The Russian Resistance

by Simon Brading

  Scarlet rubbed her hands together. ‘Well, I don’t know about A flight, but I’m definitely going to go and have a look to see what’s what.’

  Gwen frowned. ‘How? You’re last in line!’

  Her question went unanswered, though, because Scarlet was already sprinting towards Hummingbird.

  ‘Come on, Gwen, get a move on!’

  Abby appeared through the door behind her and Gwen sprang into action at her shout and together they ran to their aircraft. She climbed into Wasp and went through final checks while her fitters put the last few turns on the spring. She plugged herself in and tightened her straps, then, with everything ready, she looked up, watching impatiently as Dragonfly was pushed forward onto the lift, but something in the mirror above her caught her eye and she frowned. She leaned to the side and looked out of her cockpit, craning her neck to try to see behind her.

  Hummingbird’s overhead rotors were turning, approaching full speed and her fitters were being buffeted by the downforce as they pushed her backwards. They turned the aircraft to face the side bulkhead just as a group of sailors opened one of the large openings in the side of the ship and Gwen watched, open-mouthed, as Hummingbird lifted a couple of inches from the floor and sailed majestically through it.

  Gwen couldn’t help but laugh; the Irishwoman must have been planning her disappearing act from the very first day, when she had caught her looking out one of the holes in the bulkheads. She had indeed been thinking about escaping through it and had even worked out that she could take her beloved gyrodyne with her by simply having the safety railings in the gap removed. She briefly wondered if the captain knew what the Irishwoman had done, but quickly realised that Captain Hewer wasn’t the kind of officer who would let anything happen on his ship without his knowledge.

  She couldn’t afford to spend any more time wondering how Scarlet had managed to gain permission, though, because she was being waved forward by a Navy technician and her fitters were pushing her onto the lift.

  The metal platform jerked into motion, then began to rise smoothly into daylight and, as soon as she could see over the deck, she was looking around, searching for friendly and not so friendly aircraft, but not finding any anywhere in sight.

  The radio in her ears had been ridden with static because of the thick metal deck, but now it sprang to life as she rose into clear air and she listened in as she began taxiing towards the stern of the ship.

  ‘...see him. Hunter Two, do you have eyes on?’

  ‘Negative, Hunter One.’

  ‘Damn these clouds!’

  The two naval aviators, Chalmers and Rossiter were obviously not having any luck with whatever they were pursuing and their conversation didn’t give Gwen much in the way of information, but obviously someone had reported that she was on deck, because the next call over the radio was for her.

  ‘Badger Two, this is Tinman, do you copy?’

  ‘Tinman, this is Badger Two, I copy.’

  ‘Badger Two, radar has incoming enemy aircraft at ten thousand feet, heading one five zero, thirty miles. No visual contact.’

  By this time Gwen had reached the stern of the ship and deck hands had grabbed her wings with practised hands and were turning her into position. ‘Roger, Tinman. Badger Two ready for takeoff.’

  ‘Roger, Badger Two, go and get him.’

  ‘Thank you, Tinman.’

  Gwen smiled in anticipation, gave the sailors on either side of her a wave, then opened her throttle wide and released her brakes.

  She was pushed back into her seat by the acceleration, but her whoop of joy at finally being back in Wasp was cut short as the end of the ship rushed towards her in a highly disconcerting manner, like sprinting towards a cliff with nothing beyond except a fatal plunge.

  Her every muscle clenched as she quickly began running out of room and she glanced nervously at her air speed indicator, but in the end, Wasp reached take-off speed and leapt into the air with almost fifty yards to spare and she exhaled in relief. Her conscious mind had known that the deck was much longer than her take-off run, but her every instinct had still tried to convince her that she wouldn’t make it and that she should slam on the brakes before it was too late. It was an instinct that would have undoubtedly killed her.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Rentley and Mr Joyce!’ She resolved to give the two men a big kiss when she got home and thank them for the extra power that had made the take-off far safer than it would have been, then banked sharply to put Wasp on an intercept course for the enemy aircraft.

  Even though Tinman, the radar controller in the Arturo, had told her there was only one enemy aircraft, she kept up her scan of the sky; old habits died hard and British pilots died all too easily if they stopped looking around for even a second. She completed her first scan in seconds and after a quick check of her instruments began on the next, never pausing in the endless task, but there was nothing in the sky with her and with the thick clouds she couldn’t even see her fellow Misfits or the two Hammonds.

  In her rear view mirror she caught sight of the hydraulic lift coming back up with Bruce in Sable, continuing the horribly inefficient process of lifting and launching each aircraft individually and she sighed; it was just as well they weren’t under a determined attack because they would present easy targets, flying out to meet them one by one.

  The enemy aircraft was likely only a scout aircraft, one of several that would be sent out on a daily basis from the coast of Norway, just as they were from England into the Atlantic and the North Sea, looking for passing convoys that they could direct bombers or undersea boats onto. Typically, they would be long-range spotters, much like Vulture or Bloodhound, that would fly a straight line directly out to sea, then head parallel to the coast for a set distance, before returning home along another straight course, describing a thin triangle. With only three or four aircraft you could cover an immense amount of sea, but the odds of finding anything were still incredibly low. The fact that one of the enemy aircraft was heading directly for them was either extremely bad luck, or meant that the Prussians knew that they were there. However, the clouds that were preventing them from finding the aircraft might also work in their favour and hide the convoy, unless, of course, the enemy had some kind of radar, in which case it would undoubtedly spot the ships, or the British aircraft, which would amount to the same thing, because they had to have come from somewhere.

  ‘Enemy aircraft now at ten miles. He’s gone past you, Hunter flight. Badger Twelve, he should be right on top of you.’

  Gwen swore. Ten miles out was too close; the convoy was in plain sight of the aircraft and all it would need was a break in the clouds for them to be discovered. Thankfully, though, the enemy wouldn’t be able to report immediately; they were well out of radio range of Norway and they would have to fly most of the way home first.

  ‘Tinman, Badger Twelve here, I don’t see him.’

  Owen had been to see the radar in the carrier and had reported that it was one of the original models that he had worked on many years ago before the war. It was not nearly as sophisticated as the one in Bloodhound, or even the ones on the British coast and wouldn’t be able to do much more than alert them to the presence of hostiles. It certainly wouldn’t be able to effectively guide the fighters onto their target like he had been able to direct Gwen against the night bomber only weeks before.

  ‘Tinman to all aircraft, enemy has reversed course. He’s running for home. He must have seen us.’

  Gwen swore even louder and willed Wasp to increase speed, even though she knew the aircraft was already going as fast as it could. They had to catch the enemy before it got out of radar range and into radio range of home, otherwise the convoy might not survive, at least not intact. Not only would lives be lost, but the Arturo was the juiciest target of all for the Prussians and if they damaged or destroyed it then, not only would the mission to Muscovy be a failure, but the Misfits might well be put out of the war permanently - an accidental encounter in the frozen
northern oceans might tip the balance so far that the British wouldn’t be able to recover.

  ‘I see him! I’m going to try to cut him off.’ A surge of hope sped Gwen’s heart at Scarlet’s excited shout, the same time as it made her ears ring, but those hopes were dashed again almost immediately. ‘Damn! Lost him again. He must have changed course.’

  Gwen gritted her teeth angrily. A game of hide and seek like this could last for hours, much longer than the British aircraft, especially the Hammonds, could safely stay in the air.

  There was one thing she could do, though.

  She lifted Wasp’s nose and began to climb, reaching under her seat to turn the heating up as the temperature in the cockpit dropped steadily.

  At twenty thousand feet she reached the top of the cloud cover and burst out into bright sunshine, but she didn’t stop there. She went up another ten thousand feet before levelling off, then slotted lenses over her goggles and began scanning the clouds below, watching the many gaps for signs of activity.

  Movement directly in front of her drew her eyes, but the object turned out to be the bright yellow cross of Dragonfly. Another two specks on her left, darker ones, turned out to be the Hammonds on parallel courses, half a mile apart. There was nothing else for a long minute and she was beginning to despair of ever finding the enemy when a dark shadow come out of the bright white of a cloud far off to her right.

  ‘Tinman, this is Badger Two. Enemy in sight. Eight miles from my position bearing...’ Gwen lined up the compass on her wrist to take a bearing. ‘Three one zero. Distance approximately six miles. Hunter One and Two, turn to heading two four zero, he’s ten miles from you. Badger Leader, adjust heading to two seven zero, bandit at five miles.’

  She swung Wasp towards the aircraft just as it went into a cloud bank and disappeared again, but even from the short glimpse she’d gotten she could tell that she was rapidly overhauling it.

  She searched the clouds, looking for the next break that it should appear in and found one about two miles ahead of its position. She didn’t dive to try to intercept it, though, because she knew that she was too far away and wouldn’t get to it in time, but rather stayed where she was so that she could guide the others.

  Two miles at approximately two hundred and forty miles an hour, that was four miles every minute. So, it was thirty seconds, more or less, until the enemy would cross the next gap, unless he changed course again. Which she wouldn’t put past him; it’s what she would do after every time she was exposed.

  The hands on the Frobisher chronograph that her parents had given her for her last birthday seemed to slow as she split her attention between it and the break in the cloud, waiting, willing the pilot of the enemy aircraft to think he was safe and fly a straight course.

  There! Once again, the enemy broke into the open. This time she was more than a mile closer and could make it out much better at full magnification. It was a twin steam-engined aircraft with long, fragile-looking wings, obviously built to have an extremely long range, and there were what looked like iron rods sticking out of its nose that were likely antennae for a radar system. It was painted a dark blue, at least on top, which blended very well with the ocean below, and there were iron crosses on its wings, like the Prussians, but bright blue, not black, which Gwen figured were the Finnish variant.

  Gwen grinned gleefully when she saw Dragonfly go through the previous gap in the clouds - they were slowly closing the net on the intruder. She clicked the radio transmit button, about to report in, but stopped, rendered speechless with surprise; for some reason the enemy aircraft had just spouted a plume of dirty black smoke from its right engine as the hydrogen tanks were hit. She watched, incredulous, when seconds later a huge explosion ripped most of the Finn’s right wing off and it lurched to the side and began to spiral sharply out of the sky.

  ‘What the...?’

  Gwen’s puzzlement lasted only for a brief moment, though, as Hummingbird burst into the open in the aircraft’s wake and she watched Scarlet bank hard to follow the stricken enemy machine in its final moments.

  ‘Hello, Badger Two. Say again, please?’

  Tinman’s voice brought Gwen out of her trance and she sheepishly released the transmit button and laughed, shaking her head and resuming her customary scan of the sky.

  She’d completely forgotten about Scarlet and, while she had been trying to guide the other aircraft, the Irishwoman had been quietly doing what she did best.

  ‘Don’t worry, Tinman, Badger Two’s just a bit upset that I took the kill away from her.’

  ‘Tinman here, who is this please?’

  ‘Oh, right, yes, sorry.’ Scarlet tittered, her melodious voice filling the airwaves. ‘Badger Twelve reporting enemy aircraft destroyed. It’s gone into the drink, no survivors I’m afraid.’

  ‘Good show, Badger Twelve. All aircraft, this is Tinman. We have no more intruders on our screens, come on home, job well done.’

  The Misfits were brought in to land in the same order that they had been in Scotland, meaning that Scarlet was first down. While they were on approach, Gwen thought for one awful moment that the Irishwoman was going to be crazy enough to try to land back through the gap in the hangar bulkhead. She had visions of her rotors shattering and ripping through the hangar, tearing apart the machines and people within, while Hummingbird plunged into the icy water, but thankfully she didn’t.

  Recovering the aircraft didn’t take nearly as long as taking off because they could just taxi straight onto the lift once their hooks had been detached from the cables, but it was still a good ten minutes before all the Badgers were safely below and the Hammonds were back on board.

  Scarlet was swamped as soon as she stepped out of Hummingbird’s cockpit, not only by the Misfits and their fitters, but by all nearby naval personnel as well. The Captain himself even turned up after a few minutes and he shook her hand, congratulating her enthusiastically, before going to speak to Abby.

  ‘Well, Wing Commander, every day your pilots seem to find something to surprise me. Who would have thought a scout aircraft of Hummingbird’s peculiar characteristics would be able to take down an enemy aircraft that size.’

  Abby smiled. ‘Hummingbird carries two cannon and Scarlet has claimed several kills with her. If she had her way, she’d join us on sorties!’

  ‘I can well imagine that firebrand going up again a flight of MU9’s solo!’ Hewer gazed in admiration at Scarlet, who was describing her kill to a rapt audience. ‘Well, because of your pilots, this convoy is much safer than it otherwise would have been. Which isn’t to say that our two Hammond pilots don’t acquit themselves exceedingly well whenever they are called upon to defend us, it’s just that, with us being allocated only two of them, they are rather limited in what they can achieve.’ The captain shrugged, giving her a look that spoke volumes about his thoughts on the allocation of funds and resources by the War Ministry. ‘I must get back to the bridge, but I just wanted to say well done. Again.’ He smiled, then made his way back across the hangar to the doors that led to the bridge.

  The sailors were on duty, so the celebrations soon petered out and the Misfits wandered off, the pilots going to change out of their flightsuits while the rest went back to work on Dreadnought.

  Abby caught up with Gwen at the door to the stairway down to their rooms. ‘Good thinking out there, Gwen.’

  Gwen smiled. ‘Thank you, but I was just following Owen’s example.’

  ‘If you don’t mind, I won’t tell him that.’

  ‘Of course not, I wouldn’t want him to think he was useful.’

  Gwen winked and Abby laughed, delighted to have a partner in the torment of her Second-in-Command.

  ‘Wing Commander!’

  They turned as someone called out from across the hangar and found Lieutenant Commander Bush striding towards them. He came to a halt by their side and gave Gwen a polite nod before addressing Abby. ‘I wanted to add my own congratulations to those of the Captain’s and invite yo
u and your fellow pilots to dine with the officers tonight. We should be making landfall in a day or so, weather permitting, and this might be our last chance to properly host you.’

  ‘We would love to, thank you, Commander.’

  ‘Excellent! And there’s no need to stand on ceremony with us, day uniforms will do, that way if things get a bit messy it doesn’t matter.’ The big man smiled and gave them a nod, then started away, but stopped when something occurred to him. ‘Oh, by the way, I’m not sure if you realise, but, even though you destroyed the aircraft, the Prussians are going to know something is up, simply because it didn’t make it home. They’ll have no idea where we are exactly and we’ll be a long way away from here before they realise their aircraft is missing, but they’ll know there’s someone lurking around out here and that might have a bearing on your mission.’

  Abby nodded. ‘Thank you, I’ll bear that in mind.’

  The dinner party with the officers was far less formal than the one with the Captain had been and the Commander’s comment about it getting messy was fully explained when at various times during the evening food was thrown at certain people, including Mac and Gwen herself, for some faux pas or another.

  The rum rations were supplemented by the addition of beer, several kegs of which had been bought for the mess last time they’d been in port and the party got merrier as the evening went on.

  There was one serious note to the evening when, at seven forty-six precisely, during dessert, Owen met Abby’s eyes and tapped his watch. In reply she simply nodded and silently raised her glass.

  Owen immediately joined her and as each Misfit caught sight of them, they did the same.

  The naval officers watched them, puzzled, as did Gwen, who looked a question at Scarlet, sitting opposite her. In reply, the Irishwoman mouthed a single word - Cece.

  Gwen nodded in understanding and joined her colleagues in raising a glass to the woman who she had never known, but whose aircraft she had been flying for months.