Читать книгу Len Deighton 3-Book War Collection Volume 1: Bomber, XPD, Goodbye Mickey Mouse - Len Deighton - Страница 27

The huge Freya radar aerial swung gently, smelling the cold wind that blew from England. It stopped, began to swing back and stopped again. Willi Reinecke called to August Bach down the length of the dimly lit T hut. ‘First contact, sir.’

And so the battle began: three groups of men using every device that science could invent began to grope around the blackness like gunmen in a sewer.

August hurried up the wooden steps to the plotting-table platform.

‘Logged at 00.35 hours,’ said the clerk.

‘Near Lowestoft. An extreme-range contact,’ said August. ‘Congratulations, they are not even over the British coastline. The Freya is working well tonight.’

‘They seem to have stopped the jamming lately,’ said Willi.

‘Since we made the wavelength band wider. They can’t jam the whole width of it.’

‘And it’s the tuning.’

‘“And it’s the tuning,”’ said August smiling. ‘I said “Congratulations”.’

‘I’ve told the FLUKO,’ said the telephonist. ‘They hadn’t had a previous contact.’

‘Good,’ muttered August. He put his protractor on the map. He knew all its bearings like the palm of his own hand but still he put his protractor on it as he gave his instructions. Willi admired that sort of thoroughness, especially in an officer.

‘The red Würzburg to sweep from Ipswich to Yarmouth, 270 degrees to 290. Don’t tell them the range or they won’t try so hard.’

‘Lowestoft,’ said Willi, looking at the map. ‘That’s well north of the usual route. Perhaps they are going to Berlin.’

‘Too early to say yet. Perhaps they are routed south and that one is a few miles off course. That would account for it. We’ll have to wait and see, Willi.’

Soon Willi said, ‘You’re right, sir, you’re right. He’s turned almost due south.’

‘They’ll assemble over Southwold,’ nodded August. ‘They are creatures of habit, the British.’

Out in the cold among the windswept dunes the crew of the red Würzburg became newly alert. They knew that the Freya had twice the range of their equipment, but the Würzburg had a narrower beam and was therefore more precise. It could ‘see’ one aeroplane and tell its altitude and so bring the night fighters into contact with it. The Freya gave an early warning but the Würzburgs made the kill.

‘The Nachtjagdführer is giving us two Ju88s from Kroonsdijk,’ said Reinecke. He was still on the phone. August nodded.

‘Let’s hope it’s a pilot we’ve worked with before,’ said Willi.

‘When that fool let the Tommi escape last Wednesday I could have killed him,’ said August. ‘He must have been right on top of him.’

‘The blips superimposed,’ said Reinecke disgustedly.

The T hut was the centre of the Himmelbett station which August commanded. Nearby there were other huts: billets, Mess hall, motor-transport garage and the radar machines themselves. As well as the Freya there were two identical Würzburgs: great bowls, seven metres across. One (blue) to record a night fighter and the other (red) to follow the passage of one of the RAF bombers. Inside the T hut two plotting-clerks sat hunched underneath the big wooden platform that dominated the interior. Each of them wore headphones and was in contact with a Würzburg. To show the progress of both planes, each plotter shone a spotlight upon the glass map that was his ceiling. From their position on the platform August and Willi Reinecke could see the two lightbeam spots through the Seeburg table in front of them. One was red, the other blue. Their job was to bring the two dots of light together. After that the German night fighter should be able to pick up the bomber ahead of him on his own radar detector. Or, on a brightly moonlit night, perhaps even see him.

The T hut was dark. There were no blips on the Seeburg table, for the enemy aircraft were not yet within range of the Würzburgs. August looked at the large-scale map on the wall and every few minutes Willi reported the progress of the RAF bomber stream as it flew across the North Sea straight towards them.

The phone buzzed quietly. ‘Our two planes are airborne,’ said Willi.

‘Tell the blue Würzburg to sweep from 50 to 70 for them.’

Willi Reinecke was biting his fingernails. August smiled. This was the worst time of all. Many nights they picked up the Tommis as they assembled over their own coast, but often the bombers were headed elsewhere. Himmelbett Station Ermine was only one small sector of a long coastline and unless the bombers headed straight into the Ruhr they would pass by out of range. In that case they would spend all night gnawing their knuckles and cursing their luck. One thing Willi knew: the best crews were on duty; if the terror flyers came this way they would be certain to pick them up. After that it was up to the night fighters.

‘Here comes the jamming,’ said Willi. Then, more officially, ‘Airborne jamming on the Freya, a wide band of it, averaging 290 degrees. Constant bearing, increasing in intensity.’

‘The jamming aircraft must be coming straight for us.’

Willi said, ‘I don’t know why the Nachtjagdführer doesn’t send some of our boys out to shoot them down.’

‘How bad?’

‘Not too bad. He’s still getting a clear blip and if the tube grasses up more he can side-tune to improve it.’

‘The Würzburg will have them soon.’

‘Thank goodness they can’t jam those.’

‘Any night now, Willi my son.’

From where August stood he could watch the table and the wall beyond it. The map stretched from East Anglia to Frankfurt. The smaller one showed only Ermine’s sector and the overlapping circles of the sectors surrounding it. Now that the early warning had been given the other sectors were alerted and lit up bright green on the glass map.

Willi tapped the table with his Kneemeyer measure as he listened to the messages. ‘First night fighter overhead.’

‘I want him right out to sea at the extreme range of the Würzburg. Let’s see, if they are coming in from Southwold let’s say code-square Heinz Emil Four. How high is he?’

‘Fifteen thousand feet, still climbing.’

‘As high as possible, Willi. Height is everything.’