Nelson, sweeping the sky with his binoculars, saw the blasted fragments of wings and fuselage fluttering out of the clouds, to be swallowed up in the black waters. He handed the glasses to Brandt, saying: "I reckon that's the end of Curtis and his helicopter!"
Herr Kommander Brandt searched the sky for a moment, then explored the dark wastes of ocean astern.
"Ja," he agreed. "Ve must have blown him to bits. He ain't in the sky nor the sea!"
Other eyes were watching the fragments of aircraft wreckage that drifted with the eternal wash of the Atlantic waves astern of the convoy. Through the observation window in the helicopter's fuselage, Commander Bob Curtis grinned as he watched the sea-tossed remains of the dummy plane—a smaller replica of the helicopter—that he had thrown out as a target for the antiaircraft batteries of the Comerford.
Slowly he wound in the light cable by which the decoy aircraft had been lowered from the trapdoor in the helicopter's hull to take the full fury of the barrage, while Curtis and his pilot Lieutenant Jay Lancaster were hovering safely far overhead, protected by a cloud of vapor.
Curtis thrilled with a sense of keen satisfaction, because many of his own ideas were embodied in this helicopter. For many months of his spare time, he had worked in the navy's chemical laboratories on the aluminoid paint formula that rendered it practically invisible, especially when enveloped by the cloud of gas that could be released from the series of valves in the fuselage by touching a key on the instrument board. The collapsible dummy plane, which could be towed at a safe distance as a decoy for ambitious antiaircraft gunners had also been Curtis' own idea.
For hours after that, the helicopter drifted in the sky, high over the convoy, which, Curtis found, was still enveloped in the zone of radio silence, for he could neither send nor receive any message through the ether.
Finally, he touched Lancaster on the arm and spoke into the mouthpiece on his chest: "The Comerford's running alongside the Carethusia. If the other ships try to interfere, the Comerford's guns are heavy enough to sink them. There's only one thing to do. We must break that zone of radio silence!"
"But how—" Lancaster began.