“Call it two hits,” they are making smoke, “give me another pair.” All the cruisers seemed disabled when the last set of guided bombs struck home. The Lightings arrived. The targets were being obscured, but at least the pesky fighters had been driven off. Low and to his north he saw a number of two-engined
“Betty” bombers flying north. No concern to him.
“Okay, ready for the fish, all at once.”
Almost eighty bombers drove in. Unable to see individual ships, they simply released two torpedoes each into the haze defacing the blue sea below. More than 150 fish began their slow interlocking circuits, it was impossible for any ship to avoid at least one hit.
“Bring in the recon, everyone else home.” The raid had lasted a bit more than thirty minutes. The commander felt suddenly cold. He realized perspiration had stained both armpits of his flight suit.
In the Pacific, a Mustang was considered a short-ranged fighter. As the Japanese bombers were spotted on radar, the planes were launched from both the carriers and the airfields. The task force commander was concerned.
“Hell of a mess if the B-17s try to land when the Japs are bombing us or the airfields.” He looked at map. “Plot an intercept here. Kill them at a distance. Keep the antiair batteries ashore on ‘hold.’ I do not need anyone shooting up the Air Corps. Have the fleet and the shore batteries make smoke starting now.”
“Aye sir, the raid commander reports he cannot hold in a pattern, his guys are short on fuel.” The operations officer reported.
“Let them come right in. With any luck, they won’t even know anything is happening at all.”
Three dozen Mustangs made the intercept and swooped down on the unarmed bombers like eagles.
The Japanese responded by flying lower and lower, making each high-speed fighter approach a dangerous dive into the sea. Well over half the raiders were knocked out of the sky, two blowing up midair in spectacular fashion. Thirty managed to leave the ambush zone and continue on into the area reserved for the for the air defense gunners.
The Mustangs regained altitude and prepare to attack the bombers again when they left their targets.
Chief Petty Officer Jesse Black won his rating, as antiaircraft gunner by the simple expedient of graduating first in his class at Fort Bliss, Texas. As far as he knew, he was the only Negro to hold the Best Job in the Navy. He manned one of the four forty millimeter auto cannons on the frigate USS Perry K. Stevenson.
He sat at his station, a comfortable chair under a bubble canopy. He adjusted the powerful flow of air from the compressors to keep the perplex clear. With one foot he rang an alarm to clear part of the deck before he swung the weapon left, right, up and down to its limits. “Ready,” he said into his microphone.
“Looks like fifty inbound, bearing 260, very low. They will try to gain altitude to bomb.”
Jesse mostly ignored him. His fire controller believed the radar reports he received, he was always more pessimistic. The sun began to bother him, he lowered the tinted visor on his helmet.
The ninety millimeter guns from the ship’s main turret made a sharp transonic crack as they began to engage. Jesse tracked his gun across the horizon, scanning each degree of arc himself before seeing the dark planes right where the controller predicted.
“He’s still an asshole.” Jesse thought. He thumbed a switch on his control and the gun barrels began to spin at half-speed. A friendly green light on his instruments promised all chambers were loaded. A loader smacked the canopy, a traditional wish of good luck. It was the last thought Jesse had not related to the approaching planes.
The big guns were firing quicker now. Eight of them each putting out a dozen huge rounds a minutes.
He lined up the nearest plane and elevated above it. A second green light brightened on the edge of his field of view. He depressed his trigger.
Red tracers reached out at the slow rate of four per second. He saw them arc above the bomber, and then fall below it. He increased the speed of the spinning Gatling gun and applied more elevation. He saw an engine fall away and the place break apart. By then he was already slowed his gun and was waking his fire onto the next attacker.
The ones coming in head-on were easy. It was the ones passing to either sides that had apparent velocity that were a challenge. The shooting was complicated by the red tracers streaming from lesser guns on lesser ships.
A tone accompanied an amber light. One of his magazines was low. He ignored it and kept firing and the light went out as a crewman dumped more shells into the hopper. He lined up a green plane in his sight, but it gained speed as it rushed from his left to right. It smacked into a destroyer ahead of his frigate.
“Shit.”
“They’re ramming ships, they are not bombing,” his controller told him. “Swing to port.”
Jesse already had the inbound in his sights, and easy one that seemed to hover in front of him as it grew in size. There was a silent flash of yellow-orange and the bomber pitched up and hit the water with its tail less than two hundred yards away.
Now it was the smoke from burning ships and exploding shells that cluttered up the sky. The gunner leaned back and brought his gun to the center of his sector, he forced himself to move his head and scan the filthy sky.
A last blunt aircraft swept passed him from his right at an impossibly close range he swung the gun around in vain as it crashed close enough to splash seawater over his bubble.
“Good shooting!” the controller was overly excited.
“Asshole,” Jesse thought silently.
In the weeks that followed the Boeings began to range as far as Tokyo itself. Flying in small formations, they avoided flying over the islands themselves and used their bombing radars to drop hundreds then thousands of mines into the Japanese harbors. The Army fighters attempted to find the raiders, and inflicted some casualties. More of the Japanese planes fell. Without imported raw materials they could not be replaced.
The Chiefs of the Imperial General Staff along with the Prime Minister had regular conferences at the Imperial Palace. Protocol had the Navy representatives hit on the Emperor’s right. The Army men sat cross-legged on a traditional mat across from them at low table. The Prime Minster sat opposite the Emperor at the foot of the table.
“The war has not progressed favorably,” the Prime Minister began. The Emperor nodded silently.
“While our navy has inflicted a heavy blow on the American and British fleets, we have been hampered by our own losses. Especially grievous has been the loss of so many brave naval fliers.”
The new Navy Minister continued while looking down at the table, “The officers and men have made superhuman efforts but our losses have been significant.”
Silently, the Emperor nodded waved a hand to indicate the men in olive green.
The Army Minister kept his eyes down, “The Army has continued to push back the Chinese at all points. Since we last met several hundred square kilometers and important towns have come under our control. Our units continue to fight in Singapore and Luzon. We hope for great things from these units.”
It was a pantomime show. The Prime Minister had the next line, “If we gain Manila and Singapore, then we can gain the materials from the Southern Resource Region?”
The navy man was forced to admit, “No, we are unable to gain those resources even if our armies are successful.”
“Can the air forces of the Army strike at the Americans?”
The Army Minister shook his head, “Many of our best fliers have died defending the homeland already.”
The Prime Minster said, “Then we must strengthen the Army in our main home islands. We will force them to come to us where the superiority of their weapons will be less and of our superior spirit more.”
With that the Emperor stood and ended the meeting.
The death ride of the Japanese Navy went almost unnoticed on the two islands. Navy Construction Battalions scraped at the volcanic soil making rude landing fields. Even before
they were done, the Air Corps engineers were laying thousands of tons of steel matting to bear the weight of their heavy bombers.
Then came fuel and ammunition dumps, huge stores of spare parts, repair shops and a thousand other buildings. The number of B-17s at the six airfields reached four hundred as the spring of 1944 arrived.
Enough to strike the cities.
“Is this really necessary?” Winston asked. The time traveler, his advisors and the Chiefs of staff had been summoned to the Oval Office. Winston thought the building looked somehow shabby. So did the President.
“The Japanese do seem to insist,” Admiral Leahy replied, “do you have another way?”
“If we invade, we play into the Japanese strengths. Look at our losses on Formosa.” Marshall was ticking off a mental list, “If we use gas we will be accused of being just like the Nazis. If we use firebombs much the same. But if we let them starve, well, that will take years and that is the best thing I can say about it.”
“Those people had no business starting this thing. It has been like a puppy getting hit by a truck.” Tom said.
“Don’t forget, and it is easy for us to ignore, what the Japanese have been doing in China for years away from the newsreels and AP reporters,” Winston seemed to be screwing up his courage. “They are real people and are being slaughtered every day. How will history judge us if we allow that to go on for another year or two?”
Marshall replied, “The greatest war crime we could commit now would be to let this thing continue.
We must end this war now.”
Roosevelt never let his opinion be known until he heard them all out.
“Send in the bombers. Start with Tokyo, we might get lucky.”
T’is Done. I am somewhere between sick of it and proud of it. I hope you enjoyed it, I certainly did.
Having reached the required 50,000 words, and having run out of time, it stops here. I note that it lacks several things, so it’s really a work in progress:
1. An ending.
2. Rocket launchers in action. Only mentioned in passing.
3. Same for bazookas.
4. I really mean for the Japanese on Luzon to get hit with AC-47 or AC-13 gunships.
5. Jamming and electronic warfare.
6. More on the Special Operations submarines.
7. Something about China.
8. More on Black Americans. This was the height of the Harlem Renaissance after all.
9. More on the twin-tailed Lockheed Lightning.
10. The partisans in Russia were fun. We need more of them.
11. What about French partisans?
12. The second-generation Pershing tanks never made it to service.
13. A clear explanation of the situation in Russia. Moscow fell, but not Stalingrad or Leningrad.
14. More on the invasion of Formosa.
All comments welcomed on http://forums.delphiforums.com/autogun/messages/
HOME
Paul Adkins Page 16