The Maltese Defence

by Simon Brading

  Abby took a small sip, then passed it on to Bruce. She waited for him to swig from it and pass it on to Monty before speaking. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you two - what have you decided about your aircraft?’

  ‘Well, Boss,’ said Bruce, ‘we’ve decided we kinda like the grey and it goes with the names we’ve chosen.’

  Monty grinned. ‘Wraith and Ghoul.’

  Abby considered their answer for a moment, then nodded. ‘Even though we’re suddenly looking a lot less colourful as a squadron, I like it. I hope the Prussians don’t.’

  Chapter 12

  The Misfits were on the flight line before dawn the following morning, waiting for the Prussians to take to the air for their morning raid. Mugs of tea and coffee steamed in the chill morning air and greatcoats were buttoned up against a cold front which had moved in overnight.

  It was a beautiful morning, with the air crystal clear and a few fluffy clouds to catch the colours as the sun neared the horizon, but the pilots barely saw it; their minds were already on the day ahead and full of thoughts of what the Prussians might do as retribution for the raid of the day before.

  ‘Really, what can they do?’ asked Bruce. ‘Drop a few extra bombs on us? Write more propaganda leaflets? Stick their arses out of their windows as they fly past?’

  The pilots chuckled, but Dorothy Campbell’s frown remained firmly in place. ‘I’m not concerned about any immediate response, it’s the long-term that worries me.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Abby.

  Derek, always the strategist, saw the implications before just about anyone else and answered for Campbell. ‘Because we’re no longer just an undermanned fighter squadron, defending an island that has a few half-wrecked ships and an undersea boat base. The Prussians know we have bombers here now and we’ve become a greater threat that warrants greater attention.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Campbell nodded. ‘We’ve been poking a sleeping dragon and it’s just been batting at us half-heartedly, but now it might wake up and decide to squash us once and for all. It wouldn’t be particularly hard, either; there’s too few of us and they have aerial superiority, so if they sent a big enough invasion fleet we wouldn’t be able to stop it. They could wipe us out without breaking a sweat.’

  ‘That’s a cheery thought!’ Bruce said with a grin. ‘I’m so glad I’m getting up this early in the morning every day to do my part in a lost cause.’

  Campbell shook her head. ‘I’m not saying this is a lost cause, Bruce. If last summer taught us anything it’s that there is no such thing. I’m just saying that we have to be prepared for anything and make sure we are using what little we have to best advantage in an attempt to dissuade them.’

  ‘Well, we’ve blown up their airship, that’s a pretty good start in my book!’

  ‘Yes,’ Campbell nodded reluctantly, ‘but I won’t be sure we’ve done that until I see the photographs from the reconnaissance Spitsteam.’

  ‘But we know it was destroyed; we saw the explosion. It was bloody huge!’ Bruce protested.

  ‘I want to see it with my own eyes.’ Campbell said. ‘Once I see that airship peeled apart like an orange I’ll believe it, but until then...’

  Unfortunately, the photographs taken by Sub-Lieutenant Farrier showed that Campbell had been right to wait until the destruction of the airship was confirmed before writing it off. She pinned them up in the briefing room and the Misfits gathered at the end of the day to gaze at them disconsolately.

  The airship, or at least the top of it where the bombs had hit, was blackened and dented, but the thick metal covering the hulls had protected it, much as the flight deck had the Arturo, and the rest appeared intact.

  ‘What the hell was that explosion, then?’ asked Abby, her frustration showing in her tone of voice. ‘Charles, do you see anything that would explain it?’

  Chalky had far more experience than the rest of them in analysing reconnaissance photographs and, while everyone else had just been staring at the airship, he had been looking at the surroundings as well and he nodded. ‘Look at this.’

  He walked up to the boards and pointed at an image that showed the area of forest to the west of the airship. ‘Most of the damage is concentrated around the airship, as you would expect from our bombers, but there is a line of fire damaged trees here leading away from it.’ He followed the black line in the grey trees with his finger. ‘Squadron Leader Drake’s report stated that the electrical systems on the Bertha were powered by wind turbines. That kind of thing would be unreliable on the ground, so they would have to bring in something else to supply the system, a generator for example. I think this is what remains of the pipeline feeding whatever it was and the fireball would likely have been the generator going up.’

  ‘So, the airship itself is probably completely undamaged.’ Campbell sighed, then looked around the pilots. ‘Well, we don’t have enough hydrogen to mount another bombing raid and it would probably be useless anyway, so does anyone have any other suggestions as to how we can attack it? Rudy, did you notice any weaknesses we can exploit while you were there?’

  Drake shook his head. ‘Sorry, nothing.’

  ‘I saw something.’ Chalky flipped through the file of photographs from his own mission, a week before. He pulled one out and pinned it onto the board. ‘The airship is surrounded by scaffolding, probably to hold it upright. If we took out a sizeable portion of that, maybe it’ll topple over. We can use its own weight against it.’

  Campbell shook her head. ‘The thing already crash landed. If it didn’t get wrecked then, flopping onto its side probably isn’t going to do much.’ She looked at Wendy. ‘What about those rockets Abby was talking about? Did you get anywhere with them?’

  ‘I’ve managed to construct a few. They’re not as powerful as the ones I made before, but they’ll punch holes in tanks and armoured vehicles no problem. However...’ She looked at the images of the airship sceptically. ‘If several dozen direct hits from five-hundred pound bombs didn’t do anything, then I doubt a few rockets will; the gondola is probably almost as thickly armoured as the top of the hulls.’

  ‘Then that idea’s out of the window.’ Campbell looked around the group. ‘Does anybody have anything else?’ When nobody spoke up, she sighed. ‘Then I’m sorry, but we have to move on to targets that we do have a chance of destroying. I received word a few hours ago that a convoy is being assembled to supply Malta, Crete and Alexandria. They’ll be here in a couple of weeks and we have to give them the best possible chance of getting through.’ She turned back to Wendy. ‘I want our fighters equipped with rockets to attack their bases, but go back to working on the torpedoes, please; I have a feeling we’re going to need them soon enough.’

  ‘Right you are, ma’am.’ Wendy nodded, not at all upset by having her priorities continually changed; as long as she was working towards blowing things up she was happy.

  Campbell saw the sour looks that were being directed her way and pursed her lips. ‘Look, I know you all want to destroy that airship, and so do I, but we can’t. Not until help gets here at least. So, in the meantime we have to focus on what we can do.’ She met the eyes of the pilots one by one, making sure her point was getting across. When she was satisfied she nodded. ‘Good, now get some food then go and rest, we’re going to be a lot busier from now on.’

  Most of the pilots drifted away, but Scarlet lingered, ostensibly to take a last look at the photographs as Dorothy Campbell packed them away. When the Sky Commodore’s back was turned she took one and slipped it into her tunic, then hurried after her friends.

  She closed the door of the briefing hall behind her and turned to go to the mess, but squealed in fright when she found herself face to face, or rather face to chest, with Tanya.

  ‘Bloody hell! Don’t sneak up on me like that!’ Scarlet scolded her, but then paused, frowning and looked around. There was nowhere to hide and the door opened the wrong way for the Muscovite to have been behind it. ‘Hang on, how did you sneak up on me li
ke that?’

  The tall woman just grinned.

  Scarlet scowled up at her. ‘What do you want? There’s food waiting.’

  ‘I was wondering what you were planning.’

  Scarlet felt a moment of panic; if the Muscovite woman, who barely knew her, had realised she was up to something, there was no way her friends, or worse, that spoilsport Abby, wouldn’t have noticed. She peered around the tall woman, worried, but found that the rest of the squadron were half-way across the hangar - it seemed that they either weren’t as perceptive as she thought, or they were too wrapped up in their own worries. Still, she had no idea what the motives of the woman were in confronting her, so she decided to play it coy.

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m not planning anything.’ She tossed her head as she brushed past Tanya and stalked towards the mess hall.

  The Muscovite woman fell into step beside her. ‘You know, I’ve seen your work first hand, experienced it, in fact. It was an excellent demolition.’

  Scarlet was slightly mollified by the flattery and slowed down slightly. ‘I know, I read Rudy’s report and I’m sorry.’

  Tanya shrugged. ‘You had no way of knowing that we were there or that we were going to steal one of the aircraft you blew up. I’m just glad we weren’t actually in the hangar when it exploded. It doesn’t matter; things worked out for the best in the end.’ She glanced down at the petite Irishwoman and grinned. ‘So, do you have anything in mind for that airship?’

  The Irishwoman shook her head vigorously and quickened her pace, wanting to get to the mess and have an excuse to change the subject. ‘Of course not!’

  Tanya sighed theatrically as she easily kept pace. ‘That’s a shame, because I happen to know how to get my hands on some high explosives and have nothing to do with them...’

  Scarlet came to a sudden halt. The one problem she’d been unable to solve had been the matter of where to get the explosives to destroy the Bertha. In Muscovy all she’d had to do was find the right people, but that wouldn’t work on Malta; everything was far too RAC and official, with quartermasters and far too many forms to fill in.

  She turned to look up at the woman and smiled.

  When they had first laid siege to Malta, the Italians had constructed three air bases on Sicily to handle the hundreds of fighters and bombers that they moved in. Then, when the Prussians joined the fight, they in turn built four more. Unlike the underground RAC bases on the island, they were conventional, with all facilities and hangars above ground so, despite being defended by numerous anti-aircraft guns, that meant they were far more vulnerable to attack.

  In Muscovy, the Misfits and their allies had targeted the enemy fighters, destroying their machines while they were on the ground and with them any hope that the Prussians could defend their bombers. It was only logical to do the same thing in Malta in order to gain air superiority, so that when the convoy arrived they would be better able to protect it. Accordingly, Dorothy Campbell chose the closer of the two MU9 bases and asked Abby if she would kindly attack it with her squadron.

  Just three days after the raid on Bertha, the Misfits landed back at Hal Far after confronting the morning raid and, almost before the enemy bombers had reached their bases, took off again, rewound, reloaded and with a pair of rockets under every wing.

  The squadron was going to approach Sicily as low as they could, giving the Prussians as little warning as possible and Gwen grinned as they screamed over Malta, barely higher than the rooftops. It was one thing to climb miles up into the sky every day to face bombers where there was freedom to carry out aerobatic manoeuvres to one’s heart’s content, but quite another to be going in excess of three hundred miles an hour at less than one hundred feet, seemingly close enough to reach out and touch the trees and houses as they blasted past.

  They passed directly over the Grand Harbour. The damage from the most recent attack was still being tackled and the ships were wreathed in smoke, but many a face turned up to watch them go past and a few men and women paused in what they were doing to wave or roar in encouragement.

  The harbour was left behind in a flash and then it was just the sea. The aircraft descended until they were only yards above the waves and the Misfits settled in and relaxed ever so slightly for the short flight.

  It would take them only ten minutes to cover the sixty mile stretch of water between Malta and neighbouring Sicily and while quite a few pilots liked to spend the time before combat silently preparing themselves, others couldn’t go without talking for that long.

  Gwen preferred not to speak unless she had something to say and she listened idly to a few of the other pilots breaking down that morning’s fighting while she studied, for the umpteenth time, the reference materials taped to her knees.

  Chalky had examined the images they had of the Prussian base and identified the types of buildings and the best ones to attack. Abby had then assigned targets, hangars and storage sheds, to all of the pilots and Gwen’s was marked in red on a hand-drawn diagram taped to her left knee. She compared it to the aerial photograph on her right, wanting to make sure that she would recognise her designated target when she saw it.

  The plan of attack was very simple, as all the best plans were. They would go in at treetop level where the guns would have trouble targeting them, use their rockets on the flight line and their assigned buildings in the first pass, then make two strafing runs to finish off whatever aircraft had been left undamaged - three runs in total and then home before a response could be mounted.

  It was simple, but it was going to be very dangerous even so, far more than attacking a massed bomber raid where many of the gunners were hesitant to target them for fear of hitting their own aircraft. It was well worth the risk, though; they could potentially halve the numbers of Prussian fighters in one fell swoop and leave the playing field much more even.

  ‘Two minutes, Badgers. Arm rockets.’

  Gwen had completely lost track of time and she started at Abby’s command, cursing herself for her inattention. She looked up to find Sicily already a haze on the horizon and quickly checked her instruments, then gave her straps a quick tug to make sure they were snug, before turning her attention to the tiny brass panel bolted onto the left side of her cockpit. The panel had several electrical wires dangling from it and held two switches, one either side of a small light. She flicked the first switch and was relieved when the light turned on, burning steadily green, signifying that the electrical circuit running to the rockets was unbroken. She had tested the mechanism on the ground, they all had, but there was always the possibility that something could come loose during the flight because of turbulence or vibration.

  ‘All Badgers, check in.’

  ‘Badger Two, Roger.’

  One by one the Misfits reported their readiness. Miraculously, everyone’s rockets seemed to be armed and ready - Gwen had expected at least a couple of pilots to report failures, but Wendy’s hurried work wasn’t as slapdash as it seemed. It still remained to be seen whether all the missiles fired on command, though.

  ‘Badger Eight, climb on my mark.’

  The coastline was a thick muddy line only a few miles ahead and it was time for the Misfits to make sure that they were on the right heading. The only way to do that was to get visual confirmation of the location of the airfield, and the only way to do that was to send someone up to look for it. It would be silly for them to all go, so Abby had given the job to Sub-Lieutenant Drummond. After Smith’s death, the young man had been moved into Kitty and Farrier’s element and his temporary absence wouldn’t mean someone would be on their own for the first run. He would rejoin them when they returned and use his rockets then on whatever target was left standing.

  ‘Mark.’

  Drummond’s Spitsteam pulled up into a steep climb, going up to five hundred feet in a matter of seconds before levelling out. Abby had timed it superbly and he reported in just as the sea was replaced by trees and fields as the rest of the ai
rcraft crossed the coastline.

  ‘Adjust course ten degrees left, Leader. Target at three miles.’

  ‘Roger, Eight, thank you. Now get your arse back down before they spot you.’

  ‘Roger, Leader!’

  The Misfits turned onto the new heading, each of them unconsciously beginning a countdown in their heads; three miles at three hundred and fifty miles an hour would take just over thirty seconds to cover.

  Before they were even half done, Abby gave the word and they popped up to one hundred feet and got their first view of the airfield.

  Gwen immediately found her target and knew by the tiny course correction Abby made that she had too.

  ‘Look at that! Beeyootifull! Won’t these bastards ever learn?’

  It wasn’t hard to work out what Bruce was talking about - the Prussian fighters were lined up in a perfectly straight line with customary Prussian efficiency. They were just begging to be strafed.

  ‘Let’s hope not, Nine!’ Abby said with a laugh. ‘Happy hunting, Badgers.’

  There was no time for any more chit chat as light flared from under the wings of the ten aircraft and streaked towards the grey and green buildings. Fire bloomed everywhere, but Gwen didn’t have time to see the resulting damage as she was already past and juking Excalibur back and forth. There was no anti-aircraft fire, though; the Prussians had been taken completely by surprise.

  ‘Yes! Thank you, Wendy!’ There was a loud whoop which made Gwen wince and automatically curse Bruce under her breath, but then she blinked in surprise when she realised it had been Derek’s voice, not the Australian’s - he really was coming out of his shell.

  There was answering laughter from a few pilots, but then Kitty’s panicked cry drowned them all out.

  ‘Eight, what are you doing? Eight! Break off!’