Operation Afterlight, page 1
OPERATION AFTERLIGHT
Robert Lassen
Silvertail Books ♦ London
For Guy, Vera, John and Wilhelm, gone but not forgotten
And for Dad, gone before you could read this
Prologue
Above England, night, 3/4 March 1945
“Fireball, skipper. Four o’clock high.”
Ignoring the sudden assault of nausea and the lurch of his pulse, Wing Commander Andrew Durban kept his de Havilland Mosquito straight and level and peered up into the darkness. It didn’t matter that there was nothing in his navigator’s tone to show concern. Ninety-three missions over Occupied Europe had carved all unnecessary emotions from Clive Lampeter’s voice, until only calm detachment remained. After sharing twenty-nine of those missions by his side, though, Durban had learned to pay attention on the rare occasions the navigator spoke.
He saw it instantly.
At high altitude over Germany, the night sky had been well lit by moon and stars. Now, below the clouds, the cloying black of the rain-strewn night stressed the incandescent glow beyond the spinning props of the Mosquito’s starboard engine. For a few moments, the fireball seemed to hang in the air while its light blazed violently on the underside of the shifting grey expanse brought in by the strong front from the North Sea.
It faded as if on a switch. Darkness returned, sinister and intense.
Durban tore his eyes from the few lingering tendrils of flame and focused on the Mosquito’s controls. Rain slashed against the flat, armoured windscreen. It made it hard to see the dull smudge of the ground below. Harder still to pick out the dim landing lights ahead, their red glow partly shielded to mask them from unwanted observation.
The altimeter read three hundred feet. A little high this close to the runway. One hand automatically corrected for the mistake. The other reached for the lever that lowered the landing gear.
The words of their afternoon briefing rang clear in his mind.
Eight-hundred and seventeen bombers. Nearly five thousand airmen. Number Four Group to attack the synthetic oil plant at Kamen. Number Five Group to target the Dortmund-Ems canal.
Weather poor, with increased chance of misidentification and friendly fire.
Durban glanced to their right again. The blanket of the night had suffocated the last embers of the distant inferno.
A dozen things could destroy a bomber this close to safety. He’d heard stories of damaged aircraft nursed back against the odds to within touching distance of home before spreading flames incinerated the crew. Tired pilots made mistakes, descending too early, clipping a power line or dashing themselves against the flank of a mist shrouded hill. Sometimes a bomb clung too stubbornly to the bomb bay over the target only to detonate hours later, needing only a millisecond to turn both machine and its young crew into ten thousand smoking fragments.
Any good aviator knew they weren’t safe until they shut the aircraft down and walked away. So many ways for the war to claim more lives. It didn’t have to be a fighter.
A blinding flash ripped apart the darkness above them, and Durban’s headphones exploded into life.
“Scram, skipper,” Lampeter said, calmly repeating the panicked call of the distant radio operator. The same order that was resounding in the ears of every RAF aviator in the skies over eastern England.
A few thousand feet above them, Durban glimpsed a shark-like shape silhouetted against the new glare of a burning four-engined bomber. Then it was gone, its carnage wrought.
The red landing lights ahead of them blinked and faded to nothing.
‘Scram’ meant enemy night fighters in the area. Abort landing. Divert to an airfield further west and south, out of enemy range.
Durban frowned. A few years ago, scram orders were common, but not anymore. With the Luftwaffe reduced to a shadow of its prime and with Mosquito intruders like his own aircraft hunting them above their airfields, the enemy could barely operate in Germany’s skies, let alone over Britain.
He increased power and retracted the undercarriage, feeling the aircraft’s instant response through the control column. As always, the wooden airframe around him felt more like an extension of his body than a separate entity, but he still made the changes carefully. The twin Merlin engines and fabulous design left the de Havilland Mosquito all but untouchable for speed and handling at altitude, but at low level, low speed, buffeted by rain and wind? A new pilot could find himself horribly bent out of shape. He had lost friends that way.
He had lost friends every way imaginable these last four years.
“There’s another,” Lampeter muttered, pointing to a third distant glow, this time to their north. “How many of the bastards are out there?”
“Enough to ruin our evening.” The landing gear thudded into place. Two tiny lights on the instrument panel flickered from the gear down position to up, and Durban felt the air flowing smoother around them without the drag of the undercarriage doors. “How far to our divert?”
Lampeter glanced at his chart. “Forty miles. Heading two-two-zero. Fuel state is good.”
“Roger.” Durban decided in a moment. No hesitation. He pushed the black-handled throttles open all the way. The Mosquito seemed to leap forward, gathering speed even as he pulled back on the controls and climbed towards the cloud. He felt the navigator shift in his seat to look at him and knew exactly what was going through the man’s mind.
“Might as well keep low, skipper,” Lampeter said after a few seconds. “By the time we get to altitude, you’ll be descending again.”
Durban nodded. “Turn your radar back on.”
Another pause. “We don’t have fuel for that.”
“You said our fuel state is good.”
“Good for getting to our divert. Not for hunting German night fighters.” Another pause, this one shorter but more painful. “Sir.”
Durban winced. Despite their rank difference, Lampeter hadn’t called him sir in the cockpit for over a year. They had too much respect for each other’s abilities to need such courtesies. That the Flight Lieutenant did so now meant he didn’t just disapprove of Durban’s decision. He was furious.
“Hunting German night fighters is what we do,” Durban said coldly. More than that, it was their duty. He flicked the gun master switch on the starboard instrument panel back from safe to armed. “Stay alert. There’s more than one out there.”
Lampeter turned his attention to the Mark VIII radar set in the aircraft’s nose.
Keeping the Mosquito in a steady climb, Durban stifled a curse. His friend was only being sensible.
They had been circling over Germany before the first bombers even crossed the Channel, waiting for the night fighters. Their assigned mission was complete, their fuel tanks close to empty. He was tired, which would dull his reflexes and hamper his eyesight. Across England, fresh pilots in Mosquitoes like his own would be airborne now, ready to find whatever night fighter force the Luftwaffe had strung together and drive it back over the sea in bloody disarray.
The smart move was to let others handle it, and to head for their divert airfield while they still could.
And yet… in the time it took for reinforcements to arrive, the Luftwaffe would cause carnage among the vulnerable bomber crews. He’d already seen three bombers go down, their crews surviving the hostile skies over Germany only to be slaughtered above England. Tired or not, he couldn’t hang back as it became four or more. If they could protect even one bomber, that meant seven or more lives saved. He had the best aircraft in the world. He had a brilliant navigator and radar operator next to him. Together, they outclassed anything the Luftwaffe had.
How could they put their own safety first, and leave others to face the danger?
“I’ve got something,” Lampeter said. The navigator’s gloved hands drifted over the controls of the radar set. His face showed no emotion in the faint light from the CRT radar screen. “Seven miles, straight ahead. Probably one of ours. Too big a return for a fighter.”
“Keep looking,” Durban said. He nudged the controls, banking the Mosquito into a gentle turn and remembering the briefing. The first bombers were supposed to land about midnight; the attackers had hit them rather than any stragglers. Most of the bomber force was still to the east, returning over France or the Low Countries.
The damned Germans had been waiting for them.
They must have come in low, staying under the weather the whole way across the North Sea to avoid British radar detection. Dangerous work. Brave pilots. He might have found time to admire them if he wasn’t so busy trying to kill them.
“Two signals.” Excitement laced itself around Lampeter’s words, breathless and earnest. “Six miles. Keep this course.”
“Ours again?”
“One of them. The other is moving too fast. Turn five degrees to port.”
Durban stared into the darkness. It achieved little. “Anything on Serrate?”
“Not yet. He might be afraid to use his radar.”
“Or he’s already found a target and switched it off.”
Serrate had been a fabulous gift for the Mosquito night fighter community from the electronic warfare boffins. It allowed them to home in on the radar emissions from their Luftwaffe counterparts. As always, the Germans learned fast and kept their radar off as long as they could. Tonight, in a bomber-filled sky, the attackers might not need radar at all.
The cloud closed like drapes around the cockpit. “Altitude?”
“A little above us but descending, I
“I’m going to swing out and bring us behind them. Get ready to reacquire.”
“Roger. What’s our fuel state, skipper?”
Durban ignored the question. Lampeter wouldn’t have liked the answer. Instead, he climbed to starboard for a few seconds, then rolled the Mosquito into a descending turn to port. Too fast, he told himself. Breaking radar contact was always risky, and it took as much luck as skill to reacquire. He glanced again at the fuel gauge. If they didn’t find the target again immediately, they would head for the divert airfield.
Lampeter gave a grunt of appreciation. “Got them. Dead ahead, one mile.”
The clouds parted, and Durban’s hands tensed on the controls as tracers ripped through the sky. Away from them, he realised, but any relief dissipated as he saw their impact. Showering sparks became a sheet of flame, spreading mercilessly along the wing of the distant British bomber. He saw two engines next to each other, props still spinning despite the fire engulfing them. That meant a Lancaster, or possibly a Halifax. Even a B-17 from the jamming specialists from 100 Group, but it didn’t matter.
What mattered was the twin-engined shape that stood stark against the backdrop of the stricken bomber.
“Night fighter,” Durban yelled in triumph, pushing the throttles hard against the gate, willing the Mosquito to more speed. “Visual intercept.”
Lampeter abandoned his radar set and peered out. “Ju-88G,” he said.
“You always had better eyes than me,” Durban said, the tension between them evaporating.
The doomed bomber fell away as flames engulfed the fuselage, and Durban’s momentary sense of success disappeared with it. It was a Lancaster, an aircraft notoriously hard to bail out from. Not that the crew would have time. They were simply too low. Even as he watched, the wing broke free of the aircraft, and the bomber’s slow dive became an uncontrolled tumble as the Ju-88G turned away.
Eyes watering, bile burning at his throat, Durban banked the Mosquito to follow, while his gloved fingers adjusted the target size and distance on his Mk II reflector gunsight. Second by second, staying slightly below their target, they closed in on the oblivious German night fighter.
It was too late to save that bomber. He told himself that what he did now, he did to protect others. It was a lie. Durban watched the Junkers Ju-88G drift from side to side, its nose searching the sky with its mass of radar antennae like a foul predatory insect, and knew the truth. This was about vengeance. Nothing else.
He pulled back on the controls. The night fighter filled his gunsight. His pulse receded in his ears, a sense of calm washing over him. With practiced ease, he adjusted the lower flywheel on his gunsight to match the sixty-six-foot wingspan of the German aircraft. His breath stabilised. Keeping the target in the centre of the reticle, he tweaked the upper flywheel until the wings filled the rangefinder ring.
Only then did he squeeze the trigger.
The combined recoil of the four belly-mounted 20mm Hispano cannon shuddered through the Mosquito’s wooden fuselage. The first few rounds missed. The rest did not.
Heavy armour-piercing shells smashed into the centre of the Ju-88G’s fuselage, ripping upwards through the grey-painted underside to shred control cables, electrical wiring, and human flesh with equal ease. The Perspex canopy broke apart, shedding fragments and viscera into the night air. Incongruously, the aircraft flew on, the props on its undamaged engines still turning and carrying it on through the night air, regardless of the horrors that had befallen its crew.
Then, with awful suddenness, the fuselage behind the ravaged cockpit collapsed in on itself. The Ju-88G flipped upside down and plummeted to earth, leaving only a thin wisp of smoke hanging in the air.
“That’s number seven,” Durban said, unable to hold the words in even though they were unnecessary. They both knew how many German aircraft they had destroyed in their year together.
As always, he kept his mind focused on the simple count of machines removed from the field of play, and not on the ten to twenty-one lives they had ended by their actions. He felt only the thrill of the successful hunt in his quickened breathing and his tingling skin. The sickening guilt would come later, after they landed safely.
“Fuel state critical,” Lampeter intoned.
If they landed safely.
Durban tore his gaze from the tumbling wreckage of the Junkers and stared at the instrument panel. The climb and the pursuit of the Ju-88G had burned through their remaining fuel with alarming alacrity. They were deep into reserves now. Somewhere below them was their home station, with others dotted around it. This entire region of England was a mass of wartime airfields. In daylight, he would have backed himself to find somewhere to land, even if he had to glide the aircraft to safety. Now, with airfields blacked out because of the scram order and visibility wrecked by low cloud?
His eyes met Lampeter’s. The navigator said nothing. He didn’t need to.
Behind the navigator’s head, bright lights like giant fireflies filled the sky, seeming to hover in the air before rushing past and vanishing into the darkness beyond.
Adrenaline hit Durban with the force of a kick to the chest.
They had flown straight and level for too long, too focused on their dwindling fuel to remember the more immediate perils. Another night fighter, drawn by the flames, had found the Mosquito unwary and vulnerable. If they turned sharply enough, they had a chance to evade it. A weak pilot could overshoot and lose them in the dark. A good night fighter pilot would expect a turn, be waiting for it.
Durban wrenched the controls and hurled the Mosquito into a fast break to port.
A roar filled the cockpit.
The night fighter pilot was good.
Wood splintered, sending thin slivers into the skin of Durban’s neck. The instrument panel seemed to come apart, dials shattering or disappearing altogether. He felt something hot splash across his face, only to cool instantly as the howling gale from the fractured canopy rushed past him. The Mosquito’s controls bucked in his hands, trying to tear loose of his grip. With desperate strength, he kept hold, kept the aircraft in a descending corkscrew turn even as the airframe groaned in protest, threatening to come apart.
The dark smudge of the ground spun dizzily below them. Above them, a familiar shape hung black against the cloud before it vanished from sight.
Too familiar. “That’s one of ours,” he shouted, furious with his fellow pilot. Furious with himself. He had known other Mosquitoes would fill the sky looking for German night fighters, not expecting to find one of theirs in the way. Lampeter knew it too.
Durban turned to apologise. And realised it didn’t matter.
The navigator slumped in what remained of his seat. Most of his right side had gone, his ribs exposed and glistening beneath the tattered stump of his arm, torn away along with half his head. From beneath the broken lens of his goggles, Lampeter’s remaining eye sat open.
No life there.
Only accusation.
The Mosquito shook. Lampeter’s body collapsed forward, held in place by his straps. His ravaged head lolled down, swinging in time with the aircraft’s wild shaking.
Durban hit the rudder, fought the controls. Despite the damage, despite the protests of the airframe, despite everything the Mosquito rushed to obey him. Wrestling the aircraft out of its dive, he scanned the ground below. The altimeter was gone, obliterated among the ragged new holes in the instrument panel, but through the rain that now streamed down his goggles, he picked out the shape of a narrow bridge over a canal. Four hundred feet, perhaps lower.
He switched to radio channel B, thumbed his Receive/Transmit switch and put out a distress call. The radio showed no obvious damage. The static that filled his headset suggested otherwise.
He checked both wings. No fire there, no light to draw their attacker back. A small mercy. The other Mosquito had likely chalked them up as a kill and moved on. Gun camera footage might reveal the pilot’s mistake, but Durban doubted it. Idly, he wondered if he knew the crew who would claim a kill for their intercept of a “German night fighter” while elsewhere the casualty roll would list Wing Commander Andrew Durban and Flight Lieutenant Clive Lampeter as “killed in action, likely night fighter,” and no one would ever wonder why there was only one wreck.
