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Duus Hansen made discreet contact with resistance sympathizers in the relevant locations, to see what they might unearth. The Danish naval officer in charge on the island of Bornholm, Lieutenant Commander Hasager Christiansen, was one such man. Fate was about to hand him a vital role in helping the British to understand Hitler’s V-rockets.

Back in London, Tommy Sneum knew something big was happening, and all of a sudden he was glad that he had taken the opportunity to enjoy himself while he still could:

Mitchell took me to one side and said: ‘Would you be prepared to go back to Denmark if necessary, in spite of everything we’ve done to you? I may have a mission for you.’ I said that I would be prepared to go, but I didn’t ask what the mission was because I knew I would be told when it was deemed to be the right time. I knew the game.

Bornholm had been mentioned at around that time. They were asking so many questions about sea conditions between Denmark and Bornholm, near Peenemunde on the German coast. I’m sure I knew about Peenemunde too. I don’t think I knew anything about rockets at that time, but I did know from my time in the Danish Navy that the Germans had a special base there. I thought the British were eventually going to send me to Germany itself to find out about Peenemunde. They seemed to want someone who knew the local sea and could speak German. Part of me wanted to bite their hands off to get myself back into action. Another part of me thought: I hope they’re not going to send me in there, because it will be a bloody dangerous job.

Even for Christiansen, who was on Bornholm in an official capacity, the environment would almost cost him his life. But to go into this highly sensitive area with no connections on the inside would surely prove fatal. So Tommy waited to see if he would be handed a suicide mission.

Just before midnight on 9 August 1943, Pilot Officer Sigfred Johannes Christophersen underwent another pre-flight briefing at the large air base of 12 Pilot Advanced Flying Unit in Grantham, Lincolnshire.

With 137 hours of flying time already under his belt since joining the RAF more than a year earlier, a weary Christophersen was about to take to the skies again in a Mark I Blenheim, serial number K7050. This time he would face the added challenge of night-flying. Sigfred knew his long hours in the versatile Blenheim had prepared him for a future in the cockpit of either a night-fighter or a bomber. His advanced course was nearly at an end, and soon it would be time for real action.

Christophersen probably harbored mixed feelings about the prospect of aerial combat. Even before teaming up with Sneum in 1941, he had seemed to dread the idea of running the gauntlet of German flak and night-fighters with an Allied squadron over occupied Europe. Indeed, he had told Sneum before their mission that he considered it safer to return to Denmark as an agent than to fly for the RAF, the path chosen by most pro-Allied Danish pilots. Now, though, the spying option no longer existed.

Though Sigfred had hardly covered himself in glory while on active service for SIS, and had even been accused of cowardice by Sneum, he had still shown more bravery during the war than many men. With the help of his late brother Thorbjoern, he had also led Sneum to the genius of Duus Hansen. Now he was on the point of proving to the British and to himself that he still had the stomach to fight the Nazis. He was in the final stages of training for a new chapter in his war, and he had conquered the worst of his fears.

By 1.30 a.m. on 10 August, a confused Christophersen was flying over the fields of Lincolnshire, trying to follow a flare-path which would guide him back to the airfield. Due to elaborate defense measures, this wasn’t as easy as it might have been. Decoy airfields (called ‘Q sites’) had been built all over Lincolnshire to fool the enemy into dropping bombs on worthless targets. Although they looked inviting, the runways were lethally short, if they existed at all. And they certainly weren’t built to