by Hall, Gerald
“I know that. But we still have to cut costs even further in Bomber Command if we are going to be able to afford the entire purchase.”
“What else can we do, Minister? I’ve already retired every single piston-engine bombing platform that we had. We have reduced the number of squadrons in Bomber Command by thirty percent as well.”
“You might have to consider reducing your force of Valiants so that you can pay to operate the Vulcans.”
“You know that our Valiants remain a vital part of our force. They are not going to just operate as bombers, but will also be the tankers that will enable the Vulcans to reach out far beyond our borders to deal with threats, including threats to our Far East territories.”
“I understand this too, Cliff. Perhaps you will have to put several squadrons of Valiants into reserve. That way you can save on overall operating and maintenance costs. I’m sure that you can spare the oldest aircraft to send them to be retired. Some of the retired bombers can be cannibalized in order to keep the rest of the fleet operational, if necessary.”
To say that Air Marshal Warfield was upset would be putting it quite mildly. But he maintained a very stoic expression on his face as he spoke on the phone after taking a deep sigh.
“I see, Sir. We will do what we can. My pilots and I would appreciate it though if you were able to shake out a few extra funds so that we can keep as many of the Valiants running as possible.”
“I will try, Cliff. I promise.” The Defense Minster replied before Cliff heard a click on the phone as the connection was broken on the other end.
Now, the Air Marshal had to figure out how to break the news to his pilots that some of their planes were about to be put out to pasture.
Chapter Twenty-Eight:
Cavill Industries Headquarters
Derby, Western Australia
September 11, 1957
Judith had received a message from the company’s export office. Since it involved Japan, Judith decided to walk down from her office to personally see what the situation was. Since the surrender of Japan at the end of the Pacific War, Harold, and now his children, were always concerned about any developments coming out of that crippled nation. Agents from the various allies had searched the Japanese islands from one end to the other, searching for any remnants the chemical and biological weapons that Japan had used during the last months of the war.
While substantial quantities were found and neutralized, there was always a concern that not all of that material had been discovered.”
“We just received a telegram from Tokyo. It seems that the new Japanese government is asking for our assistance is rebuilding their industrial sector in the vicinity of Kobe.” Justin Attaway told Judith.
Justin was one of Cavill Industries’ overseas contract specialists. But like most good contract specialists, Justin also worked informally as an intelligence analyst for Cavill Industries. The conglomerate and its leadership needed to know all of the players involved. The Cavills also needed to know what the threats were and the opportunities available with every world crisis point. Harold’s children were all quite aware that the Chinese symbol of crisis was a combination of the symbols for danger and opportunity.
“Admiral Yamamoto has been very busy. I still have a difficult time accepting him as President Yamamoto even though the remaining Japanese elected him as the leader of their government. We’re not the only ones who they are asking for help, I’m sure.”
“Well, Yamamoto was the only person left with any credible authority after the death of the Imperial Family and most of the rest of Japan’s military leadership. But you’re right about their requests for assistance. I’ve heard that the Nips are asking practically every nation that has any industry left at all for help. But a lot of those countries are being real bastards about what they are offering though. Everyone is attaching strings of one form of another to their aid offers. But some of the offers are a lot worse than others.”
“Well, I suppose that beggars can’t be choosers. There is always going to someone trying to take advantage of the misery of others, Justin. But I understand the President Yamamoto has quite the reputation of being a gambler.”
“This would be quite a gamble for him to make all of these requests for assistance from nations who had been the victims of Japanese aggression little more than a decade earlier, still. There’s still something odd about all of this. The Nips seem to demanding their own conditions in this request of theirs in spite of their circumstances. They are certainly not acting like beggars, by any means. I know that they are getting some help already, but none of the nations or corporations already providing aid are as technically advanced as well are.”
“If the conditions that the Japanese are unacceptable to us, I don’t have any problem with walking away from their request. We already are pretty stretched with our own resources between the space rocket division and the aviation divisions. Obviously, we are not going to provide aid in rebuilding their military industrial complex. I’m sure that the Japanese are going to try to obtain technology and industrial resources that have both civilian and military applications though. Still, there are huge portions of Japan that are only just now recovering from all of the contamination from the chemical and biological weapons that escaped from those destroyed weapons depots.
Just out of curiosity, do we have any information on who is already providing support to the Japanese?”
“You probably will think that this is crazy, but we have received information that Korea has quietly formed an alliance with Japan. This alliance is both an economic and military alliance.”
“That does seem rather incredulous, especially when you consider how brutally the Japanese exploited the Koreans after Japan annexed the Korean peninsula in 1910. Many of the Koreans very passionately hate the Japanese still.”
“That’s true. But right now, there is an even greater threat to Korea that has prompted this new alliance. The Chinese civil war is threatening to spill over into Korea. You have to remember that China also has a history of dominating over Korea that is far longer than the period of Japanese rule was.
The Mandarin faction or Northern China Alliance are making unpleasant noises about threatening to cross the Yalu River and annex Korea in order to access to its resources.” Justin said.
“They are fools to seek a two front war.” Judith pointedly remarked.
“I’m afraid that the Cantonese faction in the south does not appear to be much wiser. There have been several border incidents between them and the French along the Chinese southern border. These do not appear to have been officially sanctioned, however.”
“The French are not going to react well to this, I’m sure. They are determined to defeat the insurgency with the Vietminh, mostly to regain some semblance of national pride after what the Nazis did to France in the Second World War. The French will certainly fight the Chinese too, if necessary. This will not be good for either the French or the Cantonese. It will be especially bad for the current trading relationship between the French and the Cantonese.
But let’s get back to the Japanese, if we could. The Koreans make a logical ally, if only because of their proximity and their available manpower. But what would the Koreans get out of this?”
“If my sources are correct, what the Koreans ultimately have in mind will not please the Nips at all. The Koreans are not merely considering entering into an alliance with the hated Japanese. The Koreans are planning on invading Japan themselves. They want to conquer the still decimated Japanese people in order to make them pay for the atrocities committed upon the Koreans during the decades long Japanese occupation of Korea. The Koreans also want to seize all of the military equipment that the Japanese still possesses as well.
The Japanese possessed enough salvaged equipment to substantially reequip the Korean military. Much of it had been located in the contaminated zones, so the Americans had no interest in going there to salvage the more advanced materiel there. The Korea
ns knew about the weapons because the Japanese had been selling some of their leftover weapons to both sides of the Chinese civil war.
Even in their weakness, the Japanese have been meddling in order to weaken any possible adversaries in the future. There are still some surviving military leaders in Japan who want to rearm their nation and retake their previously conquered territories at the first opportunity. The Japanese militarists were humiliated by their defeat, in spite of the nature of how they were forced to surrender. The irony is that Admiral Yamamoto would end up being the man to form a new democratic government for the Japanese. He will surely oppose those who wish to recreate the Japanese empire.”
“I suppose that the militarists’ efforts are going to backfire on the Japanese right when they need real assistance to get back on their feet and peacefully reestablish a relationship with the other civilized nations. But I think that the Koreans are not going to make their move against Japan until they are certain that the Chinese threat has been neutralized first.” Judith noted.
“You are probably right. But it is good to know the potential threat to our interests, should we decide to get involved in Japan. So, I guess that we are not going to offer our assistance?”
“I don’t think so. But we are not going to make that decision public. After all, we have more than a few Japanese engineers working for us in a variety of functions after they escaped the destruction of their homes from the explosions at the Japanese special weapons depots. These expatriates have been very helpful in our own programs. We don’t want to do anything to ruin our relationship with them, especially after all of the political capital that we had to expend to overturn the ‘White Australia’ policies that presented Asians from emigrating or even working here. We certainly do not want all of that to go to waste.”
“I will tell the Japanese that we are currently reviewing their request. That should put them off for a while without having to make a commitment, one way or another. If we do anything to help the new Japanese government, it will have to purely be in the form of aid that has absolutely no military applications at all.”
“Thank you, Justin. This is an awkward position for all of us. The world is in such turmoil, but we certainly do not need any more complications for us.”
Judith didn’t even mention that this was without the threat of the old Cold War and the danger of a nuclear holocaust hanging over everyone’s head. Harold’s oldest daughter knew that she and her siblings would have to tread carefully with their continuing program to reshape the direction of mankind’s history. They could not afford to let anyone on the outside know what they were doing and why, no matter what.
“Yamamoto is a very sharp bloke. I’m sure that he is working on something that provide us all with more than a few surprises in spite of the circumstances that he has found himself in.” Justin concluded.
“Yes, he can be fully of surprises. Yamamoto is a pragmatist. But I also understand that he has quite the reputation as a very skilled gambler as well. We would all be well advised to remember that.” Judith warned.
Chapter Twenty-Nine:
Derby Shipyards
Derby, Western Australia
September 22, 1957
Next to the latest Sea Dragon launch vehicle being constructed in the Cavill’s largest drydock, the second Australian aircraft carrier was finishing up her modernization. HMAS Australia has been in the Cavill shipyards for just over six months now. Her sister ship, HMAS Canberra had been through the same modernization program and had returned to service seven months earlier. This was the second major refit for both carriers since the end of the Pacific War.
Commander Edward Simmons walked up to Drydock Number three where Australia was located. He soon saw a tall aborigine man, dressed in grey Cavill Shipyard-issue coveralls and wearing a yellow steel workman’s helmet. The man was standing there talking to several other shipyard workers. An embroidered name tag on the front of his overalls had ‘Joe’ written on it. It appeared to Commander Simmons that the aborigine was in charge of the others as they all nodded before walking away to do other tasks.
“Hello, there. You must be the man in charge here. I’m Commander Simmons. I’m going to be Australia’s next First Officer when she is released from your hands.
“G’day, Commander. I’m very pleased to meet you. As you might as figured out, my name is Joe. I’m the shift leader here today. You know, Australia’s a bloody fine ship that we are doing our very best to make even better for the men who are going to serve on her.
“I have to admit that she looks nearly unarmed without having her large guns anymore, Joe.” Edward commented as he looked across at the large RAN aircraft carrier.
“It’s true that we’ve taken all of her old guns off of her. We originally needed the space for the new angled flight and edge-mounted elevators during an earlier refit. But now, she is able to protect herself against jet strike aircraft with her new missile launchers. These are the same box launchers that our newly modified destroyers are armed with. You can see them over there, one on each stern quarter and a third launcher just forward of the bridge.
You can also see the small sponsons on each quarter that we installed to replace the big guns. Each of them houses a six-pounder automatic cannon and a twenty-five millimeter radar-controlled Gatling gun. They will give you close-in defense against enemy aircraft, missiles and small surface craft. They can do the work of all of the lighter guns that Australia used to carry, but using a lot fewer blokes to operate them.”
“What about anything larger like a real warship?” Edward asked.
“First, you have to remember that those missiles that this carrier now has can be fired against either enemy aircraft or against enemy ships. They won’t kill a big ship. Still, those missiles can do as least as much damage as an eight-inch naval shell if used in the anti-ship role. But this ship can now support the latest jet fighter-bombers. Like with any aircraft carrier, her aircraft are going to be the real punch for Australia and Canberra.”
“Is she going to carry as many aircraft as before?”
“Yes and no. With the changes on her hangar, elevators and flight deck, she has a bit more space to carry aircraft. However, these new jet aircraft are getting bigger than the old Dragonflies and other piston-engine aircraft that Australia used to carry during the war. We should carry nearly as many aircraft as before, but the aircraft are all bigger, faster and much more powerful than ever before.”
“You said that she won’t need as many sailors to operate her as she did previously. What about the crew accommodations?”
“The accommodations will be the same size as before. Of course, that means that each sailor will have a bit more living space onboard. Better quarters will likely mean a much happier crew, don’t you think, Sir?”
Edward laughed for a moment.
“Yes, I would imagine that would be true. I know that I hated to sleep aboard some of the cramped bunks that we had aboard the V-class destroyer that I served aboard during the war. Of course, she was one of the old pre-war ships that had been built in England for us.”
“In many ways, our carriers actually match the newly reconstructed fleet aircraft carriers of the Royal Navy with their new armament and modified flight deck. The British are using the same angled flight deck that we have used on our carriers since shortly after the war. Canberra and Australia are a mite smaller than the big Royal Navy carriers. But I assure you that they are every bit as good.”
“We had better be good. Besides the French down in Indochina, we are about the only ships patrolling and defending the southwestern Pacific. Everyone else’s navies were either destroyed during the war or are in just too poor of a condition to be combatworthy any longer.”
“I certainly hope so, Sir. But I fought in the militia during the war. It’s been my experience that we can’t assume anything to be the case. A lot of people didn’t think that the Japanese would dare invade us here in Australia. But I lost a lot of my mates not
far from here when we discovered that we were wrong.” Joe grimly replied.
“I remember that too, Joe. I promise you that we will do everything that we can to ensure that no enemies ever step foot on our land ever again.” Edward solemnly said with a nod of his head.
Suddenly a loud roar pierced the relative din of the shipyard. Both Joe and the Australian naval officer looked skyward to see a trio of large grey-painted jet aircraft rapidly flying overhead. Royal Australian Air Force could be seen painted on the undersides of their large delta wings. In a certain manner, they almost looked like they were flying backwards because of the canard foreplanes attached to the forward section of each aircraft’s fuselage.
“Those are new. Are those what I think that they are, Joe?”
“They are the new Vulcan bombers that the Air Force just purchased. We’ve actually seen them before around here. The first couple of them were being tested out here at the Derby airfield. Cavill Aviation helped design and build them, you know.”
“I wonder what they are doing here now?” Edward asked.
“I can’t be certain. But those bombers look like they are flying towards the testing grounds where Cavill Aviation does all of its weapons testing. Maybe they are going to try out a new bomb or missile?” Joe quickly replied.
“How do you know so much about the rest of your boss’ business, Joe?”
“I told you, Sir. I was in the militia. In fact, I still am on the rolls for the Derby militia. We do a lot of our training out there. Since a lot of my mates in the militia also work for the Cavill family, we get to learn a lot about what the other divisions are involved in, Sir. Nothing truly sensitive, of course.” Joe said with a big grin.