Oh my God, my boys are going to be shot to pieces.
He pulled his plane round to follow the banking German fighters and found himself lining up nicely behind one of them.
‘No-o-o-o -’
The voice sounded like Jeff’s. It cut off suddenly and he saw in his peripheral vision one of the P51s erupt into a ball of fire. Ferrelli let his cannons fire in anger for the first time, and the tracers whipped forward, clipping the right wing of the Me-109 ahead of him. A twisted sliver of metal broke away from the wing and spun towards him, clattering noisily off his canopy and thankfully not shattering it. The Me-109 feinted to the left and then pulled sharply to the right. Ferrelli acted quickly enough to keep on the German pilot’s tail, but the German had extended the distance between them.
‘Fuck! Oh Jesus!’ The voice of one of his boys.
‘Give us a goddamn chance, you shits.’ That was Smitty’s voice.
‘You okay, Smitty?’ he shouted instinctively. There was no answer back, but that probably meant the guy was too busy to talk right now.
He let off a second burst. This time, despite the increased range, some of the bullets found the body of the plane and he was rewarded with another spinning shard of metal hurtling perilously close to the canopy, and a spray of oil that spattered against his glass like greasy rain. The Me-109 was now leaving a faint trail behind it, not smoke unfortunately, but oil.
‘Got you, you sonofabitch!’ he shouted so loud his throat rasped painfully.
The German dived and broke left, pulling away from the skirmish. Ferrelli decided not to follow him. ‘Damaged’ was as good as ‘out’ in this ball game. Instead he decided to see whether he could help any of his boys out. He quickly scanned the sky around him.
Jeeez, it’s a fucking massacre.
He could see three planes from his squadron descending away from the epicentre of the battle, trailing thick columns of smoke. Another was being tailed by two Me-109s and as he watched, the combined firepower of both planes disintegrated the tail fin and stabilisers. The Mustang spun along the length of its fuselage and quickly dipped down into a dive, continuing to spin furiously, shedding debris like a wet dog shaking off water, as it began its two-minute journey towards France. He heard a protracted scream over the radio that quickly became a high-pitched whimper of despair and eventually faded into a wash of static.
He hoped that wasn’t young Jake, but it had sounded like the kid.
In the distance he saw the B-17 levelling out, at a quick guess, three or four thousand feet below.
These Me-109s are protecting it. Ferrelli decided that his unlikely suspicion had been right, the plane had to be carrying something or someone important. Perhaps carrying some high-ranking Nazis to safety, perhaps even Hitler himself.
I was right, goddammit!
‘Who’s alive, for fuck’s sake? Call in, call in!’ he shouted angrily into his radio.
‘I’m still here, sir.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘Wally, sir.’
‘Me too!’
‘Jake?’
‘Yessir. I’ve taken some damage, but I’m okay.’
‘Anyone else?’
‘Joe here, sir.’
‘Smitty? Smitty?’ Ferrelli expected the cheeky fella to answer. But the radio remained ominously silent. Eight of my boys out of action, just like that, in the space of half a minute.
Ferrelli looked around the sky above him, now smudged with smoke and fading trails. He could see three P51s holding tightly together above the area in which the skirmish had commenced; they reminded him of three little pigs huddled together waiting for the big bad wolf to rip them to shreds.
He leaned over and peered down at the cloud carpet below. The Me-109s were hungrily pursuing two more of his squadron, both of them trailing black cords of burning oil. He watched them all disappear into the clouds, leaving the bomber defended now by only two fighters. The other Me-109s would be back in less than a minute, having finished off those poor bastards.
‘Listen . . . guys, these fighters are defending the bomber. I reckon there’s somebody real important inside . . . so that’s what we got to go after, capiche?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘All right, let’s do it quickly before those other Krauts realise their mistake.’
Max watched the Messerschmitts dive past them in pursuit of the two Mustangs. ‘Where are they going?’
‘Stupid bastards. Think they’re hunting deer,’ said Pieter over the interphone, still manning the roof turret.
Max switched from interphone to radio. ‘Schröder! What the hell are you doing?’
‘Don’t worry, I’m right here, look out of your left window.’
Max did so and saw Schröder sliding into position seventy feet off their left wing tip. ‘Erich’s on your right-hand side.’
He leaned forward, craning his neck and looked out of the right window to see Erich Köttle waving back at him from a similar flanking position.
‘I sent the others after those two . . . we should try and prevent anyone we encounter making it away and raising the alarm . . . yes?’ Schröder said.
Max nodded, it made sense.
‘Fine. I counted six or seven destroyed. Those two your boys are chasing makes eight or nine, that leaves us a few unaccounted for. Where the hell are they?’
‘I’m looking for them,’ Schröder answered quickly.
Pieter’s voice came through on the interphone, loud, alarmed. ‘Max, four coming in on our six, high!’
‘I see ’em too!’ answered Hans.
Max heard the guns in the top turret rattle angrily and brass shell cases cascaded down the ladder from the turret onto the floor just outside the cockpit. Pieter was whooping with joy, or fear.
Seconds after Pieter had started firing he heard a deafening drumming of bullets impacting the fuselage, running from the rear to the front, as if some giant wearing hob-nail boots was sprinting heavily down the spine of the plane. Glass from the roof turret shattered and he heard Pieter yelp in shock.
The machine gun went silent.
With a deafening roar, four P51s swooped low over the bomber’s cockpit and out in front. Max found himself instinctively ducking. Two of them banked left, the other two right, climbing up and to the sides, preparing for a second pass.
Schröder and Erich automatically took the opportunity to break their flanking positions and run in pursuit.
‘Shit,’ Max muttered under his breath. He heard boots on a rung of the ladder leading down from the roof turret. ‘Pieter, are you okay?’ The regulator on his oxygen mask prevented him from fully turning round to see if that was him. ‘Pieter?’ He heard the shuffling of boots at the bottom and then felt a hand grip the back of his seat. He turned to look up; it was Pieter. His face was darkened by soot and several small cuts, and Max noted his leather flying jacket was ripped and slashed in several places.
‘You okay?’
Pieter nodded. ‘I’m fine . . . those bastards have wrecked the roof turret. Shit, I manage to fire - what? - twenty, thirty rounds, and then they bloody well break my gun.’
Max, relieved, allowed himself a grin. ‘I think they were just trying to tell you you’re a shitty gunner.’
Pieter slumped into the co-pilot’s seat and plugged himself in. ‘Four years I’ve waited to have a go, and I get to fire one bloody burst,’ he grumbled to himself.
Hans watched through the left waist window as two of the Mustangs climbed around the side of them in preparation for another approach from behind. He aimed his MG-81 at a space forty feet in front of the leading fighter plane, but decided the shot would be wasted, they were too far away. In pursuit, and taking a shallower arc, was Schröder. Hans watched with growing respect as the pilot gained on the two American planes, their inexperience showing as they made their way in a lazy, careless curve towards the rear of the bomber.
Hans knew what Schröder was waiting for; he was waiting until they rolled on th
eir sides dipping their left wings to pull them round into a position behind the bomber. It would expose to him the largest possible profile. The leading P51 rolled predictably and began to swerve down and to the right, taking it towards a perfect tailing position, when Schröder opened fire on it.
Hans watched as the glass canopy shattered, and several fragments of plane and pilot showered out of the cockpit. A moment later the entire plane disappeared within a ball of fire and smoke. The flames mushroomed lazily up into the sky, while half a dozen large, tattered portions of the plane spun downwards, trailing spirals of smoke behind them.
‘Fuck, Schröder’s good!’ Hans shouted into the interphone.
‘What’s up? Have they bagged another?’ he heard Max ask.
‘Yes, it just ripped open. He must’ve hit the fuel tank.’
Stef shouted across the noisy waist compartment. ‘Hans, the others are coming in again! They’re coming in on my side!’
‘Swap guns!’ Hans shouted back, and shuffled awkwardly past Stef on the floorboards now littered with brass shell casings. He pulled the MG-81 round to face towards the rear and saw three of the P51s lining up behind each other and approaching from the rear. ‘I can’t bring the gun round on them. They’re drifting in right behind us!’
They’ve worked out there’s no one operating the tail-gun.
‘Okay, Hans, when you think they’re close enough, I’ll pull to the right -’
‘No, left, I’m manning the left waist-gun.’
‘The left, then . . . that should bring them round into a position for you to get a clear shot.’
‘Right,’ Hans replied.
He leaned towards the window, looking back as best he could, but the P51s had drifted behind the tail fin and out of sight.
‘Stef, can you see them?’
Stef leaned over the right-hand waist-gun, nearly poking his head out into the roaring wind; he looked back and managed to see the tip of one wing beyond their tail fin. ‘They’re right on us!’
Max heard Stef’s warning and pulled the plane sharply to the left. As he did so the P51s momentarily fell within the arc of fire of the left waist-gun. Hans immediately took the opportunity to fire at the leading fighter as it roared towards them, now no more than a hundred yards away. The heavy-calibre bullets ripped into the underbelly of the fighter and almost immediately smoke began to spout from it. The American pilot fired a responding burst towards the waist-gun and a stream of bullets stitched a row of ragged holes either side of the window as Hans simultaneously let go of the gun and dropped to the wooden floor. The fighter plane screamed close over the top of the bomber’s mid-section, the end of the volley over-shooting them.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’ Hans shouted as he hugged the rough wooden planks, a coarse splinter embedded in one cheek.
That was one of them; there were two more behind it. A second volley raked along the mid-section of the plane and another row of ragged holes appeared along the roof of the fuselage.
Stef dropped to the floor beside Hans, eyes widened with shock. He lay beside Hans, hugging the floor, eyes locked on him.
‘You all right?’ Hans shouted amidst the roar of whistling air. Stef only blinked.
They heard the volley from the third fighter plane pass over the top of the plane harmlessly, followed by the roar of its passing.
His engine was making an unpleasant whining noise, and he could hear the clatter of something loose rattling against the underside of his plane. Ferrelli knew he’d taken some damage, but so far the plane wasn’t telling him anything too bad. He just prayed whatever was loose and dangling beneath his Mustang wasn’t a part of the landing gear.
He looked back over his shoulder to see the bomber swiftly receding. Jake was behind him, and behind Jake, now passing over the back of the bomber and rising to join them, was Joe Lakeland. His two boys seemed to be in good shape, although Jake’s left wing was leaking aviation fuel.
Jesus . . . all that’s left of my squadron.
Beyond the B-17 he saw the two Me-109s that had been guarding it getting ready to pursue them, and in the distance, emerging from the clouds below, the other German fighters were returning.
Ferrelli clamped his jaw angrily. The whole bloody dogfight had lasted little more than four or five minutes, and nine of his young men were dead or missing. He hoped one or two of them had managed to bail out of their planes, but it seemed unlikely. The attack had been ferocious, the German fighters it seemed had been determined to not just disable them, but ensure none of them got away. They had pursued those two guys relentlessly, at the risk of exposing the bomber. Ferrelli guessed they were keen to ensure that nobody walked away from this exchange alive to spread the word.
Keeping a low profile, it seemed, was pretty high up the agenda for these sons of bitches.
Screw this.
‘Guys, we’re getting the hell out of here,’ he muttered into the radio. ‘I don’t think they want anyone crying wolf.’
‘Yes sir,’ replied Jake and Joe simultaneously.
‘When we hit the clouds, we’ll head north . . . let’s go.’
Ferrelli pulled his stick hard and rolled over into a steep dive towards the clouds below and the last two men of his squadron swiftly followed suit.
Pieter watched the Mustangs disappear below them. ‘You know, I think our bloody cover’s blown now,’ he said to Max.
Max nodded.
It had been a relatively easy victory for them. Veterans versus raw recruits. Schröder’s boys had made a short and ruthless job of them and they’d done well to prevent all but three escaping. But that would be enough to raise the alarm. He wondered how quickly the information would filter back. If the Americans and British were already on some kind of high alert, the news would travel fast. It would all be down to how many planes they had deployed in this part of France as to whether they would have another run-in. Surely, there were very few planes in the area that could respond at short notice to look for them?
Right now, Max decided, they needed to concentrate on making for the airfield outside Nantes. The 109s would be on the last of their fuel by then and, having seen how effective they had been, he didn’t want to contemplate flying for long without them close by.
Max switched to radio. ‘Schröder, what’s your status?’
‘We lost one, Jonas. Everyone else is fighting fit.’
They’ll have burned a lot of fuel during that dogfight.
‘What are you all showing for fuel?’
It was a few seconds before Schröder responded, clearly conferring with his men first. ‘We’ll make it. It might be a close-run thing, though.’
Max consulted briefly with Stefan on their position; they were about ninety minutes away from the west coast of France. They would arrive sometime around eight in the morning. He hoped those snow soldiers on the ground were in position and ready to go.
Chapter 39
Mission Time: 5 Hours, 25 Minutes Elapsed
7.30 a.m., an airfield outside Nantes
Koch tore another mouthful from the loaf of bread. It was good; the dough was dense and chewy, almost rubbery, while the crust crumbled in a brittle, flaky way, like pastry. It was so different from the bread he was used to, it amazed him how much a basic food substance, such as bread, could vary so much from place to place.
‘Good bread,’ he managed to say with a full mouth. ‘Almost like cake, sponge, you know?’
Büller nodded.
‘You want some?’ Koch held the mauled loaf out to him.
‘No, sir, I’m not too hungry.’
Koch patted Büller’s shoulder; he understood.
He checked his watch; the radio signal had been due for a while now. They had received one in the early hours confirming the planes had departed and they would be signalling again when they were half an hour away from the airfield. It had been stressed that Koch and his men should secure the airfield as close as possible to the time of arrival of the planes. Too early a
nd news of the surprise attack might filter to some nearby forces in time for them to respond and take it back before the approaching planes could make their stop for fuel. Timing was going to be everything with this raid.
Koch had sent some of his men out to reconnoitre the airfield at first light. They had come back with good news. It was a small supply strip, mostly occupied by ground crew, there to maintain the occasional Dakotas passing through. A handful of American soldiers guarded the road in, manning a hut and a barricade. These men were just counting the days until they were sent home and certainly not spoiling for a fight. Koch didn’t anticipate losing any of his twenty-seven men taking the airfield. In fact, he could see this being done without even a solitary shot being fired. If they were lucky, and everything went to plan, the planes would land, refuel and be gone in a matter of half an hour. However, if it came to it, he knew his men were ready for a scrap. The orders for this mission, which had come directly from Hitler himself, had demanded he and his men fight to the last protecting those planes while they were on the ground; but it looked like it wasn’t going to come to that.
Koch decided once the planes were in the air again he would order his men to surrender promptly. There would be no need for heroic sacrifices today if things went smoothly.
He wondered what was so important about these planes . . . a dozen Me-109s and a larger plane he presumed would be a Condor. He’d seen this before, generals appropriating crucial resources to whisk them from some hot spot away to safety. He could imagine, hiding away inside the larger plane, Göring or one of the other stooges that surrounded Hitler. He couldn’t envisage Hitler himself scurrying out from Berlin.
Karl, the radio operator, waved his arm, and the men crowded inside the kitchen stirred and looked anxiously to Koch.
‘Is it the signal?’ Koch asked.
‘Yes, sir. They’re twenty-five minutes away.’
He nodded and placed the crust of the loaf down on the kitchen table. ‘Time to go to work,’ he muttered.