Chapter 2
Over the Kattegat, between Denmark and Sweden,
11 July 1941
Â
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, a Lockheed Hudson MK IV reconnaissance plane, plummeted three hundred feet in the turbulent, iron-gray skies.
“Jesus Christ, Bunny!” bomb-aimer/navigator Peter Madsen shouted. “Hang on to it!”
Pilot Sergeant Douglas “Bunny” Walker pulled back on the yoke and clawed for the handle next to him that would drop his seat. He knew that in the storm he was certain to be bounced about, regardless of the seat belt, and smash his head on the roof. His hand clamped on the lever and pumped it down. Satisfied that his head was safe, he gripped the yoke attached to the steering column, trying to control the wild yawing and pitching of the aircraft. He drove his feet into the rudder pedals and yanked back on the yoke, fighting the full force of the gale. He felt the tension of the hydraulically assisted control cables through the pedals as they pulled the rudders to the right or left. That was really what flying was aboutâ
feeling
your airplane: how she responded to the controls, whether she was sloppy or crisp or sluggish. But against this tempest was a pure muscle jobâjust keep the damned thing from flipping over or going into a stall.
The two 1,050-horsepower Pratt and Whitney Wasp engines barely gave
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enough power to maintain headway in the storm. It was always dirty weather over this miserable stretch of waterâice, sleet, snow, and rain, or a combination of anything always seemed to drive up from somewhere to batter
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so that the crew climbed out of the twin-tailed aircraft with bruised bodies and numbed senses. It was a contest of mind and skill between Bunny and the storm, and the prize was the ugly little Hudson and the four frightened men within her. All of this for a few pictures.
Bunny clamped his oxygen mask close to his mouth so that he could be heard on the intercom above the roar of the wind. “Johnny? See anything?”
Gunner Johnny Thompson, in the Boulton-Paul dorsal turret at the rear of the aircraft, said, “Lightning, Bunny. Very impressive.”
Suddenly a great burst of air slapped the plane and threw it toward the earth.
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fell through the hole in the sky and Bunny struggled to bring it back to altitude. Continuous sheets of ice and rain beat against the windshield so that he was flying virtually blind. His arms ached from fighting the Hudson and he began to curse both the aircraft and the storm softly. “How much farther, Peter? My bloody arms are falling off.”
“Weather Ops said we should have had this for only thirty minutes or so and then clear sailing.”
“Weather Ops is wrong again,” Bunny said. “I've been at it for close to an hour.” He could hear things tumbling around inside the aircraft and he was glad that they weren't carrying anything more than a bomb bay load of cameras. That's all that they ever carried and frankly, he was getting sick and tired of it. Some genius had pulled them out of Royal Air Force rotation and handed them over to Royal Navy Coastal Command, so all that they did now was run about this disgusting straight and take thousands of pictures. He watched the sky through the maddeningly slow windshield wipers, searching for the slightest hint of clearing. The thick film of rainwater covering the windshield obscured the sky. The wipers should have taken care of it, but they were never designed for gales like this. Bunny was flying deaf, dumb, and blind, he decided, like those little monkeys he had seen at a carnival in Bournemouth. Hear no evil, speak no evil . . . The yoke tried to jerk itself out of his hands and it became a personal contest againâno longer the plane or the storm, just Bunny Douglas and that bloody yoke that threatened to break his wrists and twist his fingers offâtaking a perverse pleasure in revealing that it was no longer an inanimate object; it was alive.
See no evil
, Bunny thought, completing the triad.
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yawed sharply and Bunny kicked the rudder to bring it back on course.
For God's sake
, Bunny thought,
get a grip on yourself
. It was fatigue, he knew. When your body gets tired and your mind loses its ability to function, your thoughts wander, float really, and reality and common sense simply disappear.
He felt the yoke begin to relax. They were coming out of the storm. He quickly pumped the seat up so that he could see clearly over the nose of the Hudson. The fourth member of their crew, Radio Operator Prentice Newman, was at his side.
“Wasn't that a ride, Skipper?” Newman said in a voice that Bunny knew all too well. A man sometimes forced nonchalance into his voice to hide the fear that ate at him.
“Would you like to go back, Prentice?”
“Skipper, no!” Prentice Newman never called Douglas Bunny like the other members of the crew. “It just doesn't seem right,” he had said.
“Bunny,” Peter called. “I see sunshine ahead. Time to go upstairs?”
“Right you are, Peter. Angels twenty in ten.” Bunny turned to Prentice and jerked his thumb toward the rear of the aircraft. “Go roost now. Things are going to get busy.”
The camouflaged Hudson slipped out of the remaining clouds and began climbing to twenty-thousand feet, as Bunny adjusted the flaps.
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had been lucky. The storm had been poised on the edge of Leka Island and had hidden the plane's approach from the Germans. Now all that remained was to make three flights over the island, cameras rolling, and run for home. That was all there was to it. Simple as that.
“Keep your eyes open, chaps,” Bunny said. He knew Peter was prone in his bomb-aimer's position, tracking the approach, ready to open the bomb bay doors and squeeze the tit to start the cameras rolling. He felt the vibration of the Boulton Paul turret revolving to search the skies. It mounted twin 7.7-mm machine guns and Johnny was a fine shot, but the guns were too light and their range was too limited. And the German fighters that flew up to kill them were too fast.
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had to get in and out before the fighters appeared as tiny, lethal specks in the sky.
“Flack's up,” Bunny said, watching the powdery brown flowers appear in the distance. They were searching for the Hudson, a few odd shots seemingly cast into the sky as if the German antiaircraft crews were going through the motions. But these shots were more than perfunctoryâthey were exploratory. When the crews found the altitude and range, more little brown flowers would follow, and creep closer to the aircraft. “How are you, Peter? Ready to go?”
“Straight on, Bunny. Just a few seconds more.”
Bunny Walker looked at his watch. They had eighteen minutes from the time that they sighted the target to the arrival of the fighters. Three passes and then they were out.
“Doors open!” Peter said. Bunny heard the soft hum of the door motors. “One, two . . . three. Shoot,” the bomb-aimer said, and Bunny knew that a dozen cameras were rapidly snapping images of Leka Island.
Suddenly flak exploded a hundred yards to the left of the aircraft. More bursts followed just behind and to the right. Bunny heard shrapnel strike
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. It was the sound of hail falling on a tin roof and on a summer's day at home would have been nothing more than comforting. But it was not hail and there was nothing comforting about the shrapnel punching holes in
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's thin aluminum skin. There was vengeance in the dark flowers as they tracked
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across the sky. Bunny felt his beloved plane shudder and the tempo of the flak increased.
“Anyone hit?” he asked.
“Been practicing, haven't they?” Johnny said.
“I think those chaps mean to kill us, Skipper,” Prentice said. It was a joke but his voice was a little too high pitched and strained, and it quivered noticeably.
“Bring us around, will you, Bunny?” Peter said. “Ready for another run. Stay away from those bloody brown flowers. They make me nervous.”
“Right,” Bunny said. “Here we go.” He had eased the Hudson into a sharp bank when the port engine began to shudder. Bunny felt himself go cold as his eyes shot to the engine. He saw a thin black stream trailing along the upper edge of the wing through his window. He searched the instrument panel for the port engine oil-pressure gauge. The pressure was dropping rapidlyâthey were leaking oil from the oil tank bay. He quickly switched off the engine and feathered the Hamilton Standard propeller. “We've lost the port engine,” he said.
“What?” Peter said. Bunny heard the fear in his voice. He had every reason to be afraid. At best
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could get 177 miles an hour. On two engines. Now she had one. When the fighters showed up it would be a slaughter.
“We're going home, chaps,” Bunny said. “Close it up. Peter, get ready to throw out everything not nailed down. Prentice, tell base what's happened and then help Peter. Stay away from the rear door once you've popped it off. I don't want either one of you going out. Lie on the deck, one passes to another who chucks it out the door. Johnny, you're our eyes.”
“Yes, Bunny.”
“Don't fail us.”
“No, Bunny.”
Pilot Sergeant Douglas Walker reached inside his flight suit and squeezed the tiny stuffed rabbit that he kept there, three times. It was a ritual before each flight: three squeezes and everything would come out splendidly. Now he felt his hand trembling inside his suit and he realized just how frightened he was. They were hundreds of miles behind enemy lines in a damaged aircraft barely capable of keeping itself in the air. Still, it would do no good to let the other fellows know how afraid he was. He pushed the rabbit deeper into his suit and zipped it closed.
“Peter? You mustn't forget to throw those devilish cameras out, will you? Bit of irony there.”
“The cameras, Bunny?”
“Every last one of the bastards.”
“What a splendid idea.”
“Bunny!” Johnny said. “Five o'clock. Three aircraft.”
“How far out, Johnny?”
“Ten miles.”
They would be on the Hudson IV in minutes and then the damaged aircraft would be doomed. Johnny could keep them at bay for a moment or two; he was a game shot with a good eye. But the end would be the same: the ME 109s would line up and come in fast and it would be three hawks on a very plump pigeon with an injured wing.
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had no place to goânowhere to hide.
The storm!
It hung in front of him, a great gray wall of boiling clouds, and wind and rain that provided the only shelter they could hope for. If they could reach it they could escape the German fighters. But if they reached it, they had to survive its fury. They had half the power that they needed in a storm that could tear them apart. But what choice did they have?
Bunny began to ease the yoke down, diving to build up speed.
“Johnny? Can you keep them away from us until I reach those clouds?”
“I'll try, Bunny, but don't take too long, will you? They look angry to me.”
Bunny kept the Hudson's nose pointed toward the ominous mountain of clouds before them. Bolts of lightning flashed across the face of the dark mass illuminating fissures, valleys, and peaks so dense that they might have been solid. More lightning glowed deeply within the body of the storm as it hungrily anticipated the arrival of the damaged aircraft. The clouds seethed across the sky with violence, promising an endless wave of assaults should
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survive the first encounter.
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was behaving sluggishly with just one engine turning. There was more than that. She was a fine ship, one of the first to come over from Lockheed in the States, but she was past her prime and she wanted nothing more than quiet duty along the English coast, looking for downed bomber crews or scouting for E-boats. Even with everything thrown out that could be and Bunny's right hand nursing the throttles to the starboard engine up for more power, she had reached her limit.
The twin 7.7-mm spat a burst and two dark streaks flashed by Bunny, one on either side of the Hudson. Their roar startled him. This would be no contest.
“Peter, Prentice! Get to the beam guns. Keep those bloody bastards off us,” Bunny said. He glanced at the clouds. God, were they moving away? Trying to elude him? Playing a devilish game of keep-away now, when he needed them to stay alive?
“Here they come,” Johnny called. “Nine o'clock. Six o'clock high.”
Bunny heard the hammering of the Hudson's guns and felt the vibration run through the fuselage. Suddenly he felt the unmistakable tremor of bullets striking
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, sharp blows from the 20mm cannons aboard the German fighters. The starboard window exploded and cold air rushed in with the force of a hurricane. They'd be chewed up. Fuselage, engines, controls, flaps, elevators, wings . . . men.
Bunny's hands were numb and his eyes were watering from the frigid air blasting into the cabin. He looked over the nose of
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, searching for the best place to enter the storm. They were running out of time. Too far to go. The clouds were too far away. He needed the port engine; without it they had no chance.