JET LAG! (27 page)

The Admiral should have immediately reported his findings to the appropriate authorities, but instead he sat on it!

The intelligence supremo had never wanted this war, and had always predicted defeat if Germany involved the other major powers in Europe. He wanted the invasion of Britain to fail, so that Germany could consolidate its power instead of stretching it's resources too thinly, and condemning itself to inevitable failure.

So, he ‘sat on the report’ – for another week. It was a risk – but he was taking enough of those already.

44

Middle Fleckney

10 August 1940

There was more bad news for Goering as a result of the Canberra sortie which found the Me262 base in Holland. Further analysis of the excellent quality photography picked out eleven site locations for the German ‘Freya’ early-warning radar. This excellent equipment worked out to two hundred kilometres and was primarily deployed to defend the western borders of the ‘Fatherland’. However, it was so good that additional units were set up on the Atlantic coast.

The ECM Canberra had had some success jamming the radar with electronic noise. This overwhelmed the radar equipment and prevented the detection of British aircraft. Additionally, 1940s conventional British aircraft flying with other specialised apparatus could mimic large numbers of aircraft, and were able to divert the Luftwaffe crews to the wrong targets.

However, it would be far more advantageous in the longer term to destroy the radars, which were consistently and accurately steering Nazi fighters onto Spitfires and Hurricanes taking off to meet the bombers heading towards their airfields.

So a raid was set up to put Freya out of operation on the Atlantic coast. This would give the 1940s RAF precious breathing space – at least until the Germans replaced the damaged equipment.

It would be a night sortie flown at around 0300 hours to elicit as much surprise as possible. All four of the Interdictor Strike Tornados would be involved, taking responsibility for four Freya units each, allowing for overlap and providing additional opportunities to destroy the targets. A Recce jet would sweep down the entire line five minutes behind the first attack, running from south to north. The ECM Canberra would patrol at high level and the two ADV fighters would provide top cover against potential Nazi night-fighters.

The aircrews and groundcrews spent all day preparing the Tornados, loading them with bombs, missiles and rounds for their two Oerlikon guns. Even the Recce jet was armed with air-to-ground missiles – why not?

It was a good plan and should send another shockwave to Berlin and inevitably delay any invasion schedule – which was the primary aim.

They took off at 0230 and sped to their targets which lay near to Ault in France in the south, all the way to Vlieland in Holland in the north. The ECM listened out at thirty-thousand feet, jamming any German frequencies in use. The two ADV fighters sat at ten-thousand feet on Combat Air Patrol, waiting for any night-fighters to get airborne. This should allow them ample time to descend and intercept any threat.

The ground attack bombers had excellent Terrain Following Radar (TFR), which allowed them to hug the surface of the earth as low as one hundred feet above ground level, although two hundred and fifty feet was low enough for this mission.

The Freya steel lattice stood out like ‘dogs balls’ on the internal Tornado radar and at 3am in the morning, there was little resistance from the ground defences – most, except for the conscripted sentries, were fast asleep, and many of them were tired and apathetic.

The bombers swept in, strafed, bombed and rocketed each target, leaving behind a string of mangled steel and burning buildings. Five of the radars received double doses and by 0320, all four aircraft were climbing away and back to Middle Fleckney.

The Recce Tornado’s task was a little stiffer. It had to complete the entire run at four hundred and eighty knots, over two hundred and seventy miles, which took just over thirty-four minutes. So, after pooping off their last air-to-ground missile, they turned to port and started the climb for home, trailing their colleagues in the bombers by twenty minutes. The ECM was still on station, as was one of the ADVs. The first one had followed the bombers home – just in case.

As the Recce jet climbed through twenty-thousand feet, the ECM picked up some unusual chatter and the ADV used its look-down radar to pick up two bogies closing on the Recce Tornado.

‘Purple Five to Purple Nine – Buster! You have two fast moving contacts closing in your six-o’clock.’

‘Buster’ was the codeword instructing the Recce pilot to go to maximum throttle.

‘Roger, Purple Five – buster acknowledged, Can you assist?’

The pilot of Purple Nine was relying on his Air Defence colleague to save his arse.

‘I’ll do my best, Nine. Suggest you climb to above thirty thousand, where you should be above their capabilities.’

‘Roger Five – wilco.’

The Recce jet zoomed to thirty plus thousand as the ADV switched its concentration to the two bandits, which now lay thirty miles ahead and five thousand feet below. The Me 262s could go no higher, but would still be a threat as the Recce crew descended towards Middle Fleckney – so they would have to try and destroy them.

Although they had no radar missiles – only the Infra-red Aim-9, in the end it was another turkey-shoot.

The ADV slipped in behind the Me 262s and after closing to about four kilometres, unseen and unheard, fired its infra-red AIM-9 missiles in turn. The flash of the two explosions told their own story and the two ‘Blaue-Tod’ fell burning into the North Sea.

‘Fox-Two,’ called the ADV pilot. ‘See you on the ground.’

A much relieved Recce navigator replied:

‘Thanks mate, the beers are on us!’

All aircraft were safely tucked away in the hangar by 0500 and the entire team spent the next hour quaffing beers and back-slapping whilst the ‘photogs’ and PIs examined the film.

Eleven Freya radars had been destroyed and two Me 262s shot down.

It was their best raid yet and when Churchill was informed at 0730, he dispatched DFCs, DSOs, MBEs, BEMs and a CBE for the AVM. Every member of the 1992 force received a decoration for their contribution and valour – as did many of the attached 1940s team.

It was a very good day at Middle Fleckney.

However, it was also the highpoint of the detachment. Things would not go so well in the future.

The Luftwaffe had some surprises in store.

45

Middle Fleckney

11 August 1940

Jim Charles sat in the office of Air Vice Marshal Morrissey, nervously fingering the British Empire Medal recently awarded by Winston Churchill. The Meteorological expert had not only been advising his colleagues from 1940 in some of the more advanced methods of predicting the weather, but had also been advising 1940s aircrew on how to avoid producing condensation trails when at high level.

Contrails - short for ‘condensation trails’ or ‘vapour trails’ are long, thin artificial (man-made)
clouds
that sometimes form behind
aircraft
. Their formation is most often triggered by the water vapour in the exhaust of aircraft engines, but can also be triggered by the changes in air pressure in
wingtip vortices
or in the air over the entire wing surface. Like all clouds, contrails are made of water, in the form of a cloud of billions of liquid droplets or ice crystals.

Depending on the temperature and humidity at the altitude the contrail forms, they may be visible for only a few seconds or minutes, or may persist for hours and spread to be several miles wide. The resulting clouds may resemble cirrus, cirrocumulus, or cirrostratus, and are sometimes called cirrus aviaticus. The particles in the aircraft's exhaust act as this trigger, causing the trapped vapour to rapidly condense. Exhaust contrails rarely occur below twenty-six thousand feet, and only if the temperature there is below minus forty degrees centigrade, and if the relative humidity is over sixty percent.
Military aircraft usually take precautions to avoid contrails which greatly enhance visual detection ranges, and will choose their altitude very carefully if in a combat zone.

Jim Charles advised fighter pilots on this subject and on the benefits of flying below the condensation layer – it didn’t matter for the Canberras and modern ADV fighters as they could usually get well above forty thousand feet, where contrails usually didn’t occur. Met men in 1940 didn’t fully understand the science regarding the Troposphere and Tropopause, so Jim gave detailed instruction.

However, the subject of the weather was not why Jim now sat in front of AVM Morrissey. Following his chat with the Prime Minister, the Air Marshal had been considering the potential issues concerning any unpalatable revelations made public by Charles. He didn’t think it important that the men and women under his command realised that some minor historical detail was marginally different to that of their own timeline.

He considered it irrelevant to the task in hand. After all, nothing could be changed now!

However, of course, in reality it was
deeply
relevant.

What the Air Marshal didn’t appear to understand was the concept of alternate or parallel universes.

Jim Charles did!

‘Well, Jim, have you thought any more about our conversation last week?’

Jim Charles took his opportunity.

‘Yes sir, I have – and if you will permit me I should like to fully clarify the situation we may quickly find ourselves in.’

The AVM gave him some rope.

‘Please go ahead, Jim. You haven’t discussed this with anyone else have you?’

‘No sir. I have obeyed your order. However, I must make you aware of some salient facts. Firstly, I have been following the national newspapers supplied by the local staff and they make interesting reading.’

‘How so?’ enquired the AVM, knowing exactly what Jim was going to say.

‘Well, sir – let's look at just a few of the anomalies that I have uncovered. For a start, the great financial crash of 1926 didn’t happen until 1935. The USA is a shambles and financially a wreck. The President of the USA is Joseph Kennedy – a complete and utter Anglophobe – who publicly states that he will never enter a European war or even lift a finger to help us. Japan and China are fighting a war, which China is winning. Russia has come in on their side and Japanese Empirical expansion is just not happening. Hitler has not invaded Norway yet, and Italy have not yet entered the war because Mussolini was assassinated in 1939.’

The AVM was circumspect:

‘Well, these might be minor and unimportant changes in our known history.’

‘Minor! Minor! You are joking aren't you? Hitler is ruling most of Europe with an iron fist, including Spain and Portugal where Franco is but a mere puppet. And to cap it all, if you plot all of this forwards but a few years, the Nazis will be first to build the Atom Bomb and then we are all doomed. They are already years ahead in the race to jet propulsion and radar. In short, I vehemently believe that we have entered a ‘parallel universe’, and if and when we try to return to our own, it will be impossible to predict where we will be and what we will find. This is not
our
1940!’

The AVM realised that he could not mollify this chap any further and would now have to take drastic steps to curb the potential threat he posed.

‘Jim, if I were to accept all this waffle about ‘parallel universes’ then what do you propose?’

‘We need to tell everyone what we have discovered and give them the option. Do they return with us on the eighth of September or do they stay here?’

Jim Charles had now passed his point of no return.

‘Okay, Jim, let me think about this situation carefully. It needs to be handled delicately. Please give me a couple of days to discuss the issues with the PM. I'm sure we’ll come up with something – a compromise. In the meantime, please keep your own counsel. If we just blurt this out, some of our people might over-react – and we wouldn’t want that – would we?’

Jim nodded, thrust his medal into his pocket and left the office.

AVM Morrissey knew that he had a phone call to make. Poor old Jim Charles would shortly be going on a one way trip to his own parallel universe! He had to ‘disappear’ in the interests of the ‘bigger picture.’

However, Morrissey should have paid attention to his research and reading a little more thoroughly. If he accepted that the time-jump had been possible, then he had to seriously consider the theories of parallel or alternate universes, where self-contained ‘separate, yet slightly different’
realit
ies could co-exist alongside one's own.

And there could be hundreds – so finding the one they originally came from on their return was a very, very low probability.

However, in the final analysis, he didn’t really care either way.

***

In fact, there were huge disparities between the two time-lines and a major factor in the Battle of Britain was the development of the Me 262. It was three to four years ahead of 1992 history, and this would play a critical part in the outcome of the war.

As Jim Charles revealed his discoveries to Morrissey, Hermann Goering’s Luftwaffe was taking delivery of thirty six more jets – including Recce, high speed bomber and night-flying variants.

And there were hundreds more in the pipeline.

46

Over the North Sea

12 August 1940

That morning the Luftwaffe launched a fearsome force of fighters and bombers against the British radar stations sited along the south coast. It was a determined and well planned attack which ripped a hundred mile gap in the British radar curtain. As a direct consequence, the fighter controllers were unable to launch Spitfires or Hurricanes to defend the airfields which were the real targets for ‘Adlertag’ or Eagle Day.

Radar towers were attacked by determined and accurate Stukas, and a group of Do-17s smashed into RAF Manston with over one hundred and fifty bombs, taking out hangars, buildings and aircraft on the ground.

The British commanders had to react and do something to combat this threat, so AVM Park, commanding number 12 Group called the Station Commander at Middle Fleckney for assistance.

The six remaining Tornados were armed and scrambled immediately and dispatched towards the south coast with the ECM Canberra lurking above attempting to jam German frequencies with noise.

The 1992 force set up a Combat Air Patrol at thirty thousand feet, waiting for the two ADVs to find targets to attack with their look down – shoot down internal radar. As they transitted southwards, they approached the Isle of Sheppey in the Thames Estuary and the lead ADV spotted a large formation of potential Luftwaffe bombers heading west. The Tornados split into three pairs and following the ADVs down, sped towards the Luftwaffe Do-17s. They swept around the back of the formation and caught up with them at fifteen hundred feet above sea level, just below the thick cloud cover. Luckily the modern equipment in the Tornados allowed them to descend safely below the cloud without crashing into the sea.

As they levelled out, the ADV guiding them towards the bomber force made a brief call:

‘Purple – from Purple Five; contact multi bandits at twelve o’clock, range three miles. Attack in pairs as briefed and when complete climb to three-zero-zero and RV at pre-brief point Charlie. Acknowledge.’