Spitfire Across The Atlantic

On the morning of 24 December 1943, 542 Squadron's intelligence officer briefed Flt Lt J. Storey on covering Crossbow sites in the Calais-Abbeville areas. He was airborne at 11 a.m. and set course in his Spitfire for the French coast, passing over London at 15,000 feet. The weather was perfect over the Channel, so he levelled off and 'harried' to Dunkirk and then set course to Abbeville. Some 50 miles before reaching the objective, noisy oscillations in his earphones gave warning that the German anti-aircraft battery caught the intruder aircraft in the radar beam they used to direct fire. Occasionally, he rolled the Spitfire up on her side to check beneath him. To conserve fuel, he began a gradual climb up through 40,000 feet and levelled off at 41,500 feet. Over the objective, he lined up the aircraft and began his runs. He took photos of everything on his list of objectives. Unmolested by flak, he spent as much time over the objective as possible and then turned home. As he was flying over the North Sea, he was unaware that a special trip was waiting for him in a not so far future.