Ahead, the valley began to widen and, to his relief, the clouds lifted a little.
He pulled the aircraft up to five hundred feet and looked down at the maze of brown, green and grey topography staring back at him from the paper on his knees. He found the castle, then looked for the river. The Inn stitched its way through the varying contours of the land. He reckoned he was already halfway to it, such was the speed he was travelling.
He plotted the course that had been devised for him by Fleming. Fleming, the mission planner. The one that would expose him as little as possible to Allied and Russian fighters, or their armies’ ground fire.
Snatching glances out of the cockpit, he saw the valley gradient level off and the river bed broaden, until the snow was left behind. Wooden chalets flashed past the lower slopes, while higher up, almost level with his wingtips, there were smaller huts, sheds, some of them surrounded by the light and dark dots of the livestock they had housed during the night.
He flashed over a small herd of goats, grazing on a bluff touched by the early morning sun. The pack scattered as his turbojets whistled overhead. As his eyes followed them, a shepherd sprang into view, shielding his eyes from the sun as he searched for the Valkyrie which shattered the peace of the valley. Kruze saw a shake of the fist, then a wave, as the Bavarian peasant recognized the stark black and white Balkenkreuz stencilled under the wings.
This is how Branodz will look, he told himself. But no one would cheer for him there. The thought jolted him back inside the cockpit.
While he was still in German-held territory he decided to check over the aircraft. It would be the last chance he had. If he managed to find the waypoint, his hands would be full; navigating, looking for fighters and, more than likely, taking evasive action.
The turbojets were running smoothly at their cruise speed of 7000 rpm, jetpipe temperature and fuel pressure were normal and his fuel load was good. He looked around vainly for a headset. Provided he had survived the onslaught of the Meteor strike, the pilot of Ar 234, factory number W.Nr.140219, serial number Fi/BB, was probably clutching his flying helmet back at Oberammergau and ruminating on who it was who had taken his aircraft. Again, it did not matter. To eavesdrop on the airwaves would have served little purpose.
Suddenly he was out of the Bayerische Mountains, the rolling countryside of the Ober Bayern before him. Despite the inherent danger of flying through the peaks, he suddenly realized that they had offered protection, a mask between him and the Mustangs, Thunderbolts and Spitfires. He felt dangerously exposed, naked to the British and American fighter patrols that he knew to be roaming the area, seeking out their targets of opportunity.
He had no forward-firing armament. He could only fight them with evasive action and a weapon he had never tried before, built into the rear of the aircraft, pointing aft.
The Rhodesian scoured the horizon for a sign of the frontline, a column of smoke here and there which would have signalled the dividing line between Wehrmacht and American troops. There was none. Fleming’s flight-plan was good, taking him away to the east, deeper into German-held territory, where his Blitz was safe from ground-fire, at least.
Until he hit the Russian lines.
A town pulled into view straight in front of him, the spires of its churches clearly visible against the horizon. He looked down to his map. He hadn’t crossed the Inn yet, so it had to be Bad Aibling, the only medium-sized population centre in the area and on the rough course setting he had chosen. As he ripped over the middle of the town, he paid scant attention to the Panther tanks parked haphazardly in the main square. Then he saw what he was looking for, the distinctive confluence where the three rivers joined, the way they did on his map.
He was about twenty miles off course.
He put the aircraft onto a new heading to starboard that would take him directly to Schloss Ubersee, knowing that at any moment the River Inn would flash beneath him, signalling the moment he would have to start searching for the castle. At the speed and altitude he was flying, he would only get one chance.
An orange and silver trace ahead, stretching from left to right, then river, brown and turgid, shot by beneath his feet. The ground rose rapidly, almost taking Kruze by surprise. He eased back on the stick and noted the brief expanse of arable land giving way to mountains again, although not as steep and craggy as the ones through which he had just flown. As the ground rose up, the Arado hugging its contours at a few hundred feet, so the cloud base moved down to meet it. Kruze swore at the prospect of having his waypoint obscured by the mountain mist and being forced to set his course to Branodz by dead reckoning instead. With only one pass allowed to him over the target area, he had to get it right.
He pulled up into the clouds and weaved between the steep sides of the cumuli, avoiding contact with them, as if they were the solid, mountain walls that he had flown between earlier. He stuck to the clear air, not out of paranoia, but through a desperate urge to maintain contact with the ground. He had to find the castle. He scrutinized every patch of clear sky between himself and the ground for a sign of Schloss Ubersee, or an expanse of lake. They were the only details he possessed, the best he had to go on.
A flash below, like a searchlight in his eyes.
He nosed the aircraft down, below the clouds, keeping a careful watch for high ground, searching, willing what he had glimpsed to be the lake of Schloss Ubersee.
He broke out of the cloudstack about two hundred and fifty feet above the ground. In front of him was the castle, looming above him, almost a mile away, its towers brushing the rolling mountain mist. Below it, nestling in the bowl of a craggy glacial rock formation was the lake itself, a thin crust of ice on its surface sending shimmering reflections back at him whenever the sun’s rays forced their way through a gap in the clouds.
Schloss Ubersee, like a lighthouse guiding him in for the final course deviation.
He held the aircraft steady as it whistled over the battlements of the ancient castle, then twisted the horns on the stick to swing him round on the new bearing. He racked his brains for the next landmark. A town. Alten…
Altenmarkt. Lying in the fork of the two rivers. He was then to pick up the twisting form of the River Alz, following it for about thirty miles until it met the much larger River Salzach. Thereafter there was only another forty miles to the Czechoslovakian border and another thirty miles to the target. As his confidence grew, so the details of the flight-plan became clearer. He had forgotten nothing. He was on course.
Kruze pulled the aircraft up to one thousand feet, nosed it towards a patch of clear sky and set the autopilot. He slid forward into the smooth, glazed nose and switched on the Lotfe 7H tachometric bombsight and the BZA1 bombing computer.
In other, more conventional Luftwaffe aircraft, the Lotfe was operated by the bomb-aimer while the pilot flew the aircraft. In the single-crew Arado, the pilot performed both duties. At altitude, he could keep the autopilot engaged, go forward into the nose, look into the sighting mechanism and drop the bombs under guidance from the sight and computer. At low altitude, though, that was impossible. Kruze would need to employ all his skills as a pilot just to negotiate the terrain around Branodz, aside from the Soviet air defences.
So how did the Lotfe work under single-crew conditions at low altitude? He looked around the cockpit, his eyes eventually falling on the strange device protruding from the roof above his seat. The periscope; it had to be aligned with the periscope.
He pulled himself back into his seat, decoupled the auto-pilot and strapped himself in. Then he placed one eye against the periscope sighting system for the rearward firing cannon and found himself looking not aft, but forward. He reached down and flicked off the Lotfe and an image of mountains and clouds slipping away from him filled the viewfinder. He thought of Staverton’s reaction to his find. A combined periscopic gun/bombsight and rear mirror.