Caledonian Skies

By Hugh Wilson

It is February of 1939. International tensions are at an all-time high, and there is little trust in Germanys new leader as Ian Mackay, a decorated Royal Flying Corps ace of the Great War, settles atop the mountain of Ben Lomond to watch the sunrise. A short time later, Ian observes what he believes is an experimental German reconnaissance airplane spying on Scotland from above. But there are no other witnesses, and the rudimentary radar of the day is unreliable.

Ian has seen his share of hardship and unfortunately knows all too well about the realities of war. Still, he is driven to report what he has seen to Scotlands military intelligence officials; they are skeptical at first but eventually agree to send Ian on an intelligence mission to investigate the latest German reconnaissance aircraft. As the war clouds gather, Ian, who is now alone at forty-two after losing his one and only love years ago, embarks on a perilous journey to save his country and perhaps the world. With a cyanide capsule safely tucked away in his pocket, Ian only hopes he will never have to use it.

In this spirited tale of love and war that spans twenty-five years of modern European history and four generations of Scots, a seasoned pilot enters Nazi Germany on a wing and a prayer as the world erupts into chaos.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Feb 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781480805002

Hugh Wilson

Hugh Wilson is an American-born son of Scottish immigrants. He is a physician who lives in Monterey, California, with his son. Dr. Wilson enjoys the outdoors and is occasionally seen on a grassy place playing something vaguely resembling golf.

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Copyright © 2013 Hugh Wilson.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-0499-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-0501-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-0500-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014930999

Archway Publishing rev. date: 02/17/14

Contents

Introduction

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To my good friend and author

Gerard Rose for the inspiration to write.

Introduction

H istorians tell us the Second World War began September 1, 1939, but there were numerous acts of Nazi defiance and aggression in the years prior to that day. After the First World War—known contemporaneously as the Great War—among the participants in that conflagration, there came a worldwide aversion to violence. Western nations abandoned military conscription and extensively pared back investment in military hardware. The Allied powers created the League of Nations in an attempt to combat future international aggression and resolve conflict between nations. A wave of pacifism swept the western world.

Given this pacifism, many have wondered, in retrospect, if there were missed opportunities in the run-up to the Polish invasion. Perhaps there was something overlooked or even ignored in the all-consuming desire to avoid war. Something that could have prevented the disaster that followed.

I WAS BORN in America to Scottish immigrants. My father was a young man working in the Royal Naval Torpedo Factory (RNTF) in Alexandria, Scotland when the war began. Though he joined the RAF, the British military High Command considered munitions manufacturing an essential war industry and my father was directed to remain at the RNTF for the duration of the war, much to my good fortune.

My mother was a schoolgirl at the time and later regaled our family on numerous occasions with her recollections of bombs falling near her town of Alexandria. She was certain those bombs were intended for the RTNF but as I discovered years later, they were strays from bombing raids on nearby Clydebank and Dumbarton.

As a history buff, one of my hobbies is researching various aspects of the war on the Internet. I have often wondered how my father’s factory escaped the war undamaged. I recently came across a website displaying captured German aerial reconnaissance photographs, several of which showed the Vale of Leven, Dumbarton and Clydebank area including the RNTF. Much to my surprise, the photos were dated 2/10/39. My goodness! I thought to myself for a moment. They were reconnoitering the Vale seven months before the war began. I then just as quickly realized my mistake. The European system for date abbreviations is different from that of us Yanks. In Europe 2/10/39 is October 2, 1939 whereas in the US it would mean February 10, 1939.

It was my aha moment nonetheless. Clearly, the torpedo factory had been targeted but not hit. I asked myself, What if there really were German aerial reconnaissance missions to Scotland seven months before the start of the war and those missions were discovered? Wouldn’t that have been something? Could that have made a difference in the ultimate outcome?

What follows is my version of one possible missed opportunity.

1

Ben Lomond, Scotland, February 1939

A wake before dawn again after another of his nightmares, Ian Mackay could see the moon out his window and knew it would be a clear morning. Nearly full, he thought to himself. Great day for a morning walk.

This night saw the return of the blood-spattered pregnant wife of the headless gunner. Ach. He thought he had made peace with her.

After some tea and a hurried breakfast, he grabbed his rucksack, donned his heaviest jacket and gloves, and mounted his Indian motorcycle. If there’s one thing the Americans know how to build, it’s large, powerful engines, he thought. The bike was typically American, large and overbuilt with a lot of horsepower—just as he preferred. His motorbike roared to life first kick and he sped through Balloch on his way to Ben Lomond.

He reached the trailhead before first light. The moon would light his way. There was no one else so foolish on a winter’s morning; he was alone on the trail. That would not be the case in another couple of hours when everyone awoke and saw the beautiful conditions. He treasured the solitude of having the Ben to himself.

The trail was wet and slippery at the bottom, and the last thousand feet of the climb was in snow, making for slow going. However, with his powerful Scottish legs and strong lungs, he covered the nearly four miles in just over an hour. He was forty-two but still fit and strong.

Then he sat down and waited for the show. The top of the Ben at sunrise was the closest thing to flying he’d encountered. His timing was perfect. Light was just beginning to top the Trossachs to the east. Then came the color—all the colors of the rainbow displayed there for him alone to see. It was like greeting his first lover again after a long absence.

With the sun fully risen and full light in the sky, he retrieved his binoculars and notepad from his pack and sat down for a rest. He began sketching a pied flycatcher nearby. He chuckled to himself that the bird’s name always seemed to remind him of pie-eyed flycatcher. Funny that.

The bird flew off and Mackay followed it with his binoculars. It was then he noticed the glint in the sky to the north. The object was higher than the cloud tops and moving very fast. Too large, too fast and too high for a bird, he thought. It must be an aircraft—but what fool would be flying in the Highlands in winter? As it neared, he could see it was far too large and too fast to be a civilian aircraft. He got a good look at it with his binoculars as it went by heading straight down the Vale. It was not an aircraft he recognized. And it was just so strange that it would come from the north this time of year. He supposed it could be a new experimental RAF craft, but why no markings or insignias?

2

Reconnaissance Mission, February 1939

E rnst Drager was no politician. He was just a gifted German pilot with a sense of adventure; but in 1939 Europe, one need not be a politician to see the war clouds gath ering.

In 1933, just fifteen years after the Treaty of Versailles settled the Great War, the Nazi Party came to power in Germany and almost immediately began violating the terms of that agreement. Four years prior to Drager’s mission, Germany had reoccupied the Rhineland in open violation of the terms of Versailles. Not one of the Allies lifted a finger. Oh, they shouted and strutted about in faux outrage, but not one of them made a move to enforce the treaty.

Next, they provided materials, troops, tanks and combat air support for the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. More than fifteen thousand Germans served openly in Spain in the three years of the war. The Allied response? Unilateral declarations of nonintervention.

Then Germany annexed Austria and this brought out the big guns. The British prime minister himself visited Munich and negotiated an agreement to bring peace in our time. Sensing Allied weakness, the very next day, Germany invaded Czechoslovakia. Clearly, the Nazi leadership was emboldened by the Allies’ passivity.

Even a simple pilot need not be particularly politically astute to see all that. War was coming and it would come soon.

At a young age, Drager had become the chief test pilot for Heinkel Flugzeugwerke, among Germany’s most successful and productive aircraft manufacturers. He was fearless and loved nothing more than flight. He was a handsome, dashing fellow, much to the delight of the ladies, but his fascination with flight had left little time for a woman or family. He loved a good night out as much as the next man, but he was not about to leave the skies to chase an opportunity for changing diapers.

When the Luftwaffe took over at Heinkel, they had given him an officer’s commission and assigned him to the Intelligence Division. Test pilots flew the newest and best designs, and the Luftwaffe wanted him under oath to the Fatherland and the Fuhrer if they were to continue using his skills. Drager didn’t mind. There were many benefits to an officer’s uniform in Nazi Germany and he still flew as much as ever—perhaps even more.

Today, though, Drager found it ironic that his first combat mission should occur before the war had even begun. He was even more surprised at himself, as alone in his cockpit, he was thinking more about the beauty of the Scottish countryside than he was the mission. On a heading for the Clydebank shipyards from the north at thirty-five thousand feet, he was struck by the lush, green fields between the rocky outcroppings with only the scattered patch of snow here and there at the higher elevations. The savage ruggedness of lore was visual bliss from above.

He had left Torslanda Airfield outside Gothenburg, Sweden that morning before dawn. The short winter days and the potentially severe Scandinavian and Scottish winter weather were to make this mission a significant challenge; but today was worth the wait, only partly cloudy with no precipitation, and that spectacular azure-blue sky that is only seen so far north. Visibility was twenty-plus miles, turbulence minimal, winds mild.

He took off into a southeast wind appearing to head in the direction of his fatherland. Once out of visual range, he began climbing, turned to the northwest and headed for Scotland. He was in Sweden ostensibly on a German diplomatic mission. German intelligence, the Abwehr, had sent Drager on the mission as a junior Luftwaffe officer attached to the German diplomatic corps. He was not a key player. He was not actually a player at all. The diplomatic assignment served only to position him to approach Scotland from the north where Britain’s primitive early-warning air defenses would not detect him.

Crossing into Norway headed for the North Sea, he turned west and thought, Nothing to worry about here. Though the Germans and several other nations including Britain were actively developing rudimentary radar systems, Sweden and Norway were not among them.

Drager flew an experimental Heinkel He 119. Its monocoque, low-wing design was high-tech in its time but certainly not unique or revolutionary. Though it turned some heads at Torslanda, no one saw its presence as a threat. A standard-production 119 could cruise at over three hundred miles per hour at twenty-seven thousand feet with a range of over two thousand miles, carrying weapons, a crew of three, and battle armor. Drager’s version was stripped down to the bare essentials—no armor, no weapons, and no crew but him, and most importantly, a high-speed camera with a strong telephoto lens and high-resolution film. In that configuration, his altitude neared thirty-five thousand; his airspeed was more than three hundred fifty miles per hour.

The German High Command was vaguely aware the Brits had a primitive air defense early-warning system in place covering the approach to the Thames estuary and so decided to make their reconnaissance approach from the north. This fit in nicely with plans to take out the Royal Navy Torpedo Factory in Alexandria and the naval shipyards at Clydebank. Abwehr, though, were entirely unaware that the air defenses now extended north and west to Orkney and the Shetlands.

The Heinkel crossed silently into Scottish airspace at thirty-five thousand feet, just north of Fraserburgh over the Moray Firth. He remained off the coast as long he could before crossing the coastline. The original plan called for him to reach the coast at earliest daybreak. Although the winds at Gothenburg had been calm, winds aloft were strong out of the west, and his groundspeed was diminished. Any thought of throttling up to maintain groundspeed was out of the question. He needed to conserve fuel for the extended return flight home to Germany. He crossed the coastline after sunrise.

Drager turned SSW toward Loch Ness, making his

Reviews for Caledonian Skies

[fictionzeal · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Review from FictionZeal.com:
Hugh Wilson’s Introduction gives the reader a chance to understand why he chose this time in history. It is a fictional work based upon a ‘what If’ moment from 1939. His intro read:

“My narrative takes a look at what may have happened, had the British decided to take positive action against the Nazis before their power became too much to overcome without the massive loss of life that eventually materialized. It’s the story of the 1930s that never was, but could have changed the course of history forever.”

This is a story of two different times of Ian Mackay’s life. When it begins, it is February 1939 and Ian is all alone at forty-two years of age. While birding and watching the sunrise upon the mountain of Ben Lomond in Scotland, he spots what he believes to be a German reconnaissance plane overhead.

Then we go back more than twenty years earlier in June 1915 to the recruiting office in Dumbarton, Scotland; Ian Mackay was anxious to enlist in the Great War. With his very keen eyesight, he is being considered for flight school instead of to fight in the trenches. While in Dumbarton, he meets Ellie, a nurse at the recruiting office. They become very close over that summer before he is called to the Royal Army basic training and RFC flight school. By the spring of 1916, Ian is a pilot in France.

Back to 1939, Ian knew that Scotland’s military intelligence officials would be skeptical but he felt he needed to inform them of what he’d seen. After checking out Ian’s past, they set him up on an intelligence (spy gathering) mission to Germany to investigate. Thus begins, ‘what if …’

Overall, I found this to be a truly remarkable story. The novel is rather short (168 pages) so it is a quick read. Mr. Wilson manages to keep the good – the character development; scene descriptions; and character dialogue without a lot of unneeded or unwanted filler.

I did have a couple of issues, but certainly not with the writing itself. When Ian Mackay met Ellie, they fell in bed before falling in love. The year was 1915. Although this seems to be a common occurrence today I doubted that was the case back then.

Also in the 1939 portion, homosexuality is brought up as one of the characters refers to himself as a ‘closet homosexual’. Was this a phrase anyone used in 1939? Per Wikipedia {Closeted} the closet became the metaphor as in ‘coming out of the closet’, but this was in late 20th-century America. ‘Coming out’ was a phrase used in the early 20th century for upper-class young women who had reached the age of maturity and were ready for marriage. I rated Caledonian Skies 4 out of 5.