There’d been no danger whatsoever as far as conventional radar detection was concerned. Continual air raids over the preceding weeks had destroyed Fighter Command’s early warning systems right across Britain in an ongoing, back-and-forth battle between the two combatants. Some RAF radar sites might be repaired well enough to become operational again here or there around the country, but the moment they began transmitting again, Wehrmacht RDF and ELINT units on the French Coast would then detect them, triangulate their positions and pass them on to the Luftwaffe for further air raids to be scheduled. On that particular morning however, Fighter Command radars were basically out of action right across the eastern length of the British Isles, and Luftwaffe fighters and bombers could — and would — roam quite freely across Southern England that Wednesday as they did most days, detected by radar or not, while what little RAF opposition there was to be sent up against them remained completely dependent on an undermanned, overworked Royal Observer Corps.
Catching the Hindsight base off guard was a more difficult proposition however, although over a month without any real threat or alert had lulled the group — and Scapa Flow anchorage in general — into something of a false sense of security. Concentration was at a low ebb, and there was a pervading sense of a relaxation that was unwarranted and also, as was about to be proven, somewhat dangerous.
Warning of the incoming raid itself might well have been even later had it not been for the efforts of a single RN destroyer on ASW duty, a few kilometres west of the Orkneys. HMS Esk, built in the mid-thirties and displacing around 1,400 tonnes, was one of nine E-Class destroyers. Eight, including Esk, were in service with the Royal Navy while one, HMCS Gatineau, served with the Canadian navy. She was of a standard design as RN destroyers went, with four 4.7-inch guns in single turrets, one solitary 3-inch AA mount amidships and two quadruple torpedo tube mounts: only the depth charge throwers at her stern and the ASDIC unit mounted at her bow made her anything speciaclass="underline" something that made her potentially deadly in her mission as a sub hunter.
One thing she didn’t have was radar. Warship sets were slowly becoming available for air and surface detection and gunnery, however the fitting of technically advanced equipment such as radar started at the top and filtered down. Battleships and aircraft carriers received them first, then battlecruisers and cruisers and so on. As Esk steamed roughly due north through those cold, morning waters, it was her port bridge lookout that first spotted the enemy flight visually at a range of perhaps no more than two or three thousand metres. The aircraft were difficult to pick up so close to the surface of the grey ocean, masked as they were by the backdrop of a still-dark western horizon.
The flight howled past a thousand metres off the destroyer’s stern, too far away for the ship’s lighter air defences to take a shot or two, and the aircraft were already moving quickly away from the ship to the east at better than 250 knots by the time her 3-inch AA mount had loaded and rotated to track the unexpected target. The gun belatedly managed a few shots before they were out of range entirely, all of them bursting well short and too high. The one thing the destroyer could still do however was flash a warning to HMS Proserpine of the impending attack — something Esk’s captain did immediately.
Events progressed quickly as sirens cut through the morning air and sent uniformed men scurrying from barrack rooms in all directions to man defences and/or take cover; first at the anchorage itself and then also at Hindsight and along the flight line. The crews of the two 2K22M ‘Tunguska’ flak units kept their turrets in the expected direction, although the line of hills through the central part of the island prevented their tracking radars from picking up any targets as yet. At various points about the airfield, men readied manually aimed .50 calibre Brownings from small gunpits connected to the slit trenches, long belts of ammo glinting dully as they snaked to their weapons from ammo boxes. Gun crews for newly-installed 40mm Bofors and 3.7-inch AA guns manned their weapons and also turned them westward, waiting for a visual sign of their enemy.
Thorne came bolting from the barracks at full speed just seconds after the alert was raised, Jack Davies following close behind. Both arrowed straight for the flight line where their respective aircraft awaited in sheltered revetments, maintained in a state prepared for an emergency take off under just such circumstances. As they neared the runway, the duty crews of the Extender and the Galaxy were also beginning start-up procedures. Given enough time, they might hope to get the huge cargo jets airborne and up to an altitude that was well out of harm’s way and unattainable for piston-engined aircraft.
Ground crew already had their engines turning over as Thorne and Davies reached the fighter jets. Five AIM-120D AMRAAM medium range missiles had been added beneath each of the F-35E’s wings, mounted on single-rail launchers outboard and two twin-rail launchers beneath the inboard pylons, making for a total of ten extra missiles to complement two more similar missiles carried within the aircraft’s internal bays in partnership with the usual pair of heat-seeking Sidewinders. Expensive and complex as the radar-guided AIM-120 was, it was deemed necessary as piston-engined aircraft might not generate enough heat for an IR-guided missile to consistently maintain adequate lock-on unless fired from close range — a situation that mightn’t be possible to achieve in combat.
As Davies began to taxi his plane out onto the runway, Thorne also increased the throttle on his own engines and prepared the Lightning II for its shortened take-off run, sliding on his flight helmet as he watched the Raptor move to the middle of the asphalt. Thorne grimaced and shook his head to clear his fuzzy thoughts: his head ached badly, as did the muscles and joints of his upper body. Waking up with a hangover, half slumped in an uncomfortable armchair wasn’t something that he’d recommend as a rule, but it’d happened all the same. That morning was the tenth time so far that month that he’d been drunk enough the night before to pass out in an armchair in the Officers Mess, only to be found alone by his orderly early the next morning… the event frequent enough now for the corporal to have become accustomed to the situation and remain prepared for it.
Thorne had to admit it was hard to understand why anyone would want to wake up with a hangover at all, and having to deal with one while trying to pilot a complex and very loud fighter jet made it all the more difficult to comprehend. The irrationality of the fact that he’d been putting up with those morning hangovers quite frequently for almost a year prior to arriving in 1940 never consciously occurred to him nevertheless, so carefully had his subconscious pushed the ramifications of it from his mind in the interest of rationalisation.
The sound of heavy AA guns firing in the middle distance also began to rise over the sounds of take off, and he turned his attention back to his own controls and commenced the Lightning II’s take-off sequence. As he pushed his throttle forward and the aircraft began to move along the taxi area he was using as a runway, he almost laughed as it occurred to him he was probably still more than a little drunk.
‘If you drink, then drive, you’re a bloody idiot!’ He remembered that suddenly, the slogan appearing from somewhere deep within his memory. Had that been from an Australian anti-drink/driving advertisement or a British one? He couldn’t remember clearly now, although he suspected from the style, that it was probably Australian. It mattered little: there were more than a few things he couldn’t clearly remember these days, and the origin of an anti-DUI advert seemed the least of his worries.