With other Mossies flanking them and the thundering herd of the main bomber stream behind them, they crossed the sea. The moon was far too bright for either his or Hugo’s liking. The forecast had been for protective high cloud on the outward route, but high winds were fast dispersing it.

Once over enemy territory Hugo flew at low level to the south of Hamburg and then, climbing to 25,000 feet, headed for Berlin, still without any protective cloud cover.

The target he was to mark for the bombers behind him, was Hitler’s Reich Chancellery on Wilhelmstrasse. The centre and symbol of all power in the Greater German Reich, it was a building of monumental grandeur and the task that night was to reduce it to rubble.

Once on the run-in audible radio signals would be constantly transmitted to him—through Oboe, directional control of his plane was in the hands of operators based in England, who were able to tell him, via the signals, just where he was in relation to the target. A solid tone indicated he was on course. Morse code dashes indicated he was too far to the left and had to correct to the right. A series of dots indicated he was too far to the right and had to correct to the left.

‘Don’t like the moon, H,’ Tony shouted to him over the intercom. ‘We’re going to meet with heavy opposition.’

Mindful of the necessity of keeping the airwaves clear, Hugo merely nodded. He didn’t like the moon, either. They were approaching Wannsee and the water shimmered beneath him like black silk. He fought to suppress images from the past. Family picnics when he’d been a small boy and Paul had taken him and Max out on pedalos and, when they were a little older, on sail boats. Swimming parties when he’d raced Lotti and Ilse across the small bay they regarded as their own private preserve. Evening walks on the lake’s shoreline with Hester.

‘Christ!’ he heard Tony shout as they crossed the night-black woods that separated Wannsee from the city. ‘Here they come!’

The ground defences opened with a storm of deafening, murderous flak and as they did so enemy fighters swooped towards them, guns firing.

The radio signals were still a solid tone. He was still on track and barely needed their guidance. Once over the city centre he could have pinpointed the Reich Chancellery with his eyes shut. His problem was that he wasn’t yet over the city centre. He still hadn’t released his marker flares and, until he did so, the bombers behind him couldn’t release their loads to best advantage.

As a fighter dropped from seemingly out of nowhere, he turned in a steep, evasive climb. Despite the Mossie’s superb manoeuvrability, it wasn’t swift enough. The Ju88 came up underneath him with upward-firing cannon, hitting the starboard wing and pouring bullets into the fuselage with deadly accuracy. He peeled away only to face what seemed to be a solid wall of exploding shells and more fighter planes. Gunfire rattled all along Tony’s side of the plane and he saw Tony slump; saw blood begin to course down the side of his head.