The Danger of Life

by Ken Lussey

  ‘I need to get back to the office at some point, though I suspect they will be able to survive without me. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Our discussion about the Spitfire and Hurricane led me to wonder whether you would like to fly in a twin-engined aircraft that I think is better than either of them, or any other single-engined fighter on either side.’

  Group Captain More laughed again. ‘I suppose I should have seen this coming. Eric here is a huge enthusiast for the Mosquito. I have to admit I like my aeroplanes to have a little more substance to them, and a little more room in them, but I can’t deny that the de Havilland Mosquito is an outstanding aircraft.’

  Bob grinned. ‘I’d love to.’ He’d only ever glimpsed the Mosquito at a distance on the ground and thought it one of the most beautiful aeroplanes he’d ever seen. He’d have mortgaged his parent’s substantial house for the chance to fly in one, but it seemed that no-one was asking him to.

  It had stopped raining as Bob looked out of the squadron’s office window towards the aircraft he was due to fly in. Gill had driven him around the north side of the airfield to an area that was contained in the angle of the two main runways. Several Mosquitoes and Spitfires were visible, apparently placed at random. He knew that in reality this was a carefully planned pattern of parking intended to minimise the impact of any sudden attack by a German aircraft coming in from the sea.

  Gill came into the office, which occupied part of a wooden hut. ‘I’m told that the weather’s clearing from the west. We’ll head that way to give you a chance to see the view from high altitude and appreciate the performance. Sorry about the fleecy boots and overalls.’ He gestured at the clothing Bob had pulled on. ‘They’re hardly elegant. We tend to get togged up to look like the Michelin man when we fly. It can get very cold at altitude, even with the cockpit heater on full blast.’

  ‘Is the aircraft the Polish sergeant was trying to get into last night out there now?’ asked Bob.

  ‘No, it was towed off to the squadron hangar for repair. The RAF policeman only put one hole in it, in the access hatch, so it should be easy enough to fix. Anyway, are you ready?’

  ‘Yes, I took a comfort break before I put these on.’

  ‘Just as well, it’s not great to get caught short in a Mosquito.’

  The two men made their way out of the hut and over to an aircraft parked fifty yards away, on a square concrete area protected by blast walls. ‘I’ll do the external pre-flight checks while you get aboard, Bob,’ said Gill. Bob paused briefly to look at the aircraft. The beauty of the Mosquito that he had admired from afar was even more striking when he was this close to one. This example was painted an overall mid blue colour and looked extremely purposeful, as if it were as keen as he was to leave the ground behind.

  Bob followed the instructions of an airman and clambered awkwardly up a short ladder into a hatch on the underside of the aircraft. With his Mae West life-preserver and a parachute harness on over his thick overalls there was very little room to manoeuvre. Once inside the aircraft he was directed by the same airman, who now had his head and shoulders inside the bottom of the cockpit, to strap himself into the right of two seats, positioned a few inches further back than the left one.

  While he waited for Gill, Bob looked around the inside of the cockpit. He’d flown a number of different aircraft and was very used to those with Merlin engines, though not as a pair. He put himself in the position of Sergeant Winograd and wondered if he’d have been able to work out without instruction how to start and take off in a Mosquito. Having decided the chances of missing some vital stage in the process were simply too high, he reminded himself that Sergeant Winograd had also been trying to access the aircraft in the dead of night and would have been concerned to use his torch as little as possible for fear of discovery.

  Gill’s arrival proved that the cockpit was even snugger than Bob had imagined. With Gill in the pilot’s seat and Bob in the navigator’s, the two men were pressed against one another, the front of Bob’s left shoulder making contact with the rear of Gill’s right shoulder. ‘Cosy, isn’t it?’ said Bob, over the intercom fitted in the leather helmet he had donned.

  ‘It’s certainly not a fat man’s aeroplane, and that’s all the more obvious because of the cold weather gear we have to wear for the altitude.’

  The airman had closed the access hatch in the floor of the aircraft. Bob looked around again. ‘Given the struggle I had getting into the aircraft, I now understand why you were at such pains to talk me through the procedure for getting out in a hurry.’

  ‘Do you remember it all?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘So long as you don’t forget to attach your parachute pack to your harness you’ll not go far wrong. As I said, if you get stuck in the hatch, it’s up to me as the pilot to help with a good push of my foot. You can rest assured it will be a very good push!’

  ‘A couple more things you really need to know before we set off,’ said Gill. ‘If we crash-land, then there’s an escape hatch in the roof of the cockpit, which can be opened by these levers here. And while it’s not such an issue for the navigator, if you find yourself in the pilot’s seat of one of these and you crash-land, then remember to pull your feet right back on impact.’

  ‘Because of the lack of strength of the lower fuselage?’

  ‘No, because your feet are otherwise directly in line with the arc of the propellers. Experience has shown that when the propellers strike the ground there’s a reasonable chance of them disintegrating and blades coming through the side walls of the cockpit at speed. There have already been cases of serious injury caused in accidents the crews should have been able to walk away from.’

  ‘Thinking about last night’s shooting,’ said Bob, ‘would one man on his own be able to start a Mosquito without outside assistance?’

  ‘In theory, yes. Some models of the Mosquito need an external power source, but we are self-contained. Though you’d need to know a lot about the aircraft to be able to start it up in the dark and then taxi and take off without taxi or runway lights, which I believe were switched off at the time.’

  Bob looked around again. ‘Maybe he was hoping to hide in the aircraft until first light this morning, though that would have been getting on for 7.30 a.m.’

  ‘That seems high risk. The place would have been coming to life by then.’

  ‘You are probably right. Let’s see what my team turns up.’

  As they were talking, Bob had been watching Gill going through his pre-flight checks.

  ‘Right, we’re ready to start.’ Gill took a last look outside to ensure none of the ground crew were standing near the propellers before starting up the engines, one after the other. The pilot waved to indicate to the men outside that the wheel chocks should be removed, and Bob watched as the aircraft eased forward, gathering speed as it taxied away from the parking area.

  ‘I’ll talk you through the process in more detail on the way back, Bob, but for the moment it’s simply worth you knowing that once you’ve taken off and got the wheels up, half the battle’s won. Sensitive throttle management is essential to avoid swinging to the left as the power builds up. The key point to bear in mind is that the aircraft will become airborne at not much more than 100 knots, but the minimum safe speed for single engine flight is over 180 knots, even when you’ve raised the undercarriage and flaps. There’s always an uncomfortable few moments after you lift off as you wait for the speed to build up.’

  ‘What happens if there’s an engine failure during that time?’

  ‘You crash, it’s as simple as that. If you’ve got any sense you fly straight ahead and aim for the flattest piece of ground you can see. Trying to turn will just mean you crash more badly. It’s not helped by the fact that the undercarriage takes 25 seconds to retract and only then will she really begin to accelerate. And if one engine did fail, the hydraulic pressure would
be lower, and the undercarriage would take twice as long to come up.’

  ‘Thanks, Eric, that makes me feel even better,’ said Bob with a laugh.

  Gill lined the Mosquito up at the end of the runway and Bob felt himself holding his breath. He was always happier when flying as pilot and was a poor passenger in an aircraft. And the knowledge that the failure of either of the two Rolls-Royce Merlin engines when they were working hardest just after takeoff would have such serious consequences certainly focussed his mind.

  He needn’t have worried and they were soon flying into the base of the cloud over Guardbridge, to the west of Leuchars.

  ‘We’re going for a maximum rate climb, Bob,’ said Gill. ‘I want to give you a feel for the high altitude performance. Make sure your oxygen is switched on, will you? It will be essential for this flight. The regulator’s on your side, near the entry through to the nose section.’

  ‘We talked over lunch about the unarmed Spitfires. How do you feel about flying unarmed Mosquitoes over enemy territory?’ asked Bob.

  ‘Oddly enough, I have no problem with the idea. For me the Mosquito simply feels right for the job. It’s also a relatively safe way to fight the war. It’s early days yet because the aircraft’s not been flying in this role for much more than a year, but I’ve seen some figures that suggested our losses haven’t been much more than one aircraft for every 500 hours of operational flying.’

  ‘That is pretty exceptional,’ said Bob. ‘I’d hate to think what the comparable figures were for the Croydon-based Hurricane squadrons in September and October 1940.’

  ‘I doubt if it was a tenth as good as that,’ said Gill, ‘or perhaps even worse.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Bob as they broke through the top of the thick layer of cloud over Fife and into sunshine under blue skies. ‘That’s a sight that never fails to thrill me.’

  ‘We’re only at 12,000ft, not even nearly there yet. The aircraft ceiling’s well over 30,000ft, and we often use everything we have. We’ll go up to something like that, then descend. I had in mind a quick turn-around at the naval air station at Machrihanish near Campbeltown on the Kintyre peninsula, and then thought you might like to fly her back to Leuchars. How does that sound?’

  It sounded great to Bob. He spent part of the outward flight transfixed by views that seemed to take in a large part of western Scotland and, later, through the haze, Northern Ireland.

  At Machrihanish, Gill taxied the Mosquito around the quieter southern side of the airfield. ‘Right, Bob, this is where we get really cosy, though it can be done. I’d prefer to avoid stopping the engines, which I’d need to do if one of us got out of the aircraft to allow us to change seats. So, what I want to do is squeeze in front of you and get myself down into the nose compartment. You can then move across into this seat, and I will climb back up into the navigator’s seat.’

  The process was made more awkward by the thick clothing they wore, but the two men were able to change seats.

  ‘Right,’ said Gill, ‘let’s taxi round to the eastern end again, and get clearance for takeoff.’

  Bob did so, finding the view forward was even better from the pilot’s seat than it had been from the adjacent navigator’s seat. At Gill’s instruction, he moved out onto the runway and lined up along the centre line.

  ‘As I said earlier, this is the tricky part, Bob. Well, this and the landing. Can you remove your left outer glove while we take off? The throttles need a really gentle touch and I don’t want your glove deadening the feel. I talked earlier about the problem of the gap between takeoff speed and safe minimum single engine speed, and all you need to remember about that is to clean up the aircraft as quickly as possible once you are certain we are airborne. The flap control is here, in the centre of the console, with the “F” on it. Next to it is the undercarriage control. Are you ready?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bob, keen not to spend too long sitting on the end of the runway.

  ‘Right, grip both throttles in your left hand and twist your wrist a little so the left throttle advances ahead of the right throttle. Ever so gently, now. There’s not much movement between idle and full throttle. And watch out for the pull to the left. That’s the tail up, and we’re airborne. Wait long enough to make sure we’re not going to sink back down onto the runway, then raise the flaps and the undercarriage. That’s it. Well done.’

  Bob found he was sweating. ‘Will you navigate, Eric?’

  They kept low and fast on the flight back, dipping back beneath the tail of the cloud as they crossed East Lothian. They remained under it as they turned north towards Fife and landed at Leuchars.

  ‘Hello,’ said Gill, ‘it looks like we’ve got a welcoming committee.’

  As the propellers came to a halt and relative silence replaced the roar of two Merlin engines, Bob looked over to where Gill had indicated, to see Flight Lieutenant Buchan and Sergeant Bennett standing beside a RAF staff car. ‘It does look like that’s for me,’ he said. ‘Thanks, Eric, that’s been a real revelation. I’m very grateful.’

  ‘Not at all, Bob. Group Captain More has suggested more than once that I’m on a mission to sell the Mosquito to anyone who’ll listen to me, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to add another convert to my list.’

  ‘It’s an impressive aircraft, I have to admit. For the first time I can understand why there are so many enthusiasts for the Mosquito as a weapon of war.’

  ‘That’s all I can ask for. Remember that in the fighter versions you get four cannons in the front of the belly and four machine guns in the nose as well. They really do pack a punch. Anyway, that’s the end of the sales pitch. Have a good trip back to Turnhouse.’

  An airman had brought over Bob’s service shoes, raincoat and peaked cap and he stripped off his overalls and boots on the tarmac before walking over to the car.

  ‘Hello sir,’ said Flight Lieutenant Buchan. ‘Sorry to be dogging your heels, but Major Miller has been trying to reach you. I understand that the Security Service have some sort of emergency on, and insist they talk to you personally. There’s a secure phone you can use back at station headquarters.’

  Chapter Three

  Bob had only met his second in command, Major Miller, briefly at the beginning of the week and knew he was going to have to work hard to overcome an instinctive dislike of the man. There was something about him that Bob simply didn’t trust. It may have been the sense that he had been quite close to Bob’s predecessor, who had been sidelined as part of a far-reaching shake up of Britain’s intelligence agencies that had, in part at least, been Bob’s doing.

  Mostly, though, it was simply the sense that Major Miller gave of wanting everything to be done in the way it had always been done. Bob knew he was going to have to make changes to his northern outpost of MI11 and felt that Miller was going to be one of the problems he needed to tackle, rather than an ally. It didn’t help that Bob had walked into an office at Craigiehall on Monday just as Petty Officer Andrew MacDonald, the junior member of his Royal Navy team, stopped himself in the middle of a sentence whose final spoken words were ‘Major Mother Hen’. Bob had pretended not to hear but wondered whether MacDonald’s lack of regard for the major was widely shared.

  Bob used the phone in Flight Lieutenant Rutherford’s office. Bob’s secretary, Joyce Stuart, put him through to Miller. ‘Hello sir,’ said the major. ‘I’m glad I’ve been able to reach you. Flight Lieutenant Buchan told me you were testing out a theory about what the intruder was trying to do with the aircraft, and that meant actually flying one.’

  Bob made a mental note that if it came to picking sides, then Flight Lieutenant Buchan seemed to be on the side of the angels. Bob was Miller’s boss and had been given free rein to run the place pretty much as he saw fit. But if the two of them were going to have a parting of the ways, he needed to avoid giving the major more ammunition than was strictly necessary. And something that could be
presented as a joyride in a Mosquito with an old chum could clearly be used as ammunition. Anyway, that was for the future. Right now, he needed to know what was going on. ‘Hello, Walter. I’m told that something’s come up to do with the Security Service?’

  ‘Yes sir, there’s a lady there who seems desperate to talk to you. I’ve confirmed she is who she says she is, but she won’t tell me what the problem is. Could you telephone her?’

  ‘Of course, Walter. Can you give me her name and telephone number?’ Bob wrote down the Whitehall number. ‘And the name?’

  ‘She said you would know her as Madame Dubois.’ Bob was glad there was no-one else in the room to see what must have been a look of complete surprise on his face. ‘Are you still there, sir?’

  ‘Yes, no problem, Walter. Thank you. I’ll telephone her.’

  ‘Hello Monique, it’s Bob. How are you?’

  ‘Hello Bob. I’m well. I hear congratulations are in order on the promotion and the new job.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It seems you have decided to come over to my world, dealing with unpleasant and dangerous people. I did tell you that teaching young men to fly was a more worthy and worthwhile calling.’

  ‘Yes, you did, but other people thought differently, and after a while I came around to their way of thinking. But I’m sure that’s not why you’ve been trying to get hold of me.’

  ‘No, that’s true. You can’t imagine how much I’d like to avoid doing this, Bob, but I need to ask you a very large favour.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Is this a secure line?’

  ‘Well there’s no public switchboard involved at this end, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Fair enough. We’ve got a critically important operation that is in grave danger of collapse, with consequences that could be very far-reaching. I need your help in stopping the damage getting any worse. It means asking you to go over to Glasgow immediately, Bob, to sort out a mess that some of my people have got themselves into.’