His technique was to stalk an enemy bomber for minutes on end, finally closing in and firing at point-blank range to make sure of his kill. On one occasion, while attacking a Heinkel from only a few yards’ range, the bomber suddenly exploded in a violent gush of flame. The shock-wave flung the Hurricane over on its back and it shot through a cloud of blazing wreckage. Miraculously, the fighter was undamaged, but it was covered in oil and there was blood on the wings…
Shortly after the award of his first DFC, Stevens developed ear trouble and was grounded for a while. He returned to action on 8 April, shooting down two Heinkels in one night. Two nights later he got another Heinkel and a Junkers 88, and a few days after that he received a Bar to his DFC. On 19 April he destroyed yet another Heinkel, and the previous Wednesday night, so Armstrong had heard, he had got two more. That made nine enemy bombers so far, and there seemed to be no stopping this remarkable pilot, who had quietly confided to Armstrong that if there should ever be a shortage of bombers over Britain, he would fly his Hurricane over to the Continent, and go looking for them over their own airfields.
Armstrong had heartily wished that he had come across Stevens in the summer of 1940, when he himself had been given the task of forming a squadron for intruder operations. But the intruder idea had been tried out and, for the moment, abandoned as a serious venture, while Armstrong had moved on to other things.
“Anyway,” Air Commodore Glendenning said, breaking into Armstrong’s brief reverie, “our job is to try to make some sense out of what is going on, and be ready for any eventuality. I think —”
He looked up in some annoyance as the WAAF section officer knocked and came into the room again.
“Sorry to interrupt you, sir, but I think you should see this. It’s a compilation of various Coastal Command reconnaissance reports, brought back by aircraft during the past forty-eight hours, and some of it is substantiated by ‘Y’ Service intercepts.” She handed Glendenning a red folder.
“Thank you, Sheila. Could you organise some tea for us, do you think?”
The WAAF nodded and departed. Glendenning studied the contents of the folder, his eyes widening from time to time. At length he closed it, sat back in his chair and expelled his breath.
“I think this is it, Ken,” he said. “They’re on the move. Two big tankers have been sighted off the north Norwegian coast, apparently heading for the Arctic, and four more, together with what appears to be a supply ship, have been tracked leaving the French ports. The prediction is that these are making for the Central Atlantic. What’s your prognosis?”
Armstrong thought for a few moments, then said, “Well, sir, my first thought was that the Scharnhorst might be on the point of breaking out of Brest and heading back to Germany via the Arctic, but on reflection I don’t think that’s it. Half a dozen tankers seems an awful lot to support just one warship. It’s my belief that they are going to send out the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen, and that when these are within striking distance of the convoy routes they’ll be joined by the Scharnhorst. We know that the Gneisenau is still being repaired, so she’s out of the picture for the time being. And I’d like to bet that the next few days will see more U-boats putting to sea.”
Glendenning nodded. “I agree with you. And when they’ve made their sortie they will make for Brest, or maybe Lorient, which explains the big increase of air power at Bordeaux. It’s not a pretty picture, Ken. Come along — let’s go and see our friends in the Admiralty, and find out if they have any inkling of what’s going on.”
A few minutes later, having negotiated entry to the Admiralty building past numerous armed sentries, they were conferring with a couple of senior naval officers in one of the operations rooms. Like others deep underground, the room had escaped damage when the building itself was hit during an air raid, although there were cracks in the ceiling.
Armstrong discovered that one of the naval officers, Captain Merriman, was responsible for liaising with Glendenning on joint operational procedures between the RAF and the Royal Navy; the two met on a daily basis to update one another on information gleaned from air and submarine reconnaissance, and from various other sources. Merriman’s companion, Lieutenant Commander Rawdon, was a Fleet Air Arm officer, on temporary secondment to the Admiralty from Gibraltar. It turned out that he knew Dickie Baird very well, which came as no surprise to Armstrong. The Fleet Air Arm, still a relatively small organisation, was a closely-knit community.
Glendenning told the two naval officers about the reconnaissance report. Merriman looked worried.
“It’s a bad time,” he said. “If the Bismarck and the other capital ships come out now, there’ll be precious little to stand in their way. There’s only the cruiser Suffolk patrolling the Denmark Strait; Norfolk is off Iceland. There are more cruisers and destroyers at Scapa Flow, with the Home Fleet, but only two ships would have a fighting chance against the Bismarck, if everything we hear about her capabilities is correct. They are the King George V and the Prince of Wales, although the latter is just out of the builder’s yard and she’s not ready for action. In fact, workmen are still on board her, trying to remedy problems with two of her gun turrets. Apart from that, there’s the battlecruiser Repulse, in the Clyde. She’s about to go to the Mediterranean. Oh, yes, and the Hood. But she’s an old lady now, and she hasn’t got much armour on her upper decks. That’s a big worry.”
Built on the Clyde and launched in 1916, the 42,000-ton battlecruiser Hood had, in her heyday, been the finest — and, with a maximum speed of thirty-two knots, the fastest — warship in the world. And the whole world knew her, for in the years between the wars she had ‘shown the flag’ for Britain all around the globe. She was armed with eight 15-inch guns, which made her a formidable opponent. She had been laid down before the Battle of Jutland in 1916, a battle in which three British battlecruisers had been sunk by shells which, fired at long range, had plunged vertically through their lightly armoured decks. All large British warships built after Jutland had been fitted with strengthened armour, but although the Hood’s armour had been strengthened on her sides, no attention had been paid to her decks…
“What about aircraft carriers?” Armstrong asked. It was Rawdon who answered him.
“There’s the Victorious,” he said. “She’s currently out on exercise, and after that she’s due to sail for Malta with a load of Hurricanes, accompanied by Repulse. Her air squadrons are ashore in the Orkneys, undergoing intensive training. I visited them a few days ago, and I can tell you that the aircrews are very inexperienced. It’s doubtful whether they would be able to find and positively identify the Bismarck, let alone carry out a successful torpedo attack against her.”
Glendenning looked at Armstrong. “Better get your chap Baird up there as fast as you can,” he ordered. “He’s a ship recognition expert, isn’t he? It looks as though he’s going to be needed.”
“Very good, sir.” Armstrong made for a telephone and got through to Baird at Perranporth after some delay, warning his second-in-command to be ready for a move, but giving no further details. He would brief Baird on the situation in the morning, when he flew back to the Cornish airfield.
“We’d better lay this latest intelligence before our respective commanders-in-chief without delay,” Glendenning said. “We’re going to have to get organised, and we don’t know how much time we’ve got. I’m aware that we already have an operational task group in place to deal with the possibility of a breakout by the German ships, with various people designated for various jobs, but it will take time to pull everybody in.”
“We’ll get on to it right away,” Merriman said. “I’ll have an emergency war room set up, so we won’t be in anyone else’s way.”
After further discussions with the naval officers, Glendenning and Armstrong returned to the Air Ministry to sketch out a preliminary operational plan to be laid before Air Chief Marshal Sir Frederick Bowhill, the C-in-C RAF Coastal Command. It was Bowhill who, in conjunction with Admiral Sir John Tov
ey, the C-in-C Home Fleet, was responsible for joint air and sea operations against German naval forces in the Atlantic.
“I’m worried about the build-up of German bombers at Cherbourg,” Glendenning confessed to Armstrong, “so I am proposing to leave your Beaufighters where they are, at Perranporth, to be within striking distance of them. I shall try to have more Beaufighters assigned to you if need be. As for torpedo aircraft, it looks as though we shall have to rely mainly on the Navy, because Coastal Command’s torpedo-bomber resources are spread pretty thinly.”
The air commodore glanced at a map of the British Isles pinned to his office wall.
“The only Beaufort squadron reasonably well placed to take a smack at the warships as they come out into the North Sea is 42 Squadron, up at Leuchars in Scotland; they might, I suppose, be reinforced by 22 Squadron from North Coates, but only if there’s sufficient warning. Over at St Eval there’s 217 Squadron, also with Beauforts, but we’ll need to keep it there as an insurance against a breakout by the Brest Squadron.”
Glendenning rubbed an index finger against his short, dark moustache.
“To my mind, the whole key to this business is effective air reconnaissance, and that means daily sorties to the Baltic by PRU Spitfires. Once we know the Germans are on the move for certain, we can intensify patrols by Hudson aircraft and submarines off the Norwegian coast. We can’t risk losing the warships in that area; there are any number of fjords they can hole up in, and as you know yourself it would be a difficult job to locate them.”
Armstrong did know; earlier in the War, flying a PR Spitfire, part of his task had been to keep a watch on the Norwegian fjords, searching for German merchant vessels heading for their home ports from the Atlantic. That had been before the Germans overran Norway, and set up facilities to provide anchorages for their large warships.
“Assuming — just assuming — that the Germans evade the air patrols here, and are not sighted by our submarines, it will be up to the longer-range maritime patrol aircraft, the Catalinas and Sunderlands, to pick them up,” Glendenning went on. “There are two Catalina squadrons we can use, 209 at Castle Archdale, in Northern Ireland, and 210 at Oban, on the west coast of Scotland. In fact, both have detached flights at Sullom Voe, in the Shetlands, from where they fly Arctic patrols. But there aren’t many Catalinas, and there’s an awful lot of ocean.”
“What about the Sunderlands?” Armstrong wanted to know.
“Well,” Glendenning answered, “there’s 201 Squadron, which is also at Sullom Voe, and 204 at Reykjavik, in Iceland. Both squadrons are fully committed to antisubmarine work and convoy protection, though, so just diverting even two or three of their aircraft for reconnaissance duty would be taking a risk. It makes the case for borrowing some Halifaxes from Bomber Command, or the Liberators from Ferry Command, even stronger. That’s a matter I must chase up, without delay. Whichever way you look at it, it’s going to be a gamble, unless we locate the warships immediately and never lose sight of them. And that’s something we can’t guarantee.”
*
Armstrong spent the night in London, flying back to Perranporth the following morning. There were no raids on the capital that night, and for once London slept undisturbed, its inhabitants blissfully unaware of the terror that was to come only twenty-four hours later.
*
Between dusk and dawn on the night of 10-11 May, London lay bathed in the light of a full moon. All over England the night was fine, with good visibility apart from some haze near large towns in the south and early morning fog patches in the Midlands and the North.
Saturday, 10 May, had been quiet, the Germans confining their air activity to a few fighter sweeps off the coast and some armed shipping reconnaissances. Then, at about 2230, the bombers began taking off from the airfields of Luftflotten 2 and 3. Their target was London and they came in wave after wave all night long, 600 of them. Their bombs fell in sixty-one London boroughs, but the main weight of the attack fell on central, eastern and south-eastern areas. Over 2,000 serious fires were started, central London and the docks area being the worst hit. The fire services were stretched to the limit, their difficulties compounded by the fact that the Thames water level was low.
Ancient and much-loved churches whose spires had graced the city’s skyline for centuries — St Clement Dane’s, St Mary-le-Bow, St Columba’s, and many others — were nothing more than gaunt ruins by daybreak. The Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the British Museum and the Tower of London featured in a long list of public buildings that were hit. More than 1,000 people were killed and over 2,000 injured.
Anti-aircraft Command expended 4,500 shells and shot down one raider. Fighter Command’s Beaufighters, Defiants, Spitfires and Hurricanes destroyed nine more, although in the confusion of battle over the flaming city the pilots claimed to have destroyed twenty-eight.
The Germans lost one other aircraft that night. Just after ten o’clock, as the London raiders were warming up their engines, an air defence radar station on the north-east coast of England detected an unidentified aircraft approaching British air space. As it approached the coast it dived to pick up speed, crossed the Scottish border and headed almost due west at low level. Two Defiant night fighters were scrambled from Prestwick to intercept the intruder, but it was travelling so fast that they failed to catch it.
The mysterious aircraft, a Messerschmitt 110, flew over the town of Kilmarnock, twenty-five miles south of Glasgow. When it reached the sea the pilot turned south and followed the coast for a few miles before heading back inland. He then took the aircraft up to over 6,000 feet and baled out to land near the village of Eaglesham, where he was arrested. The Messerschmitt crashed nearby. It was 2309.
Later that night, Wing Commander the Duke of Hamilton, who was in charge of sector operations at Turnhouse, near Edinburgh, was awakened with the astonishing news that the German pilot was demanding to see him. In 1936 the Duke, known as ‘Douglo’ to his RAF colleagues, had visited the Berlin Olympics and met several Luftwaffe pilots. He had carefully noted their names, but had never heard of the man who was now asking to see him — a man calling himself Alfred Horn.
Mystified, Douglo went off to Maryhill Barracks, Glasgow, where the prisoner was being held. He entered the room where the prisoner was, accompanied by an interrogating officer and a military officer of the guard. The prisoner, who Douglo had no recollection of ever having seen before — but who claimed to have met the RAF officer at the Berlin Olympics — requested a private interview, which was granted.
The Duke listened in growing disbelief as the German identified himself. He went on to say that he was on a mission of humanity; that Adolf Hitler had no wish to defeat England and desired to stop fighting. A close friend, Albrecht Haushofer, an intellectual, had already tried to contact the Duke via Lisbon with much the same message, although Douglo had never received any such communication.
The German pilot went on to say that he had tried to fly to Dungavel, the Duke of Hamilton’s home, and this was the fourth time he had set out. On the three previous occasions he had been forced to turn back owing to bad weather. He had not attempted to make the journey during the time when Britain was gaining victories in North Africa, as he thought his mission might then be interpreted as weakness, but now that Germany had gained success in both North Africa and Greece, he was glad he had come. He added that Germany would win the War — he was convinced of that — possibly soon, but certainly in two or three years. Hitler wanted to prevent the unnecessary slaughter that must inevitably take place.
The mysterious German asked the Duke if the latter could get together leading members of parliament to talk things over with a view to making peace proposals. He already knew what Hitler’s peace terms would be. First, he would insist on an arrangement whereby Britain and Germany would never go to war again.
There would, of course, be certain conditions. Britain, the prisoner said, must give up her traditional policy of always opposing the strongest power
in Europe.
The two talked for a while longer, and then, as Hamilton was leaving the room, the prisoner delivered his parting shot. He had forgotten, he said, to emphasise that the peace proposals could only be considered on the understanding that they were negotiated with a British government other than the present one. Winston Churchill, who the prisoner claimed had been planning war with Germany since 1936, and the politicians who supported him, were not persons with whom Hitler could negotiate.
The Duke of Hamilton returned to Turnhouse the next day, scarcely able to comprehend that the incredible interview had actually taken place, and found that two fighter pilots from the squadron he had recently commanded, No. 602, had dropped in for a visit. They were Flight Lieutenants George Chater and Sandy Johnstone. Clearly flustered, Douglo took them to one side.
“Don’t think me mad,” he told them, “but I’ve just spent half the night talking to Rudolf Hess — Hitler’s Deputy!”
Chapter Thirteen
21 May 1941: 1315 Hours
High above the Korsfjord, the inlet leading to the Norwegian port of Bergen, a Spitfire described a graceful arc through the clear sky, its cameras clicking. In the cramped cockpit, Flying Officer Mike Suckling threw a quick glance behind, conscious that the enemy must be aware of his presence. The sirens on Stavanger aerodrome must be going full blast. At any minute now, Messerschmitts would be appearing over the horizon.
It was time to get out of it. His task completed, Suckling turned away and headed for home. Ninety minutes later, he was munching a hasty meal of sandwiches at Wick while RAF photographic experts rushed to develop the precious film. The Station Intelligence Officer carefully examined the still-wet prints, and came to the rapid conclusion that he was looking at a battleship and a cruiser.
On board the great battleship King George V, at anchor off Flotta in the Orkneys, a green telephone shrilled. The instrument was connected by a special shore line to the Admiralty in London. The officer who answered the call was Admiral Sir John Tovey, Commander-in-Chief of the British Home Fleet. The naval staff officer at the other end of the line identified himself and said, “They’re out, sir. The Bismarck and the Prinz Eugen. A photo-recce Spitfire has picked them up in an anchorage near Bergen.”
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