The Hornet's Sting_ The Amazing Untold Story of World War II Spy Thomas Sneum - Mark Ryan [35]
Guiltily, Kjeld pulled in the flag of peace and laid it to one side. Knowing there was no time for further recriminations, Sneum coaxed more life out of the engine and sent the flimsy plane hurtling forward. Both men knew this was the point of no return. Happily, the field seemed surprisingly smooth. Tommy feared that one bump might diminish precious speed, but he was able to use the incline of the hill to achieve a furious pace before pulling the joystick towards himself.
There was just one problem—the plane wouldn’t take off. Even with the help of the slope, the amount of fuel she was carrying made her just too heavy. The Moth flirted with the air for no more than a few seconds before thumping stubbornly back down to earth. They should have been climbing steeply by now, because pylons and high-voltage cables lay straight ahead; and a hundred meters further on was the ten-meter-high embankment that carried the railway track through the next field. The situation was critical. Even if the temperamental Moth belatedly decided to fly, it no longer seemed possible to make it over the cables. However, it was also too late to abort the take-off. And as if all that were not enough to deal with, Tommy noticed a disturbing development to the left, where another train was snaking its way over the embankment. Even if they could somehow negotiate the cables that stretched like tripwires between the pylons, the formidable wall beyond them had effectively just grown even higher.
Suddenly there was a fresh sensation of weightlessness. The Hornet hovered a foot or two above the grass for five seconds before dropping again, as if exhausted by her effort. By this stage, they were already over halfway down the hill. Time and space were running out fast, and humiliation beckoned: to be shot down over the North Sea was one thing; to crash after fifty meters was quite another.
Then, finally, the Moth took to the air and stayed there. But the prospect of death by electrocution instantly tempered the pilots’ elation. With clearing the power cables no longer an option, both men realized their lives now depended upon staying low enough to duck under them instead. Sneum remembered: ‘I had to go down, keep the engine running full speed and try not to climb.’ He had to perform the stunt at about 100 kilometers per hour, or 55 knots. For Sneum to attempt to achieve that speed without gaining altitude seemed like mission impossible. He was a good pilot, but this sort of aerobatics might demand more skill than even he possessed. The cables were perilously close now, hanging little more than twenty meters above the field. Sneum held his nerve and braced himself, while Pedersen hardly dared look. Just above them, the wires flashed past like cheese-cutters. The anxious pilots waited for what seemed like the inevitable collision. To their amazement, none came.
Now, though, the embankment and train rose before them. And going under them was not an option. As Tommy hauled back on the joystick, Pedersen gestured frantically, his palms turned to the sky, his arms flapping. ‘Up! Up!’ he screamed. Something stung the Hornet Moth into action. Up she reared, banking steeply to port, until the embankment was almost scaled. But while Tommy tried to work his magic, he saw that the train was about to crush the plane’s left wing. The wing tip was level with the top of the engine, which was hurtling towards them. The next few seconds would decide their fate. Sneum caught sight of the train driver and his fireman, seemingly both hypnotized as the Hornet Moth flew towards them. ‘They were looking as though we had just fallen down from the moon,’ Tommy said later. Those on the train ducked as if to avoid decapitation, but in an instant they were left again to their own