The sound of aircraft engines came suddenly. He phoned to his control room and when the phone was in his hands he looked up and saw the glint of moonlight upon a wing. He saw it for only a moment and it was too high to be more than a speck of light but it was leaving a condensation trail that glowed in the moonlight. Even had his 8.8-cm. guns been ready to fire they couldn’t reach that height.
The information was passed to Deelen but already it was superfluous. Other reports showed that the aircraft were two Mosquitoes at 32,000 feet.
“They are turning at Ahaus,” said the Plot Officer.
The Operations Officer moved his hand to make an arc southward from Ahaus, pivoting upon the Oboe transmitter at Dover. His thumb swiveled across the open country until it encountered the shaded pattern of a large town in the Ruhr. He looked then at the bomber stream’s reported position. The heading of the bombers would bring them over the same place.
“Krefeld,” he said. “I’ll bet a week’s pay on it.”
The other officer nodded. He didn’t take up the wager.
The plan was now clear. On their present heading the bomber stream would pass over Krefeld at half past midnight. Moving a hundred miles an hour faster and turning to approach from the north, the Mosquitoes—with their secret Oboe device—would pass over Krefeld three minutes earlier. That would be exactly enough time for the colored indicator bombs to mark the target for the heavy bombers.
The routes were converging like the rays of light through a burning glass and tonight attention was focusing on one town. The leaflet raids over northern France, the lone Mosquito that was causing the alarms to sound all the way to Berlin, and the dog-leg course that had taken the stream to Noordwijk before turning were all clearly seen for the ruses they were; the target for tonight was Krefeld. Deelen Control and Duisburg FLUKO began to arrange the defenses of the Reich accordingly.
In peacetime a complicated electronic device like Oboe would have spent six months more on the test bench and four or five in prototype, and anything up to a year would have passed before they were sold, installed and in use. But this was war and Oboe was in production. It needed nursing all the way to the target and even then it was no surprise to Flying Officer Mac-Intosh when the set went dead twenty-five miles short of Krefeld.
“Not a sausage. What a nuisance; the signals were clear as a bell—then it went dead.”
“We’ll turn back then.”
“Might as well. We’re on a curve but we’ll never find the target with a dud set.”
“Bloody thing. I canceled a date tonight.”
“You shouldn’t have joined.”
The Mosquito turned abruptly until it faced west to England. There was no sense in going a yard nearer to the Ruhr than was absolutely essential.
“Let’s get out of here, Mac.”
There were two radio transmitting stations in England from which the signals went to activate Oboe. The stations could handle only two Mosquitoes every ten minutes. The two planes that should mark the target for the very first bombers to arrive were now reduced to one plane. That one was piloted by Pilot Officer Alan Hill; his observer was Peter Hutchinson.
They had done everything according to the book. They had flown at 32,000 feet, for only at this height were the signals able to reach over the radar horizon. At a point fifty miles north of Krefeld they had turned southward. Keeping the steady beat of the signals in his ears, the pilot had banked his wing to fly a gentle curve that would—at the moment the signal from the second transmitter reached him—bring him at the right distance from Krefeld to allow for the forward movement through the air of the 250-pound target indicator bombs.
They did not know that the accompanying Mosquito had turned away with its Oboe device out of action. Nor did they know that they were accompanied by a German airplane up in this region of the sky that was almost the stratosphere. It was a specially equipped Ju88S in which the GM1 system injected nitrous oxide into the superchargers and thus provided oxygen that boosted its performance by nearly twenty percent. Its endurance was measured in minutes and a few nights previously it had used up its Ha-ha device just as it caught sight of the Mosquito. Tonight there had been no miscalculation. Tonight the moonlight had made the upper reaches of the sky into a floodlit arena.
“Bombs armed,” reported the observer. At the speed they were going, Krefeld was only two minutes away. There was suddenly a thumping sound and the controls were wrenched from the pilot’s grasp. The panel was bent and torn and the glass from its instruments flew in all directions. Two Perspex panels had suddenly gone white and the sky was no longer to be seen through them. Even when the bangs stopped, the engines were screaming an octave above their normal tone. The Mosquito performed a flick roll, steadied itself for a moment and then put its nose up and stalled. As he dived the aircraft to regain control they saw the Ju88 far away on the port beam. Its wings shone in the moonlight as it turned to find them for a second attack.
“Fire!” shouted Peter Hutchinson.
“What with?” shouted Alan Hill angrily, until he noticed that the port engine was coughing blue flame and spitting orange sparks and his few remaining instrument needles were collapsing. He wrenched at the tiny jettison box by his side and tore a nail as he broke the safety wires. There was a lurch as two 250-pound target indicator bombs—each almost as big as a man—fell out of the bomb bay, and then he struggled with the box for what seemed like hours until the other two went. Relieved of the weight of its bomb load, the airplane responded more readily to its controls. He kept the nose down and headed desperately for the cloud bank, but it was still 2000 feet below him as the Ju88 came in again. More pieces of wing disappeared as the cannon shells punched holes through the wood.
“To hear you two young fellows talk you’d think the Germans had no fighter planes.”
“They don’t as far as we’re concerned, Dad. We’re too high for them.”
“Well, I didn’t say this in front of your mother, Alan, but mark my words, your Jerry is a damn good engineer and if he wants to get up to you, one of these nights he’ll do it.”
“Drink up, Dad, we’ve two more days of leave yet.”
“And change the subject, I know. Your job’s too hush-hush to talk to your father about.”
“Peter, Peter, jump! She’s coming to pieces.” Peter didn’t move. That last attack must have done it. Please God, don’t let that Junkers come round again!
In the Junkers the fuel warning lights were on. He’d had his forty-five minutes’ fun and now the nitrous oxide was used. He turned away from the Mosquito. It was done for, he could see that. He wondered if Luftwaffe High Command would let him claim it; they were so keen to keep the Ha-ha secret.
Alan Hill held the stick with one hand and shook Peter frantically with the other. There was no sign of life. He grabbed at the flying helmet and turned the head to look into his friend’s glassy eyes. As he shook him the oxygen mask fell aside and he had difficulty in refixing it. Peter’s face was covered with fresh blood.
Down where the bomber stream was flying it was cold—colder than the coldest of domestic freezers—but up here it was much colder. Sixty degrees below zero and the air was rarefied and its pressure fatally low for a human lung. Alan undid his safety belt and Peter’s too before he put the stick over. When the Mosquito was upside down he fell out of his seat. He tried to pull his observer with him but Peter’s leg was caught under the bent instrument panel. He tugged at Peter’s arm but that too became bloody even as he watched.
Alan took one last gulp of oxygen and then, holding his breath, he let himself fall. He dropped a long, long way before pulling the rip cord but even so he had slight frostbite and lost the joint of an index finger that stuck to the metal handle. Perfectly, the canopy bloomed above him. He landed in a plowed field two miles from the Dutch border. His only other injury was a bad cut on his right hand that must have happened during the first attack. He realized then that the blood on Peter’s face and arm was
from this cut. He asked himself if he could have saved Peter’s life. Alan was interned together with other bomber crews and was thus not interrogated in the way he would have been had they guessed him to be an Oboe pilot. He spent the rest of the war in a prison camp and died aged forty-nine in a motorcar accident in Liverpool, and yet there was not a day when he did not ask himself that same question.
A layer of cold air lay closed upon the great district of the Ruhr, untroubled by any wind. This cold still air trapped smoke from the furnaces and factories and held it like a gray woolen blanket. Water droplets had built up against this layer and formed a roof as dense and flat and smooth as a sheet of gray aspic: what today we call smog. One target indicator jettisoned by the Oboe Mosquito went into this layer near the Rhine at Duisburg. The second went into the Rhine. One and half minutes and nine miles later the second two landed on the southeast edge of Altgarten.
Detonated by barometric pressure at 1,000 feet, each marker bomb spewed benzol, rubber and phosphorus for a hundred yards in all directions, so that there were two pools of red-colored fire easily seen by the bomber stream four miles above the earth. It was Altgarten’s fate to be on the track of the bombers as they flew from the coast toward Krefeld. Had the bombers passed a few more miles to one side or the other then the stream might not have seen the burning T.I.’s waiting to be bombed. It was an extra misfortune for the town that the markers dropped on its far side, for the creepback would start to bring the bombing right across the town toward the approaching stream. Each crew would bomb as early as they could do so without shame. Then they would turn away before the concentration of guns and searchlights that guarded the Ruhr on Altgarten’s far side. Perhaps some of the more experienced crews would not have been deceived by the markers into bombing the little town, except that to the H2S radar the acres of green houses that were Altgarten’s special pride appeared on the green radar screen like enormous factories.
The first Finder circled twice before putting flares down to the southeast of the markers, trying to get a visual confirmation. Then a Supporter—on his first trip—put a string of high explosives between the flares and the red T.I.s and a second Supporter did the same. The last of these bombs hit the Venlo road and set fire to a gas main.
Tommy Carter in Joe for King the Second was a Backer Up. He arrived five minutes early and put his four green markers onto the reds. One thousand feet above Altgarten sixty pyrotechnic candles were ejected from each marker. Each was suspended under a tiny parachute. Falling in close proximity and according to wind and weight they assumed the shape of a bunch of fiery grapes, or, if bottom-heavy, a Christmas tree.
Within ten minutes dozens of Supporters and Finders had dumped their flares and H.E. upon Altgarten and inevitably the release points were creeping back northwest across the town.
Meanwhile, at zero plus three minutes, an Oboe Mosquito arrived exactly on time over Krefeld and marked the real target with four perfectly placed reds. They burned unseen by the bombing force. By now attention had been centered upon Altgarten and the plan had begun to go terribly wrong.
AN HOUR TO
SAN
FRANCISCO
FROM THE HIGH
AND THE MIGHTY
BY ERNEST K. GANN
Ernest Gann is widely regarded as the dean of aviation writers. Some folks just say he was the best that ever did it, period, and let it go at that. He was a rarity, a professional aviator who turned out to be a great writer.
Gann learned to fly in the barnstorming era and went to work for American Airlines flying DC-2s. During World War II he flew all over the world for the military airlift command. After the war he left American and flew the Hawaii–California route for a steamship company that created a short-lived subsidiary airline. This experience was the basis for The High and the Mighty, a 1953 out-of-the-ballpark home run that catapulted Gann into the top echelon of popular novelists.
The book is the story of one flight, from Honolulu to San Francisco, set just after World War II. When an engine throws a prop in mid-ocean and twists partially off its mount, it becomes doubtful if the piston-engined airliner can reach land. The lives of the twenty people aboard come to a crisis together.
In this era of Boeing-747s hopping oceans filled with hundreds of people, a lumbering four-engine prop-job will strike some readers as quaint. Still, it was a perfect vehicle for Gann’s story: it was small enough that Gann could introduce to you all the passengers and all the crew; and it flew at a speed that allowed the story to ripen naturally, allowing the suspense to grow until it shrieked.
Gann’s strength as a writer was his ability to get the technical and emotional aspects of flight absolutely perfect. He puts you in the pilot’s seat and takes you flying, gives you the emotions and sensations of flight without ever leaving the comfort and safety of your armchair. Before Gann, the actual mechanical manipulations required to fly the airplane were considered trivial details that would slow the pace of the story, if the writer even knew them. Usually he didn’t. Gann was the first to use the mechanics of flying as integral parts of the story, devices to give the reader the feel of flying, the actual sensation of being there. Many writers have tried to emulate him; no one has ever written flying better.
The High and the Mighty was made into a movie starring Robert Stack as Sullivan and John Wayne as the gray eagle, Dan Roman. We’ll join them now as Flight 420 nears the coast of California. Dawn is still hours away. As usual, the Golden Gate is shrouded in fog and cloud; huge swells roil the cold Pacific. The three remaining engines of Flight 420 are devouring the last drops of gasoline as Sullivan and Dan Roman nurse the dying plane toward San Francisco airport, and safety.
In the cockpit of the Coast Guard B-17, Lieutenant Mowbray kept the lights turned up brightly because there was nothing to see, anyway. The rain had ceased very suddenly, but it would certainly come on again and the heavy overcast still obliterated everything outside the windows.
It was now certain that Lieutenant Mowbray would be forced to rely entirely on mechanical contrivances to complete his interception of Four-two-zero. While his own ship transmitted the letters M and O in alternate groups so that Sullivan could maintain a series of bearings, Mowbray switched on a high-frequency homing adapter and for a time isolated himself from all other signals. He could not hear Hobie Wheeler’s voice when he transmitted at three-minute intervals; Keim could repeat anything important Hobie might have to say. Instead Mowbray heard only a steady hum in his earphones when the nose of his ship was pointed directly at Four-two-zero. If he veered off the tight course to the left he heard the letter D transmitted, and if he went off to the right the letter U was repeated. Thus he flew a nearly exact course toward Four-two-zero, feeling his way as a blind man might touch the walls of a narrow corridor.
The radarman first-class, just behind Mowbray, was already intent on his screen. It was empty.
“Radar? Anything yet?”
“No target, sir.”
“Roger.”
They flew on in silence for several minutes. It became more difficult for Mowbray to straddle the narrowing flight path. He called to Ensign Pump.
“Navigator? How’s our position relative to interception?”
“Right on. I just got a loran fix. We should be right with them if their navigator was anywhere near right.”
“Radar?”
“No target yet, sir.”
“Navigator? You’re sure?”
“Positive.” A few minutes passed. They twisted in their seats—waiting.
“Radar?”
“No target.”
“Dammit . . . somebody’s wrong!”
Keim leaned across to Lieutenant Mowbray. He was all business now and his eyes were worried.
“Four-two-zero says their needle is fluctuating rapidly.”
“What’s their altitude?”
“Still twenty-five hundred.”
“Radar?”
“No target, sir.”
“T
here’s got to be. We’re right on top of him.”
“The screen is blank, sir.”
“Keim. Ask Four-two-zero to transmit at thirty-second intervals. We can easily miss this guy.”
“Roger.”
Keim spoke into his microphone and the minutes passed. They were invaluable minutes, for if they failed to ascertain Four-two-zero’s exact position in time to turn with them, the two ships would sweep past each other bound in opposite directions, and their combined speed would separate them a considerable distance in a very few minutes. To turn then, and attempt to overtake them, would add immeasurably to the difficulties of interception.
“Radar?”
“No target.”
“I think that navigator was a lot farther west than he thought he was. We’re seven minutes overdue.”
“Radar?”
“No target.” To rest his straining eyes the radarman looked down at his bare arm. He was fond of looking at his arm for it was muscular and well molded. Two years before he had submitted to a tattooing—the only one he would tolerate on such a fine arm. It was, he thought, a unique design—a curvaceous blonde wearing pink diapers. Below the blonde was the name “Booboo.”
“Radar?”
His attention returned quickly to the screen.
“Roger, Skipper! Target! Strong blip four degrees left. Eight miles! Looks like he’s about five hundred feet below us!”
A slow smile crept across Lieutenant Mowbray’s lean face.
“Sparks! Get on the horn! Advise Sea Frontier . . . interception Four-two-zero completed at fifty-six!”
The B-17 banked through the murk, and soon the two ships flew as partners within a half-mile of each other—invisible yet together.
On Glorious Wings Page 26
