The Shepherd 2016

The Shepherd follows a De Havilland Vampire pilot as he makes a Christmas Eve 1957 journey from RAF Celle in northern Germany to RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, only to suffer a complete electrical failure mid-flight. Stranded over the fog-bound North Sea, with dwindling fuel and no working compass or radio, he begins flying in tight triangles—an unusual pattern intended to catch radar attention and prompt an air traffic controller to “shepherd” him to the closest strip he remembers, Merriam St. George.

As the pilot threads his way through the clouded darkness, he comes upon a World War II–era De Havilland Mosquito fighter-bomber. The Mosquito’s pilot uses hand signals to issue flight commands, and the Vampire’s pilot notices the Mosquito’s nose adorned with the letters JK. Trusting the signals, the Vampire follows the guide. When the fuel gauge nears empty, the Mosquito pilot signals for a runway and clearance to land. Through the fog, runway lights suddenly flare to life, and the Vampire lands—barely able to keep the aircraft upright as it rolls to a stop with the tanks nearly dry.

Anticipated emergency vehicles are conspicuously absent. Instead, the Vampire is greeted by a car driven by an older flight lieutenant. He learns he’s landed at RAF Minton, a station long since out of operation and repurposed as a storage depot. With the stores clerks on Christmas leave, only the flight lieutenant and a 70-year-old civilian mess steward are on duty. The lights—never disconnected—had come on when the resident on-duty officer heard the incoming aircraft.

A late-night call to RAF Merriam St. George reveals a troubling truth: no local pilots were authorized to fly that foggy evening, meaning the air traffic control tower was unmanned and no one was sent out to shepherd the Vampire to safety. A call to the meteorological squadron follows, only to learn that they had scrapped the old Mosquitoes three months earlier. Faced with a puzzling anomaly, the pilot speculates that someone may have bought one of the Mosquitoes, flown on Christmas Eve, spotted a distressed plane in need, and guided it to the storage depot—the closest airstrip available.

The flight lieutenant explains that Joe, the mess steward, is preparing a room for the visitor. Joe lights a fire in the room’s fireplace, offers food, and stays to talk. He reveals he has worked at RAF Minton for twenty years. As they sit before a framed photo of a young pilot beside a Mosquito, the nose marked JK, Joe recounts the war years when many young fliers passed through. He recalls John Kavanaugh, who had once occupied the room they now share, and who would refuel his Mosquito and venture out alone to guide crippled bombers home.

The pilot gazes at the image and muses that Kavanaugh must have bought the old Mosquito after leaving service and continued to fly it on occasion, perhaps noticing a plane in distress and directing it to his old base. Yet Joe drops a final, somber note: Kavanaugh died on Christmas Eve, 1943, when his own Mosquito went down in the North Sea.