Flames Over Norway Read online

  Flames Over Norway

  Robert Jackson

  © Robert Jackson, 1996

  Robert Jackson has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1996 by Severn House Publishers Ltd.

  This edition published in 2016 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter One

  From 20,000 feet the view was magnificent. From the cockpit, Leutnant Hans Lehmann could see most of the Danish peninsula as far as Esbjerg; beyond that, the land was lost in a summer heat haze.

  He glanced across at his wingman, Unteroffizier Falcke, whose aircraft was 600 feet to the right and slightly astern. The Messerschmitt 109, shark-like and deadly, glittered in the sunlight; its upper surfaces were painted dark green, contrasting sharply with the pale blue of its undersides. The black, white-edged crosses on wings and fuselage sides, and the Hakenkreuz — the sinister Swastika symbol of the Third Reich — on the tail fin stood out starkly against the camouflage.

  Falcke’s Me 109, like the fighter Lehmann was flying, was a brand-new E-2 model, a big improvement over the Me 109B which both pilots had flown during the Spanish Civil War as part of the Kondor Legion — the military formation sent under conditions of great secrecy to the aid of the Spanish nationalist leader General Franco. That bitter, bloody war had provided an unparalleled opportunity to test the latest combat aircraft that were entering service with the ReichsLuftwaffe, and to develop the tactics that would give Germany’s pilots an advantage over their opponents in the war that now seemed inevitable.

  The battle formation flown now by Lehmann and Falcke, was a product of the war in Spain; it enabled each pilot to cover the other’s blind spots, especially the area behind and below the aircraft. If an attack took place on one of the pair, the other would warn him; the threatened aircraft would break hard outwards and the second fighter would break in the same direction, so that if the enemy pilot continued his attack on the turn he would soon find the second 109 on his tail. Lehmann had disposed of three Spanish Republican 1-16 Ratas — tubby little Russian-built fighters — using this technique, and Falcke had bagged a couple more.

  That had been a year ago, in the summer of 1938, during the closing months of the Spanish conflict. Lehmann had just scored his third victory when all remaining Kondor Legion personnel had been hurriedly recalled to Germany to face a threat of war that followed the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria. Lehmann was aware that not all Austrians had relished the idea of being incorporated into the Reich without having a say in the matter, while Britain and France had made warlike noises. But that was all they had done. The British and French had backed down at the conference table in Munich in September of 1938, their leaders following the path of appeasement. It had been an enormous political triumph for Germany’s leader, Adolf Hitler, who had used the months that followed to build up his armed forces to an even greater pitch of material power and efficiency. War, Lehmann was sure, would still come — but only when the Führer chose to start it.

  Lehmann opened the throttle slightly and applied left stick and rudder, swinging the Messerschmitt into a gentle turn. Falcke followed instantly, as though attached to his leader by a thread. Lehmann delighted in the 109’s response to his touch, revelling in the surge of power that came with the new throttle setting, conscious of the reserve that still remained untapped beneath the fighter’s long engine cowling.

  The Emil, as the Me 109E was known to its pilots, had a Daimler-Benz DB 601A engine producing 1100 horsepower — one-third as much again as the power of the Junkers Jumo engines fitted in the earlier models. It gave the 109E a top speed of 350 miles per hour and an operational ceiling of 36,000 feet. Best of all, it was equipped with a new fuel injection system that kept it running even when the aircraft was upside down, so there was no longer a tendency for the engine to cut out during violent combat manoeuvres.

  The armament was good, too: two MG FF 20-millimetre cannon and a pair of 7.62 mm machine-guns, providing a formidable punch that would knock down any adversary. It felt good to be sitting behind offensive power of that kind, available at the touch of a finger.

  Lehmann held the 109 in the turn, watching the earth revolve slowly nearly four miles beneath his wings. The long chain of the East Friesian islands appeared ahead of the nose, winding away into the distance towards Germany’s border with Holland. The islands drifted away to the right and the Emil’s nose pointed inland; down there, invisible from this altitude, was the airfield of Jever — the home base of Lehmann’s unit, the famous Jagdgeschwader 77.

  Lehmann was proud of the fact that JG 77 was one of the Luftwaffe’s élite fighter wings, which was reflected in its assignment: the air defence of north-west Germany and, in particular, of the vital naval base of Wilhelmshaven. The latter came into view now, a dark and smoky smudge on the horizon, nestling on the western shores of Jade Bay.

  Lehmann continued to turn through a full circle of 360 degrees and then levelled out, his nose pointing north-westward in the direction of the island of Heligoland. Off his left wingtip, in the distance, was Wangerooge, the most easterly of the Friesians. That, or at least what was on it, was the main reason for the sortie being flown on this August morning. There was some sort of top secret installation down there, an apparatus that was supposed to give warning of hostile aircraft approaching the German coast from the North Sea. Its controllers, or whatever one would call them, were to have contacted him and given him and Falcke a series of courses to steer, presumably so that they could check out the effectiveness of their equipment. So far, there hadn’t been a squeak out of the station, and calls from Lehmann on the assigned radio-frequency had met with no response. Well, he told himself, we’ll give them another ten minutes, and then go home. Besides, fuel would soon be running low.

  “Starling two to leader. Aircraft bearing two-six-zero, low and closing.”

  Falcke’s broad Swabian accent, sounding loud in his headset, broke into Lehmann’s thoughts. He looked down to the left and saw it almost immediately: the silvery cross of an aircraft, some 5000 feet lower down and heading directly for Jade Bay from the north-west. No camouflage, he thought, so almost certainly civilian; but this whole area had been restricted to military aircraft only for the past three weeks, so it had no business to be there.

  “All right, Falcke, let’s take a look.”

  He pushed over the stick and sent the Messerschmitt arrowing down towards the sea, followed closely by his wingman. Pulling out of the dive at 15,000 feet, the two 109s shot past the incoming aircraft and turned steeply through 180 degrees, approaching it from astern and throttling back to match its lower speed. Ordering Falcke to formate on its opposite side, Lehmann closed the gap until he was tucked in close to the civil aircraft’s port wingtip.

  He had already identified the intruder as a Heinkel He 70, a fast single-engined aircraft widely used for rapid communications and mail delivery. He recalled that one or two had been used experimentally in the reconnaissance role in Spain, and as a result of that experience they had equipped a few Luftwaffe recce units before being replaced by the more effective twin-engine
d Dornier Do 17 in 1938.

  He scanned the sleek aircraft from nose to tail. Its silvery surfaces were highly polished, their uniformity broken only by a red band across the tail fin — the swastika in a white circle at its centre — and black civil registration letters, D-UBOF, on the fuselage side.

  Lehmann became conscious that the Heinkel’s pilot was looking at him. The man raised a hand and waved. Lehmann waved back, then made a gesture to indicate that the Heinkel must alter course to take it clear of the Jade. The pilot waved again to show that he had understood, and turned 30 degrees to port, so that he was now flying parallel to the north German coastline, skirting the outer limit of the restricted area.

  Lehmann relaxed. He reasoned that the Heinkel pilot was probably bound for Hamburg, and that he had intended to take a short cut across the prohibited territory surrounding Wilhelmshaven. His new course would take him to the Elbe estuary, from where he would follow the river south to his destination.

  The fighter pilot glanced at his fuel gauge, and saw that the needle was slipping towards the red danger mark. It was time to go home. He waggled his wings briefly, the gesture acknowledged by another wave from the Heinkel pilot, then put the Emil into a diving turn towards the coast and Jever, Falcke taking up his usual slot off the right wing.

  Above them now, the pilot of the He 70 peered over his right shoulder, craning his neck to see past the trailing edge of the wing. He watched the two Messerschmitts as they dived, following them until they vanished in the blue haze. Then, letting out his breath in a long explosion of relief, he abruptly turned the nose of his aircraft through 90 degrees until it was pointing due north towards international waters. The haze was thickening now, and at this height the Heinkel would be invisible from the surface.

  He reached out a gloved hand and flicked a switch. Concealed in the Heinkel’s belly, a high-resolution camera stopped rolling. The pilot held a northerly course for a few more miles, until the appearance of Heligoland dead ahead told him that it was time to turn again. He did so, and this time the Heinkel’s nose swung round until it was pointing towards the west.

  Far below and a long way behind, the two Me 109s flattened out on their approach to land at Jever. As his aircraft’s wheels bounced over the grass, Lehmann wondered idly where the Heinkel had come from; but it was no more than a passing thought.

  If he had thought a little more deeply, and retraced the course that the Heinkel had been following when it was first sighted, he would have realized that the line would lead to only one possible point of departure — a point that was not on the German side of the North Sea.

  Chapter Two

  Armstrong spotted the sign with a mixture of relief and annoyance. Relief, because he was now more or less certain of his bearings; annoyance, because he must have ridden past the sign at least twice in the past half-hour without seeing it. He consoled himself, though not much, with the thought that the rain had robbed him of his power of observation.

  The sign, which was not very large, spelled out DEANLAND AERO CLUB. There was a small arrow underneath, pointing up a narrow side road that was little more than a cart-track. Grass grew up the middle of it and there were tall, tangled hedgerows on either side.

  Well, he thought, his orders were to report to Deanland Aerodrome, and where there was an aero club there must be an airfield. He turned his powerful 633 cc Norton motor cycle — his pride and joy, and one from which his bank balance was only just recovering — into the narrow road and proceeded with caution, for the road was winding. From what he could see, to judge by the tortuous line of roadside trees up ahead, it continued to wind for a long way.

  He was tired and wet, and his spirits were not at their highest level. They rose only the merest fraction when the rain ceased abruptly in a flurry of shining drops and the summer sun shot out from behind a bank of cloud. For the umpteenth time he wondered what was in store for him, and why he had been ordered to this godforsaken spot in darkest East Anglia. The sudden move had, to say the least, come as a severe shock to his system. He could still hardly credit that it was only a day since his squadron adjutant had handed him the signal from the Air Ministry, no less, ordering him to report forthwith to a place he’d never even heard of. Already, the heady pride of belonging to one of Fighter Command’s first — and foremost — Spitfire squadrons seemed no more than a dim memory.

  He was mystified, too, by the stipulation in his orders that he was to report to Deanland in civilian clothing, and this at a time when the entire nation was moving rapidly into uniform to meet the war that everyone knew was inevitable, even though millions who had lived through the last one prayed that it might still be avoided. Armstrong and his fellow pilots had known the possibility of it ever since Hitler’s Germany had annexed Austria, and when the Nazis marched into Czechoslovakia a few months later the possibility had turned to certainty.

  That had been in March 1939. It was now August, and there was no doubt left in anyone’s mind what Hitler’s next target would be. And if he invaded Poland, the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, had already announced that Britain would stand by the Poles. War, as the young pilots of Armstrong’s squadron had discussed with an eagerness born of their youth, could only be a matter of weeks — perhaps days — away. They had reached a peak of operational efficiency, and now they wanted to see combat. They would give the Huns a trouncing.

  And Flying Officer Kenneth Armstrong, heading for the middle of nowhere, was likely to see none of it. Deanland he knew nothing about, except for the certain fact that it was not a fighter station. He didn’t even know if it belonged to the RAF.

  He rode on for a mile and a half, between rows of tall elms. In the distance, he glimpsed an occasional farm, nestling amid wooded Suffolk hillsides across which cloud shadows chased one another. And then he saw the windsock, an orange sleeve fluttering in the breeze at the end of a tall pole.

  Armstrong rounded a series of sharp bends and entered a straight stretch of road. It led to a gate; the windsock’s pole was planted some distance away on the right. He slowed and came to a stop in the gateway, inspecting another sign that ordered all vehicles to follow a track that ran round the perimeter of a large grass field. On the opposite side of the field, directly opposite, he could see a couple of long huts and two hangars. One of them he identified as the type known as a Bessoneau, erected in large numbers during the 1914-18 war; the other seemed to be a wooden structure, doubtless dating from the same period. No aircraft were visible, and there wasn’t a soul in sight. His spirits plummeted again; if this was any kind of operational station there would surely have been signs of activity, not to mention armed guards.

  Resignedly, Armstrong set off round the perimeter track, heading for the nearer hangar — the wooden one — and taking stock of things as he went. The low hedge that surrounded the airfield was neatly and recently trimmed, which suggested that somebody was looking after the place, and the grass itself was cut short. He could smell the aroma of it, coaxed from the damp ground by the sunlight.

  There was bound to be someone about, he thought, as he headed along the stretch of track that appeared to end at the hangar. Before long, maybe he would have the answers to a growing list of questions.

  A shadow flashed over him and he looked up, startled, almost losing control of his motor cycle. He slewed to a stop, cutting his engine and craning his neck to see the aircraft that roared overhead, its cockpit canopy flashing as it turned, reflecting the sunlight. It had an elliptical wing shape, and for a confused second Armstrong thought that it was a Spitfire, but he realized almost instantly that he was mistaken. He had seen the type before, but for the life of him he couldn’t think where. He racked his brain as the strange aircraft completed a circuit of the field and levelled out into wind, its engine burbling as it came down to land, its undercarriage lowered.

  Mentally, Armstrong checked off details as the aircraft rounded out and touched down, bouncing slightly on its mainwheels before it lost speed and
finally settled as its tail came down. It had a long cockpit behind its single engine and was much larger than a Spitfire, with a wingspan, he guessed, of about 50 feet. It was silver overall and looked extremely smart, but that was not the fact about it that struck Armstrong. What did strike him, as the aircraft turned broadside on to him as it taxied towards the larger hangar, was the solitary marking it carried, a splash of colour against the silver finish. Emblazoned on the aircraft’s tail was a broad, red horizontal band. And in the middle of the red band, standing out starkly against a white circle, was the black swastika of the Third Reich.

  Suddenly, Armstrong recalled where he had seen this aircraft before. Its silhouette had stared out at him from a recognition poster of German types, pinned to the wall of his squadron’s dispersal hut. It was a Heinkel He 70.

  Fascinated and intrigued, he brought his cycle back to life and rode up to the hangar, where he dismounted and propped it on its stand near the side wall. As he did so, the Heinkel’s pilot gunned the engine briefly to clear surplus oil from the plugs and then switched off, bringing silence back to the airfield.

  The Heinkel’s cockpit canopy slid back. Armstrong watched the pilot unfasten his seat harness and lever himself out on to the wing; intent on the aircraft and its occupant, he only half noticed that the hangar doors were starting to open, manipulated by someone inside. The pilot, who wore a white overall, paused on the wing for a moment to take off his flying helmet, then jumped down from the trailing edge onto the grass. He signalled to whoever was in the hangar, and a moment later four men in khaki overalls emerged at a run and began to push the Heinkel towards the hangar, whose doors were now fully open.

  The pilot, meanwhile, advanced towards Armstrong, who stood there filled with incredulity as recognition hit him with a jolt. It was more than three years since he had last seen Wing Commander Horace Royston, but even if it had been 20 he would not have forgotten the more senior officer’s tall, aristocratic figure. Royston was a character straight out of the pages of the Boy’s Own Paper, a typical upper-crust Englishman of the kind who had made his mark from the snows of the Himalayas to the torrid jungles of Africa. The caricature was complete, right down to the dark hair brushed straight back and parted in the middle and the small, neatly-trimmed moustache.