Harald shone the flashlight on the altimeter. “Four thousand seven hundred feet.”
“So this cloud is at about five thousand.”
A few moments later the aircraft was engulfed by what looked like smoke, and Harald realized they had entered the cloud.
“Keep the light on the airspeed indicator,” Karen said. “Let me know if our speed changes.”
“Why?”
“When you’re flying blind, it’s difficult to keep the aircraft in the correct attitude. I could put the nose up or down without realizing it. But if that happens we’ll know because our speed will increase or decrease.”
He found it unnerving to be blind. This must be how accidents happen, he thought. An aircraft could easily hit the side of a mountain in cloud. Fortunately there were no mountains in Denmark. But if another aircraft happened to be flying through the same cloud, neither pilot would know until it was too late.
After a couple of minutes, he found that enough moonlight was penetrating the cloud for him to see it swirling against the windows. Then, to his relief, they emerged, and he could see the Hornet Moth’s moon shadow on the cloud below.
Karen eased the stick forward to level out. “See the rev counter?”
Harald shone the flashlight. “It says two thousand, two hundred.”
“Bring the throttle smoothly back until it drops to nineteen hundred.” Harald did as she said.
“We use power to change our altitude,” she explained. “Throttle forward, we go up; throttle back, we go down.”
“So how do we control our speed?”
“By the attitude of the aircraft. Nose down to go faster, nose up to go slower.”
“Got it.”
“But never raise the nose too sharply, or you will stall. That means you lose lift, and the aircraft falls out of the sky.”
Harald found that a terrifying thought. “What do you do then?”
“Put the nose down and increase the revs. It’s easy-except that your instinct tells you to pull the nose up, and that makes it worse.”
“I’ll remember that.”
Karen said, “Take the stick for a while. See if you can fly straight and level. All right, you have control.”
He grasped the control stick in his right hand.
She said, “You’re supposed to say, ‘I have control.’ That’s so that the pilot and copilot never get into a situation where each thinks the other is flying the aircraft.”
“I have control,” he said, but he did not feel it. The Hornet Moth had a life of its own, turning and dipping with air turbulence, and he found himself using all his powers of concentration to keep the wings level and the nose in the same position.
Karen said, “Do you find that you’re constantly pulling back on the stick?”
“Yes.”
“That’s because we’ve used some fuel and changed the aircraft’s center of gravity. Do you see that lever by the top forward corner of your door?”
He glanced up briefly. “Yes.”
“That’s the elevator trim lever. I set it all the way forward for takeoff, when the tank was full and the tail was heavy. Now the aircraft needs to be retrimmed.”
“How do we do that?”
“Simple. Ease your grip on the stick. You feel it wanting to go forward of its own accord?”
“Yes.”
“Move the trim lever back. You’ll find less need for constant back pressure on the stick.”
She was right.
“Adjust the trim lever until you no longer need to pull on the stick.”
Harald drew the lever back gradually. Before he knew it, the control column was pressing back on his hand. “Too much,” he said. He pushed the trim lever forward a fraction. “That’s about right.”
“You can also trim the rudder, by moving the knob in that toothed rack at the bottom of the instrument panel. When the aircraft is correctly trimmed, it should fly straight and level with no pressure on the controls.”
Harald took his hand off the column experimentally. The Hornet Moth continued to fly level.
He returned his hand to the stick.
The cloud below them was not continuous, and at intervals they were able to see through gaps to the moonlit earth below. Soon they left Zealand behind and flew over the sea. Karen said, “Check the altimeter.”
He found it difficult to look down at the instrument panel, feeling instinctively that he needed to concentrate on flying the aircraft. When he tore his gaze away from the exterior, he saw that they had reached seven thousand feet. “How did that happen?” he said.
“You’re holding the nose too high. It’s natural. Unconsciously, you’re afraid of hitting the ground, so you keep trying to climb. Dip the nose.”
He pushed the stick forward. As the nose came down, he saw another aircraft. It had large crosses on its wings. Harald felt sick with fear.
Karen saw it at the same time. “Hell,” she said. “The Luftwaffe.” She sounded as scared as Harald felt.
“I see it,” Harald said. It was to their left and down, a quarter of a mile or so away, and climbing toward them.
She took the stick and put the nose sharply down. “I have control.”
“You have control.”
The Hornet Moth went into a dive.
Harald recognized the other aircraft as a Messerschmitt Bf110, a twin-engined night fighter with a distinctive double-finned tailplane and long, greenhouse-like cockpit canopy. He remembered Arne talking about the Bf110’s armament with a mixture of fear and envy: it had cannons and machine guns in the nose, and Harald could see the rear machine guns poking up from the back end of the canopy. This was the aircraft used to shoot down Allied bombers after the radio station on Sande had detected them.
The Hornet Moth was completely defenseless.
Harald said, “What are we going to do?”
“Try to get back into that cloud layer before he gets within range. Damn, I shouldn’t have let you climb so high.”
The Hornet Moth was diving steeply. Harald glanced at the airspeed indicator and saw that they had reached one hundred and thirty knots. It felt like the downhill stretch of a roller-coaster. He realized he was grasping the edge of his seat. “Is this safe?” he said.
“Safer than being shot.”
The other aircraft came rapidly closer. It was much faster than the Moth. There was a flash and a rattle of gunfire. Harald had been expecting the Messerschmitt to fire on them, but he could not restrain a yell of shock and fear.
Karen turned right, trying to spoil the gunner’s aim. The Messerschmitt flashed past below. The gunfire stopped, and the Hornet Moth’s engine droned on. They had not been hit.
Harald recalled Arne saying that it was quite difficult for a fast aircraft to shoot at a slow one. Perhaps that had saved them.
As they turned, he looked out of the window and saw the fighter receding into the distance. “I think he’s out of range,” he said.
“Not for long,” Karen replied.
Sure enough, the Messerschmitt was turning. The seconds dragged by as the Hornet Moth dived toward the protection of the cloud and the fast-moving fighter swept through a wide turn. Harald saw that their airspeed had reached one hundred and sixty. The cloud was tantalizingly close-but not close enough.
He saw the flashes and heard the bangs as the fighter opened up. This time the aircraft were closer and the fighter had a better angle of attack. To his horror he saw a jagged rip appear in the fabric of the lower left wing. Karen shoved the stick over and the Hornet Moth banked.
Then, suddenly, they were plunged into cloud.
The gunfire stopped.
“Thank God,” Harald said. Although it was cold, he was sweating.
Karen pulled back on the stick and brought them out of the dive. Harald shone the flashlight on the altimeter and watched the needle slow its counterclockwise movement and steady at just above five thousand feet. The airspeed returned gradually to the normal cruising speed of eighty knots.
She banked the aircraft again, changing direction, so that the fighter would not be able to overtake them simply by following their previous course.