D for Daisy (The Blind Sleuth Mysteries 1)

D for Daisy Part 1: 1934 - Murder over Berlin

That night, as they finally flew over the Dutch coast and reached the North Sea, the crew on board D-Daisy became very nervous. They were almost home, which should have been a relief, but their skipper had been knocked out, and Derek, the flight engineer, had taken over the controls. He had never landed the aircraft before. He was now shouting to his crew-mates over the intercom.

"Rear-gunner! what do you say? Can the bomb-aimer leave his guns now?"

"Yes, yes, I think so! We're still in range of the 'bandits', but if they attack, it will definitely be from behind. So leave them to the mid-upper and myself. We'll take care of them..."

"All right! So, Ken, get up here at once! I want you in the flight engineer's seat pronto. And don't forget your chute; we're still in bailout readiness."

"Right! Coming!"

It took some time for Ken to disconnect his mask from the oxygen supply, his flight helmet from the intercom lines, and to extricate himself and his bulky flying suit from the narrow nose-turret of the Lancaster. In the meantime Derek called out to the wireless, who was stationed right next to the first aid bed, "Wireless! how's the skipper doing? Can you feel a pulse?"

"Dunno! I thought I felt something a while ago, but right now I'm not sure. I'm still feeding some oxygen into his mask, though..."

"Good! Can't you put a pocket mirror between his teeth or something; check if he's still breathing?"

"I don't have a pocket mirror, dammit! Who's got a pocket mirror on this kite? You don't fly all the way to Berlin to have a shave!"

"Hold your horses, for Chrissake!"

Derek and the crew were assuming that their skipper had been hit by flak, even though there was no visible wound. On their mission that night they had flown through several flak barrages, on the way out and coming back. It was inevitable on an op like this, deep into enemy territory. It meant you just had to fly on through exploding high altitude shells, with shrapnel bursting forth in all directions. And that in its turn always meant taking your chances in a deadly lottery where there were few winners. Tiny pieces of shrapnel would shoot right through the aircraft's skin and could hit an airman, acting like a dumdum bullet. Sometimes an unlucky chap took a direct hit, and his head or his chest just exploded. You heard gruesome stories. In this case, it seemed that the skipper had been badly injured by some freak splinter that had shredded a vital internal organ but hardly left a mark on the outside.

Meanwhile Ken had climbed from the bottom of the nose up to the flight deck, and connected himself to the engineer's station, to the right of the pilot's seat. "Bomb-aimer reporting, I'm at your station now, Derek, what do you want me to do?"

"Just read out the figures on every gauge on the panel in front of you. Start top left and go down row by row, like a book..."

Ken started to call out the figures.

"Faster! Faster! We haven't got much time!"

When he had finished reading out the figures, the bomb aimer asked anxiously, "What do you say, Derek, are we all right?"

"Yes, the kite is sound, thank God. Fuel readings good. Hydraulics good. 'D for Daisy' can land."

"Yes, but can you land her?"

"I don't know, for crying out loud! I've never done it before. It's not that easy... Listen up, you chaps. I'm no good at yawing and breaking with the flaps to decrease our speed on the glide path. All that is just too tricky, as you can imagine. So we'll touch down at a much higher speed than we're used to, all right? It's going to be a rough landing... Now, wireless, I think it's time to call ahead and tell them this: skipper down; flight engineer in charge; emergency landing imminent; wounded man on board in critical state... All right?"