The Perils and the Prize

by Jim Crossley

  “Excuse me,” began Hans. “Would you two be from Newhearts?”

  “Yes, sir, we just come from Bawdsey.”

  “Ah, I wanted to catch you, you see I am thinking of building a small observation tower in my woodlands near Thetford and I was hoping to talk to someone who had worked in that sort of thing. I was told you were the experts.”

  “Don’t know about experts, sir, but we got this job in Bawdsey and seems they wants a few more of these towers, some down London way. All we does is we digs the foundations and delivers the steelwork; they does all the rest themselves. But we could build one for you shouldn’t wonder.”

  “It sounds as if you would be too busy to bother about my little job, but tell me, how high are these towers going to be? Another beer?”

  “Don’t mind if we do, sir, but I can’t help you about the towers, all hush hush, sir, and we don’t know anyway but judging by the foundations could be two hundred feet or more.”

  “Good lord, two hundred feet, and what are they for?”

  “They says it’s something to do with rays or something like that, but they don’t tell us nothing see.”

  “Ah well, I have your address and phone number. Have a good run back to Lowestoft, I’ll call you in a few months if my scheme goes ahead. Good evening to you.”

  Hans had all the information he needed.

  The final evening at the cottage was planned as a celebration. A special meal was promised by Mrs Smithers, Rory borrowed a gramophone and some records and Hans was at great trouble to procure an excellent claret. Somehow, however, the festive spirit was lacking. The problem started when Angela got into a worry about her thesis. It was almost finished but she had just read it over and concluded that it was shallow, unconvincing and lacking in originality. “This is two years’ work,” she said plaintively, “and it’s a complete farce. Oh, what a waste, what a terrible, terrible waste of time!” The boys could do nothing to comfort her. Then she buried herself in a newspaper. This was worse still.

  “Just look what your Hitler is doing in Czechoslovakia!” she cried. “It can’t go on, there has to be a war coming and, oh, Hans, you are in the air force; it will be your job to come over and bomb us! Oh, I feel so useless! The world is falling to pieces and all I can do is write this stupid rubbish. I can’t bear it! I should never have met you; it was bound to end in tears.” With this she flung herself on him, sobbing. Hans tried to be rational. He explained that the Fuhrer had no quarrel with England. He had assured his officers of this, all he wanted to do was to win back for the German people the lands and peoples that had been so unjustly taken away in 1919. Most sensible people sympathised with this. He loved her and nothing could change that. The quarrel went on and on, Angela getting more desperate and emotional by the minute. Rory tried to divert her with her favourite record, and Hans tried to get her to dance, but she was furious now and stormed off to her room. Hans had never seen her like this. He went miserably to bed, hoping the morning would bring on a better mood.

  It didn’t. Angela was calm now, subdued almost, but couldn’t even smile at Hans. It would be better, she said, if they did not see each other for a time, at least until the news was a bit better. She could not deny that she loved him but circumstances made their relationship impossible. Rory had a few brief words of comfort.

  “She gets like this sometimes, old boy. She’ll calm down after a bit then we’ll see.”

  Back at the embassy, the crestfallen Hans had a long conference with Stokenbach and with the other military attachés. He had to go over his findings again and again, trying to remember every word said and every detail. What were these towers for? Perhaps it was an audio-location system, but that did not correspond with the conversation Hans had heard in the Pickerel. Perhaps it was some new sort of ray? No, that was scientific nonsense. Perhaps it was a chain of direction-finding radio beacons, but surely those existed already, and there would be no need for so many of them so close together. It must be radio location, and this must be reported immediately to Berlin; meanwhile, all intelligence sources available must try to find out more.

  Hans himself and Stokenbach were summoned to Berlin as soon as their report reached the Luftwaffe headquarters. By that time they had developed some firm conclusions between themselves. The meeting was to be with two generals in the air defence section, but it so happened that Goering himself and Milch, the technical chief of the Luftwaffe, were in the building and chose to sit in and listen. First Hans talked through his evidence then Stokenbach presented his conclusions.

  “I believe,” he concluded, “that the British have made great progress with this technology in recent years. The towers are being built to act as antennae for a network of radars which will cover the whole of south eastern England. Using signals from them, they will be able to identify a threatened attack well before the aircraft cross the Channel or the North Sea. They will then deploy their defensive fighters to meet the threat.”

  Fat, jovial and confident as ever, Goering laughed at the conclusion.

  “Well done, Stokenbach,” he chuckled. “You’ve only confirmed what we already know. The British are trying to keep pace with certain Luftwaffe developments, but don’t worry, we are well ahead. Our radars will detect any aircraft which ever approaches our airspace and it will immediately be destroyed. As I have already said publically no enemy aircraft will ever intrude into the airspace of the Reich. We have nothing to fear from British radar. But well done, both of you. You confirm our beliefs.”

  Stokenbach was not satisfied. Goering obviously hadn’t comprehended the whole scope of Chain Home, as the British system was called. He tried to argue, but Goering waved him away. He focused instead on Hans.

  “Have we not met before, Von Pilsen?” Hans assented. “And I remember you were training as a Stuka pilot. Why are you not in a front-line unit today?”

  Hans pretended not to know.

  “Well, you have done a good job as a diplomat, now by my orders you are to return to your unit. We are going to need young men like you soon, especially in the Stuka squadrons. I will see that you are promoted to Oberleutnant immediately. Leave diplomacy to old soldiers like Stokenbach here. Dismiss.”

  Hans was not sorry to leave the embassy. Now that Angela was out of reach, at least for the time being, he relished the thought of joining his comrades again and doing some serious flying. If Goering was so blasé about his intelligence gathering, it was doubtless because he knew a lot more about the situation than Stokenbach. Forget all that and back to the squadron.

  Goering had certainly been right about the Stuka squadrons. He was welcomed back to the Immelmann Groupe heartily. To his annoyance, they all had tales to tell about their exploits in Spain, and he was the only pilot who did not have operational experience. He had only stories of diplomatic parties and mixing with the English aristocracy. However, his flying skills were not as rusty as he had feared and he was soon established as leader of a schwarm of four aircraft. Most importantly, he had selected an excellent crewman Feldwebel Stokmann, a tough, reliable and unflappable colleague. The Gruppe had been issued with new aircraft since its return from Spain, the JU 87B-1 with twice the power and much better air-to-air armament than the original aircraft. With this mount they felt they could cope with any opposition.

  And so it proved in Poland. When the war broke out in September 1939, the Polish air force was equipped with P11c fighters, obsolescent high-wing fixed undercarriage machines, which were no match for the Luftwaffe. They were soon shot out of the sky or destroyed on the ground. The Polish army put up a stout resistance, but whenever the Poles concentrated to repel an advance or to counter attack, in would scream the Stukas, smashing down with their bombs and their guns, destroying transport, disabling artillery and hurling tanks into the ditch. This was a concept evolved uniquely in Germany. They used aircraft as long-range artillery clearing the way for the blitzkrieg. It was horrifyingly effective. Hans’ schwarm was especially busy, flying four or fi
ve missions every day, inflicting devastating blows on Polish armour and communications. This was far more like proper combat than the largely unopposed action which the Gruppe had known in Spain, where it had mostly been bombing infantry trenches or built-up areas. Here you could see great masses of enemy material disabled with each attack. Hans felt a savage elation after each successful sortie; this was what he had trained for and he knew he was good at it. He revelled in the comradeship of his schwarm and never failed to encourage and share his successes with the ground crews, who were working frantically all hours to keep the aircraft in the air. As for Angela, he tried not to think too much about her. He had been wrong about the possibility of war between Britain and Germany, but even so it seemed likely that the Fuhrer would find a way of making peace with Britain as soon as his objectives in Poland had been achieved. Soon relations would be restored and he could see her again. Thank God he had not had to bomb England, and there didn’t seem to be much chance of his having to do so. Soon enough he would be able to see her again, and all her worries would be over. Letter writing was of course impossible while the war was on, but he was confident that she would be waiting for him.

  Luftwaffe casualties in Poland were few and all objectives were achieved more rapidly than anyone had dared to hope. As Germany closed its jaws on western Poland, the Soviet Union, by arrangement with the Nazis, helped itself to the eastern provinces of that unhappy country. France and Britain took almost no part in the fighting.

  The collapse of Poland in September gave Hans’ Gruppe a chance to relax and take some winter leave at home. He found his parents rejoicing in the brilliant successes achieved by the Reich and in the wisdom and foresight of Hitler. As a front line pilot he found it rather pathetic to see his parents so uncritically devoted to the Fuhrer. Did they not remember that he had predicted no war with Britain? Why was any rational discussion with them now impossible? They were, of course, delighted to show their son off whenever possible, and constantly forced him to recite over and over again his account of his experiences at the front. He felt rather like a prize bull at a show, and soon became tired of playing the German hero. He was quite glad when it was time to return to his duties.

  There was plenty to do. After his success in Poland, Hitler sought to secure his supplies of iron ore from northern Scandinavia. This precious war material travelled by ship through the Baltic during the summer months, and here it was reasonably safe, but in winter, when the Baltic was frozen over, it had to be taken by rail to terminals in Norway and then shipped down through the chain of islands known as the Norwegian Leads, to a port in Germany or in occupied Poland. There were signs that Britain and France were going to attempt to close this route and starve Germany of vital raw material. In a lightning stroke German forces occupied Denmark and then moved relentlessly on to occupy the whole of Norway, throwing aside the feeble resistance of the surprised Norwegian armed forces and hurling an ill-prepared Allied intervention force back whence it came. This bold move was accomplished with very little fighting, but the Stukas were on hand to harry enemy shipping and to soften up any military concentration which seemed likely to offer resistance. It was a brilliant campaign, skilfully executed. No sooner had it been successfully concluded than the might of the Luftwaffe was redeployed and ordered to ready itself for some serious fighting – the assault on France was about to begin.

  Chapter 7

  William simply had to see Jacky. He had some time to wait before his appointment at the Ministry and he spent it in a call box, trying to run his old pal to earth. He tried all the main hotels without success then remembered that the Garrick Club had always been something of a mecca for most of the young RADA folk. He got through and, after some annoying obstruction, he was put through to the star himself. A meeting was arranged for that evening in their old haunt, The Royal Dragoon. “Listen,” Jacky had said. “There is this awful bore of fans all over the place. I’ll have to come in a big hat with my face covered up somehow or we’ll get no peace. I’m so glad you rang, I’ve so much to ask you.”

  At the Ministry William found himself shunted into a little meeting room which seemed to have been chosen for its airlessness and obscurity. It occurred to him that this might have something to do with another secret project. He sat there gloomily anticipating a long stint of boring test flights when Hugh Wesley, closely followed by Kilowatt, came bursting into the room. It was amusing to see that Hugh was now decked out in an RAF uniform – he was a Squadron Leader, no less – but he looked just as awkward and untidy in uniform as he had in civilian clothes. “They made me join up,” he explained. “I think it was because they wanted to start ordering me about, and they knew I’d do my own thing in my own way if I was still a civilian.” The three chatted about nothing much until they were joined by two senior officers, an Air Commodore and Group Captain. The Group Captain called the meeting to order.

  “Mr Keystone-Watts,” he said. “Will you please tell the meeting about your night vision project?”

  “Ah,” began Kilowatt. “In the early days of the radar development project we once tried fitting a radar into a Heyford bomber. You’ll remember that, William? Good, well, we got it to work after a fashion, then shelved the project. Now, however, Fighter Command is convinced that Jerry is going to have a go at night bombing our cities. Perhaps not for a month or two, we expect it to start when the nights get longer – perhaps in October or November. We are afraid they will be able to do it quite accurately because we think that they have been developing a system which enables their bombers to fly along radio beams which tell them where they are and when to drop their loads. Now, it’s almost impossible to intercept bombers at night using the Chain Home radar system. We’ve been trying for some time but so far only one has been shot down in this way. You see, Chain Home can only guide the fighter to a spot a few miles from the intruder, and he’ll hardly ever see it in the dark. What we can now do is to use ground radars to feed information into a system we call a Plan Position Indicator which will get the fighter within three or four miles of the intruder. The difficult bit is the final stage of the interception. What we have been trying to do for this is to fit a radar set in the nose of a fighter so he can sniff out the enemy from a few miles away, get within range and destroy him. Of course, the radar has to be relatively low-powered so its range will be only five miles at best, and, as you will know, radar has a minimum range too, because the echo signal begins to get confused with the pulsed transmission if it’s too close, so the last few seconds of the attack will require visual contact. Airborne intercept, as we call it, is not perfect, but it’s the best chance we have of developing a useful night fighter. If we can’t use fighters at night, there’s really no other effective way of protecting our cities. Just think of the horror that would bring.”

  The Air Commodore broke in:

  “We have given some thought to the aircraft we can use for radar-assisted night fighting. There are several new types under development, but for now there is only one machine readily available for use – the Blenheim. I know it’s no faster than the German bombers and that’s going to make interception difficult but it’s Hobson’s choice I’m afraid. I believe that you, Portman, have been trained on the Blenheim? Good, well, the fighter version is much the same as the bomber, but it has a four-gun pack under the nose, and of course the bits and pieces of radar gear. The reason why you are here, Portman,” he went on, “is that you have experience in test flying, and I believe you understand radar, at least in outline. When Squadron Leader Wesley here suggested you to run some operational tests on the night fighter, and I saw that you were training on Blenheims, I had to agree with him. You will be based at Tangmere and will carry out trials of the new interception system. If it works, a new dedicated night fighter squadron will be formed, and I should imagine that you will be part of it. There is already a small night fighter development team operating there so you will be joining the team. Any questions?”

  “Yes, sir, can I kee
p my existing crew? We’ve been together for six months now and trained together on the Blenheim.”

  There seemed to be some doubt about this. Radar-guided attacks would require an observer who understood the system and was intelligent enough to make use of it. Also the gunner, Hopson, would need to train as a dedicated radar operator. William sang Willis’s praises as a navigator and explained how quick he had been to get to grips with the sextant and celestial navigation. As for Hopson, he was bright enough, but a radar operator? Well, at least no one else had much experience in the role, he might make a success of it. In the end William got his way. When the meeting broke up he was able to grab a quick lunch with Hugh and Kilowatt, although they both claimed that they were rushed off their feet by the demands of the war. His two friends could not tell William much about their work, but they were clearly enthusiastic about the night fighter project. William was slightly resentful that, once again, Hugh, in his muddled way, seemed to be calling the shots as regards his career, but there was hardly time to address the matter during their brief meal.

  William’s posting to Tangmere was dated three days after the meeting in the Ministry. He determined to spend the time in London rather than travel up to Tyneside on the crowded wartime trains. It was springtime and the city by day was decorated as usual by the blossom in the parks and the early green leaves on the trees. There had been very little warlike activity at that stage, although the blackout was rigidly enforced during the hours of darkness, and uniforms were everywhere in the streets. Shops and cinemas were open as usual, although the goods available in shops were now strictly limited and rationed. Everyone carried a little haversack containing a gas mask. After an afternoon wandering around drinking in the atmosphere, William still had a couple of hours before his meeting with Jacky and to fill the time he decided to take a cup of tea in a Lyons Corner House. He took a table in a corner and sat down with his evening paper. He did not actually see the girls come in, but he could not miss their chattering as they took the table next to him. They were trainee nurses, all dressed in hospital uniform and looking incredibly lovely. He stood up and made a futile attempt to help them with their chairs, in the process dropping his uniform cap on the floor and recovering it, red-faced. The girls were delighted to find themselves involved with an RAF officer sporting a pilot’s wings on his chest and begged him to join them. Introductions were quickly made. He found himself pressed into telling the girls what it was like to fly an aeroplane in wartime (mostly pretty boring), and they talked about their life in hospital. They were all educated, well-bred girls and had volunteered to train so as to become members of the QAIMNS, the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service. Nurses in this service were all from upper-class backgrounds and once qualified they enjoyed officer status, but they were expected to work hard, doing menial tasks on the wards and supervising junior medical staff. The girls had almost completed their training and were eagerly awaiting their first postings. They had an evening off today and were planning to use it seeing a film. “You see,” said the most talkative of them, whose name William discovered was Angela. “It has Jacky Simple in it and he’s sooooo beautiful.”