Once More the Hawks by Max Hennessy Read Free Book Online

out like a sore thumb. Whose idea was it?’
    ‘I can guess,’ Dicken said, thinking of Diplock. ‘Why not try duck-egg green like Sidney Cotton. He’s found it makes them virtually invisible.’
    They were also worried about the lack of back armour and when the Air Ministry experts had maintained it would affect the Hurricane’s centre of gravity and lead to difficulties of flying, they had simply stolen a plate from a written-off Battle and, fitting it into a Hurricane, had found it made no difference at all.
    As far as the intentions of the Germans were concerned, nobody seemed to know very much, chiefly because the concept of air reconnaissance was that the Lysander would look after the short range work at low level while longer range cover would be supplied by Blenheims flying at 12,000 feet, the maximum height at which it was believed cameras could give acceptable pictures. The Blenheims, in fact, were suffering casualties in their attempts to get information.
    Barratt was at a loss. He was being pressured by the Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force for photographs because he didn’t agree with the French, who, assuming that their Maginot Line defences would present an impassable obstacle, were convinced that the German attack would come across the Belgian Plain between Namur and Antwerp. Fortunately, at that moment Cotton turned up, a huge bespectacled man full of Australian self-confidence, and when Barratt asked for proof of his suspicions that the Germans planned to use a southern approach, he immediately offered a Spitfire he had made faster by replacing the thick dope with a hard semi-gloss.
    ‘With all the holes blocked up and all projections streamlined,’ he said. ‘We can push the speed up by thirty or forty miles an hour. The Germans won’t ever catch it. Especially with the guns out.’
    A fortnight later, with the weather improving, the Spitfire arrived. When Dicken wanted to mount the camera behind the pilot’s seat, the engineer officer promptly objected that it would upset the balance of the machine.
    ‘You’d better see Number One Squadron,’ Dicken said dryly. ‘ They were refused back armour because one of you lot said it would affect the flying qualities so they fitted it anyway, and it made no difference at all. Besides, in case you haven’t noticed, to compensate for the heaviness of the new three-bladed steel propellers we’re fitting, lead weights have been let into the tail.’
    The red-faced engineer officer had to admit this was true and the camera was mounted in place of the weights and, at the beginning of May, with the weather improving all the time, Dicken flew along the wooded country of the Belgian- Luxembourg-German border.
    Taking the photographs into Barratt, he indicated what they had picked up. ‘Tanks,’ he pointed out. ‘Hiding among the trees in the Ardennes.’
    Barratt frowned. ‘The French regard the Ardennes as impassable for armoured troops,’ he pointed out. ‘Allied strategy’s based on that assumption. It’s the whole basis of the French Plan. When they come, we’re to advance to the River Dyle to cover Brussels and Antwerp. I think we’d better have a low-level for confirmation.’
    The following day was bright as Dicken climbed into his seat. The Merlin engine’s crackling roar filled his ears as it started up in a cloud of dust and streams of white smoke from the exhaust stubs. The Spit was a difficult machine to taxi and oversensitive to fore and aft control so that lifting the tail tended to dig in the prop while a correction tended to dig in the tail.
    As he howled over the ground at low level he saw faces turned up to watch him, so that woods that had appeared to be empty were suddenly sprinkled with white spots. The forests of the Ardennes were in full leaf but it soon became obvious that there were army units hiding there and he could see men running for cover and occasionally lorries lurching out of sight. It seemed