Flight of Eagles

‘Excellent plane, sir. Marginally better than a Hurricane and certainly as good as a Spitfire.’

‘Show them,’ West said. ‘Five minutes only. We don’t want to get you shot down.’

Kelso went up to 3000 feet, banked, looped, beat up the airfield at 300 feet, turned into the wind and landed. He taxied towards them and got out.

‘As I said, sir,’ he told Green. ‘Excellent plane. Mind you, the Hurricane is the best gun platform in the business and, at the end of the day, it usually comes down to the pilot.’

Green turned and said lamely to West, ‘Very interesting, Teddy. I think I’d like a written evaluation from this officer.’

‘Consider it done.’

Green and his two officers went to their staff car and drove away. Munro held out his hand. ‘You’re a very interesting young man.’ He nodded to West. ‘Many thanks, Group Captain.’

He went to his car, Carter limping after him. As they settled in the back, he said, ‘Everything you can find out about him, everything, Jack.’

‘Leave it to me, sir.’

Harry gave the German pilot a packet of cigarettes. ‘Good luck.’

The guards took the boy away and West said, ‘I know a country pub near here where we can get a great black-market meal and you can write that report for me.’

‘Sounds good to me.’ They got in the car and as the driver drove away, Harry lit a cigarette from his spare pack. ‘I asked you were we winning and you said not at the moment. What do we need?’

‘A miracle.’

‘They’re a bit hard to find these days.’

But then it happened. London was accidentally bombed by a single Dornier, the RAF retaliated against Berlin, and from 7 September, Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to turn on London. It was the beginning of the Blitz and gave the RAF time to repair its damaged fighter bases in the South of England.

In a café in Le Touquet, Dolfo Galland was playing jazz on the piano and smoking a cigar when Max came in and sat at the end of the bar.

‘That’s it, Dolfo. The rest is just a matter of time. We had the Tommies beaten and our glorious Führer has just thrown it all away. So what happens now?’

‘We get drunk,’ Dolfo Galland told him. ‘And then we go back to work, play the game to the end.’

5

The Blitz on London, the carnage it caused, was so terrible that the red glow in the sky at night could be seen by Luftwaffe planes taking off in France, and by day, the sky seemed full of bombers, the contrails crisscrossing the horizon of hundreds of RAF and Luftwaffe planes fighting it out.

The Knight’s Cross was awarded to those who shot down more than twenty planes. Galland already had it, plus the Oak Leaves for a second award. Max got the Cross on 10 September, although by then he’d taken care of at least thirty planes.

Harry and Hawk Squadron engaged in all the battles, six or seven sorties a day, flying to the point of exhaustion and taking heavy losses. It finally reached a point where he was the only surviving member of the original squadron. And then came the final huge battles of 15 September: 400 Luftwaffe fighters over the South of England and London against 300 Spitfires and Hurricanes.

In a strange way, nobody won. The Channel was still disputed territory and the Blitz on London and other cities continued, although mainly by night. Hitler’s grandiose scheme for the invasion of England, Operation Sealion, had to be scrapped, but Britain was still left standing alone, and the Führer could now turn his attention to Russia.

In Berlin in early November, it was raining hard as Heinrich Himmler got out of his car and entered Gestapo headquarters in Prinz Albrechtstrasse. A flurry of movement from guards and office staff followed him as he passed through to his office dressed in his black Reichsführer SS dress uniform. He wore his usual silver pince-nez and his face was as enigmatic as ever, as he went up the marble stairs to his suite of offices, where his secretary, a middle-aged woman in the uniform of an SS auxiliary, stood up.

‘Good morning, Reichsführer.’

‘Find Sturmbannführer Hartmann for me.’

‘Certainly, Reichsführer.’

Himmler went into his palatial office, put his briefcase on the desk, opened it, then extracted some papers, sat down and looked them over. There was a knock at the door and it opened.

‘Ah. Hartmann.’

‘Reichsführer.’

Hartmann wore an unusual uniform, consisting of flying blouse and baggy pants Luftwaffe-style, but in field grey. His collar tabs were those of a major in the SS, although he wore the Luftwaffe’s pilot’s badge and sported an Iron Cross First and Second Class. He also wore the German Cross in gold. The silver cuff title on his sleeve said RFSS: Reichsführer SS. This was the cuff title of Himmler’s personal staff. Above it was the SD badge indicating that he was also a member of Sicherheitsdienst, SS Intelligence, a formidable combination.

‘In what way can I be of service, Reichsführer?’

At that time, Hartmann was thirty, almost six feet with a handsome, craggy face, his broken nose – the relic of an air crash – giving him a definite attraction. He wore his hair, more red than brown, in close-cropped Prussian style. A Luftwaffe fighter pilot who had been badly injured in a crash in France before the Battle of Britain, he’d been posted to the Air Courier Service, to transport high-ranking officers in Fieseler Storch spotter planes, when a strange incident had occurred.

Himmler’s visit to Abbeville had been curtailed and, due to bad weather, the Junkers which had been due to pick him up had been unable to get in. As it happened, Hartmann was at the airfield with his Storch, having dropped off a general, and Himmler had commandeered him.

What had happened then was like a bad dream. Rising above low cloud and rain, Hartmann had been bounced by a Spitfire. Bullets shredding his wings, he’d had the courage to go back to the mess below, with the Spitfire in on his tail. A further salvo had shattered his windscreen and rocked the aircraft.

Himmler, incredibly calm, had said, ‘Have we had it?’

‘Not if you like a gamble, Reichsführer.’

‘By all means,’ Himmler told him.

Hartmann had gone down into the mist and rain, 2000, 1000, broken into open country at 500 feet, and hauled back on the control column. Behind him, the Spitfire pilot, losing his nerve, had backed away.

Himmler, a notoriously superstitious man, had always asserted that he believed in God and was immediately convinced that Hartmann was an instrument of divine intervention. Having him thoroughly investigated, he was enchanted to discover that the young man had a doctorate in law from the University of Vienna, and the upshot was that Hartmann was transferred to the SS on Himmler’s personal staff to be his pilot and goodluck charm, but, in view of his legal background, he was also to serve with SS intelligence as the Reichsführer’s personal aide.

Himmler said, ‘The Blitz on London continues. I’ve been with the Führer. We will overcome in the end, of course. Panzers will yet roll up to Buckingham Palace.’

With personal reservations, Hartmann said, ‘Undeniably, Reichsführer.’

‘Yes, well, we let the English stew for the time being and turn to Russia. The Führer has an almost divine inspir-ation here. At most, six weeks should see the Red Menace overcome once and for all.’

Hartmann, in spite of serious doubts, agreed. ‘Of course.’

‘However,’ Himmler said, ‘I’ve spoken to Admiral Canaris about the intelligence situation in England and frankly, it’s not good.’ Canaris headed the Abwehr, German Military Intelligence. ‘As far as I can judge, all our Abwehr agents in Britain have been taken.’

‘So it would appear.’

‘And we can do nothing.’ Himmler was angry. ‘It’s disgraceful!’

‘Not quite, Reichsführer,’ Hartmann said. ‘As you know, I’ve taken over Department 13, after Major Klein died of cancer last year. And I’ve discovered that he recruited a few deep cover agents before the war.’

‘Really? Who would these people be?’

‘Irish mostly, disaffected with the British establishment. Even the Abwehr has had dealings with the Irish Republican Army.’