On those rare occasions when Hitler was forced by circumstance to use this highly secret aerial vehicle, he was escorted by a crack squadron of the best of Germany's pilots.
As we at M15 became aware of this matter, it seemed possible the situation might be turned to our advantage. Since the second year of the war, we had seriously considered the assassination of Hitler as a distinct possibility. Of course, the deliberate killing of a head of state was strictly forbidden under international law; but then, so was the sort of unlimited war in which we were engaged at the moment.
One of our most promising operatives was a lovely young girl from Wales, the daughter of a respectable family there, who had been recruited shortly before the outbreak of hostilities. She was highly intelligent, athletic, intensely patriotic, with an intuitive grasp of psychology and unshakable courage. In addition, she was blonde, classically beautiful, and in fact resembled the Aryan "ideal" of our enemies. As such, she seemed an ideal agent for the plan we eventually formulated, which was to insinuate her into the environs of Berlin, where she would be expected to enter into a wartime liaison with one of the pilots of Hitler's aerial escort, and eventually, though her mastery of psychology and other, more physical persuasions, to "turn" him to our purposes.
Although this may have seemed a terrible thing to ask of a respectable and patriotic young girl, I may honestly say that this brave woman did not hesitate in the slightest to thus sacrifice her honor upon the altar of war; in fact, being of a rather ardent disposition, it may be assumed that this was not such a sacrifice at all - as she performed the apparent miracle of turning
not just one of the escort squadron's pilots, but two, and each of them apparently kept completely unaware of the other's great good fortune!
Of course, all this took a deal of time. Inserting the agent--code-named Tangerine--provided with an established history, a German identity, and a job, required most of a year. Her penetration of the elite military squadron required more time. But by the fourth year of the war, we calculated we were ready for a serious attempt; we had risky but immediate wireless contact with Tangerine; her two lovers, thoroughly under her influence and increasingly distressed by Germany's failure to stave off ever-increasing aerial punishment, were privately convinced of the necessity of Hitle's death; all we required now was Hitler's cooperation, which unfortunately proved dilatory.
But finally, in April of 1944, with the Allies - obvious preparations for Operation Overlord, it became appropriate for Hitler himself to inspect the defenses of Festung Europa. We received the prearranged wireless from Tangerine, indicating the schedule of the Fuehrer's flying mansion; this, together with clues gleaned from our routine deciphering of German signals through their Enigma machines, enabled us to set up an aerial ambuscade in the path of Hitler's flight home from occupied France.
Of course, we realized the Hitler in the plane might well be Hitler's double; but even so, his loss would at least be an inconvenience to the enemy, and at best might serve to tip the unstable dictator completely over the verge.
The plan was for a squadron of Typhoons with auxiliary fuel tanks to make a quick dash into France in time to intercept