Assault on Zanzibar: Book Four of the Westerly Gales Saga

by E. C. Williams

  “Why, Dave? I mean ‘why’ to everything you said – ‘more accurate but we can’t really do it?’ Explain.”

  Dave looked over at Commodore Bowditch, and saw that he had that expression of keen interest on his face whenever the subject was how better to defeat the enemy; the gray, drawn, tense look had vanished. Apparently, Dave had found the formula to distract his boss from his fear of flying.

  “Well, sir, because in dive bombing, you simply aim the plane at the target and go into a power dive, then release the bomb, and pull up sharply. The inertia imparted to the bomb takes it straight in. If you wait long enough, you can hardly miss. We practiced with one plane bombing and his wingman strafing, to suppress triple-A fire. It worked well – at least under controlled training conditions.”

  “Then why won’t it work in action?”

  “Because in action, under enemy fire, you need to nearly max out the airspeed in the dive, then pull up as sharply as possible. The G-forces are incredible – the airplane won’t take it, and neither will the pilot. When pulling up, the pilot almost always blacks out and loses control.”

  “And the airplane?”

  “The air frames of both the Puffin and the Petrel can’t take those forces either. Even in the gentle dives we did in training, the entire plane shook and shuddered at pull-up, like the wings were about to fall off.

  “No, Commodore, we need a specially designed dive bomber to be successful – a plane with all structural members beefed up to take the stresses. And I don’t know what we’d do about the pilot.”

  “I don’t understand that bit – why does the pilot black out?”

  “Well, as Doctor Girard explained it, the acceleration forces cause the blood to rush away from the head and pool in the lower extremities, causing temporary unconsciousness.”

  “Doesn’t really matter, anyway,” Bowditch said broodingly. “The verdoem politicians will never come up with the money it would take to develop a new flying boat from the keel up.”

  “Guess it would be easier just to develop a new weapon … a weapon that would allow us to stand off from the target. Maybe ancient navies had something like that …?”

  “Oh, they did – rocket-propelled missiles – flying bombs – with vast range and tremendous explosive power, and the ability to home in on the target … that is, fly itself, adjust course after launching. But making something like that is far beyond our engineering and manufacturing capability for now; maybe ever.”

  “Well, what if we could mount a bigger gun on the Puffin? Say, 37millimeter?” asked Dave.

  “Would a Puffin carry the weight?”

  “I think so – don’t know exactly what a 37mm weighs – certainly, if you left off the shipboard mount, it would weigh a lot less on an aircraft than on a schooner.”

  “But that would just give you one shot, wouldn’t it? I mean, unless there was some way the observer could reload from the cockpit.”

  They both glanced around the cramped cockpit, its entire front space taken up by gauges and controls, and laughed at that idea.

  “Yeah, but Commodore, the boffins came up with a semi-automatic one-incher – that’s what all our planes mount now. Why not a semi-auto 37?” asked Dave.

  “That’s a terrific idea, Dave – a way to give us a stand-off weapon to take out their AAA equipped gun-dhows!” There was a growing excitement in Sam’s voice as the subject had shifted from blue-sky speculation to the realm of the possible.

  “Well, not exactly stand-off, if by ‘stand-off’ you mean ‘out of AA range’, Commodore. I mean, the 37mm comfortably out-ranges their AA guns, but there is no way you could be accurate at that range – nearly one sea mile. But it would make our planes a helluva lot safer if they could attack effectively from, say, five hundred to a thousand yards, instead of right down their gun barrels.”

  “You know, Dave, this might be do-able – just. We have little hope of buying a new, custom designed and built 37mm, not under the current budgetary freeze, but I’ll just bet our gunners could put one together from spare parts. And our engineers could probably machine anything missing. It would need a shorter, lighter barrel of course, which would lessen accuracy, but not enough to reduce its effectiveness as an air weapon.”

  They talked excitedly about the viability of a prototype for fitting into one of the Puffins, and the likely time line from conception to testing. Sam scribbled their ideas into a pocket notebook – the first time in a long while he’d had to take his own notes.

  “I’ll draft our ideas into the form of a signal, and give it to Dallas during our stopover to send from Nosy Be back to the task force. Maybe I can talk to our boffins in French Port, too, while I’m there. Damn it, Dave, we might see something useful come out of this trip! Aside from getting our budget restored, too, of course.”

  They talked enthusiastically about this idea for some time, fantasizing about how a squadron of Puffins armed with 37-millimeter guns could sweep the sea of enemy gun-dhows.

  Out of words temporarily, they then fell silent for a while. No land was visible now – just the bright blue Indian Ocean, as far as the eye could see, and a few fluffy white fair-weather clouds. Dave, even while talking, had continuously scanned the horizon for signs of the sudden rain squalls common in these latitudes. Bad enough for a schooner – deadly to any aircraft caught in one.

  They chatted about mundane subjects, desultorily, for an hour. Then, feeling hungry, Sam broke out the rations Ritchie packed for them: rice balls with fish and cabbage, rice balls with coconut and sugar, cold sweetened coffee from a bottle. There was also a bottle of plain water, which they didn’t open. Sam’s appetite turned out to be slighter than he had thought, as did Dave’s, they put the rest of their lunch back into its canvas bag.

  They flew on silently for a while, digesting, and then Dave said, “Time to check in.” He switched from intercom – a simple sound-powered circuit -- to radio, and began calling Charlemagne. “Mother, this is Bull. Come in …” He waited a moment, and then broadcast the same call again … and again … and again.

  “Dozy bastards in the Air Shack must be napping,” he commented casually. If this concerned him, he didn’t show it.

  He then tried to raise Nosy Be, with a similar lack of result. After multiple attempts to raise either station, with silence as the result, Dave noted that he could not hear any of the usual background static, always there even under the best atmospheric conditions. He fiddled with the volume and gain, and still heard nothing. While doing this, he noticed that the small red light that showed that the set was getting power was dark.

  He noticed something else, too – he had allowed the altitude to increase to nearly seventeen thousand feet. One of the Puffin’s vices was a tendency to a slight nose-up attitude when, as now, there was no ammunition for the gun – the plane was of course unarmed for this mission, to allow maximum fuel to be carried -- and Dave’s lack of attention had let it gain almost five thousand feet. How long had they been that high?

  Dave, like the rest of the squadron, gradually testing the limits, routinely flew this high despite the official ceiling. All of them had noted that the higher they were, the more efficiently the engine appeared to run. He put this down to the nature of the Stirling cycle – the greater the difference between ambient and operating temperature, the better it ran -- and of course the higher you went, the lower the temperature. He had flown as high as twenty thousand feet for short periods without feeling any ill effects.

  But with the Commodore aboard he had meant to adhere strictly to the regulation ceiling. He felt no symptoms of hypoxia himself, and a covert glance at his passenger told him that the Commodore appeared normal. Perhaps it had only been for a few minutes, then. Or maybe the regulation ceiling was lower than necessary, to allow for pilot carelessness.

  He nosed down and quickly lost altitude until leveling off at twelve thousand. He was cursing himself for his carelessness while the most senior officer of the Navy was his passenger. />
  Sam had begun to feel alarmed. “Is everything OK, Dave?” he asked, striving to keep the worry out of his voice.

  “I think our radio’s packed it in, Commodore,” he replied. “Either that, or there’s a fault in the electrical system. But not to worry – the aircraft’s fine.”

  At that moment, as if God were mocking him for his hubris, the engine coughed, sputtered, and died. Dave, cursing under his breath, pumped the throttle, and tried to restart the engine, to no avail. His first thought was to jettison the external wing tanks, to reduce the weight and drag and, he hoped, the glide angle as well. He pulled the release and looked up to his left and right. The starboard tank released and fell away at once, but the port tank released only partly, and hung half-free momentarily. This imbalance caused the plane to lurch to port and lose altitude. Dave frantically pumped the release, and after what seemed an eternity the port tank fell away. The airplane steadied, responding to controls, leveling off. Their altitude was now eleven thousand feet and falling fast.

  “Dave, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, the engine does not appear to be running.” The Commodore’s voice, though calm, had an element of strain in it, Dave thought. And he also thought that he really, really did not appreciate the sarcasm.

  “Sir, yes sir, your pilot has noticed that fact. Sir, your pilot is endeavoring to cope with the situation. Sir”

  “Sorry, Dave,” the Commodore replied meekly. “I’ll shut up now.” He wasn’t really being sarcastic, not on purpose – the engine was so quiet compared to the wind noise, and he couldn’t see the pusher- prop from the observer’s seat, not while strapped in, so he thought Dave might really have failed to notice.

  Dave went through his mental checklist for ditching: fuel shut off, battery off, fuel pump off, prop feathered …if time allows, inflate life vest. Did time allow? Yes – they were still above five thousand feet. But wait – another item was tightening seat harness as much as possible. How could he do that if inflated his life vest? Wouldn’t the deceleration forces when they touched cause the vest to burst? Cursing, and making a mental note that there needed to be a written checklist for ditching, he said, “Commodore, tighten your seat harness as much as possible. Don’t inflate your life vest until after we’ve ditch … after we’ve touched down.

  Sam obediently tightened his seat harness. He had entirely forgotten that he was wearing a life vest, so that was just as well.

  Dave gently and gradually turned the plane into the wind, which, as well as he could judge from the sea surface, was southeasterly. Thankfully, the seas weren’t large, and swell and wind-waves roughly coincided, so the landing itself shouldn’t be rough. He scanned the sea horizon ahead, keeping one eye on the altimeter. He was hoping to spot the Comoros Islands, particularly Grande Comore, the northernmost and largest, but the sea ahead stayed empty … or did it? He thought he saw a faint smudge dead ahead.

  Then he had to focus all his attention on the dead-stick landing. With no second chances, he had to get it right the first time. When the Puffin had dropped below the altitude at which the altimeter was accurate, he had to judge by eye, difficult to do over a featureless sea. When the actual touch down occurred, it came as a surprise: a slight bump, a sudden deceleration, and then the flying boat gliding to a smooth and gradual stop.

  Dave put on a modest, aw-shucks expression, and turned to the Commodore for the effusive praise he was due for a textbook-perfect dead-stick landing. He saw that his passenger had his eyes squeezed tightly shut. Dave sighed to himself. His only witness had missed it, and he didn’t dare boast about it -- his brother pilots would rag him unmercifully.

  Sam gradually opened his eyes and looked around cautiously. “Are we down now, Dave?”

  “We are down, Commodore.” Dave looked ahead, searching for the smudge of land he thought he had glimpsed. There was nothing on the horizon. That meant that either his eyes had fooled him, or the island was now below their visible horizon, and more than ten miles distant. No help there.

  The two sat for a moment in silence, letting the tension of the emergency drain away. Sam was first to break the silence. “What now, Dave? I suppose when we’re long enough overdue, Charlie will send a search flight …?”

  “Yes, sir. But since we don’t have an SOP for overdue flights, I don’t know how long that will take.” And that’s another oversight on me, he thought bitterly. To add to the nonexistent ditching checklist.

  “Well, it’s gonna get mighty thirsty around here in twenty-four hours, or less,” Sam said.

  Dave had no answer for that, so they sat in silence for a few more minutes. Then he said “The Comoros – or more specifically, Grand Comoro Island – is only about ten miles away, to the south-east, I reckon. If we can figure out a way to get there, we won’t die of thirst.”

  “That close? You sure, Dave?”

  “I could see them clearly on the horizon right up until just before we touched down. And that’s about right, anyway – they were in our flight plan, as a waypoint.”

  “Bit too far to swim, ‘though.”

  “Yessir.”

  They thought for a while. Then Sam said, “Maybe we could jury-rig a sail? We could pick apart our flight suits.”

  “Yes sir, but it’s dead upwind. And how would we rig it?”

  “Well, we could run a stay from the mooring eye in the nose to the lifting eye on top of the engine nacelle, and rig a small staysail. Couldn’t we then tack upwind?”

  Dave considered this. “Well, sir, the rudder – I mean the rudder that’s in the water, not the one that’s part of the tail assembly – is very small. The vertical tail plane will tend to bring her up into the wind, like a vane – there’d be a helluva weather helm.”

  “But do you think you could keep her on at least a close reach? It would take a whole lot of tacking to get there, and I’d be amazed if we could get two knots out of her, but right now we’ve got nothing but time.”

  “Guess you’re right, Commodore. Doing anything is better than just sitting here in pools of our own sweat.”

  That last phrase was literally true: In full flight gear, in the tropical sun, they were sweating buckets. They had to strip off if only to conserve bodily fluids.

  Awkwardly, in the tiny cockpit, they took it in turns to stand up and divest themselves of flight jacket, boots, and flight suits, not stopping until they were in their underwear. Then they set to unpicking the seams of their flight suits. When they had carefully disassembled the garments, they tore off long strips of uniform width to braid into a sturdy line for the stay. They worked in silence, each glancing around at the sky occasionally, hoping to see a Puffin or Petrel searching for them. Once they paused for a short break and a small swig of water apiece. To their surprise, the water in the bottle was refreshingly cold, with a small chunk of ice still unmelted; the water had frozen in the frigid heights at which they had been flying. They quickly returned to work.

  At length, Dave said, “Sir, it looks like it will take most or all of the flight suit fabric just to braid a line long enough to rig as the stay.”

  “I think you’re right. We’ll have to use the rest of our clothes for the sail.”

  Dave chuckled. “We’ll be naked when we get to the island, Commodore. But at least we’ll be cool.” Sam acknowledged that with a smile.

  Cool Dave thought. How nice it would be to be flying at altitude now, up in the cool air at ten thousand feet. Or even higher! Where it’s freezing … cold enough to turn the contents of our water bottle to ice. Ice …”.

  “Ice!” Dave shouted, causing Sam to jump in alarm.

  “What is it, Dave?”

  “I’m going to try to re-start the engine, Commodore. Please strap in – just in case.”

  “What? Why do you think…?”

  But Dave was already flipping on switches for the fuel pump and the ignition coil, noting that the battery still showed half a charge – enough, if he was right.

  Then there was the seemingly i
nterminable wait for the engine to warm up enough to turn over – during which interval Dave infuriatingly declined to explain. Finally, groaning sound came from bearings now nearly dry as the propeller turned very, very slowly through a full revolution, then another.

  “Better put your jacket back on, Commodore. We’re going to get cool now!”

  He was right. After a long thirty minutes, the engine had finally worked up to full rpm, and Dave began to taxi into the wind for takeoff.

  “Dave, you’re killing me – tell me how the hell you knew the engine would start now.”

  “Ice, Commodore! Ice. The conditions must have been right at the altitude we were flying for water in the fuel to freeze, and plug the fuel line. The engine stopped because it was no longer getting fuel. But we were down at sea level, in the heat, for more than enough time for it to melt.”

  “Won’t it happen again?”

  “No worries, Commodore – I’m staying at five hundred feet all the way to Hell-ville – just high enough to be comfortably cool!”

  Eight

  When they arrived over Nosy Be, Dave made several low circuits over the town to alert port authorities to their arrival, since the radio was still not working. He picked an area of the outer harbor that was free of local boat traffic and touched down. After losing enough speed, he taxied to the Charlemagne’s anchor buoy.

  “We’ll use that bit of line we made up from our flight suits to tie up,” Dave remarked as he did so. Sam wondered who was going to have the awkward – and almost certainly wet – task of climbing out of the cockpit and making the flying boat fast to the buoy. He needn’t have worried – as it happened, a boat pushed off from Navy Landing and beat them to the buoy, a man standing in the bows ready to pass a line through the Petrel’s mooring eye and lead it to the buoy. Lieutenant Hank Dallas was in the boat, and waved an enthusiastic greeting.