The Hornet's Sting_ The Amazing Untold Story of World War II Spy Thomas Sneum - Mark Ryan [160]
‘You’re a bit rusty, aren’t you?’ said the older man quickly. ‘But you’re doing OK.’
Tommy remained receptive to the demands of both plane and instructor, and his skills came rushing back to him. Adrenalin coursed through his veins, just as it had the very first time he had flown as a teenager. He was soon at one with the machine. The pilot within had clearly never left him.
‘I found that flying was fundamentally the same, no matter how many engines you have,’ he remembered with a smile.
All too soon, though, he faced the ultimate challenge of his first high-speed landing. His entire being was focused on getting it right. The tarmac rushed past as he met it, and the kiss was smooth. ‘I got lucky,’ he admitted later. ‘I was due to do two or three landings, but the first one went so well that when we came to a halt the instructor wrote on his pad: “Above average to excellent.” Then he told me: “OK, all yours, just take a navigator with you.”’
To all intents and purposes, Tommy had just been given the green light to fly solo. ‘I enjoyed that feeling so much when I went up again,’ he recalled. ‘And the navigator had no idea that I had never been in Mosquitoes before. He seemed to think I was an experienced twin-engine pilot.’
Four years of frustration were blown away in the wind as the Mossie scythed through the sky under Sneum’s instinctive guidance. The power of the plane and majesty of life among the summer clouds inspired him.
‘I can’t put into words what it felt like,’ he said apologetically, ‘except to say that it was like coming home.’
Tommy Sneum won a place in a Norwegian squadron within the wider structure of Coastal Command, essentially defending Britain from German attack. This reflected a compromise Riiser-Larsen had reached with the British, who were keen to avoid the risk of Tommy being shot down over enemy airspace, in case he gave away all their secrets. Ironically, he was often stationed at Leuchars in Scotland, where he had been apprehended as a perceived threat to national security only two years earlier.
‘We’d sometimes fly over the sea towards Norway in our Mosquitoes, and find the odd U-boat to attack. But skirmishes were very limited because by the time we got so far it was almost time to turn around and come back.’
On one occasion, however, while stationed in Wales, Tommy was sent on what he described as a ‘training reconnaissance flight’, though his Mosquito was armed with live ammunition.
I’d been ordered not to get involved in anything. But I saw a German ship running out in Irish waters. There was no mistaking it, because I knew every ship the Germans had from my spying days and I could identify them. This particular ship fired on me, so I got mad and attacked. I just went in once and gave them a heavy burst of fire, then I got away. They had a lot of guns and I didn’t want to get shot down, but I think I did some damage.
When I got back to base I knew they would check the ammunition, so I had to tell them what had happened. It was an English-run airport in Wales, so first I got a bollocking from the English and then I got another one from the Norwegians. As a matter of fact, I think they were pleased, but they had to give you a dressing down.
Tommy Sneum had always tried to do things his way, and that continued right up to May 1945:
I was out with Lars, my navigator, flying eighty kilometers due south of Cape Clear in southern Ireland. I was keeping a sharp lookout for submarines when we received a call-up on the radio: ‘Back to base immediately.’
We had only been flying an hour and a quarter, and it was meant to be a six-hour patrol, so I replied: ‘Everything under control, I’m continuing.’ But they came back again, even more emphatically: ‘Come back immediately.’ That was it, the war