“You want to give me the name of the brave pilot?”
“There is no reason not to. Her name is Cynthia Oosterhout, formerly of Key West, Florida. Twenty-six years old, used to be a wing-walker and circus acrobat, a high wire artist, with Barnum and Baily’s shows.” He spelled out Oosterhout, and I wrote it down. Credit where credit is due. “That is incidental to our mission today. Events are coming to a head, and I want you to have sufficient background, so you may be able to comprehend the flow of action in the next few weeks.” The more pedantic he gets, the more important the shit is going to get.
I had expected our return to the secret radio station in the woods, or to the shipyard where they had built the Hydrodome Tender, but instead, we headed south and west, toward the Fraser River, the base where I had been initiated into the secrets of the hydrofoil. Never mind. All would be revealed soon enough. “Lupo, how are you getting along in your new career at Crazy House?”
“Not bad. We do good. The transmitter and studio for our broadcasts en Espanol are nearly ready, and I fill my time with the monitoring of VEUAC radio.” He had a mixed emotion kind of look on his face, but I knew he would give whatever job he was given his best shot. He had started VEUAC Radio, and then been nationalized out by the Colombianos. “Santa Fe is in our hands now, and San Diego is ours in a few days. A very few days. El Paso is more difficult.”
“We will prevail. The Texans are idiots, and the Newfederacy is doomed.”
“The next task is to clean the Caribbean. Clean of the Ango-Germans, you understand.”
“The Anglo-German Navy? A tall order. EUAC has no ships.” We were all starting to pronounce EUAC as if it was a word, Euac. Not a pretty word, but a word. Ewe-ac. “They don’t have much ship-building capacity either, do they?” I really didn’t know, but I had never heard of any shipyards down there.
“As usual,” James said, with something much like a twinkle in his eye, “You have stumbled on the crux of the problem. Ship-building. If you can’t build battleships, you have to be able to win with something you can build.”
“And so?”
“Patience is a virtue.” I can take a hint. I just chatted with Lupo, remembered a few of the times we had managed to not get killed, remembered a few people who hadn’t been that lucky. You know, like people do.
>>>>>>>
Eventually, we came up on that obscure dock I had been to when they introduced me to the hydrodomes, the HD-9s. It had changed a lot, there were more piers, a paved road that looked suspiciously like it could double as an airfield, and a lot of long low buildings, roughly built out of raw lumber, with green roofs, so they would merge with the evergreens they stood under. How long had it been? A few months? “James, you have accomplished miracles...”
“We have been tightly focused at the very least. And with the export markets down, there was a surplus of lumberjacks, carpenters, and woodworkers needing employment. The only really challenging part was the engines, but we finally have that concern well underway. The engineering had been done, of course, but production has its own difficulties. But, then again, you did have something to do with the aircraft production in Hong Kong.”
“I just threw out the idea. It landed on fertile ground. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know, and a newspaperman gets to know everybody, if he is any good at his job at all.”
“Your modesty is going to ruin your image, if you are not careful. Shall we?” We exited the car, and walked into the closest building. Once I was used to the gloom under the trees, I could see that the buildings extended up the valley behind the dock, taking every advantage of terrain and cover to be invisible from the air. Nature had been helped out, here and there, by camouflage nettings, like the ones I had seen hiding tanks before the Bellingham assault a few months ago. I was prepared to be shocked, but I had never seen anything like the machines on display inside the long low building.
“The fuck?” There was an obvious display set up inside, two machines on risers, with carpets and floodlights, the whole nine yards. The one on the left was a tiny airplane that looked like it was built backwards, the elevators were on the pointed nose of the craft, the engine was all the way in the back, and the broad stubby wings had vertical fins on them, just outboard of the prop. The engine was mounted high, right behind the pilot’s head. The familiar muzzle of a .50 air-cooled stuck out of the pointed nose of the airplane. I managed to restrain my mouth, but the other one made me burst out loud.
“That’s a fucking hydrodome? It’s tiny!” Both devices had the same body and engine and propeller, but where the airplane had landing gear, landing gear that seemed awfully tall, the other device was up on tall hydrofoils. It had a wide one in the front, and a narrow one in the back that looked like it was designed to steer. They both were barely twenty-five feet long, and the fuselage looked like a tight fit for any pilot over a hundred pounds. “Thank god, my fat ass would never fit in those little bastards. They look like they will go like stink, though.”
“Indeed they will. We use a locally manufactured four-cylinder engine, an opposed boxer design. It displaces a bit over two liters, a hundred-twenty-odd cubic inches, and produces a little over one hundred horsepower.” He waved at a couple of benches, a coffee urn. “By all means, have a cup of coffee, and get comfortable. My apologies, but I am required to give you a bit of a lecture.”
We shuffled to obey, he took up a pointer, like you see in any classroom, and continued. “This is called a canard monoplane. Canard means duck, of course. Some of the earliest experimental aircraft, even those of your Wright brothers and the Brazilian Santos-Dumont 14-bis airplane of 1906, were of the foreplane configuration. It was generally ignored after that, until Focke-Wulf co-founder Georg Wulf, built the F 19 Ente, four years ago. Ente also refers to a duck. The Ente was a high-wing monoplane with a canard layout and fixed tricycle undercarriage. The pilot sat in an open cockpit, while an enclosed cabin was provided for two or three passengers. The canard was mounted on short struts above the nose of the aircraft, ahead of the cockpit, and the two engines were housed in nacelles mounted under the wings.”
“The F 19 design was set so that the front stabilizer would stall some moments before the rear-mounted main wing, which made the Ente virtually stall-proof, at least in theory. The first example flew in September, 1927 but was destroyed later that month, when a control rod snapped. Georg Wulf was unfortunately killed in that crash.”
Annie muttered something about fucking krautheads that James ignored. She had brought a hip pocket flask to enliven her coffee. He went on. “Nevertheless, a second aircraft was built, which flew successfully. However, with the death of Georg Wulf, the momentum of the program was lost. Coincidently, an Italian refugee to Canada, Sergio Stefanutti, had already experimented with canard aircraft. His SS.3 Anitra, which again, also means duck, had only a two-cylinder Keller engine rated at only sixteen horsepower. It flew well enough to attract some funding from the Bell Laboratory organization. The rest was a simple matter of linear development. Once the engine and airframe were viable, the transition to a hydrodome was simple and obvious.”
“Simple to Bell Laboratories. The tall landing gear are to clear the prop?”
Arbuthnot could not restrain himself from tapping the struts. “In fact, no. The design constraint was to provide clearance for the main weapon, a variant of the historical Congreve Rocket, which was celebrated in your anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner.” I had researched that too, inventing the Rocket Clusters, but we didn’t have the time or resources to follow up on that. Obviously, Bell Laboratories had. “We do not have a sample to show you, but we have moved on from the Congreve design, which is stabilized with a long stick, to the slightly more recent William Hale spin stabilized design. Hale was born in Colchester, England in 1797. He was self-taught, and achieved his first patent in 1827, when he was barely thirty years old, and he also won a first-class Gold Medal of the Royal Society of Arts in Paris for his paper on ship propulsion using a
n early form of jet propulsion. We are also looking into those ideas. His rocket, from 1844, was a new form of rotary rocket that improved on the earlier Congreve rocket design. Hale removed the guide-stick from the design, instead vectoring part of the thrust through canted exhaust holes to provide rotation of the rocket, which improved its stability in flight, exactly as a rifle bullet is stabilized. This design has been improved again, but I shan’t go into detail. Our operational missile is fifteen feet long, eighteen inches in diameter, and carries a two-hundred-pound charge in the warhead.”
“Is that big enough? Torpedoes carry a ton or more, don’t they?”
“Indeed, but we utilize what is called the Munroe Effect, which is named after Charles E. Munroe, who discovered it in 1888. As a civilian chemist working at the U.S. Naval Torpedo Station at Newport, Rhode Island, he noticed that when a block of explosive guncotton with the manufacturer's name stamped into it was detonated next to a metal plate, the lettering was cut into the plate. In 1894, Munroe constructed the first crude shaped charge. He discovered that a simple warhead with a conical indentation could cut through quite impressive thicknesses of even hardened armor plate. He used a hollow cartridge made by tying the sticks of dynamite around a tin can, the open mouth of the latter being placed downward. It penetrated the wall of a safe that was four inches thick. Further developments have been made, successful deployment requires a relatively slow-moving projectile, for obvious reasons.”
“Like a rocket. I get it. So, you have weapons that are cheap, easy to build, and able to blow holes in damn near anything. The airplane missile does not use the shaped charge, I assume.” I had to show I was paying attention, didn’t I?
“Only for attacks on armor and ground fortifications. Ships, tanks, and bunkers. Accuracy is not high, but whatever it hits can well be considered defunct.” He almost broke a smile. “The vaporized steel causes considerable damage once it gets through the armor. It is hoped that the regular explosive warhead will prove useful against Zeppelins and bombers, but the new aircraft have limited operational altitudes.” He paused for effect. “We have arranged a small demonstration. Follow me, if you please.”
We trooped along like good little soldiers, out a couple hundred yards up a heavily wooded valley. Somebody had dragged what was left of a Großkampfwagen super heavy tank up there, under the evergreens, and sapper types were busting about it, fiddling things into their proper alignment. Arbuthnot waved at a Sergeant Major, he produced a whistle, blew into it, and everybody snapped into attention. “Alright, chaps, clear the area, you know the drill.”
There was a nondescript steel can about the size of a paint bucket lashed to the front armor of the tank, I knew that was the thickest area, and I knew it must be a couple inches thick, at least. Germans love their overkill. A corporal handed out ear plugs and headphones, I took both. I have had enough loud noises for my personal satisfaction. The whistle blew again, we were herded into a long low bunker arrangement, a red smoke grenade was set off, and somebody threw the magic switch.
There was a not very impressive kaboom, a cloud of very hard-looking smoke, the bucket took off at a high rate of speed, and there was an eight-inch-wide hole in the front glacis. Just like that. No fuss, no muss. Arbuthnot strode forward with that damn pointer he had brought with him, and tapped the hole in the armor. It was as clean cut as if it had been punched with the world’s biggest punch press. I swear, the sides of the hole were shiny, the cut was so clean. “Seventy millimeters of hardened armor plate, almost three inches. Quite comparable to even a battle cruiser’s armor, in spots. The deck, for example. Most impressive, I am sure you will agree.”
“So, what,” Annie grated out, “Do we call these cute little bastards?”
“We must admit to whimsy. The flying one is the Teal, the swimming one is the Loon. Very Canadian, of course.” He set the pointer aside, said, “We have dinner laid on for you, Miles and Lupo. Captain Brennen, you shall wish to supervise the loading of your ship, no doubt. She is in Bellingham; you have your orders. Anything else you need, just let one of us know. There is a car and driver waiting.” She waved a salute, and walked back down the valley without a murmur. The word “Captain” was strong medicine.
James led the way to a rough and ready dining hall, there were a couple of smaller tables at one end, one even had a white table cloth and a candle in a wine bottle. High class, no doubt. There was no menu, but there was wine, and real silverware. We had salmon, surprise, and an excellent salad. I had to ask the stupid questions; “So, when are we going to see these fucking ducks in action?”
If I was hoping to bother Arbuthnot with my vulgarity, it was a waste of time. “Hopefully, never. These are designed to be easily manufactured under adverse conditions by moderately skilled tradesmen. Gnats rather than eagles. Captain Brennen’s ship has a few dozen of each type, complete plans, a cadre of trained workers, and as many engines as we can spare. We are in production here, and at a few other locations in Pacifica.”
“You plan to flood the Caribbean with these Loons and Teals? They do not look like they will handle much weather, and they can’t hold much fuel.”
“Indeed. But on the other hand, a common commercial ship can be converted into a carrier, a tender for both models. The Loons can be launched from regular lifeboat davits, and the Teals need only a few hundred feet of runway to become airborne. An oil tanker would be quite long enough. Steam catapults can also be used.”
“Yeah, I get it. We had a railroad car that launched pursuit planes in China. I don’t know if it was ever used in battle, though. Another of my crazy ideas.”
“Interesting. If you come up with any more of your wild ideas, be sure to mention them to me. In writing, if you please.”
“Not a bit of a problem. I hope those Congreve rockets can kill zepps, I hate those bastards.”
“A common enough sentiment.”
“How much of this is background information, and how much can I print?”
“I’m afraid none of this is for publication at the moment. The Germans should be led to assume that these are indigenous Colombian inventions for as long as possible. Franco needs to be able to deny receiving any assistance from Pacifica for the time being. It won’t last, it can’t last, but we do not want to touch off a war in Europe, if we can possibly avoid it.”
“Why not? Sounds like a great idea to me?”
“It’s the old story of tails and dogs. EUAC is soon going to be a much stronger power than Old Spain. We do not want them to divide their loyalties at this point in time.”
“You want them to join Pacifica, don’t you?”
“Not necessarily. We would rather they become their own independent power, and if they were focused east, instead of west, that would suit us well enough.”
“You and the Japanese don’t need any competition?”
“Simpler than that,” he said, “We don’t need another navy in the Pacific. We don’t care about, or have any need for the Caribbean, but we would prefer the Colombian Canal to remain in more or less friendly hands. That would be well worth a few shiploads of inexpensive weapons. Plus, we get our designs tested in the real world, without risking too many of our own people.”
“I see. So, what next?”
“I shall provide you a ride back to your offices, and if and when the Colombians strike a few blows against the common enemy, you will know how to report the news. Lupo?”
“I understand. Good. I will do as you say. A good plan. I hope it works.”
>>>>>>>>>
As did we all. Hilda was racked out when I got back, about four, let her sleep. The Mississippi Thrust was well past St. Louis, there were no more natural barriers, and there were so few Loyalist troops on the west bank, that it was a walkover all the way to Texas. Any soldier in the West found himself without supply or a chain of command, and had to make the individual decision who to desert to. Mormons, Texans, Anglo-Germans, or just say fuck it, and go home. We were too far away to be a g
ood escape, and the IB had purged the Spanish out of the ranks, so we had a lot of survivors already, even if they had come the long way around, via China.
Tommy the Cork and Dougherty had their heads together, plotting and scheming and destroying a bottle of whiskey, but I couldn’t hear what they were up to.
There were a few interesting stories on CKYZ, the Indians in Oklahoma, the Cherokee and the Choctaw mostly, had a radio up and running, and were declaring their independence, but not very loudly. I knew they had been Confederate in the First Civil War, and suffered grievously. They really had nowhere to go, and were between the hammer and the anvil, even more than usual.
Another straw in the whirlwind, the Idaho Legislature, in emergency session, voted to petition Deseret for admission as a component state, and a few others were hinted to be leaning that way. Then, we got late word that Pacifica Navy ships were occupying the Port of Long Beach, just south of Los Angeles, and were rescuing people fleeing from the EUAC drive up from San Diego. No one had actually said that San Diego had gone under, but there was little doubt that it was going, or gone. One thing for sure, it was a long drive from LA to San Francisco. Reports started coming in of a mass exodus of Anglos on anything that even looked like it could sail the three hundred and some odd miles up to the Bay Area. The June weather was as good as it gets, so maybe they had a chance. Nobody thought the EUAC would be as brutal as the USA had been, but a lot of people were not inclined to take any chances. When the world goes crazy, maintaining your sanity may not be the best tactic.
Brown Bear Blues Page 12