The Maltese Defence

by Simon Brading

  Drake contemplated the contraption. It was a pretty harebrained scheme, even by the standards of the Royal Aviator Corps, but it had its merits; the antique Italian airships were more akin to balloons than the more modern, rigid-hulled Zeppelins, so the blade should be able to cut through them, releasing their gas. It was going to be extremely risky, though, because they would have to get well within the range of the ring of defensive guns the airships mounted. He was doubtful that it would work, but, even so, after a few seconds he nodded and forced a smile. ‘Good work! I’m looking forward to seeing what you can do, but only once you’ve carried out your runs on the bombers. Understood?’

  Both men nodded again, enthusiastically, almost like children.

  ‘Yes, Lord Drake!’

  ‘Of course, my Lord!’

  ‘Thank you,’ Drake said, grateful that, just like with the Misfits, the Maltese pilots’ individuality and eccentricity was backed up by discipline in the air and a good deal of common sense. ‘Happy hunting and I hope the fish are biting today!’

  ‘Thank you, sir! Happy hunting, sir!’ The two men returned the traditional RAC encouragement and saluted again, parroted by their entire group of helpers.

  Drake laughed and returned the salute to them all, giving them a last nod and grin before turning away.

  A quick glance at his chronograph told him that it was nearing time for takeoff, so he hurried his steps slightly, waving to his other pilots as he went past, heading for his Harridan at the end of the flight line.

  The twelve Harridans had been unmarked when they had been delivered and, in the absence of a proper squadron designation to give them, Sky Commodore Lloyd Hughes had just had letters stencilled on them to distinguish one from the other, from A to L. Only C, D, F, G, H and J survived, with F being Drake’s and H Tanya’s.

  ‘Morning, sir.’

  ‘And a very good morning to you, Sergeant Forrester! How does she look?’ Drake gave his chief fitter, Gertrude Forrester, a nod and a smile, receiving only a scowl in return as usual.

  Forrester was in her mid-twenties, but her permanent frown and the way her hair was pulled back severely under her uniform cap made her look a lot older. Drake had confessed to Tanya one of the first nights that they had been there that he felt intimidated by her, not only because of her forbidding nature, but also because she reminded him of one of the nuns he’d been unfortunate enough to make the acquaintance of in his youth.

  The woman shook her head. ‘If it was up to me she wouldn’t be flying, sir.’

  Drake grinned. ‘If it was up to me I wouldn’t be flying either; I’d be at home with my feet up, drinking tea, eating biscuits and reading a good book. Unfortunately, it’s not up to me, it’s up to the Italians, so we’ll just have to make do.’

  ‘Hrumph.’ Forrester grunted, her frown deepening, but she made no further comment and just ducked under the wing of the Harridan.

  Drake shared an amused look with Giuseppe, the young Maltese recruit who served as Forrester’s second, before crouching to follow her.

  He squatted beside the undercarriage with her, using the strut to support himself and looked up at the wing where the day before he had been hit by a cannon shell from a heavy bomber. He was surprised to see that the hole was still there and he could see the clear blue Mediterranean winter sky through it. ‘Um...’

  ‘Before you say anything, sir, let me just tell you that my crew and I were up all night repairing the rest of the damage you brought my bird home with yesterday and we didn’t have time to make her all pretty for your approval.’

  It was Drake’s turn to frown; he wasn’t so much worried about the hole making the aircraft look less pretty as whether she could fly, and more importantly stay together, with a bloody great gap in the wing root.

  She saw his expression and squinted at him - her ultimate expression of disapproval. ‘Do you think I would let her take you up if I didn’t think she would bring you back down?’ She didn’t wait for his answer but just looked back up at the hole, sticking one of her gloved hands into it. ‘Having said that, you were damn lucky yesterday. This cannon round not only punched a hole through the frame here,’ she tapped one of the slats that supported the wing’s skin and he saw that it had been roughly welded and reinforced with pieces of metal of an unknown origin, ‘but it also damaged the aileron control wires and they were hanging on by a thread.’

  She pointed out the thick control wires and Drake saw that they had been replaced ... with what looked like fishing line.

  Once again, she reacted to his sour expression. ‘It’ll hold.’ She jerked her head in the direction of the group of fisherfolk loudly wishing the two Maltese pilots well as they climbed into their machines. ‘I got it from them, and they assure me it’ll hold.’

  Drake was doubtful, but he had no choice but to accept the woman’s word, and that of the fishermen. He just hoped that if the line did break, it didn’t do so while he was in combat.

  ‘Alright, then, Sergeant. What else should I know about?’

  Forrester quickly walked him through the rest of the imperfections of the aircraft, most of which he already knew about, having flown with them for a while, like that he only had five working .303 Whiting machine guns instead of eight, that the spring tension gauge was broken, and that there was a crack on the left side glass panel of his canopy. The last was especially annoying because it kept catching his attention and made his scans for enemy fighters far less efficient.

  Drake signed the log book, accepting the status of the Harridan and taking responsibility for it, then handed it back to Forrester with a wide smile. He got only a disdainful sniff in return, as he had every sortie since he’d started flying F, but he’d promised himself that he would get her to crack a smile one day and he wasn’t going to stop trying.

  With only a couple of minutes left, Drake climbed into the cockpit and strapped himself in, thanking the fates for the umpteenth time that there were enough glidewings for the pilots, even if he, Tanya and a few of the others were using the ones they had borrowed from the Prussians.

  He did final checks, paying special attention to the ailerons, moving the stick from side to side in an effort to see if he could feel any difference with the new control wire and was relieved when he couldn’t.

  When he was ready, he gave Forrester a thumbs up, which she returned before backing away to the front of the aircraft and putting her hand in the air. She waited, looking down the line of aircraft, and when she saw that all of the chief fitters had their hands in the air, she blew her whistle.

  The Centurions were first to go, accelerating smoothly and taking off after an incredibly short run. Less than a minute later it was the turn of the Maltese machines, which lumbered down the runway almost comically, pursued by the laughing children of the fisherfolk, before lurching deceptively heavily into the air. Finally, the Harridans, led by Drake, took to the air. He waggled his wings, knowing that the Maltese families would be watching, along with everybody else nearby, wanting to give them heart.

  The Hal Far Fighter Force climbed away from the dusty fields, stone houses, sleepy fishing villages and bustling towns of Malta, which had remained almost unchanged for hundreds of years. They passed almost directly over the capital, Valletta, with its fortresses and the impressive Grand Harbour, which had sheltered ships for thousands of years, and headed north, out over the sea. They reached their operating height, ten thousand feet above the Italian bombers, with plenty of time to organise themselves into the pairs in which they fought and form a long line abreast.

  As usual, the Italians were formed into three groups, with a dozen or so airships lowest of all, at fifteen thousand feet, one hundred plus medium and heavy bombers at twenty thousand, and the fighter cover, a single squadron of sixteen aircraft, above them all at twenty-five thousand feet.

  The Italians had always decorated their aircraft as flamboyantly and individually as the Muscovites and during the First Great War the British had gotten used t
o the sight of gaily-coloured machines going into battle with them against the Prussians. That had changed with the advent of the Second Great War, though. After seeing the easy conquests the Prussians were making, the Italian king had decided he’d really quite like to have an empire of his own and had joined the Prussians in what had become known as the “Coalition” (although most people, the British press included, tended to refer to the Coalition as just “the Prussians”, whether they were or not - indeed, most people were completely unaware that a good few of the machines that had flown in the battle over Britain had been Italian). The newly-crowned emperor of the Italian Empire had immediately commanded that everything possible should be done to bring back the glory days of the Roman Empire. He had begun an ambitious construction programme to rival that of Kaiser Wilhelm III’s in Berlin and had invaded a few countries in North Africa as a start towards growing his empire. He had also made sweeping, but largely cosmetic, changes to his armed forces, renaming the army, navy and air forces as “legions” of the ground, sea and air respectively, changing their ranking system accordingly and giving them new uniforms and new liveries for their vehicles. Consequently, the aircraft that dropped bombs on Malta several times a day weren’t the garish hotchpotch that they had been, but were rather impressively painted a blood red a few shades darker than that of the Crimson Barons, with gleaming gold markings and highlights. Even the bombs had been given a coating of gold paint for some reason - there was an unexploded and defused bomb on display in the town square of Valletta, which attracted plenty of visitors.

  The snazzy new paint jobs did nothing to improve the performance of the aircraft, though. Like the Centurions, the fighters and bombers dated from before the war and aerial technology had evolved considerably in a year and a bit of hard fighting. They were easy pickings for the Harridans and the only thing stopping the British from destroying the whole lot of them was a lack of ammunition.

  ‘All Falcon aircraft, this is Falcon Leader. You know what to do. Happy hunting.’

  Drake waited for the acknowledgements to finish before switching to the frequency he shared only with Tanya as his wingmate. ‘Falcon Two, this is Falcon Leader, what’s your status?’

  Drake winced as vehement swearing in Russian filled his ears and he glanced over at Tanya who was gesticulating widely at her aircraft.

  He waited for her to run out of steam, knowing that it was useless to try to get a word in edgewise, then grinned at her. ‘That good, eh?’

  ‘Sorry, but this bucket of bolts is really annoying me today. How am I supposed to concentrate on killing Italians when my aircraft is trying to kill me?’

  Drake frowned. ‘If it’s that bad, then return to base and get repairs - you’ll have plenty more chances to shoot down some Eyeties later.’

  ‘Not a chance, Leader, I’m not leaving you on your own.’

  ‘But if...’

  ‘On second thoughts, it’s not too bad after all. I was wrong. I’m fine, Leader, ready to go. Thank you. No need to worry.’

  She gave him a thumbs up and a cheery smile, before turning her full attention back to the struggle with her machine.

  Drake grimaced, concerned, but there was no time to say anything more or order her home because they were on top of the Italians.

  Ignoring the fighters angling to attack - the Centurions were assigned to deal with them - he picked out a flight of medium bombers at the front of the formation, squarely in the middle, and grinned; it was time to put the cat amongst the pigeons.

  ‘Diving now.’

  Trusting Tanya to stay on his wing, he pushed his stick forward and lined up on the lead bomber. He didn’t aim to pounce on it from above, though, but rather come down in front of it then take it head on.

  It was a tactic they’d used dozens of times and it worked just as well as it always did. The Italian pilots panicked at the sight of the Harridan fighters closing with them at them at more than six hundred miles per hour and broke in all directions. Unfortunately none of them crashed into each other - something that had happened before - but their neat formation was broken up, meaning that their guns no longer created a deadly crossfire. It also meant they would be delayed slightly and the raid would no longer arrive over the island together, giving the anti-aircraft guns a better chance to shoot them down.

  Drake put a half-second burst into the belly of the lead bomber, then ducked under it and did the same to the next in line. In a flash he was through the bomber formation and he put the Harridan on its wing and pulled hard, bringing the fighter round for another run. He felt rather than saw Tanya separate from him, her aircraft evidently unable to sustain the turn. It didn’t worry him too much, though; she could easily take care of herself. He just hoped her Harridan would be agile enough to evade the fighters when they finally came down for them.

  The bombers came back into Drake’s sights, and now there were streams of tracers reaching out towards him from them. He kept his Harridan moving unpredictably with quick movements on his stick and rudder pedals as he closed the gap and grinned as he saw at least half a dozen of the bombers drop their payloads and dive away, heading back to Sicily.

  The next pass took longer to complete, now that he was going in the same direction as the bombers, but it was also far more successful and two bombers turned for home with smoking engines, while one began a lazy dive towards the sea.

  Once he was through, he pulled the nose up and took a few seconds to check on the rest of his squadron. Tanya was racing to get back on his wing after having completed her own second pass through the formation of bombers, but the other Harridans, along with the Maltese machines were still making their second runs and, even as he watched, three more of the large red and gold machines dropped away.

  Satisfied that the fight was going well, Drake turned his attention skywards towards the fighters.

  He fully expected to find chaos, as the highly manoeuvrable Centurions spun and banked, taking what shots they could at the faster, but more sluggish Italian fighters, however what he saw made his blood turn cold.

  Two of the Centurions were tumbling from the sky, broken and battered, wings snapped and flapping uselessly. A third was on fire and plummeting straight down towards the sea. The fourth was in a shallow dive, the pilot obviously dead, Italian machines swarming around it, still taking potshots.

  For a moment he couldn’t understand what had happened, but then he saw them - a squadron of Muhlenberg MU9’s, already screaming down towards the fighters attacking the bombers.

  The Prussians had sent fighters to help their allies gain air superiority over Malta.

  ‘Break! Break! Bandits coming down!’

  There was nothing more Drake could do to help his men and women because he suddenly had his hands full trying to survive himself as four of the MU9’s had chosen him and Tanya as their targets.

  The Prussians had the advantage of height and speed, so all the two of them could do was try to make life at least a little bit more difficult for them by turning into them and returning fire.

  Drake banked hard towards the attack and squeezed off a quick burst, knowing full well it would go wide, but only wanting to put them off. There was a bang and the Harridan lurched, but then the Prussians were past. He continued banking to follow them, yelling to force blood back into his head as the G forces piled on. Dimly, he was aware that he had lost Tanya again, but he had no time to spare her a second thought as his turn took him directly back into the bomber formation.

  He weaved his way in and around them, using them as cover from the pursuing MU9’s, but all too soon he was in clear sky again.

  A quick glance at his ammunition indicator showed him he was down to a few seconds at the most. That was barely enough to do anything worthwhile against the fighters, let alone the bombers and in any other circumstances he would have gotten clear, but that would mean abandoning the rest of his squadron and he just wouldn’t do that.

  Tracers flew past his cockpit and he pushed the s
tick forwards to dive away from them while simultaneously rolling and kicking the rudder to perform a kind of split S which brought him back in the opposite direction. He’d sacrificed altitude for speed and he used it now to gain some distance from the MU’s; he’d spotted Tanya in trouble on the other side of the melee, being pursued by an entire flight of MU9’s and knew that her only chance of survival, and his, would be to work together.

  ‘Falcon Two, I’m two miles away on your four o’clock and coming straight for you. Turn towards me on my mark and go under.’

  ‘Roger, Leader.’

  He threw his throttle wide open, pouring on emergency unwind to keep ahead of the two fighters coming up behind him and flew straight towards the Muscovite’s Harridan, breaking the most important rule of combat flying in his haste to get to the woman he loved.

  As he futilely urged his fighter on to greater speed, he bit his lip and watched Tanya fly, praying for her to survive the time it would take for him to close the gap.

  Bombers buzzed past as Drake careened into the pack, missing some of them by only feet and sending a couple of them banking away in fright in an attempt to avoid him. A few of them passed through his sights, but he ignored all of them; he was going to need all the ammunition he had left if he and Tanya were going to get away.

  Whilst they had hiked through the frozen north, trying to stay out of the clutches of the Prussians, Tanya had demonstrated that she was extremely good at everything she put her mind to, so Drake hadn’t been surprised when she’d turned out to be an excellent pilot as well. He had only ever seen one other pilot with such raw skill, in fact, and that was Gwenevere Hawking, or Gwen Stone as she was now known - one of the renowned Misfit Squadron pilots. She and Drake had met as children and he had watched with amazement, and not a little envy, as the six-year-old girl had taken to the sky like a natural and surpassed him after only a couple of months of lessons, despite his two-year head start.

  In the short weeks that the two of them had been on Malta, he had watched the young Muscovite woman do the same thing.