The Hornet's Sting (13 page)

They had reached an altitude of 1750 meters by the time they began to cross Jutland. Above the town of Haderslev they ran into thick cloud. Now Sneum relied on his Reid and Sigriet blind-flying instruments—compass, altimeter, speed dial and fuel gauge—as he maintained 1900-2000 rotations per minute and checked the oil pressure. It was time now to try to confuse Hitler’s forces with a new tactic. A plane heading due west across Denmark in the direction of the North Sea and England would automatically arouse suspicion. The Germans would have it firmly tracked on radar at the Fanoe installation, and no one knew better than Sneum how devastating that new technology could be. But perhaps there was a way to throw them off the scent.

Tommy explained: ‘We started to zigzag to prevent the radar from knowing which direction we were going. That’s why they thought it was a German aircraft. How the hell could it be anything but a friendly aircraft, flying like that?’ By feigning this aimlessness, Tommy hoped to look like a German pilot on a drunken jaunt, or a raw trainee being given his first taste of night instruction. It would still look suspicious, but even if the Nazis thought some defiant Dane was breaking the flight ban, they would read no specific intent into his seemingly random course, and might assume they were witnessing nothing more than a foolhardy protest against the occupation. As Tommy weaved one way then the other, their overall westbound course might have appeared to be no more than a casual coincidence. There was nothing casual about the atmosphere inside the cockpit, though. Cloud condensation and the freezing night air seeped through the hole in the cockpit roof. Then Pedersen became nauseous, his sickness probably aggravated by all the twisting and turning. Soon he vomited. ‘I didn’t manage to avoid all of it,’ Sneum confessed as he remembered the moment with a grimace.

Tommy still thought his tactics worthwhile, though, especially if they had confused Meinicke’s staff on Fanoe long enough to delay the scrambling of a night-fighter. Meinicke had often said that spending the war in Denmark, with no real enemy to fight, suited him just fine. Sneum hoped that the German’s colleagues, who shared responsibility for monitoring the Danish skies, would have the same non-confrontational approach to the mystery aircraft.

Almost two kilometers up in the sky, plotting a course that ran safely south of Fanoe and its gun batteries, Sneum continued to rely upon a combination of experience and guesswork as he turned time and again in ever-thickening cloud. Both men’s lives depended upon Tommy’s instinctive skill; and for that reason he preferred not to worry Kjeld unduly as a nagging suspicion began to take hold inside him. For while they may have fooled the Germans, they might also have begun to fool themselves. In short, they might be lost.

‘We were in clouds with no visibility and we didn’t know where the bloody hell we were,’ Sneum admitted. ‘In fact, we were fifteen or twenty kilometers too far north.’

Tommy prayed for a tiny window in the wall of swirling cloud, not big enough to be noticed from the ground but sufficient to spot a reassuring landmark. He didn’t get one. He still had the compass, and was still taking into account the thirty-degree discrepancy in every calculation he made. However, he had changed direction every two minutes for so long that by now the compass provided little comfort. Mentally it was becoming a struggle to keep up with the new information that his technology was throwing at him.

Having checked with the Luftwaffe, Meinicke’s staff on Fanoe would have concluded that none of their planes was supposed to be airborne. So now Sneum’s old friend might well have been faced with a tricky dilemma. He had only one plane at his disposal, a Messerschmitt 109 fighter. The rest had been sent east a few days earlier, in preparation for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia. The single remaining Messerschmitt and her pilot were being held in reserve for an emergency. The rogue plane heading slowly in their general direction would hardly have constituted a life-or-death crisis, but some sort of action would have to be taken sooner or later. It must have felt like a no-win situation for Meinicke, because if he ordered his pilot to shoot down a foolhardy Dane displaying no malicious intent, it would be a public relations disaster in what had been a relatively peaceful occupation. After all, the Germans were supposed to be keeping the local population on their side, not stirring them to resistance by shooting them in cold blood. On the other hand, if the plane kept coming, Meinicke would have to be uncharacteristically ruthless in order to safeguard the radar installation.

Meanwhile, Sneum felt no need to convey his private concerns about their confused course to Pedersen, because he calculated that the west coast of Jutland was now only minutes away. More often than not, the coast would herald a break in the cloud. If that happened, distinctive landmarks would probably be visible below to tell them precisely where they were.

The plan was to fly out into the North Sea between the islands of Romoe and Mandoe. That was almost as far south as you could go without flying into German air space, and there were no gun batteries in the area. Sneum’s brother, Harald, had told them the previous afternoon that they could expect a mild south-easterly breeze—hardly a problem. He had been confident of his calculation, having been supplied with up-to-date information by friends in the Meteorological Office. Although Tommy suspected he had drifted from his intended flight path, he presumed they would still be able to spot either Romoe or Mandoe from wherever they hit the coast. But as the Hornet Moth broke clear of the cloud, the pilots were confronted with a very different sight: ‘Puffs of black smoke were exploding all around us from shellfire,’ remembered Tommy. ‘And tracer bullets seemed to be coming directly at us from below.’

As they looked down and saw orange flashes from battery guns, in an instant the awful truth dawned. This wasn’t Romoe or Mandoe. The landmass below was frighteningly familiar. They had left Jutland over Esbjerg, with all its battery defenses, and crossed the narrow channel to Fanoe, Sneum’s home island. Now they were over Nordby, at the island’s northern tip, almost directly above the radar installation that Sneum had filmed so courageously. The same installation was about to exact its revenge by guiding 105mm and 88mm cannon-fire on to their little sports plane. As the flak exploded with increasing venom and accuracy, Tommy and Kjeld braced themselves for a direct hit.

No one was to blame. Harald had made the most accurate forecast he could given the data that was available to him. By midnight, however, conditions had started to change. As Tommy and Kjeld had been taking off, the wind was already coming from due south; then it had continued to shift until now it was a strong sou’westerly. Simply by veering through ninety degrees, the wind had become potentially disastrous. Sneum had been blown further north than he had foreseen, and now it looked as though he and Pedersen would pay for it with their lives.

Kjeld motioned frantically. ‘Up, up!’ he urged again.

Tommy didn’t need telling, and he sent the plane into a steep climb towards what cloud cover was available at 2400 meters. While making this desperate dash for safety, he realized they could be shot down right over his family’s mansion, in full view of his parents, who had doubtless been woken by the commotion in the skies.

A direct hit would bring an appropriately explosive end to Sneum’s stormy relationship with his father. At least they had recently come to accept their differences, and had even discovered some common ground. Christian Sneum was a complex man. A headmaster at the local school, he was a firm disciplinarian and yet remained a pacifist. He hadn’t approved of his son’s career in the military. Even so, when the Germans had invaded, Christian knew that his eldest son wouldn’t be able to take the occupation lying down. And strangely, given the views he had held for a lifetime, he didn’t seem to want Tommy to sit around and do nothing as the Nazis took control of their country.

‘Shouldn’t you be in England?’ he had asked his son pointedly earlier in the year.

Tommy was shocked yet inspired by the message behind the question. It was clearly a time for honesty. ‘You know, Father, I probably won’t survive the war,’ he said.

Christian knew his boy to be a natural risk-taker. ‘No, Thomas, I don’t suppose you will,’ he replied in an equally matter-of-fact way.

Tommy’s mother, Karen, overheard the exchange and burst into tears. Soon there were no dry eyes left in the Sneum household, not even among the men, whose emotions were normally well hidden. Despite the war that had changed their lives, Tommy’s family found peace among themselves that day.

But a sense of peace or resignation wouldn’t keep Tommy alive now. All that could save him and Pedersen were lightning-quick reactions. The gunners on the ground had originally fired too high, fooled perhaps by the seemingly distant noise of the sports plane’s tiny engine. Now they were getting closer with every shell, guided by the very radar system Sneum had sought to expose to the British. Somewhere in all the chaos Tommy realized that it might be his old friend Meinicke who was seeking his destruction. Given the strategic importance of the installation, situated just west of the major port of Esbjerg, Sneum couldn’t blame him. The highly sensitive nature of the technology there had left him with little choice. But it still seemed like a strange way for their friendship to end.

In spite of the gunners’ best efforts, the little plane remained in one piece and flew ever closer to the haven of the clouds. As a result, the German commander was left with no option but to play his last and deadliest card. It was time for the solitary Messerschmitt 109 to be scrambled.

Even when he reached the comforting oblivion of the cloud cover, Sneum sensed that the danger wasn’t over. He knew the Germans would send up any fighters they had if the flak failed to find its mark. From what he could see through occasional breaks in the clouds, the night sky was no longer pock-marked by small explosions. The guns below had fallen ominously silent and there had to be a reason why. Twice he doubled back, anticipating the threat of unwelcome visitors. He flew in wide circles, always using the natural cover.

At first the Messerschmitt would have waited in clearer skies, working on the theory that sooner or later the mystery aircraft must head out to sea. When the Moth didn’t reappear, however, Meinicke’s man probably followed the rogue plane up through the clouds, to seek out his target from above. The two planes might well have been flying blind in opposite directions on several occasions. At any rate, gambling the Messerschmitt was hunting to the east, Sneum suddenly made a break for the west, out over the North Sea in the direction of England.

If the Messerschmitt pilot ever saw his intended target, perhaps he was fooled by the similarity between the Danish cross that had been painted on the Hornet Moth and the Luftwaffe cross found on all German aircraft. At any rate, to their amazement, Sneum and Pedersen continued to fly out over open sea unchallenged. Meinicke could and perhaps should have ordered his pilot to follow, but there was no pursuit. It’s possible he felt that the threat to the radar installation had receded, so there was no need for such ruthlessness. Nevertheless, it seems a miracle that the Hornet wasn’t intercepted. Quite how Sneum and Pedersen survived in the skies over Fanoe, no one would ever know.

‘
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OOK, THERE!’ YELLED PEDERSEN when they had put plenty of North Sea between themselves and Denmark.

What greeted Tommy’s eyes as he followed Kjeld’s gaze filled him with such relief that only now did he fully realize the immense pressure he had been under. He remembered that moment with joy: ‘There was an opening in the clouds and we saw the North Star right on the starboard side. I was so happy. It meant we were on the right course, flying due west, and we both knew it immediately.’

They had distrusted the compass right from the start, but it hadn’t let them down badly after all. And if the Moth continued to fly like this, then the north-east coast of England lay only a few hours away. They were cold, but pretty soon they realized they had been flying over the North Sea for an hour without incident. They almost relaxed, and freedom felt well within their grasp. Then the Hornet’s engine stopped.

At least, that’s what it sounded like, for a fraction of a second, before it spluttered back to life. ‘No words will ever convey the sheer terror we felt during the following minutes,’ admitted Sneum decades later, ‘but we didn’t panic.’ The pilots shot each other a horrified glance and listened in silence for a possible repeat. There it was again, a clanking sound and a strangled groan as the engine threatened to cut out completely. ‘We just about went through the roof with fear,’ Tommy said. ‘But I was also thinking about how the hell I could get out of this situation.’

Every half an hour, Kjeld had fed the luminescence of the radium-painted control dials with his torch. Now he hardly dared read what he saw there. ‘The oil pressure’s flickering between point-five and zero,’ he shouted. ‘What’s it supposed to be again?’

‘Three-point-five,’ replied Sneum.

‘I thought we’d had it,’ admitted Tommy later. ‘Apparently the oil gauge was working, since the needle was oscillating, and that led to the disastrous conclusion that the whole oil system had broken down. That, in turn, would cause the engine to burn to pieces in a few minutes. Without hesitation I cut the gas and started gliding towards the water.’

He had to control a mounting sense of terror if he was going to control the plane without power. It didn’t help that they couldn’t even see the sea, because thick cloud was obscuring their view of what lay below them. Imagination ran riot as they braced themselves; family and friends flashed through their minds in snapshots. And all the time there lurked the grim realization that they had lost everything for the sake of a foolhardy flight they hadn’t needed to make.