It wasn’t precise, but Canidy had had experience in China navigating with a lot less. He looked at his watch, then scrawled some arithmetic computations on the map. He put a check mark on the map. The way he had it figured, the lead aircraft of the bomber stream was now passing over a relatively unpopulated area of Germany, southeast of Dortmund. He made some more marks on the map, then touched his air-to-air microphone switch.
“Dawn Patrol Two,” he called.
“Go ahead,” Douglass replied a moment later.
“There’s something I want to see,” Canidy said.
“Say again?”
“I say again, I’m going to have a look at something I want to see,” Canidy said.
“I’ll be back in about two zero minutes.”
“Dick, are you all right?” Douglass asked, the concern in his voice clear even over the clipped tones of the radio.
“Affirmative,” Canidy said.
“Permission to leave the formation is denied,” Douglass said.
Canidy ignored him. He dropped the nose of the P-38F and headed east.
He knew that Douglass could not simply ignore his responsibilities as fighter escort commander; so Douglass would not follow him.
Canidy dropped through the bomber stream, more than a little surprised that at least one gunner didn’t get excited and take a shot at him. In a P-51 or a P-47, that probably would have happened. But the twin-engine, twin tail boom shape of the P-38F was distinctive. There was no German plane that looked even remotely like it.
When he passed through 11,000 feet, he took the oxygen mask from his face and rubbed the marks it had made on his cheeks and nose, and under his chin. He loosened the snaps of the sheepskin jacket. It was cold, but not nearly as bitter cold as it had been at 25,000 feet, nearly five miles up.
He dropped to 2,000 feet and trimmed it up to cruise at 300 miles per hour.
If the air were still, that would have moved him across the ground at five miles
per minute. The air wasn’t still, of course, but it still helped to have that stored in the back of his mind. He was making, roughly, a mile every twelve seconds.
His chronometer showed that he had left the formation thirteen minutes before when he found what he was looking for. The River Eder had been dammed near Bad Wildungen, making a lake with a distinctive shape. He passed east of it, far enough so that if there was antiaircraft protecting the dam, he would not be in its range.
He reset the second counter on the chronometer.
Almost exactly six minutes later, which would put him thirty miles from the dam, he spotted what had to be the River Lahn. Right, he thought, where it should be.
He banked sharply to follow the river south, and dropped even lower toward the ground. He would be very vulnerable if he was attacked from behind and above. He was counting on not being detected until he had seen what he had come looking for. He was also counting on the probability that whatever Germans were airborne would be directing their efforts toward the bomber stream and its escorts, rather than trying to look for one lone fighter on the deck.
He saw first the medieval castle on the hill in Marburg, then he dropped his eyes just ahead of him and to the right.
And there it was, the Marburg Werke of Fulmar Elektrische GmbH.
He retarded his throttle and extended the naps, and when it was safe, lowered his wheels. Technically, lowering the gear was a sign of surrender. But in order to surrender, there had to be someone to surrender to, and there was no German in sight. He lowered his wheels to slow the P-38F down. He wanted as good a look as he could get.
He passed so low and so slow that he thought he could see surprise on the faces of the workmen who were erecting fences and framework for camouflage netting around and over the new, square, windowless concrete block building.
And then he was past it. He shoved the throttle ahead and retracted his gear and flaps and pulled back on the stick.