Midnight falcon
Midnight Hawks ( Engl. Hornet Flight , published in 2002) is a historical spy thriller by Ken Follett , who was like a number of his books worldwide bestseller. In Germany , the first hardcover edition was published on August 29, 2003 by Bastei-Lübbe Verlag , translated from English by Christel Rost and Till R. Lohmeyer. The paperback was published on May 24, 2005. A new hardcover version of the book was published on December 12, 2006.
In August 2003, the same publishing house in Germany published audio books on CD and cassette , read by Anne Moll and Philipp Schepmann . There is also a CDA special edition as an abridged reading, published on December 4, 2006.
background
It is May 1941 and the German Reich ruled Austria , Czechoslovakia , the Netherlands , Belgium , France , Denmark and Norway . Italy is an ally, Spain a sympathizer, Sweden neutral and a non-aggression pact has been concluded with the Soviet Union . Britain is the only active war power to oppose it. Winston Churchill massively intensifies the air raids in order to force the Nazi regime to give up, but for inexplicable reasons a great number of British planes are shot down. The invasion of the Wehrmacht into the Soviet Union will come soon.
The focus of the book is Denmark, which has been occupied for around 14 months . King Christian X is still king, but the government and the Danish police are under the control of the German police and the Gestapo . Hitler's regime uses the exposed location of the Danish islands to monitor the airspace between Germany and Great Britain. One of the most successful resistance movements in Europe is gradually emerging in Denmark; it often provides intelligence information to the Western Allies. The characters of the book fall into the wake of this resistance movement - and the attempt to smuggle important information into England.
Plot (overview)
Harald Olufsen, an 18-year-old Danish high school student at a boarding school, accidentally discovers a Freya radar station operated by Germans on a small Danish island on the way home . His brother Arne is engaged to the British diplomat's daughter Hermia Mount, who works for the British secret service in London without her fiancé knowing about it. Desperately she tries to get pictures and functionality of the innovative radar surveillance of the Germans and goes to Denmark. Without knowing each other and with the same goal, namely to pass their information on to the English secret service , Harald Olufsen and Hermia Mount repeatedly come into fatal danger.
Plot (detail)
First part
Harald Olufsen (18) is an engineer / scientist gifted boarding school student. A striking feature is his motorcycle with a sidecar, which he equipped with a steam engine that burns peat because of the gas rationing by the Germans . Taking a shortcut on the way home to his parents' house, he discovered an innovative radar surveillance system in a German military restricted area - without really knowing what it was.
His father is a pastor, his parents don't have much money and live quietly on a small Danish island (Sande). His parents fell out with the wealthiest family on the island, the Flemmings, whose son Peter Flemming works for the Danish police. Harald's brother Arne (28) is a flight instructor in the army, his fiancée, Hermia Mount, is an English diplomat's daughter who grew up in Denmark, had to return to England at the beginning of the occupation and now works for the British secret service, which she does not tell her fiancé.
It is thanks to her that she built up the Danish resistance movement Midnight Falcon and got it to pass information relevant to the secret service to it. Your liaison is Poul Kirke, the chief pilot of the flight school of the Danish Army, where Arne Olufsen also works.
Harald's aunt lives with her daughter and her husband, who is Jewish , in Hamburg. He knows that his uncle was already transported to a concentration camp by the Nazis (without realizing its significance). These circumstances and the fact that his best buddy is also a Jew, lead him to loudly accuse a member of the boarding school that he is not doing anything against the Nazis in his own country. He is invited by his buddy to spend the weekend with him and falls head over heels in love with his sister Karen.
International newspapers print an article in the Danish underground newspaper Virkligheden , which is bitter when the Wehrmacht controls the Danish police. A Swedish liaison officer Hermias has passed on intelligence information to Reuters in Stockholm . Hermia gets into distress and needs to explain. When Peter Flemming discovered that this underground newspaper was getting to international newspapers via Lufthansa flights from Copenhagen to Stockholm, his reputation with the commanding German general increased.
Hermia Mount has now found out with the help of a receiver that there is a radar monitoring station on the island of Sande, which enables the Germans to locate and shoot down English bomber planes. She instructs Poul Kirke to gather information about it. This instructs Harald to make a drawing of the device for him.
Peter Flemming, spurred on by his success and by some colleagues, begins to adopt the hostile sentiments of the Nazis and by chance comes across Poul Kirke during his investigation. After Flemming found Harald's drawing in Kirke's office, he promptly caused an aircraft accident in which Poul had a fatal accident.
Second part
Peter Flemming uses his position of power to take revenge on the Olufsen family. After a stupid prank, he has Harald expelled from school. Pastor Olufsen takes this as an opportunity to refuse his son the longed-for study. Harald then piled away from home and retreated to a dilapidated monastery that was on the parental property of that Jewish classmate near Copenhagen. His parents are wealthy bankers and Jews and Harald comes more and more into contact with their daughter Karen. In the ruined monastery, Harald discovers a damaged De Havilland DH.87 Hornet Moth aircraft belonging to Karen's father. Thanks to his ability to repair the engines of agricultural machinery, Harald finds work with the neighboring farmer.
Hermia plans to get the necessary information about the radar station from her fiancé Arne, meets him for a conspiratorial meeting on Bornholm and assigns him to photograph the radar station. Arne is being watched by Peter Flemming's men. He can leave his tail and visit his younger brother Harald in his accommodation. After he hears about Arne's assignment, the brothers agree that Harald goes to Sande to photograph the radar station.
Arne continues to be shadowed, while Harald initially remains unsuspecting, but his recent visit to the military base on Sande does not go unnoticed and thus he too becomes the focus of investigators. Arne finds shelter with one of the midnight falcons in Copenhagen, but is tracked down through a trap set by investigators for the inexperienced Karen. Arne Olufsen shoots himself during interrogation in order not to have to betray the others and to protect them.
After Arne does not come to the agreed renewed meeting on Bornholm, Hermia decides to go to mainland Denmark. She goes to flight school and learns of the death of her fiancé.
Harald succeeds in taking the photos and developing the film in his former boarding school. Back at the Duchwitz 'estate, he begins to repair her father's plane with Karen, in order to later fly to England and forward the important information to the British secret service.
third part
Hermia Mount wants to get in contact with Harald because she suspects the photographs are in his hands. She visits his parents, who cannot help her, but suspect that Harald is on the Duchwitz estate.
Harald and Karen are busy doing repairs on the plane. Harald tries to get hold of spare parts at his brother's flight school. He learns that Hermia was there too.
Hermia is shadowed by Peter Flemming and his people while she is looking for Harald in his school. There she learns that Harald developed the pictures. Now she wants to intercept Harald on the property.
There is a showdown in which Harald and Karen can take off the plane just before Peter Flemming and his people can catch them. Hermia Mount also missed them by a hair's breadth.
After a turbulent flight at night, during which they are attacked by an Air Force plane and almost run out of gas, the two make it to mainland England thanks to Karen's flying skills, which began a long time ago with the pilot's license.
epilogue
Hermia comes back to England via Bornholm and Stockholm. Harald and Karen reach the secret service and deliver the photos that lead directly to the invention of the bomber stream : the bombers fly into enemy territory one after the other, only to be perceived by the enemy radar as an airplane. As a result, fewer bombers are shot down.
In the end, given their courage, determination and creativity, they are offered to go back to Denmark for the British secret service to build a new Danish resistance movement.
Historical reference
The plot is roughly based on the story of the Danish air force officer Thomas Sneum (1917–2007), who brought photographs of a German Freya radar system to Great Britain in a Hornet Moth . His copilot was the mechanic Kjeld Petersen, who helped him repair the Hornet.
The Würzburg radar system and the four-poster bed method of the German air defense really existed.
Thomas Sneum's flight took place in July 1941, a month after the German invasion of the Soviet Union . The bomber power attack concept goes back to statistical evaluations by the British.
See also
Footnotes
- ↑ Entry in the Dansk Biografisk Leksikon (3rd edition 1979–1984)