The Hornet's Sting_ The Amazing Untold Story of World War II Spy Thomas Sneum - Mark Ryan [38]
As they looked down and saw orange flashes from battery guns, in an instant the awful truth dawned. This wasn’t Romoe or Mandoe. The landmass below was frighteningly familiar. They had left Jutland over Esbjerg, with all its battery defenses, and crossed the narrow channel to Fanoe, Sneum’s home island. Now they were over Nordby, at the island’s northern tip, almost directly above the radar installation that Sneum had filmed so courageously. The same installation was about to exact its revenge by guiding 105mm and 88mm cannon-fire on to their little sports plane. As the flak exploded with increasing venom and accuracy, Tommy and Kjeld braced themselves for a direct hit.
No one was to blame. Harald had made the most accurate forecast he could given the data that was available to him. By midnight, however, conditions had started to change. As Tommy and Kjeld had been taking off, the wind was already coming from due south; then it had continued to shift until now it was a strong sou’westerly. Simply by veering through ninety degrees, the wind had become potentially disastrous. Sneum had been blown further north than he had foreseen, and now it looked as though he and Pedersen would pay for it with their lives.
Kjeld motioned frantically. ‘Up, up!’ he urged again.
Tommy didn’t need telling, and he sent the plane into a steep climb towards what cloud cover was available at 2400 meters. While making this desperate dash for safety, he realized they could be shot down right over his family’s mansion, in full view of his parents, who had doubtless been woken by the commotion in the skies.
A direct hit would bring an appropriately explosive end to Sneum’s stormy relationship with his father. At least they had recently come to accept their differences, and had even discovered some common ground. Christian Sneum was a complex man. A headmaster at the local school, he was a firm disciplinarian and yet remained a pacifist. He hadn’t approved of his son’s career in the military. Even so, when the Germans had invaded, Christian knew that his eldest son wouldn’t be able to take the occupation lying down. And strangely, given the views he had held for a lifetime, he didn’t seem to want Tommy to sit around and do nothing as the Nazis took control of their country.
‘Shouldn’t you be in England?’ he had asked his son pointedly earlier in the year.
Tommy was shocked yet inspired by the message behind the question. It was clearly a time for honesty. ‘You know, Father, I probably won’t survive the war,’ he said.
Christian knew his boy to be a natural risk-taker. ‘No, Thomas, I don’t suppose you will,’ he replied in an equally matter-of-fact way.
Tommy’s mother, Karen, overheard the exchange and burst into tears. Soon there were no dry eyes left in the Sneum household, not even among the men, whose emotions were normally well hidden. Despite the war that had changed their lives, Tommy’s family found peace among themselves that day.
But a sense of peace or resignation wouldn’t keep Tommy alive now. All that could save him and Pedersen were lightning-quick reactions. The gunners on the ground had originally fired too high, fooled perhaps by the seemingly distant noise of the sports plane’s tiny engine. Now they were getting closer with every shell, guided by the very radar system Sneum had sought to expose to the British. Somewhere in all the chaos Tommy realized that it might be his old friend Meinicke who was seeking his destruction. Given the strategic importance of the installation, situated just west of the major port of Esbjerg, Sneum couldn’t blame him. The highly sensitive nature of the technology there had left him with little choice. But it still seemed like a strange way for their friendship to end.
In spite of the gunners’ best efforts, the little plane remained in one piece and flew ever closer to the haven of the clouds. As a result, the German commander was left with no option but to play