England Expects el-1

by Charles S. Jackson

  “Pack Leader reading you loud and clear: what’s up, Tom… over?”

  “Looks like we have a malfunction at one of the Doghouses, Pack Leader… one of the Terriers is refusing to hunt… over.” The coded signal was quite clear: that the radar unit stationed at one of their gun emplacements had ceased operating.

  “Understood, Kennel…” Kransky replied with a vague frown, belatedly deciding he too should probably adhere to the use of official code and call signs, being the Chief of Security and all. “Which Doghouse needs extra training… over?”

  “Doghouse William, Pack Leader… repeat… Doghouse William… over…” The frown on his face grew significantly less faint: the four radar units were named ‘Nigel’, ‘Simon’, ‘Edward’ and “William’ and each name’s first letter corresponded with that of the appropriate point of the compass. Doghouse William’ therefore was the westernmost radar unit… the one positioned at Rora Head he’d barely walked away from minutes earlier.

  “As luck would have it, I’m just a few minutes away from William myself, Kennel: I’ll get over there and see what I can find out… over.”

  “Roger that, Pack Leader… understood… please investigate and advise… Kennel over and out…”

  Kransky turned back toward the western hills and the brightening sky beyond. The gun emplacement was no more than two or three minutes brisk walk back the way he’d come, but he paused for a moment as the immediate frustration of having to retrace his steps was suddenly supplanted by an uneasy sensation of vague concern. It was at that moment the faint, mournful sound of air raid sirens disrupted an otherwise peaceful sunrise. As he broke into a run, back toward the Rora Head fortifications, a rather ironic thought flared for a moment in his mind that it now seemed certain he’d get his morning’s exercise after all.

  The flight of B-13A Seeräuber fast bombers, escorted by their almost identical J-13C heavy fighter escorts, approached low from the west following a wide detour that had taken them right around the Orkneys in the hours before to sunrise. Staging out of Luftwaffe airbases in Norway, they’d circled north of the islands, staying just above the wave tops at all times to avoid radar detection in the hope a dawn attack from an unexpected direction might catch the base’s defences off guard. Every second an alert was delayed would help their cause, and there’d have been no possibility of surprise unless the western radar at Rora Head was put out of action, which had suddenly and rather effectively just occurred.

  Twelve bombers of II/KG30 came in low and fast in three distinct groups of ‘finger-four’ formation, accompanied by a similar number of their fighter brethren from I/ZG76. Both types were variants of the same original Junkers Model 388 and were a brand new model being phased in to replace the same company’s versatile B-88s and J-88s currently filling similar roles. The aircraft even looked like little more than an enlarged and modernised version of the older ‘Eighty-Eight’, but beneath the surface they were a generation ahead of those being replaced, as was the case with many of the new aircraft currently coming into Luftwaffe service.

  Both models were incredibly fast for a twin-engined aircraft; capable of speeds comparable to the Spitfire and greater than a Hurricane. They were also able to fly missions of far greater range than was possible with a single-engined aircraft, and with a pair of 250-litre auxiliary tanks beneath their inner wings (as these now carried), the distances they could fly were could be quite remarkable. They were also substantially larger than the Model-88 they replaced with a wingspan of 22 metres and a maximum take off weight of almost fifteen tonnes.

  Save for a remotely-controlled turret in the extreme tail mounting a pair of 13mm machine guns, the B-13A bomber variant was unarmed, relying on speed alone to carry it to its target and allow it to deliver its 3,000kg bombload. Its three-seat cockpit included a clear Perspex nose that provided an excellent forward view for the bombardier on approach to target. The J-13C fighter variant also carried the tail turret mounting, but instead carried a streamlined, solid nose and two 23mm cannon and four 13mm machine guns it a ventral mounting in place of an internal bombload. Four hardpoints beneath the wings and one beneath the fuselage also allowed the carriage of extra fuel and/or up to 1,500kg of external weapons such as bombs or rockets.

  There’d been no danger whatsoever as far as conventional radar detection was concerned. Continual air raids over the preceding weeks had destroyed Fighter Command’s early warning systems right across Britain in an ongoing, back-and-forth battle between the two combatants. Some RAF radar sites might be repaired well enough to become operational again here or there around the country, but the moment they began transmitting again, Wehrmacht RDF and ELINT units on the French Coast would then detect them, triangulate their positions and pass them on to the Luftwaffe for further air raids to be scheduled. On that particular morning however, Fighter Command radars were basically out of action right across the eastern length of the British Isles, and Luftwaffe fighters and bombers could — and would — roam quite freely across Southern England that Wednesday as they did most days, detected by radar or not, while what little RAF opposition there was to be sent up against them remained completely dependent on an undermanned, overworked Royal Observer Corps.

  Catching the Hindsight base off guard was a more difficult proposition however, although over a month without any real threat or alert had lulled the group — and Scapa Flow anchorage in general — into something of a false sense of security. Concentration was at a low ebb, and there was a pervading sense of a relaxation that was unwarranted and also, as was about to be proven, somewhat dangerous.

  Warning of the incoming raid itself might well have been even later had it not been for the efforts of a single RN destroyer on ASW duty, a few kilometres west of the Orkneys. HMS Esk, built in the mid-thirties and displacing around 1,400 tonnes, was one of nine E-Class destroyers. Eight, including Esk, were in service with the Royal Navy while one, HMCS Gatineau, served with the Canadian navy. She was of a standard design as RN destroyers went, with four 4.7-inch guns in single turrets, one solitary 3-inch AA mount amidships and two quadruple torpedo tube mounts: only the depth charge throwers at her stern and the ASDIC unit mounted at her bow made her anything special: something that made her potentially deadly in her mission as a sub hunter.

  One thing she didn’t have was radar. Warship sets were slowly becoming available for air and surface detection and gunnery, however the fitting of technically advanced equipment such as radar started at the top and filtered down. Battleships and aircraft carriers received them first, then battlecruisers and cruisers and so on. As Esk steamed roughly due north through those cold, morning waters, it was her port bridge lookout that first spotted the enemy flight visually at a range of perhaps no more than two or three thousand metres. The aircraft were difficult to pick up so close to the surface of the grey ocean, masked as they were by the backdrop of a still-dark western horizon.

  The flight howled past a thousand metres off the destroyer’s stern, too far away for the ship’s lighter air defences to take a shot or two, and the aircraft were already moving quickly away from the ship to the east at better than 250 knots by the time her 3-inch AA mount had loaded and rotated to track the unexpected target. The gun belatedly managed a few shots before they were out of range entirely, all of them bursting well short and too high. The one thing the destroyer could still do however was flash a warning to HMS Proserpine of the impending attack — something Esk’s captain did immediately.

  Events progressed quickly as sirens cut through the morning air and sent uniformed men scurrying from barrack rooms in all directions to man defences and/or take cover; first at the anchorage itself and then also at Hindsight and along the flight line. The crews of the two 2K22M ‘Tunguska’ flak units kept their turrets in the expected direction, although the line of hills through the central part of the island prevented their tracking radars from picking up any targets as yet. At various points about the airfield, men readied manually aimed .50 calibre Br
ownings from small gunpits connected to the slit trenches, long belts of ammo glinting dully as they snaked to their weapons from ammo boxes. Gun crews for newly-installed 40mm Bofors and 3.7-inch AA guns manned their weapons and also turned them westward, waiting for a visual sign of their enemy.

  Thorne came bolting from the barracks at full speed just seconds after the alert was raised, Jack Davies following close behind. Both arrowed straight for the flight line where their respective aircraft awaited in sheltered revetments, maintained in a state prepared for an emergency take off under just such circumstances. As they neared the runway, the duty crews of the Extender and the Galaxy were also beginning start-up procedures. Given enough time, they might hope to get the huge cargo jets airborne and up to an altitude that was well out of harm’s way and unattainable for piston-engined aircraft.

  Ground crew already had their engines turning over as Thorne and Davies reached the fighter jets. Five AIM-120D AMRAAM medium range missiles had been added beneath each of the F-35E’s wings, mounted on single-rail launchers outboard and two twin-rail launchers beneath the inboard pylons, making for a total of ten extra missiles to complement two more similar missiles carried within the aircraft’s internal bays in partnership with the usual pair of heat-seeking Sidewinders. Expensive and complex as the radar-guided AIM-120 was, it was deemed necessary as piston-engined aircraft might not generate enough heat for an IR-guided missile to consistently maintain adequate lock-on unless fired from close range — a situation that mightn’t be possible to achieve in combat.

  As Davies began to taxi his plane out onto the runway, Thorne also increased the throttle on his own engines and prepared the Lightning II for its shortened take-off run, sliding on his flight helmet as he watched the Raptor move to the middle of the asphalt. Thorne grimaced and shook his head to clear his fuzzy thoughts: his head ached badly, as did the muscles and joints of his upper body. Waking up with a hangover, half slumped in an uncomfortable armchair wasn’t something that he’d recommend as a rule, but it’d happened all the same. That morning was the tenth time so far that month that he’d been drunk enough the night before to pass out in an armchair in the Officers Mess, only to be found alone by his orderly early the next morning… the event frequent enough now for the corporal to have become accustomed to the situation and remain prepared for it.

  Thorne had to admit it was hard to understand why anyone would want to wake up with a hangover at all, and having to deal with one while trying to pilot a complex and very loud fighter jet made it all the more difficult to comprehend. The irrationality of the fact that he’d been putting up with those morning hangovers quite frequently for almost a year prior to arriving in 1940 never consciously occurred to him nevertheless, so carefully had his subconscious pushed the ramifications of it from his mind in the interest of rationalisation.

  The sound of heavy AA guns firing in the middle distance also began to rise over the sounds of take off, and he turned his attention back to his own controls and commenced the Lightning II’s take-off sequence. As he pushed his throttle forward and the aircraft began to move along the taxi area he was using as a runway, he almost laughed as it occurred to him he was probably still more than a little drunk.

  ‘If you drink, then drive, you’re a bloody idiot!’ He remembered that suddenly, the slogan appearing from somewhere deep within his memory. Had that been from an Australian anti-drink/driving advertisement or a British one? He couldn’t remember clearly now, although he suspected from the style, that it was probably Australian. It mattered little: there were more than a few things he couldn’t clearly remember these days, and the origin of an anti-DUI advert seemed the least of his worries.

  “Lucky I’m not behind the wheel right now,” he muttered with a grin, not concentrating anywhere near enough on what he was doing. His ground speed increased, and it was only as the F-35E drew near to take off speed that he realised he’d misjudged his run and was headed directly for a small tanker truck and trailer parked at the end of the taxi lane. Well beyond the point of no return, Thorne could only jam his throttles fully forward and haul back on the stick as hard as he could in the hope there was enough runway left. The wheels lifted from the concrete — finally — and he immediately lifted his port wing slightly, all humour gone from his tense features as it cleared the rear trailer of the tanker by scant metres.

  Even over the roar of his own powerplant, he heard and felt the faint rumble behind him as Davies’ Raptor accelerated down the runway at a tremendous rate and lurched skyward, immediately entering into a steep climb under full afterburner and vectored thrust. The Galaxy and Extender were both taxiing now, but it’d still be several minutes before either made it into the sky and even longer before they reached a safe altitude. As Thorne took the F-35E past 300 metres and pushed into a shallow bank to the west, he cast his eyes over his left shoulder with real concern: either of those big jets would be an irresistible target for an attacker, and both were irreplaceable and vital to their mission.

  Most of the important cargo had been unloaded and dispersed about the base to keep it safe, however what couldn’t be unloaded quickly were the computer systems stored at the rear of the Galaxy’s upper deck. Within those processors’ memory banks and hard drives were vitally-important technical drawings that were the equivalent of millions of pages of blueprints. If they were lost, there was a more than fair chance Germany might be able to conquer the entire planet… or at the very least become the unassailable master of all of Europe.

  The gruppe of fighters and bombers reached the coast quite close to the emplacement at Rora Head and skimmed low around the western heights of Hoy as they roared past, just a few dozen metres above Berriedale Wood. They were less than ninety seconds of flight time away from the Hindsight runway and surrounding buildings as the B-13As and their escorts reached the crest of Ward Hill and finally became visible to AA gunners and radar tracking systems alike. With the guns and bombs at their disposal, the pilots fully expected to inflict serious damage on the targets they’d been assigned: four special aircraft that they expected to find sheltering at the base ahead

  Flak began to burst around them as the bombers flew within range of the nearest of the heavier AA guns, a few of the Home Fleet’s warships at the near end of the anchorage also letting fly with their larger DP gun mounts from the far left of the aircraft as they flew on. The bursting shrapnel was initially high and off target, but gradually grew closer as gun crews got their range. A few more seconds, and the northern-most quartet group of fighters lost one of their flight to some well-aimed 3.7-inch guns, while a second was destroyed completely by a direct hit from a four-inch anti-aircraft shell fired from the battlecruiser HMS Renown in the anchorage further north.

  It wasn’t long before the heavy AA fire began to fall away however. As the range between the guns and aircraft narrowed it became increasingly difficult for the gun-layers of the heavy 3.7- and 4.5-inch guns of the naval base and airfield to keep up with the constant changes to fuse settings. The guns were primarily intended for high-altitude use after all, and as the black clouds of bursting flak began to fall behind the formation, the battle was taken up by a pair of 40mm Bofors medium batteries to the north- and south-east.

  The flight plan had been devised specifically to take them between the firing arcs of the two batteries, the positions of which Luftwaffe Intelligence was quite aware of, and they were firing from the very extremity of their own effective ranges. Even so, three more aircraft fell prey to their direct fire: one fighter was destroyed, and two bombers were damaged to the point that they were unable to press home their attack. The stricken B-13As peeled up and away to the north, both trailing smoke.

  At a distance that was now less than five kilometres, all could see Davies’ F-22, its broad wing and fuselage surfaces flashing in the morning sun as it hurtled along the runway and launched itself into the sky at an incredible rate. Some of the pilots also spotted the F-35E banking around at low altitude a moment later
.

  “Enemy aircraft airborne, Herr Hauptmann!” The gruppe-leader’s wingman observed excitedly over the radio “Circling over the hangars to port of the runway and turning onto our position…!”

  “Shit on that!” His superior snapped with equal fervour, momentarily losing his professional attitude as they also caught sight of the Galaxy and Extender on the taxiway beyond the main hangar buildings, moving out to line up for take off. “Look at the size of those bastards parked at the end of the runway! All units — primary targets are in sight: two large aircraft at the far end of the main landing strip. Drop tanks and weapons free. Watch your altitude, gentlemen: anything that big is liable to go up with a big show!”

  Empty auxiliary fuel tanks fell away from the aircraft as they prepared for attack, but the commander’s words were his last as the western Tunguska opened up on one aircraft with its twin 30mm cannon from the flight’s starboard flank and simultaneously fired a pair of 57E6-E missiles targeted on two others. The second 2K22M flak on the far side of the base loosed two missiles also, although it was still too far away to engage with its cannon. A two-stage missile with a boost phase during launch, they quickly accelerated to a speed faster even than the shells from the Tunguskas’ own cannon and arched across the distance between their launchers and the nearer targets in less than four seconds.

  The flight commander and his crew died instantly, their aircraft disintegrating in the blast of a direct hit from one missile’s 20kg warhead as three more around it met a similar fate and a fifth was shredded by an eighty-round burst from the nearer Tunguska’s twin cannon. Five more fell a moment later, leaving the flight down almost half its entire strength within ten seconds of firing. Wreckage was strewn all about the western perimeter of the base, starting small spot fires here and there as each site released trails of black smoke into the sky.