RAF SULLOM VOE, SHETLAND ISLANDS
MONDAY, MARCH 31, 1941
Microphone in hand, Hugh peered out a round window. “This is Hugh Collingwood reporting from inside a Short Sunderland flying boat of the RAF Coastal Command. That roar you hear is the Sunderland’s four mighty engines as our aircraft plows through the icy waters of this inlet and releases—ah, do you hear it!—releases from the water into the sky.”
Since seeing a Sunderland patrolling on the Lofoten Raid, Hugh had angled for this story. He’d spent the past week at the airfield of RAF Sullom Voe in the Shetland Islands, and he’d sent a series of recordings to London about the men of No. 201 Squadron. Now he could capture their work in the air.
“We are soaring above our airmen’s remote base in a land of stark beauty, a land iced in the sugar of snow, in blatant defiance of the Ministry of Food’s prohibition on iced cakes.”
Above him on a scaffold platform, the two beam hatch gunners snickered at Hugh’s joke.
“Now that we are airborne, shall we tour this fine aircraft, my dear listeners?” Hugh pushed to his feet and braced himself against the plane’s metal hull, more unsteady than he cared for.
“You’ll be happy to know the Sunderland offers a great deal of comfort for our boys on their long patrols. I am not a short man, but I have ample room to stretch. The aircraft contains bunks, a galley for preparing meals or a pot of tea, and a lavatory—my apologies to my more delicate listeners.”
Hugh worked his way aft, spooling out cord as he walked. “Of course, our airmen are not here for comfort. They’re here to fight. And fight they will. The aircraft bristles with machine guns, should any German fighter pilot test his chances. And a full load of bombs awaits any Nazi U-boat that might meander beneath us.”
He peeked out another window. He would not mention that for every German ship sunk, about ten Coastal Command aircraft were lost. “Now we are flying over open seas. Hours will pass until we reach our destination, but our crew of eleven will remain ever vigilant.”
He faced his BBC engineer, Robert Ferguson, and gave him a signal.
Rob nodded and stopped the recording machine.
Hugh leaned against the riveted beams forming the internal framework of the plane. Blue-gray seas rippled below, and the Shetland Islands diminished behind him.
He’d taken the assignment in Scotland to escape and to revive his career. At least he’d achieved the latter. His report from the Lofoten Raid had been widely praised, and also his reports from the devastating Luftwaffe air raids in Glasgow and Clydebank during the Clydeside Blitz earlier in March. In between, he’d found intriguing stories at the naval base at Scapa Flow and with Scottish farmers and shipbuilders.
Despite the busyness, he couldn’t escape. With each recording, he had to ring Fletcher with his notes, like an errant schoolboy—which, in fact, he was. To report to Fletcher, Hugh had to keep his notes organized.
He could still hear Aleida’s sweet, lightly accented voice. “Open to a fresh page. Date it at the top. Don’t change pages until you fill the first one.”
Hugh’s gut wrenched, and he rolled up cord and brought it back to Rob. Escape? How could one escape memories? The past month’s activity could only blur the memories, not erase them. Couldn’t erase the regret.
He’d lost her, and loneliness gnawed at his insides.
Although he’d spoken without care, was it wrong to lay the suggestion before her? Her appropriate determination to find her son had become an obsession so dangerous she considered abducting the boy. What could abduction accomplish? She’d be found, imprisoned, and separated from Theo again—but in worse straits. Without proof, she had no recourse.
Hugh sat on a bunk and reviewed his notes. He planned to record three four-minute discs on this flight, and he wanted to use the time well.
If he could learn to take orderly notes, perhaps he could learn the orderly ways of a solicitor or a government minister. A safe job to protect the Collingwood heir. Far safer than patrolling the North Sea.
A job that might earn his first sliver of respect from his parents.
Hugh groaned. If he took such a job, he could end up like his father. Nigel Collingwood would have been a brilliant professor of some esoteric subject. But he’d obeyed his father and taken a commission in the Army. During the First World War, the Army had given him mundane posts in London where he could do no harm, where he’d performed in a thoroughly lackluster manner. After too many years, the Army had retired him with more pomp than he deserved. He was a failure, and he knew it.
That would be Hugh’s fate if he chose the law or the government. In his head, Uncle Elliott’s voice roared. “Stuffing a vibrant young man like Hugh in a stodgy desk job would kill him.”
Uncle Elliott. Pain crushed Hugh’s chest, and he folded his notebook shut. The newspapers insinuated that Philippe Larue would be charged for writing the threatening letter but not charged with murder. The police simply hadn’t enough evidence.
Why couldn’t they see the murderer had to be a man like Bert Ridley who prized security over freedom, a man who’d almost come to blows with Uncle Elliott and who despised Jouveau? Hugh frowned. But a man with an alibi.
Or someone with a temper, a career at stake, and no alibi, like Norman Fletcher. Or someone with the initials of G.B. or J.I., like Jerome Irwin, another man who disliked both victims.
“Is that a periscope?” one of the gunners called from high on his perch.
Hugh sprang to standing and caught Rob’s eye.
“I’m ready when you are.” Rob fiddled with dials.
Hugh climbed the ladder to the gunners’ platform, not an easy task in a bumping aircraft with a microphone in hand.
The two gunners sat back-to-back, wearing padded jackets and hoods with implanted headphones.
On the left, an affable gunner called Blackie grinned at Hugh. “I can’t believe I’m going to be on the BBC.”
Hugh gave Rob the thumbs-up. “Here we are, not even an hour into our mission, and one of our alert gunners has observed something.” Hugh gave Blackie raised eyebrows to proceed.
“Down there.” Blackie pointed his machine gun to the waters. “I saw a periscope.”
“Or a whale,” his mate said with a laugh.
“Or a whale,” Blackie said with a resigned sigh. “But we can’t be too careful.”
Hugh nodded. “The pilots are circling lower. What comes next?”
“We keep watching.” Blackie’s dark gaze fixed on Hugh, his voice low and portentous. “If we think it’s something, we drop bombs.”
His mate let out a scoffing noise. “So keep watching, Blackie.”
“I’ll leave you to your duties. Now I’d like our listeners to hear what this crew’s engineer has in store for any U-boat lurking beneath these waves.”
After he gave Rob the signal to stop recording, Hugh descended the ladder, made sure his headphones were in place so he could hear Rob, and headed forward, his knees bent, his feet wide, and his free hand gripping anything stationary.
Toward the front, the plane had two decks, the lower deck with the comforts Hugh had described earlier and the upper deck for pilots and navigator and engineer and bomb-aimer and radio operator.
Trailing cord behind him, Hugh climbed a ladder to the upper deck. In the first compartment, the engineer checked bombs on a rack overhead.
“Ready, Rob?” Hugh spoke into his microphone.
“Ready, Collie.” Rob’s voice spoke in his headphones.
Hugh lifted a smile. “I’m now standing in the center of the plane between the two massive wings that hold us aloft, with the crew’s engineer. Whilst you work, would you please tell our listeners what you’re doing?”
“Yes, sir.” The engineer, a lanky young man with a Welsh accent, kept to his duty without glancing at Hugh. He turned a crank, and gears clanked. “I’m winching out our bombs.”
“Quite clever, I say.” Hugh studied the contraption as icy air swirled through the open window. “Like a conveyor belt at a factory, moving hundreds of pounds of bombs from inside the plane into position under the wings. Let’s go forward, shall we?”
Hugh worked his way through a narrow door. “I’m passing the stations for our navigator and our radio operator with banks of modern equipment at their fingertips.”
As he passed the radio operator, Hugh covered his microphone to avoid picking up coordinates or call signs. He looped out more cord and entered the cockpit, occupied by two pilots.
Hugh wouldn’t interview them, only observe. “Here in the cockpit, our pilots conduct the crew’s activities like an orchestra. Each man in our crew knows his instrument and plays it well, but the pilots ensure they play together.”
The captain of the aircraft called for bomb release on the bomb-aimer’s signal.
Peering over the pilots’ heads, Hugh saw only the nose of the plane and sky.
The aircraft suddenly lifted. “The bombs have released, and the plane rises from the loss of weight.”
“Hold tight, Mr. Collingwood,” the captain called.
Hugh leaned against the side of the fuselage and grabbed a support beam, and the Sunderland tipped in a tight circle.
Hugh glanced down through a window. “Our bombs have hit the water. White plumes erupt in the sky, with white circles rippling away from the point of impact. How any submarine could survive such an explosion, I can’t imagine.”
After the plane leveled, Hugh talked his way back to the gunners’ platform, gathering cord as he went. Then he climbed the ladder to the platform. “So, chaps, did we sink a U-boat?”
“It was nothing.” Blackie’s voice twisted with disgust.
“No U-boat this time,” Hugh said into the microphone, “but this crew’s vigilance, their diligence, are sure to bear fruit. Their very presence, their ever-watching eyes, force German submarines to stay beneath the waves, where they are slower and less dangerous. No, my friends, those bombs were not wasted. And this patrol has just begun. More bombs and bullets remain, and the Germans would be foolish to stand up to this Sunderland and her exemplary crew.”
Hugh signaled to Rob and pulled off his headphones.
A flush colored Blackie’s thin cheeks. “Ah, you make us sound more heroic than we are.”
“Not at all.” Hugh wound up the mass of cord. “I report only what I observe. I admire what you do.”
Blackie and his mate exchanged a sheepish smile.
Hugh’s parents insisted his job was nothing but a lark, that his work was meaningless.
Was it? Was it meaningless to show the nation what these quietly heroic men did in service to the crown? Was it meaningless to build up the confidence of those men, to show appreciation by shining the light of attention on them?
“No,” Hugh muttered. Not meaningless at all.