Flames Over Norway Read online

  Royston stuck out his hand, smiling rather secretively. Armstrong thought that he looked tired, and noticed that there were patches of sweat on his flying overall.

  “Good to see you again, Armstrong,” he said. “Do hope you didn’t have any trouble finding the place. It’s a bit off the map.”

  “Not at all, sir,” Armstrong lied, shaking the proffered hand briefly. “Can’t help wondering what it’s all about, though.” He inclined his head towards the hangar, into which the Heinkel had now disappeared. Royston’s smile widened into a grin.

  “All in good time,” he said, glancing at his watch. “Four-thirty. I expect you could do with a cup of tea. I certainly could.” He pointed to the Norton. “Is that your kit strapped to the back of that thing?”

  Armstrong nodded. “Leave it there,” Royston told him. “I’ll have someone take it to your room. Facilities are a bit basic here, I’m afraid, but I expect you’ll get used to the occasional shortage of hot water.”

  Royston turned and led Armstrong past the front of the hangar towards one of the long huts. As they walked, the newcomer reflected on the last time their paths had crossed. It had been in the spring of 1936, when Armstrong — then a pilot officer — had been seconded for a few weeks to an experimental establishment at Farnborough, where a small staff under Royston’s leadership had been undertaking high-altitude trials with a specially-designed monoplane called the Bristol Type 138A. To this day, Armstrong never knew why he had been selected; he could only assume that it was because as a graduate he had produced a widely-acclaimed paper on the effect of high-speed winds at altitude. Meteorology was a subject that had always fascinated him, and was a principal reason why he had applied to join the RAF as a pilot at a slightly older age than most; there, he could combine the thrill of flying with firsthand study of the elements. Commissioned in 1934 after passing through the Royal Air Force College, Cranwell, he had flown Bristol Bulldog biplane fighters for 18 months before his spell at Farnborough; in his absence the squadron had converted to Gloster Gauntlets, which he had also flown until the first Spitfires were delivered in 1938.

  The Spitfire had been a joy, and the future had stretched ahead of him rosily, with prospects of early promotion to flight lieutenant and command of his own flight. Now there was this. He couldn’t help wondering, not for the first time, what he had done wrong.

  “We use this hut as an office block,” Royston explained as they reached the building. “The accommodation is in the other one, and there’s a shed behind the hangar we use as a canteen. But come along in, and I’ll explain.”

  He opened the hut door and led Armstrong into a narrow corridor. There were rooms on either side, their doors closed. The corridor opened in to a larger room, with a table in the middle and some armchairs that looked somewhat the worse for wear. There was another door at the far end, and next to it a large map was pinned to the wall. It showed the British Isles, north-west Europe and part of the North Atlantic.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” Royston said, indicating an armchair. Armstrong shook off his damp trench coat and laid it on the table while Royston went to the other end of the room, opened the door and peered round its edge. He spoke to someone unseen, then returned and sat down opposite Armstrong, crossing his legs and taking a cigarette case from a pocket of his overall. He extended the case towards Armstrong, who shook his head.

  Royston lit a cigarette, taking his time, and leaned back in his chair with a sigh, watching the blue-grey smoke drift through a sunbeam that made a pool of light on the polished linoleum that covered the hut floor.

  “Ever heard of a chap called General Baron Werner von Fritsch?” he asked suddenly. “No? Well, he’s one of Germany’s best. A cavalry officer of the old school, very astute. Some time ago, he let fall a prophetic remark. It was widely reported in military circles. ‘The next war,’ said old von F., ‘will be won by the side with the most effective photographic reconnaissance.’ And d’you know something, Armstrong? He’s absolutely right. And that’s why we’re here. Welcome to No I Photographic Reconnaissance Flight.”

  He noticed Armstrong’s raised eyebrows and grinned. “Don’t get too excited, though. We aren’t exactly well-equipped, at least not yet. We’ve been promised a couple of Spitfires, modified for high-altitude, long-range work and fitted with cameras, but it will be a while before we get them. In the meantime, we plan to use the Heinkel to take the occasional peep behind the curtain, so to speak. With a bit of luck it will fool the opposition. She’s quite an interesting aircraft; we borrowed her from Rolls-Royce, who have been using her for engine trials. She’s fitted with a specially supercharged Kestrel engine, and we can get her up to about 27,000 feet. Rolls-Royce weren’t flying her around with a swastika plastered on her tail, of course; we added that when we took her over.”

  The Wing Commander’s face took on a very serious expression, and he leaned forward to gaze directly at Armstrong. “I don’t have to tell you that we are going to have to fight Germany again, and probably very soon. The point is that we can’t afford to wait until the shooting starts before we set about gathering the photographic intelligence we need.”

  Royston rose and went over to the wall map, beckoning Armstrong to follow him. He studied the map for a moment, then asked: “When war does come, where do you think the decisive battles will take place?”

  “In the air, I should imagine, sir,” Armstrong replied immediately. “The side that gains air superiority will also win the battle on the ground. It happened in Spain, after all.”

  Royston nodded. “Yes, it did. But in a major European war, involving Britain, this is where the real decision will be forced.” He planted his index finger firmly in the middle of the North Atlantic.

  “You may bet your bottom dollar,” he said, “that when war does come the Germans will do their damndest to starve Britain into submission. We depend on our ocean lifelines, and we know that the Germans are gearing up for an all-out war on the high seas. There won’t be a repetition of last time, when their fleet was penned up uselessly after the Battle of Jutland.”

  He took a long pull on his cigarette, looked around, and stubbed it out half-smoked in a convenient ashtray before continuing.

  “They are building ocean-going submarines. They are building fast, modern, heavily-armed battleships and cruisers. There’s even a rumour that they might build aircraft-carriers. Everything points to a determined effort to gain command of the seas. However” — he turned back to the map again — “whatever they do in naval terms is restricted by the simple fact of Germany’s geographical position. Look.”

  Royston indicated a spot on the map on the north German coast. “To get out into the Atlantic from their main naval base here, at Wilhelmshaven, they have a choice of two routes. The first is through the English Channel, which would be so dangerous as to be out of the question once hostilities started; the second is here, through the gap between Scotland and Norway.” His finger traced a north-westerly path past the Shetland Islands, the Faeroes and Iceland, then south-west through the narrow passage between Iceland and Greenland.

  “The Denmark Strait,” he said. “That’s the way they’ll go, you may depend upon it. And once they’re out into the broad ocean they can lose themselves. They’ll be out of air surveillance range and they can pop up at any point of their choosing, to knock hell out of our shipping. The Royal Navy would do its best to track them down, of course, but it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

  He was interrupted by a knock on the door. He reached out to open it, and an extraordinary figure entered the room, carrying a tray on which rested a teapot, cups and saucers, milk, sugar and a plate of biscuits. The man who bore it seemed exceedingly old; he wore a pinstriped suit and a wing collar that only partly concealed a scrawny neck. He was completely bald and walked with a pronounced stoop, his hooked nose bobbing dangerously close to the teapot as he crossed the room to place the laden tray on the table.

  “Thank
you, Max,” Royston said, smiling at the aged person. “This, by the way, is Mr Armstrong, who has just joined us. Max is our indispensable retainer,” he added by way of explanation. Max turned to Armstrong and bowed slightly. Armstrong noticed that the man’s eyes were a vivid blue, piercing and almost translucent, with none of the rheum normally associated with old age. He left the room without a word.

  “More to him than meets the eye, too,” Armstrong said, as Royston poured the tea. It was a statement, rather than a question. Royston grinned, rather secretively.

  “You could say that. He has, shall we say, a number of attributes other than the making of tea. He is Lithuanian, and he is fluent in German. He also has a knowledge of certain codes and cyphers which are extremely useful in our work, but I’ll say no more than that.”

  He handed Armstrong a cup and indicated the milk and sugar. “Help yourself. Speaking of our work, I had better tell you exactly what that is, and why you have been brought in. Remember your time at Farnborough? Well, we are going to need pilots with high-altitude experience, and you are one of the few who have been higher than 40,000 feet.”

  Armstrong remembered the experience very well indeed: the indigo of the sky, the curvature of the Earth on the far horizon. From a height of seven and a half miles the familiar contours of the ground, covered with speckles of cloud, merged into a flat, brown monotone broken here and there by the glint of a river. The vista was hard to describe; you had to experience it.

  On three occasions the Bristol 138A had taken Armstrong up to 42,000 feet, but there were others who had been even higher. In September 1936 a squadron leader called Swain went up to 49,967 feet, and just under a year later a Flight Lieutenant Adam took the Bristol to an incredible 53,937 feet.

  The thing Armstrong remembered most about his own flights to high altitude in the Bristol was the bitter, paralyzing cold that had penetrated the special pressure suit designed by Siebe Gorman, the diving-suit firm, in collaboration with scientists at Farnborough. He also recalled the “dead man’s handle” fitted to the control column; if the pressure suit failed and the pilot lost consciousness, his grip on the control column would relax and the device was supposed to close the throttle automatically, so that the Bristol would glide down to less hostile altitudes where it was hoped that the pilot would recover.

  “We hope to have our first Spitfire by the middle of September,” Royston said, breaking into the other’s reminiscence. “In the meantime, we’ll have to make do with the Heinkel. We won’t be sticking our necks out to begin with — just taking a quick look at one or two naval objectives on the periphery to see what the Huns are up to. Our task is to detect any movement — any movement at all — of the German fleet, and there’s no doubt at all that it will begin to move to its war stations some time before any outbreak of hostilities.

  “We are under Admiralty control, by the way, even though everyone here is RAF, apart from Max, of course, and one or two civilian specialists.” He grinned. “It’s a small firm at the moment, but it will grow. Our main concern is to avoid attention, which is why we picked this place; it’s nicely out of the way and our cover is pretty good. So is our security, just in case you were tempted to think otherwise. There are people keeping an eye on things, although it wouldn’t do to have guards pounding around everywhere, armed to the teeth. That would give the game away completely. The cat will be out of the bag when the Spitfires arrive, of course, but by that time I don’t suppose it will matter.”

  Royston finished his tea and got up. “That’s all for now,” he said with a yawn. “I’m off for a wash and brush up. Come on — I’ll show you where home is. We’ll have another chat over dinner. Incidentally, it’s civilian clothes at all times, until further notice. I’ll show you round the Heinkel later on, and you can check out on her tomorrow. I can’t tell you when we begin operational flying, for the simple reason I don’t know. We just have to wait, and be ready.”

  At the hut doorway the Wing Commander stopped suddenly and turned to Armstrong. His expression was once again serious.

  “Today is the sixteenth of August,” he said. “It’s my guess that Hitler will move against Poland at the beginning of September, and perhaps even before this month is out. We are going to have a lot of work to do, and it won’t be a piece of cake. The Hun ports are heavily defended. But make no mistake: a great many people are depending on us. All the risks are justified.

  “And that,” he concluded with a rather embarrassed smile as he walked out into the afternoon sunlight, “is probably the longest speech you’ll ever hear me make.”

  Chapter Three

  It was a beautiful morning. 5000 feet below the vibrating wings of the nine fighters the silver snake of the River Vistula wound its way through the September colours of the Polish countryside, finally disappearing under the thin curtain of haze that shimmered over the horizon.

  The fighters, gull-winged PZL P-1lCs of the Polish Air Force, were fighting hard to gain altitude, their noses pointing towards the north-east. From the cockpit of his Jedenastka, as the little aircraft was affectionately known, Lieutenant Stanislaw Kalinski scanned the horizon over to the left; the treacherous quarter of the sky from which the formations of the Luftwaffe came to unload their deadly cargoes on Polish targets, their guardian Messerschmitts roving everywhere to challenge Poland’s pitifully outclassed fighter defences.

  Kalinski still found it hard to grasp that it was only a few hours since the first waves of Stukas, Heinkels and Dorniers had come sweeping out of the western sky without warning, pounding the forward Polish airfields, shattering military installations and blasting gaps for the armoured columns that were now spearing into his homeland. He was still dazed by the sudden fury of the German attack in the early hours of this black Friday, the first day of September 1939; both he and his fellow pilots had known that war was inevitable, but now it had come it seemed unreal.

  Slightly ahead of Kalinski’s aircraft and to the right, the Jedenastka flown by his squadron commander, Major Lesniewski, rose and fell gently on the warm currents of air, its red-and-white chequered insignia standing out boldly against its drab olive-green camouflage. It might have been just another pre-war training flight; at any moment now, thought Kalinski, they would emerge from the nightmare and return to base for a meal.

  It was then that they saw the enemy: a cluster of black dots, sliding low over the Vistula away to port. Opening the throttle, Kalinski brought his P-11 alongside Lesniewski’s aircraft and waggled his wings, pointing frantically at the enemy formation. The Squadron Commander waved in acknowledgement and winged over into a dive, followed by the other eight fighters. The wind screamed past Kalinski’s open cockpit as the Jedenastka gathered speed, plummeting down towards what could now be clearly recognized as slim, twin-engined Dornier 17 bombers; there were seven of them, holding a tight arrowhead formation.

  With eyes only for the leading bomber, Kalinski levelled out and sped towards it head-on, crouching low in the cockpit as tracers flickered past from the Dormer’s nose-gun. The Pole forced himself to hold the fighter rock-steady as the distance between the two aircraft narrowed with terrifying speed, holding his fire until the bulk of the Dornier filled the sky ahead. A gentle pressure on the trigger, and a stream of bullets from the Jedenastka’s twin 7.7 mm machine-guns tore into the enemy bomber at point-blank range. At the last moment, Kalinski rolled the little fighter over on its back and pulled on the stick, missing the Dormer’s pale blue belly by inches. Completing his roll, he pulled the P-11 up into a steep climbing turn and looked back in time to see the Dornier nosedive into a field and erupt in a tremendous explosion as its bomb-load went off.

  There was no time for jubilation. Pushing the throttle wide open, he came up behind a second Dornier, closing right in to 50 yards and firing in short, vicious bursts. Bullet strikes danced and sparkled over the bomber’s dark green wings and fuselage. Suddenly, a jet of flame burst from the Dornier’s starboard engine. Kalinski fired again, and thi
s time the bomber’s “glasshouse” cockpit shattered into fragments. The stricken aircraft went into a steep climb, hung poised for a moment, and then spun into the ground.

  Climbing, Kalinski looked around. The remaining Dorniers had jettisoned their bombs and were heading flat out for the border. There was no sign of the other Polish fighters. Later, when he landed, Kalinski learned that the rest of the squadron had jumped a second formation of nine Dorniers, shooting down no fewer than five of them. With Kalinski’s two, that made seven — and all the Polish fighters had returned safely to base.

  Nevertheless, their victory did little to boost the Polish pilots’ morale. For every German aircraft they destroyed there seemed to be ten more to take its place, and each pilot was grimly aware that if the Dorniers had been escorted by Messerschmitts, the outdated P-11s would have been massacred. The Poles would go on fighting for as long as they had aircraft to fight with; but in his heart of hearts Kalinski knew that unless Britain and France came to Poland’s aid immediately, the struggle was hopeless. Time, he realized with bitter certainty, was not on his country’s side.

  *

  Armstrong awoke with a start. The night had been hot and he had slept with curtains and window open; a shaft of pale yellow sunlight made a square pattern on the wall next to his bed. He raised himself on an elbow and twisted his neck to peer at the clock on his bedside locker. It was five-thirty, and for a moment he toyed with the prospect of snatching another half-hour of sleep before his batman came along with the morning mug of tea. He knew that he certainly wouldn’t be able to sleep after he had taken a sip of the stuff; you could clean brass buckles in it, stand spoons upright in it and poison rats with it. In fact, you could do just about anything you liked with it except drink it.