Hurricane Legacy Page 2

  The landscape was flat, snow-covered with just a few scrubby bushes and feeble looking fir trees and the odd rock poking through the snow.

  “In the lake” Oleg shouted

  "Lake, what lake?" Tom replied

  “The one under” came the cryptic response

  The Mil bounced to a halt on the uneven ground and the engine clattered to a stop. Oleg’s team unloaded the stores and barrels. One man attached a rotary hand pump to one barrel and refilled the fuel tank of the helicopter. Another unpacked a large tarpaulin and made a makeshift tent whilst another couple went off with axes and a chainsaw.

  This far North the sun almost never set at this time of the year and the lakes partially unfreeze for just a couple of weeks. Tom watched fascinated by the frenetic activity around him.

  "If this is summer, I’d hate to be here in winter," Tom thought

  Two of the soldiers cleared away rocks and meagre vegetation and smoothed out a ramp from the bank to the lake. Another soldier was using a foot pump to inflate a small rubber boat which they then pushed out onto a flat area of snow which collapsed exposing the lake's surface through the thin, residual ice. They emptied barrel after barrel of fuel into the Mil’s tank and rolled the empty barrels down to the lake bank where they fitted them with caps which had long hoses trailing from them.

  Tom watched fascinated as one of the team apparently named Victor as he struggled into a diver’s dry suit and dragged the empty barrels and their attached lengths of hose out onto the small lake using the inflatable boat which was now sporting a small outboard motor. The barrels slowly sank.

  “Look out” from Tom, laughter from Oleg and the others.

  “They’re sinking,” Tom exclaimed, amidst even greater hilarity from the team. “Yes,” from Oleg.

  With that the whole team convened under the tarpaulin to eat an unrecognisable animal shot by one of the team, whilst away wood collecting, they had roasted over the open fire. The inevitable cigarettes, vodka and ablutions followed, and the team dispersed with Victor wriggling himself back into the dry suit and heading off across the lake in the boat. He dropped backwards off the boat, sank beneath the surface and disappeared from view. Twenty minutes later up he came and took down a pile of webbing straps from the boat. Tom stood on the bank somewhat bemused as he watched this process repeated a couple more times, the last time with Victor holding onto the side of the boat which then dragged him ashore clutching the hose ends.

  Oleg’s team then took these from the beached Victor and connected them up to some kind of manifold arrangement with separate valves for each hose. They then connected these to a small petrol compressor which reluctantly coughed into life in a cloud of blue smoke.

  Victor was back in the lake now with an intercom connection between himself and the boat operator.

  “Gently” shouted Anatoly the boat operator to the manifold crew onshore

  "Less on 2, more on 4," from him again.

  Ten minutes passed and then “More on 5 and 3, shut down 1.”

  Fifteen minutes passed with just the occasional bubbles breaking the lake surface and then:

  “There!”

  Slowly the unmistakable tip of an aircraft’s tail fin broke the surface. Painted in a camouflage pattern of browns and greens and replete with a Soviet red star. Fabric strips hung in tatters from the rudder through which Tom could plainly see the aluminium framework. More bubbles and the rear of the fuselage broke the surface with further markings visible and then a port wingtip followed rapidly by a length of outer wing.

  The barrels, now doing service as flotation devices, were now visible strapped to the wing roots and fuselage.

  Cheers went up all around and Oleg turned to Tom.

  “Eh, so what you think?”

  Tom was speechless as more of the Hawker Hurricane fighter broke the surface for the first time in almost 50 years.

  “BD732,” Oleg stated authoritatively.

  The top of the canopy appeared and Tom noticed with some trepidation it was still shut. The weight of the engine and propeller was obviously keeping the front of the aircraft submerged.

  They anchored a large hand winch in the ground near the helicopter with its rope trailing over the manufactured ramp and Victor dived once again taking the end with him.

  “Go” he yelled to the winchman as he surfaced from where the front of the submerged plane must have been. The winch turned, and the Hurricane swung round in the water to face the bank. More winching with the removal of two of the barrels and a propeller blade tip broke the surface.

  “Stop” yelled Tom

  "What is the problem?" Oleg asked.

  "If the propeller is not bent either the engine had stopped when it crashed on the lake or, more likely, he landed with the wheels down. If the wheels are down, you cannot just pull it up the bank forwards as the undercarriage will probably collapse."

  “Where on the aircraft is the tow rope attached?” Tom asked

  Oleg translated for Victor, the answer confirmed Tom’s fear.

  "Move the rope to the rear of the fuselage and pull the plane out backwards. You must make sure the ramp is smooth enough for the wheels to run up the bank and you’ll need something to put under the tailwheel to support it."

  "There should be a handling bar socket in front of the tail, if you can put a length of metal rod through use this for the tow rope anchorage. Once the main wheels are out of the water and come up the ramp, we should also gently pull or push the main undercarriage struts."

  Oleg barked out instructions to his men and the team set to work.

  The soldiers made short work of gouging out a gentle ramp on the bank and Victor made another shallow dive and confirmed the tow was now in place on part of the rapidly removed tent awning frame which was now doing service as a handling rod.

  “Start winching,” Oleg ordered and slowly, but inexorably, the product of the Hawker aircraft factory’s finest wartime product spun round in the water and crawled backwards up the slope until a good percentage of it sat resplendent in the sunshine with water dripping from various orifices.

  Oleg clambered onto the wing and hammered at the external cockpit latch with his clenched hand. The canopy slid reluctantly back and there, still erect in his seat, sat Senior Lieutenant Nikolay Urosov. He was staring sightlessly through goggles out of the blackened windscreen with his gloved hands resting on the top of the instrument panel as he had accepted his inevitable fate back in 1943.

  A respectful silence descended over the whole group who, after securing the aircraft, set about removing the pilot as carefully as they could. Despite being in what appeared to be an astonishing state of preservation with his clothing muddy but mostly intact, his bodily remains had decomposed to the point where they could no longer lift him intact. He was carefully re-assembled on the bank, wrapped into a tarpaulin and placed reverently in the helicopter.

  Oleg checked the pockets of his flight jacket, found his ID card and pay book, and confirmed his identity. They would now take him back to St Petersburg to his family for proper burial. At the tender age of nineteen Nikolay Urosov had been a seasoned fighter pilot who had sufficient seniority and experience to be entrusted with this state-of-the-art fighter donated by Britain under the lend-lease scheme. His pay book confirmed that he’d been in the Soviet Air Force since he was sixteen years old. Tom reflected on what he’d been doing between the ages of sixteen and nineteen. It had involved little in the way of responsibility or maturity, altogether a very sobering moment.

  Tom mounted the wing and peered into the now vacated, muddy, but very intact, cockpit and at the instrument panel and controls. The cockpit door panel still held a map and compass swing card and there, emblazoned in two inch high stencilled letters was `BD732`, it’s RAF serial number.

  Sliding off the wing Tom walked round to the front of the aircraft where the cause of its failure became apparent. There was a hole through the rear of the engine cowling on the port side and oil smears all around the rear of the cowling. The stains continued up over the top and all across the windscreen completely obscuring it. A lucky shot had struck either the engine itself or one of its ancillaries causing a massive oil leak and starving the Merlin engine which had subsequently failed. There were two other, similar holes in a rough line front to back with the rearmost entering the cockpit somewhere above and behind the rudder pedals. Senior Lieutenant Urosov, despite being wounded, had made an absolutely miraculous landing on the frozen lake it appeared. His luck just hadn’t held out though as the ice was just not thick enough to support the weight of his Hurricane which had sunk through to the bottom of the frigid lake.

  The team disconnected and tidied the spaghetti of pipes, web slings and ropes dotted along the bank and Oleg handed Tom a hose which he connected up to a pump pulling water from the lake.

  “Cleaning?” Oleg asked

  Tom climbed back onto the wing and sluiced off the instrument panel and cockpit fittings with the hose. He glanced left and saw one of the team undoing panels on the wings and pulling out belts of 20mm canon shells from the ShVAK guns, more than somewhat concerned at the cavalier fashion they were handling what had to be rather volatile live munitions.

  Tom reached down to play the hose over the base of the control column and a brief reflection glinted from something near the base of the seat. Tom reached down and pulled out a round medallion about two inches in diameter which had lodged itself between the seat frame and the base when the seat had been lowered. On the face was an engraving of two men sitting on a horse and some words which looked like Latin to Tom. Tom’s school had inflicted Latin on him at an early age, despite his best efforts to avoid it, and amazingly some of it had sunk in. The result of this was that he could recognise the language for what it was but didn’t have a hope of translating it! On the other side there was a pattern of what appeared to be random lines radiating from the centre. Tom didn’t recognise it as currency and assumed it was the pilot’s lucky charm which had ultimately failed him. He pocketed the medallion for future study and set about cleaning up the cockpit with the hose.

  A day spent cleaning off the worst of the mud and filth and then the horrible task of coating the whole aircraft, inside and out, with some smelly concoction contained in the final barrel from the helicopter. According to Oleg, they made this from used cooking oil mixed with diesel fuel and it was necessary to stop the airframe rotting away now it was out of the water. Tom set about this latest task with some understandable reluctance, especially as he could see the inevitability of getting himself soaked in this muck and without other clothes to change into. He needn’t have worried too much as, by the end of this, everybody was top to tail coated and all smelling equally undesirable, even the dog smelt better.

  “Twenty thousand dollars - yes?” Tom wasn’t sure whether this was s statement or a question from Oleg or what he meant by it.

  “Twenty thousand dollars for the team, four cartons of Marlboro each for load helpers and maybe two thousand dollars for the export licence and we load into your container and deliver to your shipper in St Petersburg - OK?”

  Tom rather hoped his mouth wasn’t hanging open. It was obvious whatever he’d said during that fateful drunken dinner had led to this precise moment where Oleg was expecting Tom to cough up a huge bundle of cash and take delivery of a somewhat used World War 2 Hawker Hurricane fighter aircraft. Tom was nothing if not pragmatic and quick thinking. “How long to get to St Petersburg with the export licence?”

  "Maybe six to eight weeks," Oleg replied. Tom took a deep breath.

  "When I get back home I will wire you two thousand dollars for a deposit and two thousand dollars for the licence. I will return to St Petersburg in eight weeks with the balance in cash once you have confirmed the aircraft is ready for packing - OK?" Tom held his breath, there was a long pause.

  “Make sure you bring cigarettes when you come back” said Oleg and slapped Tom on the back “Come, we drink a toast” and that appeared to conclude the deal.

  Tom sat, stinking, in the helicopter waiting for takeoff wondering how he would tell his kids they would have to postpone their planned Disneyworld trip. He’d spent the money he'd saved for the trip on a deposit for a wrecked aeroplane in Russia which he pessimistically doubted he’d ever see in the UK, not that he had any idea what to do with it if it did actually appear. He wasn’t looking forward to the conversation when he got home.

  The return journey was slightly less uncomfortable as most of the team, and a lot of the equipment, stayed with the Hurricane to facilitate its transport to St Petersburg. Almost a day later, sitting in a steaming bath in his hotel room in Moscow, Tom reflected on what he’d committed himself to do and formed a plan of action. He would need to contact museums, aircraft collectors and the RAF to find a buyer for the Hurricane. In reality Tom knew he couldn’t raise the rest of the cash required without a great deal of hassle, probably involving re-mortgaging his already mortgaged house. He would have to persuade a buyer to part with cash up front, probably without actually even seeing the aircraft which would be a challenge. He’d need a brochure to show prospective buyers, and he’d have to liquidate all of his savings to transfer the promised deposit. Finding a shipper and a container shouldn’t be too difficult as he had good contacts from his work, paying for it however might be a different matter. How would his boss take to Tom taking another protracted absence from work, especially as the first one had been rather a waste from the company point of view? It would be an interesting couple of months!

  CHAPTER THREE

  Sussex - Present Day

  Tom Stroud sat at his desk on which a large picture frame lay face down with its back off. He was trying to arrange a collage of photos, scraps of fabric, identification plates, an altimeter dial face and a few assorted items from a Bell P63 King Cobra aircraft he’d helped to recover from the Kuril Islands in Eastern Russia.

  Tom was one of those men fortunate to have aged well despite the excesses he’d enjoyed regularly for most of his life. His dark brown hair was salt-and-pepper greying but hadn’t reduced in volume or coverage. His blue eyes shone from a largely unlined face and the upright posture of his lean but muscular six-foot frame radiated an ill-deserved fitness. He was squeezing glue onto a scrap of camouflage-painted fabric when his phone rang.

  “Legendary Air Restorations” this after he’d balanced the phone under his chin whilst holding the fabric scrap down onto the collage while the glue dried.

  “Hello is that Mr Stroud?” spoke a voice with a hint of an Eastern European accent.

  "Tom Stroud speaking."

  “My name is Victor Fedonov, I am a solicitor acting on behalf of one of my clients who wishes to engage your company’s aircraft recovery and salvage services.”

  “I’m afraid we don’t offer our services for hire and we are not a recovery company. We research the potential locations of historic aircraft and then undertake recoveries when necessary using resources near the location. We usually undertake these projects for our own benefit although sometimes our clients commission us to research and recover a specific aircraft.”

  “My client is prepared to pay extremely well and has categorically stated that he requires your specific team. What he requires is for you to revisit a recovery site in Russia from where you have previously salvaged an aircraft.”

  “Who is your client and which site do they want me to revisit and why?”

  “I’m afraid I cannot divulge my client’s identity but he is a well-known and respected individual with more than adequate financial resources. As for the location I do not know this, however I can tell you it is in the North West of Russia.”

  “And the why?”

  “I cannot answer that either. My client will give you full details of what is requires if you agree to undertake the project.”

  Interest aroused, Tom put down the fabric scrap and pushed the button on his phone to record the conversation.

  “Assuming I'm prepared to consider this, where do we go from here?”

  "My client will contact you by telephone to discuss."

  "Please tell your client I’m not prepared to undertake a commission based on phone calls or emails only. I would insist on a proper contract, which would need your client’s name and address, a sizable deposit being lodged in escrow and a face-to-face meeting,"

  "Any contract will be between my firm and yourself, the deposit will not be an issue and I am prepared to meet you to discuss any details in person as my client does not live in this country,"

  Tom considered this and decided to go along with it for the time being. He now wanted to find out what this was all about and if the only way forward was to deal with a lawyer in the interim, well so be it. His bank balance was also hovering firmly in the ‘red’ and proper paid work seemed to have rather dried up in the past couple of months. Legendary Air Restorations never recovered from the 2008 financial crash although the fact it was still operating at all Tom considered something of a small victory.

  “OK, how about you send me an email with your address etc. outlining your proposal and suggesting a day/time and location to meet, do you have my email address?”

  “Shall I use the email you have posted on your website?”

  “That’s fine” Tom said and with that he broke the phone connection.

  Tom made himself a coffee and tried to think of a sensible reason somebody would want to rake over an old recovery site and pay handsomely to do it. After several minutes he gave up this rather pointless exercise and set back to laying out his collage.

  The following morning Tom sat in his office drinking the first of the many morning coffees and stared at the various framed collages which hung on the walls around his office. Each one represented a particular recovery going back all the way to when he’d started with the Hurricane back in 1989. These pictures and artifacts gathered from the successful recoveries told only half the story. There weren’t any visible reminders of the many costly failures there had been over the years. Hauling World War 2 aircraft out of some of the most inhospitable places on Earth was not the most secure way to make a living. Many of the aircraft remains recovered ended up as museum exhibits although two he knew of were now airborne again thanks to remarkable restorations and another was nearing completion in the US. Tom stood at his office window looking out at the small workshop/hangar beneath the mezzanine floor where the unmistakable shape of a German Focke Wulf Fw190A fighter aircraft sat on jacks with the tail unit on a separate frame and the shrink-wrapped engine sitting alongside on a stand waiting for attachment to the fuselage. The five year restoration had now stretched to almost twenty years and was on hold again awaiting a further influx of cash. Tom worked on his pet project whenever he didn’t have paying work and thus the time to do it. The problem being that when he didn’t have paying work, he rarely had the spare cash either to continue working on the plane. When, and if, finished this would undoubtedly be the World’s most original example of this magnificent machine with its correct engine and original equipment. Tom’s team recovered this from a Russian forest and, despite the aggravation it had caused Tom had found himself unable to pass it on to the client he'd contracted with to buy it. This impressive machine had landed during the latter stages of World War 2 in a remote area after an engine malfunction. The pilot, having managed an emergency landing, abandoned it in its complete and relatively undamaged state. Tom’s team had stumbled over it by accident whilst searching for a Messerschmitt Me110 crash site they had researched. Tom had almost everything he owned tied up in it, including a sizable mortgage on his house he’d taken out to cover the recovery costs and to refund the original, very unhappy, client. He had foregone any opportunity to provide himself with some future financial security, relying on his ability to continue to earn money and the inherent value of the Focke Wulf. As the clock ticked inexorably towards his 60th year, he wondered whether this had been a mistake. He pondered, not for the first time, whether he should accept an offer from the American billionaire collector who had the wherewithal and desire to complete the job. He had approached Tom on two occasions, through intermediaries, and it was obvious he wanted this aircraft to join his burgeoning collection in its custom-built display hangar on the American West Coast.