Hans-Joachim Marseille, the ‘Star of Africa’ with a confirmed 158 kills, blacked out at that moment having never quite grasped the realisation that his neck had been broken as he’d struck the tail of his own aircraft while bailing out. Completely paralysed from the neck down, it was perhaps a small mercy that he never regained consciousness as his body continued to plummet toward the earth below. He died instantly a little over two minutes later as his body struck the stony ground at a terminal velocity of something close to two hundred kilometres per hour.
Pöttgen banked his own jet around in a wide circle, one wing tilted sharply toward the ground and screaming warning after warning with tears at the corner of his eyes as he watched his friend and colleague tumble ever downward, knowing full well it was all in vain. Completely distracted, he never saw the approaching Lightning as the jet hurtled up toward him from below and he never felt a thing as a stream of 25mm tracer engulfed the Schwalbe, tearing it apart in an instant.
Looping over and rolling out at better than 40,000 feet, Trumbull released a held breath of relief and turned back toward Kibrit and the departing Super Galaxy, his systems already automatically searching the skies all around for any further threats.
Meier led the rest of 1./SG2 in low across the battlefields west of Kibrit, the dozen Dragonflies agile as their namesakes as they slipped in and out of the rolling clouds of smoke and dust, seeking out targets of opportunity. The billowing detonations of artillery blossomed across the desert below, obliterating trenches, tank traps and human beings alike with wild abandon as the jets swept past overhead.
The rest of the geschwader had been diverted away to the north, pounding the crumbling British defences at Ismailia as ground forces once more pushed forward with embarrassing ease. Meier’s first staffel however had been ordered on toward Kibrit with a new and vitally important objective passed on from HQ just moments before: the destruction of a single, large transport aircraft currently in the process of departing the RAF airfield ahead.
Neither Meier nor Rudel were particularly concerned. Certainly, their low-level approach meant there was always the need for caution with regard to anti-aircraft fire, but none of SG2’s pilots held any great fear of attack from enemy fighters. With the exception of their own Schwalbe, the S-15 was the fastest aircraft in existence so far as they were aware, and the characteristic hit-and-run tactics employed by Luftwaffe strike aircraft made them extremely difficult for piston-engined Allied fighters to even see, let alone pursue. One of two of the Brits’ better pilots might get lucky… might… but no one was really all that concerned. Most were more disappointed that they’d been sent off on such a mundane task rather than be allowed to go about their usual mission of ground attack.
Streams of tracer rose into the sky to greet them as the jets hurtled on, one or two forced to manoeuvre slightly to keep clear of the sporadic fire. It fell away behind as quickly as it had appeared, the Libelle fleeting targets at best as they roared by at 400 knots, little more than screaming ghosts as they slipped in and out of the smoke and haze above.
“All right, boys… we’re over Kibrit now: let’s take it up to five thousand and see what we can see,” Meier directed, pulling gently back on the stick and sending the nose of his own aircraft skyward. “Schackal to control… any news on our objective… over…?”
“Nothing on radar, Schackal,” the nearest Luftwaffe fighter control unit replied immediately, Meier’s unit having been accorded priority status, “but we have visual reports of an extremely large aircraft at low level heading due east, approximately four thousand metres from your position bearing zero-eight-zero…”
“Acknowledged, control… climbing to altitude ‘zero-five’… stand by…”
They broke through the pall of smoke and dust coating the airfield at that moment and surged out into the brilliance of a clear, blue sky above. They were all excited, all eager to join the battle against the enemy and all completely stunned by the unexpected sight of the impossibly huge C-5M in the distance as they spotted it within seconds of entering clearer skies. A little more than three thousand metres ahead, it was still flying at a comparatively low speed and altitude, desperately trying to increase both after having only managed to bring all four engines back on line moments before.
“Mein Gott…!”
That single, breathless exclamation from Rudel across the unit radio channel summed up what they were all thinking well enough… all of them, that was, except for Oberst Willi Meier; the only man who’d seen that aircraft once before.
“Du dumme schlampe…!” Meier snarled softly, forgetting his own mike was open and surprising the rest of his men with such an uncharacteristically vile expletive. “There you are, you filthy whoreson! I was right, Hans… I was right…! It’s one of those big bastards from Scapa Flow I told you about! Get after it, boys, and make it quick: this dicke auto will be sure to have ‘friends’ about we won’t want to meet. Let’s put him down fast and get out of here before the ‘Indianer’ arrive!”
“Feindlich jäger, two o’clock high: coming in fast…!” That called warning came suddenly across the intercom from the pilot of one of the jets in the southernmost of the three schwarm.
“No, no, no, no, noooooo…!” Meier howled in frustration, flashbacks of that terrible, aborted Scapa Flow attack of two years before flaring in his mind as he looked up in horror and again saw one of the huge enemy jets that had destroyed almost his entire geschwader within five terrible minutes. “Hans, with me…! Everyone else: break formation… evasive action… now… now… now….!”
First Staffel of SG2 instantly split apart like three ‘exploding’ flowers of aircraft. Tracer reached out from above as the F-35E hurtled down from above, seeking out and destroying the aircraft of the very same pilot who’d called a warning moments before. The Lightning roared past behind, levelling out and instantly banking around in an incredibly tight turn as all but two of the staffel’s remaining aircraft spread out across the sky, presenting far more difficult targets.
“We’re going for the objective, boys…” Meier announced, a strange calmness in his voice as his hands clenched the joystick and his eyes never left the growing bulk of the Super Galaxy ahead. “He’s going to come after us first, and when he does I want you all to take the bastard down…!”
It was pure chance that ultimately proved Meier’s prediction wrong. Accelerating out of the hard, 180-degree turn on full afterburner, Trumbull was presented by a pair of S-15Cs converging on him from the north-east, the rotte formation close enough to present a threat.
“Guns… guns… guns…!” He called as a warning, more as a formality than anything else as the green ‘pipper’ of his HDMS settled on the first of the approaching Libelle.
A fifty-round burst from his belly gun tore the aircraft apart, leaving no more than a greasy stain of smoke and debris to fall to earth. Adrenalin and bloodlust well and truly up at that point, Trumbull turned in toward the wingman as he banked hard to port, evasive manoeuvres costing the F-35E another hundred rounds of precious ammunition but only prolonging the inevitable as it too was blown from the sky seconds later.
Trumbull quickly took stock of the situation as he levelled off once more, his screens clearly showing that two of the remaining seven German jets had quickly broken free of the pack and were obviously in pursuit of the C-5M as the others circled toward from various points of the compass, struggling to close for an attack as he continued to accelerate.
One of those seven, positioned directly ahead and coming straight for him, was the only one positioned well enough to be of any danger, and he was initially hopeful that he might simply evade rather than engage, husbanding his few remaining cannon rounds for the two jets in pursuit of the Super Galaxy.
All that changed a second later as the pilot rather optimistically opened fire on him at a range of almost twelve hundred metres, a range well outside the capabilities of the very basic optical sights at his command. For all that, the twin st
reams of 23mm tracer blasting from the gun pods beneath its wings were close enough to force Trumbull into a hard jink to starboard. His next action was decided for him as a trio of huge 88mm shells that sizzled past a second later, fired from the recoilless gun beneath the S-15Cs belly in rapid succession as expanding clouds of burnt propellant billowed away into the slipstream behind.
“I think I’ve jolly well had enough of you blighters! Guns… guns… guns…!” He snarled angrily through clenched teeth, his gunsight lining up perfectly with the nose of the oncoming S-15C as he keyed the trigger on his joystick.
The last few dozen of his belly cannon’s 220 round magazine spewed forth, tearing a wing off at the root as the Heinkel spiralled away in the opposite direction, streaming a long sheet of flame behind. Trumbull paid it no further heed as the pilot bailed out, instead pulling the F-35E’s up high and hurtling skyward at full throttle.
“Harbinger to Phoenix-Leader… come in, Phoenix-Leader…” He called over the radio, dismay in his voice as the cameras of his EOTS locked on to the leading pair of S-15s, the aircraft clearly closing on the lumbering Super Galaxy.
“Reading you loud and clear, Alec,” Thorne’s voice replied in through his headset. “What’ve you got for us, mate: we’re flying blind here…” With only very basic weather radar and no defensive systems whatsoever other than flare dispensers beneath the tail – something that was completely useless against a gun-armed fighter – none of the Super Galaxy’s flight crew has any idea what was going on behind them other than what little they could see from the windows of the aircraft itself and from reports supplied by other sources.
“‘Splashed’ three more bandits but… but… still eight attack jets on your tail with two closing fast… all ordnance is ‘Winchester’… Max… I’m sorry…”
On the flight deck of the C-5M, Thorne and both the pilots all grimaced at the same time upon hearing those words. ‘Winchester’: the NATO brevity code word that indicated a pilot was completely out of weapons or ammunition. They all recognised the significance of that statement, and the look on Lloyd’s face suggested he’d also worked out what it all meant.
“Is there any point in my telling the rest of the guys?” He asked, almost rhetorically.
“None at all,” Thorne growled, not yet willing to admit defeat. “Tell ‘em all about it after we blow this fuckin’ joint instead! Harvey: what’s our current airspeed?”
“Three hundred knots and rising, Max,” the pilot shot back quickly, pushing his hands against the throttles as if the action might somehow produce more thrust.
“Alec: what’s the speed of approach for the nearest jets?”
“Four-zero-zero knots, Max… currently approximately three thousand yards off your tail and closing…” there was another pause “…perhaps if I ram the leader…”
“Don’t you even think about stupid shit like that, you bloody fool!” The Australian snarled back instantly, dismissing the idea out of hand. “You just keep an eye on those bastards and start reading off the range.” He turned his attention to Weems once more, and you could see that both he and the pilots were all working through the same basic equations of relative speed and remaining distance in their heads. “Harvey, Old Son, I reckon we’re cactus if they get within about a thousand yards, so that gives us maybe twice that much room to play with. You reckon this contrary bitch is quick enough?”
“Sir,” Weems began, his voice filling with quiet pride as he patted one hand almost lovingly on those same throttles, “I’ve got two hundred thousand pounds of Goddamn thrust coming outta this Old Girl’s ass right now, and those Kraut sons-a’-bitches can pucker up and kiss mine…!”
“Well, as Terry Pratchett might say…” Thorne grinned, nodding approvingly, “…million-to-one shots come up nine times outta ten…” With only slightly more confidence and bravado that he truly felt at that moment, Max Thorne slumped back down into his engineers seat and made a great show of putting his feet up on the edge of Lloyd’s seat opposite. “I reckon we’ve got these bastards fucked…!”
The distance between the Galaxy and its pursuers continued to close, but as Meier and Rudel hurtled on with the entire focus of their concentration on overhauling the huge transport ahead, both eventually began to realise that although they were indeed drawing closer, the actual relative velocity at which that was happening was beginning to decrease. Neither could believe that an aircraft of such size could possibly be faster, but the nagging fear that this might actually be the case began to skirt the edges of their consciousness. The tiny ranging radar mounted in the nose of the S-15 read off the approximate distance as the seconds ticked on and the pair closed first to within two thousand metres and then, after a far longer time, to almost fifteen hundred.
At a thousand metres, the 23mm cannon pods beneath their wings and the recoilless gun beneath their bellies were nominally effective against surface targets. The muzzle velocity of neither weapon was particularly high however and while their effectiveness was all well and good when firing at the ground, trying to fire effectively against a fast-moving aerial target at a similar altitude was another thing entirely. The ballistic arc of the weapons carried beneath his aircraft were such that hitting even a target as large as a Super Galaxy from anything beyond perhaps a thousand to twelve hundred metres – in Meier’s opinion – would be problematic at best.
The C-5M Super Galaxy reached the S-15C’s maximum sea level speed of 400 knots while Meier and Rudel were still at least thirteen hundred metres or more astern. Adding insult to injury, the airborne leviathan continued to accelerate and climb simultaneously, although it was a few more seconds before the pursuing German pilots finally realised that they were now falling behind.
With a single howl of rage and frustration, Willi Meier dragged back on his stick and forced his own nose high, trying to compensate for the extreme range as he pressed down his gun triggers and emptied the magazines of his wing-mounted gun pods, at the same time firing off all twelve of his 88mm shells at the transport’s receding bulk. None came particularly close, although one or two shots from the recoilless rifle were nevertheless close enough to cause a collective gasp of breath from the Galaxy’s flight crew as they sizzled past underneath the nose and fell away ahead with a sparkle of pink tracer.
The huge transport continued to climb, airspeed flattening out at slightly less than 500 knots as it continued to pull away from the receding German jets. Meier was eventually forced to concede defeat and back off on his throttles, even then only at the point that red lights were flashing on his instrument panel warning of excessive temperatures within his engines. He released a vile stream of profanity at the transport’s receding bulk, his impotent fury not helped in the slightest as the F-35E pulled in beside the pair momentarily, just long enough for Trumbull to give a wave and a perfunctory salute before powering up and away again at an incredible rate neither could hope to match.
Thorne finally allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief as he left the flight deck made his way back through the aircraft’s upper deck, but was immediately forced to use every ounce of willpower to prevent it becoming a gasp of shock as he got his first real look at the main seating area at the Super Galaxy’s rear.
To describe the scene as chaos would be to do it an extreme injustice. Dozens of wounded lay across the rearward-facing seats while blood dripped and pooled on the metal floor below. Moving about them and tending to their injuries where they could were two medics (one SAS, one ex-USAF) and also one Egyptian civilian, a man he assumed from his movements and general demeanour was either a doctor or at least possessed of some basic medical training.
He saw Rupert Gold there too, surprisingly, as the young man also moved from patient to patient, horrified by the wounds and injuries before him but trying to make some effort to comfort those around him all the same where he could. Their gaze met momentarily from some distance away, both giving the other a faint nod of recognition before they went on their separate way
s; there’d be time for the frivolity of greetings another time.
Toward the very rear, several tarpaulins had been thrown across a pile of those whom the medics had been unable to save, blood seeping through their coverings too and trickling across the floor. Moans and the occasional scream of pain filled the confined space and the air stank of sweat, vomit, faecal matter and the ever-pervasive, rich, coppery smell of blood, the vile combination of odours almost enough to make Thorne gag.
He located Eileen not far from the hatch through which he’d entered, seated beside a still-unconscious Davids, head and arms bandaged and still wearing the shirt Hacking had placed around her earlier. On the opposite side of the wounded tank commander, an extremely worried Angus Connolly sat also, his eyes never leaving the face of his unconscious friend and commanding officer.
“How is he?” Thorne ventured with concern, afraid of the answer he was likely to get.
“The civvie over there’s a med student…” Eileen answered slowly, her words slurring faintly as she struggled to maintain focus on his face “…says he’s stable bur borderline critical right now. Lost a lot o’ blood though… if we don’t get him to hospital soon…” she left the rest of the sentence hanging: it was crystal clear what the situation was in any case.
“And how are you doin’?”
“He saved my life, Max.” She replied as tears welled in her eyes. “Pushed me to the ground and threw himself on top ‘o me before the blast hit.” She laid a gently hand on the young man’s motionless arm. “We’ve got to get him somewhere that can look after him.”
“We will, kid… we will,” Thorne reassured, laying his own hand on her shoulder. “Less than ninety minutes to Habbaniyah, and the hospital on base is already preparing for our arrival. All they all need to do is hang in there…”
Winds of Change (Empires Lost Book 2) Page 95