“‘EMP’…?” Trumbull asked, uncomprehending
“Electro-magnetic pulse,” Thorne explained, forgetting his colleague’s lack of knowledge in that area. “It’s a by-product of a nuclear detonation that burns out electrical circuits and transistors around the blast area, but the effect has a far greater radius in the case of an air burst than it does when the weapon’s detonated at ground level, as this one will be. We’ll be far enough away for that not to be an issue.”
Thorne glanced down as a light began blinking on his instrument panel accompanied by a faint warning tone in his headset. “Oh-ho… looks like we have company. EW’s picking up broadband emissions, which would have to be German coastal search radar.” There was a pause as he checked the details. “Sites to port and starboard now, each about seventy kilometres off beam… probably those sites at Boulogne and Dieppe intelligence warned us about.”
“Will they see us?”
“Unlikely,” Thorne mused slowly. “At only a couple of hundred feet off the deck, we’ll be a bit low for them, and their emissions don’t seem to be completely overlapped. That’s why I chose this direction going in, hoping to slip right between them. The only thing their systems are likely to pick up at all is the bomb under our belly anyway, which is bloody small all things considered, and even if they do see us, it won’t be for long… we’re not doing much short of six hundred miles an hour.”
“Then, if they do see us,” Trumbull deduced quite correctly, “they’ll immediately know who it is…”
“Yes,” Thorne agreed with the astute but unpleasant conclusion as they hurtled on toward the French coast. “That they certainly will!”
The pair of NCOs rostered on that night at the Luftwaffe radar station at Boulogne-sur-Mer did manage to catch a fleeting glimpse of the Lightning at the very limit of their radar’s range as it flew past to the south. The corporal stared into the hooded cover of his pale, green display for a few moments, trying to lock the intermittent signal down before calling over his staff-sergeant. The signal was gone again a moment, but whatever it was had been travelling fast enough to warrant calling the incident in. There’d been other occasions when objects had been picked up moving very fast — much faster than any normal aircraft — but those times had usually been preceded by forewarning from Fliegerkorps, and normally accompanied by an expected flight plan.
“Low level, extreme range, and heading due east,” The senior NCO mused slowly, staring at his partner. “I think we should definitely report this one to headquarters…”
Thorne and Trumbull flew on, crossing the French coast between Ault and Le Tréport as they held a steady easterly course, and Thorne was fully prepared as the jet reached Waypoint Two, a few kilometres south-west of Abbeville. This time their course changed by only five or so degrees, and the autopilot also took the F-35E into a sudden climb. Thorne reached across and manually deactivated his iPod, leaving the cockpit silent, and he rested his hands on the controls, ready to take over if anything unexpected occurred as g-forces pressed them into their seats for a moment. Any positive movement on the joystick would’ve deactivated the autopilot, but Thorne kept his hand steady, instead flicking through his various systems a few times as he switched from navigation, to air-, to ground-search.
His AN/APG-81 radar suddenly picked up three separate airborne contacts at ranges from sixty to one hundred kilometres, all three well dispersed across their frontal arc. The flight profiles suggested they were regular, piston-engined aircraft — they were travelling at speeds far slower than any Flanker was likely to be capable of.
“Looks like one of those radar sites did see us… we have some company,” Thorne observed, getting Trumbull’s attention immediately. “I’m picking up centimetric radar from three inbound bogies… almost certainly night fighters.” He shrugged the news off, far less concerned than his passenger. “They won’t worry us any… too far away.” He gave a slight grimace. “Gonna switch over to ground attack now and see if I can lock onto the target: there’s some more of those broadband ground radars up ahead, and one’s real close to where the target should be… I’m thinking it’d make sense they’d have a search system set up in the area to support any protective flak sites.”
“I suppose they’d normally expect more warning that this,” Trumbull observed quietly.
“We’ll definitely catch they by surprise,” Thorne agreed, speaking more to himself as he adjusted his ground-search modes and increased the range reading to take in the approaching target area. As the aircraft levelled out again at 1,000 metres, the radar was able to pick out much more of the landscape ahead, and the largest contact by far was almost exactly in the same position as the nearest of the ground radar emissions he was picking up.
“Have a look at that on the target screen, Alec… there’s a big contact sitting in the middle of nowhere up ahead that’s emitting radar, and its surrounded by a whole cluster of smaller ones… what do you make of that?”
“Large structure or cluster of buildings surrounded by flak emplacements…?”
“Works for me,” Thorne said grimly. “Batten your hatches, Alec: I think we have our target.” He designated the largest signal on his radar, and with a last, deep sigh of released breath, he armed the B83 thermonuclear bomb clamped beneath the F-35E’s belly.
17. Slings and Broken Arrows
Wehrmacht Western Theatre Forward HQ
Amiens, Northern France
Sunday
September 8, 1940
The special briefing had been an exceptionally long one, something that no one had found surprising, and was only just winding up sometime after one that morning. There’d been a lot to go through as Reuters and Schiller provided final, detailed briefings to all of the heads of the Wehrmacht’s different services and the direct theatre commanders that’d be on the spot, commanding the massed air land and sea forces collected for Operation Sealion. The Führer himself had been forced to remain at Berchtesgaden due to maintenance problems with his personal transport, but he’d given assurances he’d arrive in the morning for a second round of talks. In his absence, a carefully-worded and quite inspiring telegram had been read that evening to the entire gathering in the main briefing room, received unanimously with cheers and applause as many gave Nazi salutes in appreciation at the end.
A late-night cocktail party had been laid on with full catering, again at the insistence of the Chancellor, and was now in full swing on the ground floor, in one of the mansion’s larger ballrooms. A 15-piece jazz band performed in one corner, while appropriately-dressed young women specially flown in by the BDM — the League of German Maidens — were on hand to dance with the officers and gentlemen of the Wehrmacht while excellent food and French champagne were served from all sides. There was good food, heavy drinking and much dancing, and many of those who’d been stationed at front lines for some time now in preparation for the invasion made the most of such a rare opportunity and enjoyed themselves greatly.
Reichsmarschall Kurt Reuters hated every moment of the revelry and the celebrations. He was still far too tense and far too despondent over the loss of Carl Ritter for him to be in any mood for socialising, and in truth he’d spent the entire day stressed about the impending arrival of The Führer. That his appearance had now been rescheduled until the next morning had merely postponed his discomfort and had served merely to allow more time for increased anguish to build rather than any real relief. The reconnaissance flight had gone a long way toward assuaging everyone’s concerns regarding the continued existence of Hindsight as a coherent force at Scapa Flow, but there was still a lingering doubt at the back of Reuters’ mind that simply would not dissipate.