Not until we’re ready, darling, he murmured under his breath.
He looked down again. Their speed had reached 125 knots. Nearly there, they were so close!
“We just passed the final marker. End of the runway!” Vogel called out.
“Just a little longer,” he replied, intentionally filling his voice with an optimism he no longer felt.
Gutwein held the nose down a bare moment more. Ahead of them, the final warning lights that marked the end of the runway flashed. Tense and anxious before — now, his smile was genuine. He had done all he could. Fate would decide whether his aircraft could fly.
Vogel stared at him, terror in his eyes. “End of the runway!”
Gutwein’s smile turned into a broad, lunatic grin. He pulled the yoke ever so gently toward his chest. The nose lifted slightly off the ground and he felt the massive change in force as the aircraft altered its angle. He carefully maintained some forward pressure to stop the nose from over extending and causing them to stall.
Pine trees lined the edge of the field, approximately five hundred feet past the end of the runway. By the time the Condor reached them, its landing gear were less than ten feet off the highest tree.
“Gear up,” he ordered.
“Landing gear raised,” Vogel acknowledged, as he moved the lever.
The mechanical actuators whined loudly as the taildragger’s wheels folded backwards into their nacelles under the inboard engines.
In the rear-facing engineer’s seat, Krause glanced through the small viewing point in the flooring that gave him a clear view of the Condor’s underbelly. “Gear up, and locked,” he confirmed.
With the drag of the landing gear removed, the Condor was finally able to pick up speed and gain altitude. Gutwein set a course for a steady climb until they reached a cruising height of nine and a half thousand feet. Its technical ceiling was above twenty thousand, but without a pressurized cabin, they were restrained by the thin atmosphere to ten thousand feet.
Gutwein immediately set a northerly course and continued until they reached the English Channel. Vogel unclipped his harness. Taking the secondary role of radio-operator, he headed aft and waited for the report from Germany’s radio tower at Bordeaux. The operator there had been instructed to broadcast any sightings of enemy aircraft throughout the entire region.
A few minutes later, Vogel returned and took his seat again.
Gutwein glanced at him. “Well?”
“We have a clear run down the Channel and into the Atlantic.”
Gutwein closed his eyes and gave a silent prayer of gratitude. “That’s a miracle.”
He took the first shift for a total of four hours, flying over the Channel closer to the French Coast. With the blackout, there was little to see. No one would risk turning their lights on after dark since the war had begun and air raids were common. He passed the most eastern French peninsula of Brest and headed out into the dark Atlantic, setting the course they would try to maintain for the next twenty or more hours.
He unclipped his seatbelt. “Here, take the controls. Maintain this heading. I’m going to take my first sleep shift.”
Vogel confirmed, “I have the controls. Have a good sleep, sir.”
“Wake me if we run into trouble.”
Gutwein headed to a somewhat flat section of floor toward the aft of the fuselage, where an inflatable mattress formed a poor replacement for a bed. For two hours he lay there with his eyes shut, trying to force himself to sleep. It was an impossible task. Within another twenty-four hours he might fail in his mission and that would mean he’d be dead. Alternatively, and somewhat more terrifying still, he might succeed, and perhaps millions would have died because of him.
Both outcomes were abhorrent. His entire mission abominable, but necessary. “Wer die Wahl hat, hat die Qual,” the German proverb advised, meaning, “He who has choice has torment."
Fortunately, he wasn’t burdened by decisions. His choices had dwindled. They were narrowing further with every minute of flight.
After four hours and having checked his wristwatch for what seemed to be the millionth time, he gave up. Gutwein stretched his legs, poured himself a coffee, and headed toward the cockpit.
He stopped midway along the shallow fuselage, where Krause was at the top of a small ladder taking a sighting through the observation dome above. Gutwein waited until Krause had finished and climbed back down.
“How are we looking?” he asked.
“Good,” Krause answered. “Do you want to take your own sighting and confirm our coordinates?”
“Sure.” He put his coffee mug down.
Gutwein took the bubble octant, which was basically a sextant, designed to work through the observation dome, and climbed up to the top of the ladder. The observation dome protruded a single foot above the top of the metal body of the fuselage. The sky was clear above and he had an uninterrupted view of the stars. It was another good omen.
He spotted Polaris and then adjusted the bubble until the octant appeared level. Making a note of the time, he looked through the mirror, adjusting the angle until the star appeared to be on the azimuth. He then read the angle off the mirror. Gutwein made a mental note of the angle and the time using a navigator’s accurate chronometer. This number would later be used to calculate their longitude. He then spotted Sirius and followed the same process until he could accurately read off its angle. This number would be used to calculate their latitude.
Gutwein climbed down the ladder and sat down at the navigator’s table. Krause handed him the book of navigation almanacs. He quietly flicked through the pages until he came up with the matching angles. Navigators measured distance on the globe in degrees, arcminutes, and arcseconds. A nautical mile is defined as 1852 meters, which is exactly one minute of angle along the meridian of the Earth.
He wrote the numbers down.
46°51′05.7" North
And,
21°42′51.9" West
He marked the coordinates on a map of the Atlantic and smiled. Krause had calculated the same numbers. The tail wind was making a considerable improvement in their ground speed. They were making good time.
Gutwein returned to the cockpit and took over the controls, sending Vogel off to try and get some sleep. The next four hours passed relatively quickly. The tail wind even picked up a little. So long as their luck held, they would make it with fuel to spare.
That’s when Krause approached. His jaw was set hard, his concern was palpable.
“What is it?” Gutwein asked.
Krause swallowed. “We have a problem.”
The Lorenz FuG 200 Hohentwiel low UHF-band ASV radar was a new addition to the Condor. Positioned in the nose of the aircraft, the device utilized an array of sixteen horizontally-oriented antennas, which the radio operator had to manually switch between to determine the direction of the enemy. The received signal strength was then displayed on a cathode ray tube, also called a monitor, so the observer or pilot could roughly gauge the target's heading. When it worked, it provided results bordering on the realms of what was considered magic, before the start of the war.
Gutwein felt the fear rise in his throat like acid after a long night drinking heavy whiskey, as he stared at the image.
“Is there any chance this is a false reading?” he asked.
“No,” Krause said, without hesitation. “The exact location may be off slightly, but there’s no doubt about it… we’re on a direct heading for an enemy convoy.”
Gutwein shook his head. Two years ago, this would have been exactly what they were looking for. Now there was too much risk that they would be shot down and the most important mission in the history of the war would be ignobly lost to bad luck.