Accompanying these two photographic reconnaissance planes was another Mosquito aircraft, but of a different sort. It was an Mk FB VI, and protruding from its blunt nose were four .303 caliber machine guns, and directly beneath them, almost hidden in the round body of the aircraft, were four 20-millimeter Hispano cannons. It was the FB VI’s duty to ensure that the two unarmed Mosquitoes could go about their job, undisturbed by enemy aircraft.
The PRs were stationed at Benson and had been since early in the war, but the FB came from a Pathfinder base at Walker and was flown by a Polish crew: Pilot-Sergeant Casimir Gierek and Navigator/ Radar Operator Jozef Jagello of the No. 105 Squadron. They had escaped to England soon after the fall of Poland and had two things in common. First, they hated the Germans with every once of their strength and lived for the day when they could return to their homeland. Second, they hated the Russians with every ounce of their strength and lived for the day that they could return to their homeland. Other than that, they were complete opposites.
Gierek squirmed, trying to get comfortable atop the parachute that fit into the hollow box that was his seat, below his buttocks. He stretched his left leg along the thigh rest just underneath the compass attached to the instrument panel and glanced from the oil and fuel pressure gauges to the left and right manifold pressure gauge. He had yet to master the art of becoming comfortable in the tiny cockpit of the two-man aircraft.
Jagello, on the other hand, seemed entirely at home in the confines of the Mosquito. He seldom spoke, hardly moved, and, once settled into his seat situated to the right and slightly behind Gierek’s, was content to consult his charts, read the compass, make navigational computations, and watch the soft green face of the radar screen in front of him.
They had, before they flew off to rendezvous with the two photographic reconnaissance unit Mosquitoes, gone over the details of the mission with their squadron commander. After he was satisfied that they knew exactly where and when they were to accomplish their mission, they walked to the aerodrome and talked with the Welsh RAF sergeant who led their ground crew. “Erks,” the British called them, Gierek discovered one night at a squadron get-together, but no one was sure why. The sergeant’s name was Williams, and Gierek was convinced that his booming voice and slow delivery were somehow based on the misconception that the language difficulties that sometimes arose between the two nationalities could be overcome with words delivered patiently, and at a great volume.
Both Poles finally accepted Williams and his eccentricities, especially after they saw the great care that he lavished on their aircraft. They were not entirely sure about Williams’s eternal companion, the Black Prince.
“Mascot,” Williams shouted at them in explanation, and then began some ridiculous sign language that was apparently intended to clarify the presence of a large black dog, whose fur was coated with oil from the hangar floor.
“He looks like a bear,” Gierek commented, eyeing the beast with some suspicion but to Williams’s untutored ears it sounded like: “Eee luks lik ah beer.” Gierek’s English was substantially less refined than Jagello’s.
“Yes,” Williams agreed loudly, as if the two were thirty yards away, and then bent down and roughly stroked the solemn dog whose eyes were hidden behind a thick mass of greasy fur. “Good dog. Bloody good luck.” The Black Prince responded by ponderously shaking his large head in slow awkward motions, his wide ears flopping ludicrously in the air.
What Jagello and Gierek came to understand is that the English mechanics viewed the Black Prince as a good-luck token and so, too, eventually, did the Polish members of No. 105 Squadron. To catch sight of the Prince before you took off on a sortie was necessary for a successful return. It worked nearly all of the time, enough so that the consensus was that the Black Prince was indeed, lucky.
The one member of the squadron who felt otherwise was Gierek, who thought the animal nothing more than a pest. There existed a silent conflict between the two, Gierek unwilling to give credence to either the dog’s ability to bring luck, or comment on the fact that he alone despised the animal.
The Black Prince seemingly ignored the pilot’s distaste for him and chose, on a regular basis, to collapse in a heap of filthy black fur in front of the plane’s left wheel. Gierek had named the aircraft Kele after his hometown in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, and Williams and the others were used to the Polish pilot storming into the hangar immediately before each mission, pointing in anger at Kele and sputtering a single word: “dawk.” Williams would then dispatch one of the men in a lorry out to the hardstand, carefully lift the apparently unconscious dog, and place him in the bed of the truck.
This, to Gierek, was a far too common occurrence. To Jagello it was just one more item to be checked off the preflight list.
“Cherbourg,” Jagello said, nodding below them. The reconnaissance aircraft would drop down to 30,000 feet and begin mapping the area with their cameras while the Fighter-Bomber stayed well above them, searching the skies for German fighters. Flak was almost incidental, the enemy having learned that it was better to save their ammunition for large bomber raids than to reveal their positions trying to shoot down aircraft that were virtually out of range anyway.
“E-boat pens,” Gierek said, scanning the sky. “Our German friends are going to have many visitors, soon.” Kele had led bombing raids on harbor facilities, U-boat pens, rail yards, and enemy fortifications. They were Pathfinders, leading the bombers into the target — marking the way. But always it was the same, the satisfaction that they were helping to kill Germans with each mission, and each mission brought them closer to the day when they could return home. “Anything?”
“Clear,” Jagello said watching the radar. “Everything is clear.”
“I wonder if they’ll let us lead the raid. We’ve flown over Cherbourg enough to be able to walk the streets with our eyes closed. Will they, do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Jagello said.
“I shall speak with Papa,” Gierek said, referring to their squadron commander. “Papa is very influential with the Wing Commander.”
“Perhaps.”
“Will it take place just before the invasion?”
“What?” Jagello said.
“The raid? On the E-boat pens? It’s getting so that they bombed the same targets a dozen times over. There will be nothing left when they land. They’re running out of targets. Don’t you think?”
“No.”
“‘No?’” Gierek said in surprise. “What do you mean ‘no’?”
“The E-boat pens,” Jagello said. “They haven’t been bombed. When they are, it will be a very big raid. I think that it will stir a bees’ nest when we return.”
“Oh,” Gierek said, satisfied with the answer. “Then we shall accompany them. More dead Germans.”
“Anymore,” Jagello said in one of the rare times that he ventured an opinion, “it is not so much the dead Germans that I am concerned with. It is the safe return of two Polish airmen.”
“That is nothing to worry about,” Gierek said grimly. “Don’t you remember that we are blessed with the lucky dog?”
Chapter 9
“Edland?” DeLong said to Cole, puzzled.
“Lieutenant Commander,” Cole said as he followed DeLong to the cockpit of the 155 boat. “ONI. We’ll take the one sixty-eight and Dean’s boat with us. Make sure everybody’s topped off, and for God’s sake have them check the torpedoes.”