“If we do see a Lancaster, Peter, or anything, we will not engage. Not engage. Understand?”
“Jawohl, Herr General.”
“If you see something, do a one-eighty and get the hell out of there.”
“Jawohl, Herr General.”
The airplane was as agile in the sky as anything Peter had ever flown. He engaged in a brief mock dogfight with Karlsberg and lost sight of him in a turn. And then Karlsberg flashed past him.
“All things considered, I’d say you’re dead,” Galland said. “But that’s not too bad for your first fifteen minutes.”
Peter went looking for Karlsberg, spotted him, and put the ME-262 into a sharp diving turn to the left.
What seemed like two or three minutes later, Galland spoke again: “If you don’t plan to make a dead stick landing—and these birds drop like a stone, I think I should tell you—I think you should try to find the field.”
Peter found the fuel gauges. The needles were close to empty. He looked down at the ground. Darkness was already concealing the details of the terrain.
Where the hell is Augsburg?
He looked at the Radio Direction Finder, then banked the ME-262 toward the Augsburg transmitter.
“With a little reserve, you have about fifty minutes at altitude,” Galland said. “You aren’t going to be able to strafe the King in Buckingham Palace in one of these. We just don’t have the range. But once we get these airplanes operational, I think my friend Spaatz is going to get far fewer B-17s back to England than he sends here.” General Carl Spaatz, USAAC, directed the bombing of Germany by the Eighth U.S. Air Force.
“With those thirty-millimeters,” Peter thought out loud, “you don’t have to come in range of the guns on a B-17.”
“And if you’re quick,” Galland said, “you can come out of the sun at them at a thousand K, and get two, maybe even three of them, and still be out of the range of their guns.”
“Jesus!” Peter said.
“I think I should warn you, Hansel, that the standard punishment for my pilots who bend one of these on landing is castration with a very dull knife.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Two other things: One, you have to land hot. They don’t handle well at low speeds, which means you should put the wheels down as close to the threshold of the runway as you can.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Two, you don’t get instant throttle response from a turbojet engine. It’s five to seven seconds before you get any usable power.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“You want me to shoot a touch-and-go so you can see how it’s done?”
“Why don’t you let me try it, and take it away from me if I start to lose it?”
“If I start to take it away from you, don’t fight me.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Jaegerhaven,” Galland called over the radio. “Two One Seven and Two Two Three for approach and landing.”
The control tower responded with landing instructions, and all of a sudden, two parallel lines of lights showed him the runway.
“Sometimes, if a dull knife isn’t immediately available, I use a dull saw,” Galland said.
Peter lined up with the field, turned on final, and touched down hot but smoothly on the yellow and black stripes that marked the end of the runway. The runway lights went off before he had finished the landing roll. Tow trucks were waiting for both fighters on the taxiway, and had hooked up before the whine of the turboprops had stopped. When they reached the hangar, the doors were opening, and the moment the airplanes were inside, they began to close again. The hangar lights did not come on until the doors were fully closed.
Ground crew appeared and put a ladder up to the cockpit. Galland got out first, and then Peter climbed down after him. Karlsberg appeared. He had removed his sheepskin trousers but was still wearing his now unbuttoned high-altitude jacket. Galland unbuttoned his jacket and somewhat awkwardly pulled off the trousers. He waited until Peter had done the same thing.