Chapter 1

The Bay was as bleak and dreary as that coast gets in late Autumn. The wind had a hint of the ice of the Arctic which cut through to the bone as effective as any sabre slash. It hardly stirred the sea, however, with its fitful breath, although it hardly mattered. Saturated from my dunking in the Bay, I knew I had little time before my remaining strength became so depleted, my only wish would be to lay down and submit. My RAF quilted flying jacket was never designed to withstand an immersion in such waters and felt as heavy on my shoulders as if I was carrying bricks in my pockets.

Beyond the veil of the night fog, the old aircraft had remained afloat just long enough for me to scramble from the cockpit. A piece of aluminium wheel spat had served as a life buoy - sufficient to get me to shore. Fate had offered me the means to survive the sea, but I was not sure I would survive the cold. As I looked behind, the Lysander had tipped and surrendered to the sea - dragged down to the bottom by the heavy engine.

I enjoyed flying that old, British machine. At Wismar, we’d dubbed her ‘The Walrus’ in that habit Soviet pilots have of naming their machines after animals. I’m not sure how it fell into our hands. The story I heard was it was a ‘Prise de Guerre’, found locked up in a hangar on some Luftwaffe airfield as our forces moved across North Germany. The Germans had destroyed the engine by running it up with an empty oil tank. But, we had plenty of replacements and engineers had bolted on a M-25 - much the same as powered the crates I flew during the war. It gave marginally more power, but was also larger in diameter. The Lysander was never particularly pleasing aesthetically, and that grafted on Soviet version of the Wright Cyclone did little to change the pure utilitarian look of the machine.

Designed in 1936 at the same time as the old Pobiedas, the Lysander concealed a wealth of aerodynamically advanced features for the time. That is why it proved such a valuable aircraft in the inventory. These features centred on the wing, which enabled it to have a very low stall speed and short take off and landing capability. Coupled with an extremely rugged undercarriage and fuselage construction made it perfect for clandestine operations. You can put the Lysander down on a sports field or a forest clearing and it will pull up in a distance barely three times its own length. I know this is true because I have done it. We compared it to the German Storch and found it had a bigger payload and could withstand landings that would break the more fragile German aircraft.

I remembered that operation as clear as yesterday. The fog was closing in that evening and I decided the mission must be going to be called off. It was a simple flight across the Bay of Mecklenburg to drop something at a location to the West of Kiel. We were never told what was in the packages, or who they were for. We, after all, were the taxi drivers forbidden to talk to the passengers, and delivery drivers who were not to know what we were delivering. Our ‘Special Deployment Section’ was pathetically small - merely two specialist machines, a Pobieda with a second cockpit, and the Lysander. A half dozen mechanics, some security and administration guys and that was the unit - maybe 20/25 in total.

We used an old Luftwaffe field just outside of Wismar. We were rarely let out of the wire and never by ourselves. Instead, an improvised cinema entertained us with propaganda films and old movies. We played football and chess when it was too cold to spend anytime outside. The mail was always a month old - sometimes we felt like submariners sealed hermetically from the outside world for weeks of a patrol. For we young men, the absence of female company was the hardest to endure. All the time I was there, I never saw a woman. We would’ve given a year’s wages for a French film.

I was to fly the Lysander. The Pobieda had too short a range - it’s fuselage tank having been taken out to accommodate the second cockpit. The Lysander had been fitted with an external tank bolted below the fuselage. We emptied that, first, lest it be split open during a hard landing. A package was mounted on each of the wheel spats with simple trip wires that fed into the cockpit. Once over the drop zone, I’d pull on the wires and release the containers which were slowed in their descent by drogue chutes. That was the plan and it didn’t differ at all from a dozen others I’d done before.

By 5pm the fog had closed in and I took myself to my bunk to read. Barely 5 minutes later the commander opened the door and ordered me to prepare for the mission. I started to argue, but he told me it was a priority. Such was the reality in our little, secret outfit. We pilots did what we were told, obeyed orders, and our judgement was never taken into account. This is what happens when spies make the decisions. For them, it is a matter of life and death and they expect we ‘drivers’ to have the same sense of duty.

Around my neck was the cyanide pill I was expected to swallow in the event of a crash landing in ‘enemy’ territory. Across the Bay was the British Zone - the same British who were our comrades in arms barely two years before. I met many of the British when I was stationed down in the Thuringian Forest area shortly after the peace. Now, we are told we are enemies, that they are allied with the Americans who have a bomb so powerful it can destroy cities. This ‘atomic’ bomb shifted the ground with the thought of hundreds of American B-29s swarming over our country, annihilating cities at will, and at a height and speed few of our interceptors could reach. America wanted to rule the world, we were told by our political officers, and it was a fear that was easy to believe. Why then have such a terrible weapon if they had no intention to use it? In any case, I was determined not to use that pill. If I was to crash, I would prefer to go down with my aircraft in the manner of a combat pilot, not in a death reserved for traitors and spies.

It was dark by six o’clock, when the mechanics started the Lysander’s engine. Serials and maker’s codes had been cleaned off and even the engine numbers had been thoroughly filed. The plane was finished in all over dark green with a scheme uncharacteristic of Soviet military aircraft. Naturally, no National markings or tactical numbers were painted on the wings and fuselage. Nothing was left on the aircraft that would make it easy to trace the origin. Neither was I to carry anything personal, or military ID - anything that would identify me as a Soviet military officer. I wore an RAF jacket a GRU ‘Leytenant’ turned up one day - pleased, he was, like an angler who’d hooked a big salmon. An old pair of Luftwaffe flight overalls completed the image, dyed black, and a set of fur lined boots obtained locally. Exaggerated secrecy was the order of the day, with a swift death in the event of failure. In my bunk at night, I sometimes wondered what all the death and destruction was all for in the end, if we still treated each other as enemies, albeit with a different uniform, and conducted peacetime missions with all the urgency, discipline and risk inherent two years ago.

At 6.05 I was taxiing to the runway marked by a double row of red lamps. The GRU spies had insisted I not carry a radio, so tower instructions were conveyed by a polychromatic signal lamp mounted outside the control room. A torch inside the wind sock showed me wind direction. It was all very basic, like before the war at the student airfield in Rostov. The lamp on the tower railing flickered from red to green, so I ran up the M-25 to take off power. Heavy with fuel, the Lysander took a full 400 metres before reaching rotation speed and then I was off. I kept her low - barely 150 metres - but I knew the coast was as flat as a football field. The run to the ocean was free of obstructions, providing I kept strictly to my bearing. The British compass was first class, as was the artificial horizon and altimeter. I had little trouble flying on instruments - I was arguably the best in our little band of fliers. The guys would say I could not find my way out of a bar in the daytime, but given an aircraft on a dark night, I would always make it home.

There was only about 50 metres of clear air below the fog, but it didn’t worry me that much. I have flown in worse conditions and I thought I could handle it. Finding the drop zone on that anonymous, sparsely populated, inky black shore would be a challenge to my navigation, but, again, I had that confidence born of youthful energy, training, experience and military discipline.

At 150 knots, I should be over the drop zone in just over an hour. The lights at Dahme and Groemitz were my fixes, but I doubted they would be visible in these conditions. With no radio DF it was seat-of-the pants, dead reckoning flying with slide rule and guess work. A break in the fog revealed the light, I was sure, was Groemitz. I corrected 15 degrees to the North before hitting the coast. I was low/low to avoid a British radar installation we knew they operated on Fehmarn, well to the North. At that time, we could only guess the power and range of the British radar. We Soviets had been late to the game and had a lot to learn about this new technology. I calculated, rather than saw the coastline. On that night, you would need Xray vision to see very much of anything. It was time for the slide rule, the stop watch and the guess work.

Suddenly the engine faltered. My heart leapt in my chest and I desperately switched over from the external to the internal tanks. It had to be fuel, but there ought to be plenty of gas left in the tank. I hadn’t the time to dwell on that, I was too busy navigating and listening to the beat of the engine, as it struggled back up to the proper revolutions. I was so close to the ground I feared a sudden loss of height would see me clipping a tree, a pole, or some other obstruction and slam into a field. But, it was well. I regained height and continued. There would be time later to recalculate my fuel.

To this day, I don’t know for sure what happened. I suspect it was probably the joint between the external tank and the main fuel line. It included a non-return valve to stop fuel from the internal tank bleeding back into the empty external. It looked vulnerable to the effects of vibration to me. But, in our unit, engineers could not be questioned. We were the taxi drivers and delivery boys.

The drop zone was a forest clearing. We’d used it before and I was dead on the mark. A red lamp pulsed amid the blackness below and I pulled on the wires to release the containers. Guns, radio parts, forged documents, explosives, microfilm cameras or false beards, I had no idea and cared even less. My job was to drop the load and skedaddle and that is what I did - as fast as that five year old rattletrap could go.

In that dawn of the jet age when our first experiments in the operational capability of turbine powered aircraft were just beginning, I know of no other aircraft more appropriate for what we did in Wismar than that big, chunky British Westland Lysander. The British developed this mark for the express purpose of flying clandestine missions into occupied France. A special propellor and muffler was designed to reduce noise. It could land in a cornfield and take off on a country lane. Automatic wing slots reduced the stall speed to 55 knots. Its high wing gave an unparalleled view of the ground for the pilot. Its slow approach speed meant you could hop hedges and dot it down precisely where you wanted it. Unlike the German Fieseler Storch, it had a useful payload and an undercarriage that could withstand the heaviest landing. 1947 saw the introduction of the Antonov AN-2 that had some of the features of the Lysander, but not all. Our engineers should have copied that aircraft and turned them out by the thousands. For the Russian environment, it would’ve been perfect as a general utility aircraft. But, it was the only one in our inventory and I sent it to the bottom of the Bay of Mecklenburg.

I was back over the sea before I tackled the vexed question of fuel. The external had no separate gauge so you ran it dry before switching to the fuselage tank. By my calculation I was going to be short and wouldn’t make it back to the airfield. By next question was, where would I land? I could try to make the waters off the Soviet Zone, or turn down the coast and ditch somewhere offshore? I thought, 10, 20 kilometres off shore I was bound to drown or freeze to death, providing I survived the ditching. I had no parachute, nor life preserver, for we were expected to die with our aircraft. Even in the worst days of the Patriotic War, I do not remember such callous disregard for the lives of our combat pilots. Of course, we can all criticise the tactical decisions of our generals that needlessly wasted the lives of so many fine pilots. But, in the war there was never a deliberate policy to deny a pilot the chance to save themselves if things go wrong - which they often did.

I did not want to drown, freeze to death or take the GRU’s bitter pill. I resolved to turn South, past the Groemitz Light, and down the coast of the British Zone. This way, I was sure I could never make it back into Soviet controlled waters, but, to be within reach of the beach was far preferable than the middle of the Bay. In half an hour, the engine died. I trimmed the aircraft tail heavy to counter the weight of the dead engine. With a fixed undercarriage, the aircraft was liable to flip over as it hit the sea. I thought to take standard ditching procedure - a dead stick approach into the wind keeping the nose up so the tail will strike first. The sea was a flat calm, and I was sure I could get down safely. How long it will stay afloat, I had no idea. I pulled back the cockpit canopy so I could exit as fast as possible.

There was no sound but the eerie whistling of the wind through the wing slots and flaps. The plane seem to tremble as if in fear of the freezing cold water. With no power to the hydraulics, it took all my strength to keep the plane on an even keel, for if a wingtip hit the water, it would be bound to cartwheel with dire results for me, the pilot. I held my breath as the plane shuddered. The tailwheel bounced off the surface of the sea and those big, mainwheel spats smashed into the gentle swell. For a moment, the nose dipped and I thought it was going to plunge straight down, of flip over onto its back. Then, with a groan, it settled, upright, with the sound of the sea rushing into every aperture. I punched the buckle of my seat belt and clambered out of the cockpit. The ocean was barely a metre below and rising when, in desperation, I held my nose and jumped.

I should’ve drowned then. I had not thought to remove that heavy jacket and I sank like a stone into the cold water. Fighting for my life, I sluggishly regained the surface, but I could feel my waterlogged flight clothing trying to drag me back down. Kicking and thrashing for all I was worth, my hand found metal and I clung onto it. It turned out to be a section of wheel spat made of duralumin and it floated like a boat. Summoning all my strength, I hauled myself onto it so it part submerged, but had enough buoyancy to support my weight. Then, I kicked my legs, steering in the direction I thought ought to be the beach.

I cannot remember the time it took to paddle to shore. My sense of time expanded, slowed, so that minutes seemed like hours. All I remember is the sense of relief when my feet contacted gravel bank, less than 100 metres from the stoney beach. I part crawled, part floundered as I could not swim in that saturated clothing. When I at last hit the beach, I was all in, steam rising from my overworked body as the heat of exertion gave way to the onset of hyperthermia. I tried to stand, but slumped to my knees. I needed to get as far away from the water as I could, so I crawled over gravel, dune, until encountering prickly grass, damp from the evening dew and just as chilling.

I knew I had to keep moving or submit to an icy death. I argued with myself, demanded I stay awake, get some shelter, dry my clothes, make a plan of what I was to do now. As a language student, I could speak English fairly well, but not enough to fool an Englishman. I had enough German to ask the way, barter for a bottle of schnapps, but not nearly well enough to pass for a German. I was lost in enemy territory after a top secret mission I dare not tell anyone - even my own people. Will I be shot as a spy or traded back to the GRU? Then what of them? A secretive, vengeful organisation who took care of their ‘failures’ with ruthless efficiency. No trial for me, but days of interrogation followed by a bullet.

Should I seek the nearest British official and turn myself in? Surely they will want me to betray my country, my service, my comrades and tell all I know. They will want the whole story of these secret operations into the territory they administer. They will want names and places. I told myself I could never do any of that. To become a traitor meant sacrificing my family, my close friends, as well as those agents working out there in the field. I may well become some prize, some show pony in this secret war between erstwhile allies. I imagined being posed for propaganda films in the same way we posed defectors in front of our cameras. I couldn’t bear to be treated as such. I wanted a quiet life doing the things I loved.