“Harbinger, this is Icebreaker receiving you loud and clear. Destination is as planned. Please come to preset bearings and execute flight plan ‘Alpha’. Over…”
“Thank Christ!” Thorne breathed, more than a little relieved to say the least. He keyed his transmitter once more. “Thank you, Icebreaker: you don’t know how glad I am to hear your voice! Executing flight plan ‘Alpha’ now: I should see you in about fifteen minutes. Over and out…” Releasing the transmit button, he added for the aircraft’s benefit: “Navigation: preset flight plan Alpha.”
His flight computer retrieved the appropriate information in an instant, and Thorne watched the directional caret on his HDMS visor screen alter to indicate the correct heading. With a single positive movement on the joystick, he took full manual control, pushed his throttle forward and pulled the aircraft into a tight bank to starboard that took him almost 180 degrees around to a heading of east-north-east.
The Lockheed Martin F-35E Lighting II strike fighter lurched and dove headlong for the ocean, almost breaking the sound barrier as it levelled out just two hundred metres above the surface of the Atlantic. Holding the aircraft steady, Thorne reset the automatic pilot and kept his eyes scanning the view ahead for any potential threat as he hurtled past above the darkening Atlantic at high subsonic speed.
They were at 5,000 metres, heading south toward the Channel coast, as Alec Trumbull held the Spitfire at an uncomfortably lower-than-normal cruising speed that was the fastest the Gladiators could manage. It wasn’t safe to fly that way — dangerous to be caught at such a speed disadvantage by an enemy — but leaving the b on their own would’ve been fatal…there was simply nothing to be done about it.
There were fifteen of them now — 610 Sqn had met and formed up with 601 Sqn a few kilometres back, the seven aircraft of that unit as much of a mixed bunch as his own. Fighter Command controllers had informed them that at least three times their number of aircraft were approaching in what was suspected to be an attack on Ventnor radar station. Trumbull ignored the estimate as it mattered little: no matter what number of enemy they came up against, they were the only opposition in the area the RAF could field. All they could do was get on with it and try to shoot down as many as they could.
“Keep your eyes open, Chaps…” Trumbull, the senior officer present, warned over the radio. “The bombers out there ahead of us won’t be alone!”
With the English coast to port, Major Adolf Galland held his J-109E fighter barely above the surface of the Channel as he had for the whole of the trip from France in an effort to avoid British radar. His gruppe of escorting fighters had broken away from the main group and circled west of the bomber formations under direction by Fliegerkorps. Advanced German radar installations at Calais and Cherbourg could pick out RAF aircraft with greater clarity than could the more primitive British systems in return at any distance, aided substantially by the fact that the French coast wasn’t under constant air attack.
Their mottled green and blue-grey camouflage made them difficult to pick out against the dark water of the Channel in the failing light, the only variation in their colour schemes being their distinctive yellow-painted noses that declared they were part of fighter wing JG26 ‘Schlageter’, one of the more accomplished and decorated Luftwaffe combat units of the war so far. Streamlined 300-litre auxiliary fuel tanks hung from their bellies: the J-109E, for all its abilities as a fighter, wasn’t a long range aircraft and the pilots needed every extra litre of fuel they could carry if they were to carry out effective combat operations against the RAF over England.
They could easily see the RAF formation in the light of the setting sun, illuminated clearly against the darkening blue of the sky above them. Just a few kilometres away now, the British fighters were unwittingly flying straight across I/JG26’s path. With one word of attack over the radio, Galland pushed his fighter into a power climb, throttle wide open. The rest of his group — twenty-four fighters in all –climbed as one to intercept, engines howling in fury as their belly-mounted drop tanks fell away.
“Bandits! Bandits! Yellow-Nosed Bastards: three o’clock low!” The call came suddenly over everyone’s headsets from Stiles in his Gladiator on the western edge of the formation. The sighting had been late and from a completely unexpected direction, and the Messerschmitts were among the RAF fighters and firing even as their surprised prey began to separate in an attempt to split the attack. Stiles, the closest, was the first to fall and died almost instantly as machine gun and cannon fire tore his Gladiator to pieces, the burning wreckage spiralling downward and trailing terrible clouds of black smoke. Three other aircraft — two Hurricanes and a Spitfire — fell to that initial pass, one of those also plummeting earthward in flames while the other two pilots at least managed to bail out.
Instantly going to full-throttle and cursing the speed at which they’d been forced to fly in formation, Trumbull threw his Spit into a power dive seeking desperate acceleration. He felt his aircraft shudder as a half-dozen machine gun bullets peppered his rear fuselage to no great effect save for giving him a serious fright and a sobering taste of things to come. An absolutely terrifying cascade of cannon tracer from a different attacker cut a deadly arc across his nose in red streaks a split second later, one of the shells striking his engine cowling a glancing blow and tearing away a jagged section that left a gaping hole over his Merlin’s right cylinder bank. Shrapnel and debris spattered and bounced off his bullet-proof windscreen and fell away behind as wisps of grey smoke began to trail from the hole in the cowling before him. He could feel the engine falter almost instantly and he was left in no doubt the impact had done some kind of damage to his powerplant that might well prove ultimately fatal.
He continued the dive in fear the attacking enemy might follow to finish him off, still accelerating despite his power loss thanks to the benefits of gravity. He couldn’t know that a second after firing, the J-109E had collided in mid-air with one of his own Hawker Typhoons, the British aircraft’s notorious rear empennage having shaken loose under heavy manoeuvres and sending it into an uncontrollable, tailless spin across the Messerschmitt’s flight path to the detriment of both. The tangled mass of wreckage whirled off at an oblique angle, neither pilot surviving the catastrophic impact.
Trumbull managed to level the Spitfire out at just five hundred metres, speed dropping off sharply as he came out of the dive. Even at full power, the clattering Merlin V-12 was struggling to keep the aircraft flying at much better than half its normal top speed at sea level. There was no way he’d be able to play any further part in the air battle above: in truth he’d be lucky to make land again once he’d detoured around it, but twilight was less than forty minutes away and there was at least a chance that he might avoid detection by any other enemy in the area if he stayed low and minded his own business.
Trumbull called in his situation to the others in his squadron before advising Fighter Command of his predicament and that his XO, Flight Lieutenant James was now in command of the flight.
Assuming, of course, that he’s still alive… he added mentally, the thought a singularly unpleasant one. There was nothing more he could do now but keep flying and pray for his engine to hold out.
Max Thorne was a dozen kilometres south-west of the Orkney Islands as his radio unexpectedly came to life.