Stalemate (The Red Gambit Series)
Page 62
Zilant
Legendary creature in Russian folklore somewhat like a dragon
Zimmerit
Anti-magnetic paste applied to the side of German vehicles.
ZIS3
76.2mm anti-tank gun in Soviet use.
ZSU-37
Soviet light self-propelled anti-aircraft vehicle, mounting a 37mm gun.
Zuikaku
Japanese fleet aircraft carrier of the Shokaku class. Present at Pearl Harbor, she succumbed to air attack during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, sinking on 25th October 1944.
Zhukov’s Army from a Hundred Lands
As Europe moved from September into October, a growing number of nations started to contribute more than good wishes to the Allied cause, prompting Zhukov to speak of the Allied forces as ‘The Army from a Hundred Lands’.
Whilst the number was an exaggeration, the following will give the reader some information on the nations who slowly united against the spread of communism.
Fig #70 - The Allied Nations.
Active forces = men & equipment supplied that forms fighting units, within the theatre indicated.
Service Units = manpower supplied, conditional non-combat use.
Home service = Also, using troops to relieve US forces in situ.
About the Author.
Colin Gee was born on 18th May 1957 in Haslar Naval Hospital, Gosport, UK, but spent the first two years of his life at the naval base in Malta.
His parents divorced when he was approaching three years of age, and he went to live with his grandparents in Berkshire, who brought him up.
On 9th June 1975, he joined the Fire Service and, after a colourful career, retired on 19th May 2007, having achieved the rank of Sub-Officer, Watch Commander, or to be politically correct for the ego-tripping harridans in HR, Watch Manager 'A'.
After thirty-two years in the Fire Service, reality suddenly hit, and Colin found himself in need of a proper job!
As of today, Colin is permanently employed doing night shifts for NHS Out of Hours service.
At this moment in time Colin has a wife, two daughters, one step-daughter, two step-sons and two grandsons, called Lucas and Mason, who are avid Manchester United fans, although neither know it yet.
Four cats complete the home ensemble.
He has been a wargamer for most of his life, hence the future plans for a Red Gambit wargaming series.
In 1992, Colin joined the magistracy, having wandered in from the street to ask how someone becomes a beak. He served until 2005. The experience taught him the true difference between justice and the law, the former being what he would have preferred to administer.
In his time, Colin has dabbled with keyboard, piano, and drums, but actually managed to get a reasonable note out of a trombone.
He always promised himself that he would write something but, apart from a short story or two, it never happened.
Until now.
Red Gambit was first researched over ten years ago, but work and life changes prevented it from blossoming.
Now it has become a projected six books, instead of one. As more research was done, and more lines of writing opened themselves up, the need for a series became inevitable.
Though the books are fiction, fact is a constant companion, particularly within the biographies, where real-life events are often built into the lives of fictitious characters.
Colin writes for the pleasure it brings him and, hopefully, the reader. The books are not intended to be modern day 'Wuthering Heights' or 'War and Peace'. They contain a story that Colin thinks is worth the telling, and to which task he has set his inexperienced hand. The biographies are part of the whole experience that he hopes to bring the reader.
Enjoy them all, and thank you for reading.
The Red Gambit Series
Opening Moves
Breakthrough
Stalemate
Impasse
End Game
Check Mate
Extras available on the website www.redgambitseries.com and also on www.facebook.com - group name ‘Red Gambit’.
[https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/167182160020751/]
Please register and join the group or the forums.
If on the website, remember only to visit the areas relevant to your book or you may pick up spoilers.
‘Impasse’ - the story continues.
Read the first chapter of ‘Impasse’ now.
In the absence of orders, go find something and kill it.
FeldMarschall Erwin Rommel.
Chapter 103 - THE SUNDERLAND
1505hrs, Monday, 5th November 1945, the Western Approaches, approximately 45 miles north-west of St Kilda Island, The Atlantic.
The Sunderland Mk V was a big aircraft, the four American Wasp engines giving her the power previously lacking in the Mk III.
Not for nothing was she called the Flying Porcupine, her hull bristling with defensive machine-guns, fourteen in total, manned by her eleven man crew. Such arnament was required for a lumbering leviathan like the Short Sunderland, whose maximum speed, even with the Wasps, was a little over two hundred miles an hour.
In the German War, encounters with enemy fighters had been mercifully rare and, in the main, enemy contacts were solely with the Sunderland’s standard fare; submarines.
This Mk V also carried depth charges and radar pods, making her a deadly adversary in the never-ending game of hide and seek between aircraft and submersibles.
Sunderland NS-X was out on a mission, having flown off from the Castle Archdale base of the RAF’s 201 Squadron. The men had once been in 246 Squadron but, when that squadron ws disbanded, the men of NS-X, all SAAF volunteers, had been one of two complete crews to be transferred to 201 Squadron.
During World War Two, there had been a secret protocol between the British and Eire governments, which permitted flights over Irish territory though a narrow corridor. It ran westwards from Castle Archdale, Northern Ireland, across Irish sovereign territory, extending the operating range of Coastal Command considerably, and bringing more area under the protection of their Liberators, Catalinas and Sunderlands.
The agreement was still in force.
NS-X had followed this route out into the Atlantic, turning north and rounding Malin Point, before heading into its search area around St Kilda.
A Soviet submarine had been attacked and damaged the previous day, somewhere roughly fifty miles west of Lewis, and the Admiralty were rightly jittery, given the importance of the convoy heading into the area in the next ten hours.
There was little good news.
The RCN corvette which had found and attacked the submarine was no longer answering, and was feared lost with all hands. Other flying boats and craft were assigned to the dual mission, all hoping to either rescue, or recover, depending on how fate had dealt with the Canadian sailors, as well as attack and sink the enemy vessel.
Flight Lieutenant Cox, an extremely experienced pilot, hummed loudly, as was his normal habit when concentrating.
Having just had a course check, and finding themselves a small distance off their search pattern, he eased the huge aircraft a few points to starboard, before settling back down to the extended boredom of searching for a needle in a choice of haystacks.
The Sunderland carried many comforts, including bunks, a toilet, and a galley, the latter of which yielded up fresh steaming coffee and a bacon sandwich, brought up from below by Flight Sergeant Crozier.
“There you go, Skipper, get your laughing gear around that, man. I’ll take over for a moment.”
South African Crozier wasn’t qualified to pilot the aircraft, but that didn’t trouble the old hands of NS-X. He flopped into the second seat and took a grip, permitting Cox to relinquish the column to the gunner.
“Skipper, I think Dusty is an ill man. He’s wracked up on a bunk, looking very green.”
Dusty Miller was the second pilot, and he had disappeared off to sort out a stomach cramp, about an hour beforehan
d.
“Too much flippin Jameson’s last night, that’s what that is, Arsey”, the words came out despite having to work their way around large lumps of bread and bacon.
Rafer Crozier didn’t much care for being called Arsey, but it didn’t pay to point that out, for obvious reasons.
“Don’t think so, Skip. Dusty was the only one to have the goose, wasn’t he?”
The local procurer of all things, Niall Flaherty, had slipped such a beast to the camp cooks for a small consideration. In contravention of standing orders on air crews meals, Miller had wangled a portion of the well hung goose, prior to flight ops.
“Maybe you have a point, Arsey. Best we keep quiet then, eh?”
Another voice resonated through the intercom.
“Contact Skipper. Starboard 30. One thousand yards. Wreckage.”
Flight Sergeant Peter Viljoen’s crisp and concise report interrupted the great Goose discussion, as Cox wiped his hands clean on his life preserver, and took back command of the aircraft, releasing Crozier to crane his neck in the direction of the sighting.
“Contact confirmed Skipper, Starboard 35, One thousand yards. Wreckage, and lots of it too.”
Cox spoke to the crew.
“Pilot to crew. OK fellahs, close up now, and keep your eyes peeled. Turning for a low level run over the site now. Sparks, get off a report to base right now. Magic, pass Sparks the position please.”
Both radio operator and navigator keyed their mikes with an acknowledgement, as the port wing dipped to bring the lumbering seaplane around for a west-east run across the wreckage.
Whilst some of the crew used binoculars to probe the floating evidence of recent combat, others remained with eyes firmly glued elsewhere, seeking out the tell-tale plume of a periscope, or a glint of sun on the wing of an aircraft.
Nose-gunner Viljoen was first up again, professionally, and matter-of-factly, at first, then rising in pitch and excitement, as his eyes worked out the details of what he was seeing.
“Contact dead ahead, 500 yards. Dinghy in the water. Men onboard, Skipper, there’s men onboard! They’re waving!”
“Roger Dagga. How many?”
“Hard to say Skipper. Five, maybe more. Looks like a standard issue navy dinghy, and I will bet a pound to a pinch of pig shit that they are navy uniforms, Skipper.”
The reason behind Viljoen’s nickname was lost in time, but he was Dagga to everyone, including 201’s Squadron Leader, although, in fairness, that may have been because they were brothers.
Sparks came back with a message, confirming the passing on of the location report, leaving Cox free to concentrate on his fly past.
His first sweep had been at full speed but, with the absence of any adverse reports, Cox turned his aircraft, and throttled back to permit closer examination.
He saw the waving men in the dinghy himself, and believed he saw others in the water, whose only motion was caused by the shifting of the sea.
‘Poor bastards.’
“What’s the latest on Dusty, please?”
A slight delay, and the metallic voice of Rawson, one of the gunners, responded with negative news.
The pilot did not welcome being single handed for the entire flight.
“Bollocks with an egg on top.”
His favourite expletive, and one that always puzzled those who heard it.
”Arsey, I need a hand up here. Pass your guns onto someone will you.”
“Roger, Skipper.”
Crozier looked away from his waist guns, and saw Rawson moving forward.
“All yours, Tiger,” and Crozier slapped the gunner on the shoulder, as he headed towards the stairs, that rose up to the flight deck.
Rawson had been nicknamed ‘Sid’ at a young age, for reasons best known to God, and his friends in Mrs Oosterhuis’ class. That label survived until the first time that 246 Squadron’s Operations officer had placed his initials up on the crew roster.
By the time those present had stopped laughing at G.R.R.R., ‘Sid’ was history, and ‘Tiger’ was born.
“Radar Contact, bearing 010, range approximately 95 miles, heading unknown, possibly south-south-west, Skipper.”
Magic Malan’s report was delivered in his normal impersonal style. The type VIc Radar set was supposed to be capable up to 100 miles in the right circumstances, and Flight Sergeant Malan always seemed to coax the best out of the equipment.
Cox thumbed his mike.
“Busby, fit in with you at all?”
After the slightest delay the Navigator replied.
“Position could tie in with the Stord, Skipper.”
“Roger.”
Stord was a destroyer of the Royal Norwegian Navy, one of the array of vessels converging on the area.
Crozier slipped into the second seat, a place he often occupied. He had failed his pilot’s training, not on his ability behind the controls, but more on his inability with the required mathematics.
Lining up on the wreckage, Cox throttled back as much as he dared.
“Ok crew, Slow pass. Keep your eyes skinned.”
As the big flying boat did a leisurely flyover, Dagga and the rear-gunner, Van der Blumm, confirmed the presence of Naval personnel amongst the survivors, as well as many bodies floating on the surface.
“Skipper, radar target has changed course, now confirmed at 90 miles, heading 190. She changed course after Sparks lit up the airwaves.”
“Roger, Magic.”
Standing orders no longer permitted the Flying Boat to touch down and recover the Canadians, but as the Norwegian Navy was coming to the rescue, it just meant a few more hours on the water for the survivors.
“Dagga, use the Aldis. Let them know we can’t stop, but help is on its way. Witty, how long?”
Navigator Jason Witt was already prepared for the question, so his answer was immediate.
“Thanks, Witty. Four hours, Dagga. And wish them good luck. Sparks, send confirmed survivors at this location.””
The Sunderland circled slowly, as the Aldis lamp blinked out the message to the men below.
“Skipper, message sent.”
“Roger Dagga. Right, now let’s find the bastards who did this.”
For more, watch out for Book Four of the Red Gambit series, ‘Impasse’, which should be available by December 2013, on Amazon Kindle as a download, and createspace.com as a book.
Fig #71 - Rear Cover of ‘Stalemate’