Len Deighton 3-Book War Collection Volume 1: Bomber, XPD, Goodbye Mickey Mouse. Len Deighton

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      Overlapping circles of light had appeared on the map. Each one was a radar station like August’s own. Each one had two night fighters circling above it waiting to pounce upon a bomber coming into range of its magic eye. Now and again one of the T lights was switched off as a bomber was destroyed.

      The young Leutnant had noticed August’s Pour le Mérite and decided that he was worth a fuller explanation than most of the rubberneck visitors that he showed around. He pointed to the six rows of stalls far below them.

      ‘It’s in the two front rows that the battle decisions are made. The Major-General third from the left is the Divisional Controller. On each side of him he keeps an Ia – Operations Officer. On the far left is the NAFU or Chief Signals Officer. Second to the right of the Div Controller, the officer with the yellow tabs is the Ic or Intelligence Officer. The old man on his right is the senior Meteorology man. The second row of officers, the ones speaking into phones all the time, are Fighter Controllers carrying out the orders. On that same desk there’s a Flak Officer, Radar Controller and Civil Defence Liaison.’

      ‘Who is the man in the tinted-glass office on the left?’ asked August.

      ‘Radio Intelligence Liaison Officer. He only comes out to talk with the Divisional Controller. Even then it’s in a whisper.’ He smiled, he had the cynical attitude to boffins that operational pilots always have.

      The T-shaped lights moved slowly in a straight line towards Berlin.

      ‘What do you think?’ asked the Leutnant.

      ‘It’s damned impressive,’ said August.

      ‘It’s not always as calm as this, I’m afraid. On a real raid things get more hectic. I’ve seen them shouting at each other down there.’

      ‘And those little white lights don’t disappear so quickly,’ said August.

      ‘Ah,’ said the Leutnant. ‘That’s the real difference, I’m afraid.’ He spoke like a man who knew how big the sky was on a dark night.

      They watched the ‘air raid’ proceed for a few more minutes. Still the white T lights that represented the bombers kept on their narrow line. The controllers practised dealing with the ‘stream tactics’ that the RAF had developed as a way of overwhelming the radar defences of just one zone instead of presenting single targets piecemeal to several radar sets and accompanying night fighters.

      ‘What about the Mosquito they send in to mark the target? If our planes could get up high enough to knock that down, the stream wouldn’t know where to drop their bombs.’

      ‘Exactly,’ said the Leutnant. He swung lightly round on his toes with his arm stiffly akimbo, giving him a curious effeminate stance. He eyed Bach speculatively and then decided to confide a secret.

      ‘Tonight we have a surprise awaiting them.’

      ‘The Ju88s supercharged with nitrous oxide?’

      ‘“Ha-ha” they call them – laughing gas, you see – you’ve heard about them, eh?’

      ‘What idiot thought of that code name?’

      ‘And 12.8 guns on railway mountings, we are going to try everything we know tonight. I don’t know, some fool in Air Ministry, I suppose.’

      ‘If they cooperate by flying over the railway guns,’ said August doubtfully.

      ‘They always come in from north to south, and always towards the Ruhr because – we think – that’s the limit of the electronic range. So we can make a guess at it. We’ll be more or less in position.’

      ‘Radio intercept predict a big one tonight,’ said August. He looked at his own radar station on the glass map, its range indicated by a dull lit circle. It was exactly placed between the RAF bomber airfields of East Anglia and the Ruhr. ‘I’m at Ermine,’ said August.

      ‘I know, sir,’ said the Leutnant. ‘I don’t think you’ll have much sleep before morning.’ Now August could see that the young Leutnant’s stiff left arm was artificial.

       Chapter Eleven

      Like all such depressions, this one had been born when moist air from the Azores met the cold dry air of the Arctic. The resulting muddled air mass moved eastwards over Britain until it reached the sea area to the west of Denmark which was called Heligoland. Here the centre of the depression paused. Hinged upon this depression, the cloud-marked cold front, like a thousand-mile-wide door, swung across Europe at twenty miles an hour. The front curved because its southern edge couldn’t keep up the pace. That southern end had only reached Bilbao in Spain when the centre was darkening the skies of Lyon and the northern sector was deluging the streets of Esbjerg with torrential rain.

      In the high-pressure region that followed the front the heavy air subsided, warming by compression as it dropped. There was no more than the lightest of breezes, the clouds shrank even as you watched them, and the sun shone.

      England had had its thunderstorms during the night and a morning of sunshine, but already a little cumulus had appeared over Wales and parts of the West Country. At Kroonsdijk, however, where the cold front had only recently passed, the skies were blue and the sun warmed the wet grass.

      Unteroffizier Himmel eased himself into the pilot’s seat of his Ju88 parked at the end of the dispersal. The sun had been upon the metal fuselage for several hours and now the seat and controls were hot to touch and the smell of warmed fuel was as powerful as Glühwein. It was a luxury to be alone for a moment and apart from the sounds of the ground crewmen doing their pre-flight inspection it was as peaceful as a country graveyard. Himmel looked at the wet grass where an oil-patch made a rainbow pattern of red, yellow and mauve. A sandpiper landed and bobbed around the brightly coloured grass looking for worms until a mechanic closed the dinghy stowage hatch forcibly enough to frighten it back into the air.

      The old piece of fuselage that the fire section had set alight sent a quill of white smoke into the still air. At its nib, Leutnant Beer in overalls was wielding a fire extinguisher under the command of Horst Knoll, the senior NCO of the fire section. Horst was a bad-tempered fellow who hated officers and did his best to make their lives as uncomfortable as his legitimate duties permitted.

      ‘On to the base of the flame,’ he was shouting to Beer, who was reluctantly closing in upon the foul-smelling wreckage and cursing. Horst Knoll, knowing exactly what the moving lips were saying, smiled and urged him forward all the more. ‘Don’t be afraid of the smoke, Herr Leutnant, get much closer and put the jet on to the base of the flame. Much closer, Herr Leutnant, much, much closer.’

      At the far end of the line of matt-black aircraft Major Redenbacher’s aeroplane poked its snout from the dark hangar. Most of the spare mechanics were working on it. Suddenly the peace was shattered by the sound of engines. A Junkers with Leutnant Kokke at the controls was also preparing for an air test. Its chocks were pulled aside. Kokke gave a blip of throttle to start it moving around the perimeter. It moved away beyond the Alert Hut where the aircrew spent so much time. Outside it a dozen aircrew – air tests completed – sat sunning themselves. Most of them were younger than Himmel and few had been in the Luftwaffe as long as he had, but they’d come from all manner of units as their clothing showed. They’d seen service on war fronts from Finland to Egypt: British Army bush СКАЧАТЬ