W E B Griffin – Men at War 4 – The Fighting Agents

Darmstadter had been in the left seat when they left Malta, and had made the takeoff. But Canidy had taken over the controls after they had left the ground, and he was the one who had set the course and rate of climb and fine tuned the engines and the mixture.

And then, matter-of-factly, he had told Darmstadter where they were going–but not why–and pointed out their course on a chart.

And then he had told him, patiently, even kindly, as a flight instructor teaches a student pilot, how it was planned for them to find Vis and what would happen if things went wrong.

Canidy explained that the OSS agent with the British SOE force on Vis had a radio transmitter-receiver capable of operating on the frequencies used for aviation. Using the radio direction-finding equipment on the B-25G, they would home in on Vis very much as they would home in on Newark Airport after a flight from Washington.

With several significant exceptions:

“The trouble with RDF transmitters,” Canidy said, “is that they can be picked

up by anybody tuned to that frequency. For example, German or Italian aircraft.

A curious Luftwaffe pilot looking for the way home from a patrol over the Adriatic might come across the signal from Vis and wonder what the hell it was.”

“The worst possible scenario is that two pilots, or for that matter, two ground stations, might hear the Vis transmission at the same time, and mark their position and the relative position of the Vis transmitter on a chart. If they did that, all that would have to be done would be to put the chart marks together.

Triangulation. You with me?”

Darmstadter nodded. He knew that without actually following a signal to its source, the location of the transmitter could be easily determined.

“Triangulation” simply meant the drawing of straight lines on a chart from two different points of reception toward the source of the signal. The intersection of the straight lines indicated the location of the transmitter.

“So what they’re going to do to reduce the odds of getting caught,” Canidy said, “is to go on the air as little as possible. The first signal we’ll listen for when we get close enough will be on the air for only five minutes. Then it will go off and come back on fifteen minutes later for sixty seconds on a different frequency and using different call letters.”

He handed Darmstadter a typewritten list.

There were three columns. The first gave times, starting at 1500 and ending at 1745. Sometimes there was nineteen minutes between transmissions, and sometimes as little as eleven minutes. But there were no two intermissions alike. The second column listed the frequency of the transmissions. No two of these were alike. The third column listed the three-letter identification code that the transmitter would send, endlessly repeating them for the period of time it would be on the air.

“Clever,” Darmstadter said.

“It presumes our guy on Vis has the transceiver, and that it’s working, and that we’ll be able to pick it up when we have to,” Canidy said.

“And if we don’t?” Darmstadter asked.

“That could pose some problems,” Canidy said.

“You’ll notice that the Point of No Return on the chart is here, and the point where we hope we can pick up the Vis RDF transmitter is here.”

Darmstadter saw that the first place they could hope to pick up the direction finding signal was at least two hundred miles from the Point of No Return.

“And if we don’t get the RDF signal?”

“Then we go down on the deck and try to find it by dead reckoning,” Canidy said.

“That would be kind of hard, wouldn’t it?” Darmstadter asked.

“Think positively, Darmstadter,” Canidy said dryly.

“But since you posed the question, I think it would be impossible.”

“And then what?” Darmstadter asked.

“Then you have a choice,” Canidy said.

“You can take the airplane over the Yugoslav mainland, bail out, and take your chances that the partisans might get you before the Germans do. If the partisans get you, you’re home free. If they don’t, you’ll have to take your chances with the Germans.”

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