arrived Mustang fighters of 93- and 96Sqn. Thorne and Donelson were waiting to meet him as Markowicz stepped from the plane, dressed in a tailored grey suit he’d purchased while in London. Under one arm he carried a briefcase of soft leather that appeared to be quite full.
Hal had been working with the War Ministry to assist in streamlining production of new and improved weaponry, and the sight of his familiar form in the very unfamiliar cut of a 1940s three-piece suit and matching bowler hat somehow brought home to both Thorne and Eileen a sense of culture shock more than almost anything else they’d seen up to that point.
“Hard to get used to, is it not!” Markowicz admitted with a beaming smile, noting their strange looks as he drew near and correctly deducing the reason. “Tailor-made… and it feels wonderful to wear… but I shiver every time I look in a mirror. Most of my clothing was destroyed during one of the raids, and I was looking forward to getting back here and wearing a pair of jeans again…” He paused as he surveyed the distant, gutted ruins that had once been the Hindsight base. “It seems they are gone also. I heard what happened… to poor Nick and the others…”
“How’s the armaments industry going, Hal?” Thorne changed the still-painful subject instantly as they moved off together. “Whipped them into shape down there, yet?”
“Hah! You think I’m a miracle worker then?” The old man gave a hollow laugh, and Thorne thought perhaps his normally faint accent was perhaps a little stronger than it had once been. Markowicz turned toward Eileen and laid a gentle hand on her arm. “Lady, we could use you and your memory down there… I tell you that!” He shrugged and reconsidered the statement somewhat. “But perhaps they wouldn’t listen to a woman any more than they listen to a ‘mad old Jew’, yes? The raids have made them scared and disorganised, and the ones in charge of the factories and the arsenals are suspicious of any new ideas.” He threw his hands and arms about as an ‘aid’ to his speech, and Thorne and Eileen were suddenly certain the accent and mannerisms were more pronounced.
“They argue about this and that, and it takes twice as long to get anything done as it should, even with the letter of authorisation I carry signed by Churchill himself!”
“And the production levels…?” Eileen queried. She’d indeed wanted to go south with him, however the idea had been vetoed for a number of reasons. Her greatest asset — her eidetic memory — was also ultimately why she’d been forced to stay in the north: her loss to Hindsight, should she be killed or captured, would be irreplaceable. Over and above the thousands of plans and blueprints and other things of interest they carried in storage, her photographic mind also carried with it a vast wealth of information that they could ill afford to lose.
“The new anti-tank sights for the AA guns are all out and going well, and the 10-pounder guns seem to be working nicely in tanks and on towed carriages. There aren’t many of them yet, but there are enough, perhaps, to make their presence felt if used in the right areas. The main bottleneck has been in smallarms, as much because of disruption by raids as anything else. They have one division now, I think, armed with AKMs and RPKs, although they’re complaining about losing their precious Bren guns…”
“Wait ‘til they start carting the new ones around: that’ll shut the whingeing bastards up!” Thorne grinned slightly. The new squad light machine gun, provisionally named the Vickers-Enfield Mk.I and based on the Realtime Soviet RPK, had a high level of commonality with the AKM rifle, and was about three kilograms lighter that the Bren gun it was replacing, even when loaded with a 75-round drum magazine.
“The real question will be whether they can supply enough ammunition… they’re going to need everything they can get!” Hal continued with a knowing smile. “Getting enough of the new ammo has been difficult.”
The new short round was basically a direct copy of the Soviet rimless round fired by Kalashnikov rifles and light machine guns in Realtime, the only change being the slight increase in calibre to 7.7mm (.303-inch) to facilitate manufacturing equipment already set up for that established British standard. The .303 inch Rimless Mark I cartridge, as it had become known, proved just as effective as the round from which it had been derived, and the improvement on available firepower for the British infantry squad promised to be great indeed.
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