The Day the Aces Died
Drink the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.
This is the conclusion to the previous vignette, “Spilt Milch,” so if you haven’t read that, make sure to read it!
MESSERSCHMITT Me 325D-2 DOBERMÄNN, R52/01C No. 812
OVER THE NORTH SEA, APPROX. 230 NMI NORTHWEST OF BREMEN, GREATER GERMAN REICH
OBERST HERMAN GRAF, LUFTWAFFE
GESCHWADERKOMMODORE, JAGDGESCHWADER 52
1029 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945
“Damned machine, shut up!” Oberst Herman Graf cursed to himself as he watched his Messerschmitt Me 325’s radar warning receiver flash alive for the sixth time in five minutes, filling his ears with shrieks that pierced his skull. The low-resolution radar display in front of him showed nothing other than the lumbering formation of USAAF bombers coming toward the Northwest German coast. He again broke radio silence, asking for guidance from a Junkers Ju 390E-2 Kran airborne controller circling over Jutland. They merely repeated the order to close and destroy the bombers. He growled in between heavy breaths under his breathing mask as he switched his RWR off, sick of its incessant yapping.
Close? We’re closing all right. You lazy lily bastards. He and his Jagdgescwhader, along with two (JG 25, 50) of the other five Dobbermänn wings (JG 25, 28, 50, 52, 53), had come up to meet the American bombers. They were closing at a kilometer a second. He looked out his canopy and scanned the sky. His dogs were screaming across the grey sky like avenging Valkyrie. There were about forty aircraft from his IV Gruppe and his stabschwarm in his immediate proximity. They were not supposed to push their aircraft beyond Mach 2.7, but no one was listening to that rule today (or most days).
They were armed with two L-40 ‘Skoll’ (Ru 374 X-13) semi-active long-range air-to-air missiles, four L-50 ‘Hati’ (Hs 366 X-12) infrared short-range air-to-air missiles, and a double barrel MG189 20-millimeter Gast-gun. His Dobbermänn did not have six MG 17 machine guns built into the wings, unlike earlier Me 325s. The Luftwaffe learned the hard way that 7.92x57-millimeter was not suited for the aircraft—that, and the fact it was such a bodge-job that it would tear the wings off of the jet at high speed.
He took a deep breath and looked back at his radar. He almost choked on his air. The American bombers were about 45 miles away, just out of the no-escape-range of their L-40s, but they had begun to accelerate—fast. The American wonder bomber, the B-52 Stratofortress, was supposed to be subsonic. This was a nasty wrinkle as his radar told him that these B-52s were accelerating past Mach 1 and disappearing below his radar horizon. These had been confirmed. What in the name of God is happening?
The radio came alive with shouts from his men before an order came growling from the Kran, “Knight, Warden. Release! Weapons Release!” Graf confirmed the order to his wing, and his men complied. They all chafed silently that they, knights of the sky, had been made serfs by soft men in their flying coffee houses. It was the right order, the Dobermänner was a wonderful aircraft, but it could not look-down/shoot-down.
We cannot allow whatever these are to escape.
The Kran’s talker spoke again, “All Knight elements, this Warden. Major American air movement. Multiple division strength. Fall Burnhilde initiated. Divert east, azimuth 90, maintain altitude 40,000, maintain speed 3,000.”
Colonel Graf switched his RWR back on, and it was still screaming about a frontal aspect lock. A moment later, his radar was consumed by a blizzard of jamming. What? He looked up and forward. He did not see the telephone pole-sized missile before it detonated just off to his left. Mein Gott. He looked and watched two of his command flight’s aircraft tumble out of the sky, torn to shreds by a single massive continuous rod blast. The fragments peppered his aircraft, and he screamed into his microphone for his men to take evasive action, but it was no use. The RWR was crying out, dozens of contacts. He started to see them. Shit.
Their aircraft were built for speed, not maneuverability. Graf wheeled his Dobbermän into a dive, and his wingman followed him. The next missile turned Graf’s wingman, the wing’s adjutant, into a dead man in the husk of shredded metal. Grey-black puffs of smoke dotted with twisted coffins of steel tumbled to the sea with all the grace of a dead bird. Graf listened to his men, all veteran pilots—most of them aces in their own right—turn into panic-stricken boys screaming into their radios.
Good, God. I’m sorry, Jola.
Colonel Graf did not see the missile which found its mark. He was consumed with trying to avoid that fate to notice its approach. The weapon’s fuse failed, but a little more than 3,000 pounds of steel, fuel, circuitry, and explosives flying at Mach 4 was more than enough to do the job. The colonel yanked back the ejector lever as he was pressed into his seat by the Dobermänn’s death spiral. The canopy came loose, and he was launched free into the wind. It nearly snapped his neck. The stabilizing parachute deployed but failed. The secondary stabilizer opened and worked. He released himself from his seat when the spinning stopped. His main chute worked. Mercy for the small things. He looked around as the last missiles detonated.
There were maybe a dozen white parachutes against the granite clouds. He looked down and saw movement over the water. Oh, God. Water. He recognized the objects, just barely. They looked like training drones. What has happened? What is this?
He touched his face, and when he checked his hand, he saw red blood. Shrapnel had pierced his jaw, and he now felt the blood flowing through his mouth. It was a bitter, iron taste as he looked down at the frigid waters, dark like a wine of a terrible vintage. He had no recourse but to curse those who had sent him and his men to their deaths, even if his shattered mouth would not comply.
COMBINED AIR OPERATIONS CONTROL, ALLIED AIR DEFENSE COMMAND
“MOUNTAINTOP,” CAMP GRIFFISS, BUSHY PARK DEFENSE ANNEX, RICHMOND-UPON-THAMES, UK
GENERAL OF THE ARMY FRANK M. ANDREWS, USAAF (GSF)
COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, COMBINED ALLIED AIR FORCES
1029 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945
General Frank Andrews across the main floor of Control—such an ominous name for a wondrous place. The digital screens glowed blue-white, revealing a stunning battery of information that was almost hard to believe. Every airborne aircraft from Trondheim to Taranto was tagged and cataloged. Every day he appreciated just how prescient the name “MOUNTAINTOP” had been for this bunker complex. Despite being more than 30 yards underground, it was as if he was standing on the peak of Olympus on a clear day. Except, the radars and the ELINT sensors the Combined Allied Air Forces had at their disposal could see far more than the human eye.
He was struck, as was often these days, about how much had changed in the last few years. It made him feel old, and he didn’t like that. He put out his cigarette with a slight tenor of ire in the movement of his arms and face. He looked up at the main display as a set of green arrowheads closed in on red arrows over the middle of the North Sea. It was a buffet of information for men used to mere morsels.
Andrews pressed a button on a small panel of microphones beside his seat, “Status?”
Control had a new conductor, a Cert Rear Admiral. He turned on his heels and faced the glass window of the conference room. The little Korean man had been an oddity, someone who smacked of ill-repute when Andrews had first met him. He understood now that Admiral Jeung was a terrifying creature, one with abilities that Andrews and his subordinates could not comprehend when they had first met him. Now they did, and they let the little bald man do his awful work.
“We’re in the green.” Jeung started, talking through a microphone on his lapel. “Lead elements of FREIGHT TRAIN and JACK KNIFE will arrive over Norway in the next five. STAR KILLER has begun their sprint to target, and FOX HUNTER’s birds are reaching the Foxbats… now. Display three.” One of the control crew tugged on the Cert’s shirt sleeve, “Apparently, we fried the auxiliary phone line, I’ll get someone on that now.”
Even his uniform was odd. The Certs wore stand-collar service uniforms; Jeung had removed his coat, revealing a collarless dress shirt. No necktie? How uncouth.
Andrews and the other officers in the conference room leaned forward together and looked through the glass panels in the table, which contained screens of their own. He pressed a button on the little panel and swapped it to three. He watched as the color-coded arrows collided and smiled ever so slightly as he saw red ones turn grey. These bastards had unleashed the Second Blitz and then massacred VIII Bomber Command. They were getting a taste of their own medicine.
“Bloody cold business, Frank,” Air Chief Marshal Sholto Douglas, CINC of the Allied Air Defense Command, surmised. It was. They’d sited this air battle with a cold and calculating precision. They lured the very best of the Luftwaffe, those who posed the greatest danger, both behind the stick and in the instruction room, over the North Sea so that every man they shot down was more or less certain to die.
If the missiles didn’t end them, Neptune’s frigid embrace would.
“Bastards deserve every lick they get,” answered General Carl Spaatz, the CINC of the Allied Strategic Air Forces. It was his men who had been massacred in the SAM Days of 1943, he had a grudge, and he was not above settling it. Andrews was with Spaatz. He would not settle for anything less than the destruction of the Jagdwaffe and the crippling of the Luftwaffe.
The display froze and began to chug into stop-motion. General Andrews pressed the transmitter again as the engagement ended, “How’d we do, Admiral?”
“Met expectations. 648 AIM-8 Golf, dud rate of about ten percent. 421 were targeted at 321 Foxbats, 274 kills across 289 hits, so pH was .68 and pK .65. That’s better than we estimated. VF-13 and VFQ-33 are closing on the stragglers, and the Lightnings from No. 12 Group should be on the scene in ten. We’re tracking 112 Matador, 265 Mace, and 239 Hound Dog. That’s a hair lower than expected, but…” Jeung smirked, “More than plenty. Phones are back, but we’re now seeing some processor lag on displays. I’d wager it’s from the Fireflies switching over from the Screechmakers to the Stormknights.”
Andrews gave Jeung a nod, “Well, let’s see if these Navy super-fighters are worth all the money we’ve spent on them.” Andrews simmered with annoyance. The AAF’s own advanced fighter-interceptor program had suffered delays. They still had the F-110 Spectre, but the F-112 Delta Scorpion was supposed to be their peerless interceptor. Even then, whenever the Seattle Project deigned to unrestrict the Delta Scoprion, the Combined Pacific Ocean Areas would get first dibs. Nimitz and Kenney needed the extra range more than them. Sorry for stealing your air tankers for two months, Chester.
Spaatz and Douglas were chatting while Andrews simmered. The crew manning the computers was abuzz with activity. The entire operation was an order of marionettes on marionettes. There were dozens of talker birds, EC-121 Warning Stars, alongside hundreds of ground-based Vector-Altitude Controllers. This concert was directing the striking arm of the USAAF and RAF—plus the other Allied air forces—toward their litany of targets. Is this what the grapes of wrath taste like?
Air Chief Marshall Trafford Leigh-Mallory, the CINC of the Allied Expeditionary Air Forces, was in some God-awful hamlet in Brittany the last thing he was told. His tour of the airfields had been going well—and was sorely needed after the AEAF’s tactical fighters had run themselves ragged. Allied air power had blunted Operation WOTAN, Ike’s lines might have had a gash carved through them by OB West, but they were still standing. The Germans and their Vichyite puppets had gotten lucky and played their hand expertly, but it was not enough. They never had enough forces to reach, let alone capture, the main Allied port at Bourdeaux. It had been quite the gamble.
After the surrender of Rommel at Toulouse, OB West had been led by Model, and his gamble had failed. He had failed to cut off or destroy any significant portions of the Allied Expeditionary Ground Forces. The monocle’d Nazi had achieved two things: he had drastically shortened the AEGF’s supply line and given their field commander a sufficient kick in the ass for them to accept PROMETHEAN refits, which had delayed throughout 1944. There was enough kit in British depots to equip them twice over. To be fair, it had taken the Second Blitz and Black Thursday for the Allied Air Forces to accept their own Best-Possible-Advice in toto.
The situation in France was stabilizing—they had not been broken—but still bad. The 93rd Infantry and 101st Airborne Divisions were cut off in the port city of La Rochelle, and they were struggling to get supplies to them. The seas were rough, and the Nazis had learned not to even go out for a piss without an iron umbrella. The Red Army was preparing another bevy of counter-offensives. The Free Nordic Army had intensified its sabotage campaign. Italy was a complete mess. The civil war between monarchists and republicans had not stopped, but neither had the preparations for the next Allied offensive. Now was the time for the next step, one for all of Europe.
They had their nose bloodied by the Fascist in 1943. They had fought that enemy to a stalemate and stopped the terror. They had spent 1944 honing their forces, developing their tactics, and strengthening their logistics. They had bided their time. Now, they would show those monsters in Berlin just exactly who they were facing. It had been the FOCUS of the CAAF over the last six months to prepare for this, even before the Royal Marine Division had initiated Operation ARSENAL with the landing on Jersey. What had begun under the shadow of the moon would now ring out under the blazing sun. Operation SHATTER POINT was less a military maneuver and more a final will and testament written in absentia for the Luftwaffe.
They had their Adlertag in 1940—they would have their Adlernacht in 1945.
CONSOLIDATED-VULTEE F-106A DELTA DART, FOR DAN, 666-S6 / 44-27559
STAVANGER, REICHSKOMMISSARIAT NORWEGEN
SENIOR FLIGHT OFFICER MARY-GENIEVE “JEZEBEL” LAROUX, USAAF (GSF)
666th FIGHTER-INTERCEPTOR SQUADRON (WOMAN), 666th FIGHTER GROUP (INTERCEPTOR, WOMAN)
1133 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945
Missy LaRoux rolled her aircraft to give herself a better view as she crossed the coast. Looking down, she saw chaos, smoke and brimstone, on the streets of Stavanger. The city’s local operations center was an inferno. Well, never seen that before, she thought as she saw the distinctive delta-wing of a Me 304H Farmdart impaled through the facade of a massive church. Free Nordic Army Partisans, their Green Beret advisors, and the Super Force’s super bombers had done terrific work.
The aerodrome for Gruppe IV of Jagdgeschwader 5 had been designated “Stavanger Main” by the CAAF. It was one of three main interceptor bases in Norway. They were the ones who did the bulk of the interception work—only leaving the most dangerous and more important interceptions to the Foxbats running out of Germany proper.
The combined air and partisan raid had smashed the base. Craters pockmarked the main runways, and ribbons of tar-black smoke belched into the sky. Smote onto the concrete, left in ashen outlines, were the wreckage of dozens of jets. There was a pair of jets spread along the latter half of the main runway, destroyed while attempting to get off the ground. Missy counted wrecks as she scanned.
She scanned the horizon. Nothing had changed. The same three sets of plumes from the destroyed SA/L-2 Guideline sites greeted her. With the LOC destroyed, they would be blind and dumb even if they were still functional. Special Forces were very serious people and had done good work, and no one could dodge the fury of the Super Force. The Atlantikwall was strong and tall, a mighty thing, but it had become brittle and inflexible. It had to be. They built it fast, and they built it mean; but they didn’t have enough folks with the right skills. So, they centralized to ration out their egg-heads.
The door to Norway was open. She didn’t even have to turn the handle, only walk in.
So, this is what Europe looks like? Looks cold. Not as cold as Thule, though.
Missy was at the very tip of the 666th Fighter Group, escorting IRON HAND EF-105E Thunderscreeches of the 480th Bombardment Squadron (Suppression). They had come expecting a fight. Even coming in below the radar horizon, they’d expected Farmdarts. CAP screaming down the fjords, Guidelines from well-sited bunkers—at least some flak. Instead, they were greeted with smoke, still water, and silence.
“Chin, got anything?”
“Not a mouse, Jez.” Flight Officer Hazle “Chin” Ying-Lee, her wingwoman, replied.
Inside Chin’s ventral bay was a sensor the eggheads called EVIL EYE. Missy didn’t understand how the thing worked, but it was apparently good for sniffing out passive snoopers. They were both at about 800 feet, with another pair of Sixes about five miles north escorting another quartet of Wild Weasels. The Weasels were a few miles ahead, darting between valleys and fjords, guided by their backseaters.
“Well, I’ll call it.” Missy snapped her radio to her second preset, “Pontiac One-Two, Broad Devil Three.” The 666th FG had been assigned the designator BROAD, and the 666th FIS had gotten DEVIL. The charm had worn thin. “Stavanger Main is hard bent. I tally four-six Farmdarts dog on the ground, mostly How and George spec. Evil Eye is negat emissions. Southern Passage is clear. Say again. Southern Passage is clear. Over.”
“A-firm, Broad Devil Three. Passing word. We expect an air sweep in the next thirty. We’re already picking up Starfighters from Stockholm Main. Get ready, babs.”
The quartet of Sixes pushed over Boknafjord, chasing after the Thuds. Missy shifted in her seat and checked her instruments. Everything was all green, even as she felt her hands shake ever so slightly under her gloves. She took a deep breath. She learned to love flying from her grandfather. He was light-skinned enough to pass and had gotten inspired by Eugene Bullard when he was over in France. She’d gotten the same bug he got; even though her life had been spent serving tables and playing piano. She was one of only three African-American women aviators in the Army Air Forces and the only one of them rated to fly any ‘sonics, for now at least.
She looked into one of her rear-view mirrors and could just make out the hazy trails of exhaust as the southern pincer of FREIGHT TRAIN crossed the horizon. The dozens of F-106s of the 666th Fighter Group (Interceptor, Woman) were the southern pickets for the rest of the strike force.
Their strike package was down to “only” two wings of B-52 Stratofortresses now that the Peacemakers had dropped their doodads and turned back for their bases in Nova Scotia. Twenty-seven bombardment squadrons were on the deck, penetrating Graðr just south of Bergen. Eighteen squadrons of fighters escorted them—twelve F-106 and six F-110. The 364th Fighter Group (Tactical, Nisei) was escorting the rest of the 480th BS as the Thuds turned their ARMs toward the SAM batteries around Oslo. The Navy had gotten the plum job of clearing up the remnants of the Jadgwaffe’s screamers as the rest of the CAAF’s fighter corps scrambled out of England.
The talker on the 666th’s designated EC-121 transmitted again, “Broad Devil Group, Pontiac One. Pass from Motor City. FENCER. I say again, FENCER. Oslo SOC has transmitted a raid alert signal to Berlin CADOC. Major enemy air mobilization in progress. Increase to angels 30. Maintain position north 5-8 parallel. FREIGHT TRAIN Easy Main is diverting to Point Strong. Be advised friendly strike package JACK KNIFE operating to your northeast. No skinny on who or what, assume Cert. Verify IFF before engaging any bogeys from Bullseye 20 to 70. All contacts south of 5-8 parallel and east of 0-5 meridian are assumed bandits. B-V-R authorized, you’re all unrestricted. Happy Hunting.”
Those gotta be Certs. I thought they were just kicking in the door?
“Well golly, here it is,” Missy murmured to herself as she pulled her Six into a climb toward the rest of her squadron. Fuel was good, they had finished their last tanking cycle before the German long-range radars had burned through the jamming of their escorting EB-36s, and the formation had dove below the horizon.
Seems like it’s working. Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer? My fanny it is.
The Nazis had bet their super jets and their pilots—their best hopes for keeping their pilot training regime—while the CAAF was betting some of their best and their best munitions. She’d never seen AAF maintainers or Army Service Forces ordies work so damn hard, and they always worked like dogs. Nearly two years’ worth of production, all for this moment, she’d heard that somewhere—no idea if it was on the level.
Chin and Jezebel regrouped with the other pair of forward Sixes as they punched into and through the clouds. This was home. The F-106 was built for high-altitude combat, not knife fights above the dirt. They kept their radars turned off. They would use their FLIR and the guidance of their EC-121 to deal with the incoming. First would be the alert fighters from Sweden. There were three fighter groups in Swedish-based JG 50, all flying older Me 304s. The Luftwaffe had maybe thirty or thirty-three fighter groups in Luftflotte Reich, plus another twenty-five or so in Luftflotten Two and Three that were likely to come out and play. They could get another ten or so from their bases in East German within a reasonable time; but their eastern front air forces—Luftflotten Four, Five, and Six—were stretched thin. They had their reserves in Luftflotten One and Eleven, but those were of negligible value at unimpressive readiness. Not all of these were ‘sonics—and a lot of ‘em were early Farmdart models, which were more dangerous to the Nazis driving ‘em than anyone in the CAAF. Still, it was quite the tide of screaming steel.
The Nazis had ballooned the size of the Luftwaffe beginning in mid-1942—adopting distinctly American tactics that the AAF themselves had barely decided to use. Their training regime had pivoted from quality to quantity at the flick of a switch. Missy had heard that was why ole Goering joined Himmler in that cockamamie coup.
Missy flicked the cover off her airframe master arm. She was armed for bear with six AIM-7D Sparrow, four AIM-9F Sidewinder, and 650 rounds of M43 20-millimeter API for the M6A1 Gatling gun below and behind her left foot.
They had to cover the heavies until they got to their release point south of Oslo. Then they had to cover them as they withdrew. Almost every ‘sonic fighter squadron would be routed toward them via Scotland and Northern England, but that would take time.
Colonel Jacqueline “Jack” Cochran, their group commander, spoke over their net, “Come on ladies, twenty minutes ‘till drop. Let’s show the Krauts just how the Devil’s Daughters say hello.”
Twenty minutes never felt like such a long time.
358 American fighters had to hold off the entire Luftwaffe for twenty minutes.
It was an even fight.
NORTH AMERICAN F3J-3 VINDICATOR, IRISH GOODBYE, #90021 / AK 209
OVER THE NORTH SEA, APPROX. 80 NMI NORTHWEST OF ESBJERG, REICHSKOMMISSARIAT DÄNEMARK
ENSIGN ROBERT “BOOTLEG” KENNEDY, USN (GSF)
FIGHTING SQUADRON THIRTEEN
1033 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945
"Track is good. Lock!” Bobby Kennedy shouted at his stick, Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Cornelius “Connie” Nooy. Their Vindicator hurtled ahead at Mach 2.1 as they eased off full afterburner.
The Foxbats they had chased toward Jutland had turned around and were coming at them. They were a mean piece of kit, but no one could win a fight like this blind. It wasn’t 1942 anymore. They had the jammers, and the USAAF’s dirty trick had killed six of the Luftwaffe’s twelve Ju 390E Melon AWACS—out of a fleet total of no more than 30. It had cost them eight months of Talos production, but it had paralyzed the Luftwaffe’s main fighter directors, killed two-thirds of their best interceptors, and taken out about half of their Northern standing CAP.
VF-13 and VFQ-33 had to clean up the stragglers before the real show started over Norway. Thanks for making this easy, boys.
A moment later, Connie growled into his radio in response, “Ripple Fox One!” Three AIM-7D Sparrows slipped loose from the rails and streaked into the rainy sky. The Vindicator’s track-while-scan pulse-doppler radar tallied two targets.
They had been outnumbered four-to-one when the fight had started. Now it was only thirteen on twelve. However, alert fighters from the two major airfields on Jutland and the twenty-three airfields in Hannover and northwest Germany were now in the air and were likely to come out to play sooner rather than later. They needed to get this done so they could level the field again.
Only fifteen miles separated the two squadrons, and they were closing at a combined speed of over 4000 knots. They’d only spark up the fire controls when it would be too late to dodge. There was no shouting, only silence. No panic, only patience. These aces were supposed to be their best. They blustered like knights of old. Kennedy and his squadron mates had been trained—or retrained—in a different art of war.
Graðr, the Reich’s integrated air defense network, was excellent. It had strangled the Combined Bomber Offensive in its crib and killed hundreds of Allied aviators. It had allowed the Nazis to modernize their economy and their forces free from continuous bombing. Allied Expeditionary Supreme Headquarters, Operations Europe—SHOE—had been forced to only launch piecemeal strikes with ‘sonic bombers like the B-57 Super Canberra and the FB-105 Thunderchief.
Graðr’s long-range air defense missiles were in range if not for the defensive jamming from VFQ-33 and their AQM-34s. Even then, their main long-range SAM, the SA/L-5 Gammon, was designed to counter slow-moving bombers. That had not stopped the Bremen Sector Operations Center from getting spooked and firing off a dozen plus as the Talos/Firefly salvo appear on their radars. That salvo had only managed to shoot down three of their own Me 304s on CAP and then rain missiles onto the fish of the North Sea. It had made everyone in their squadron jump for a moment.
The Germans did not have the fuels, spare parts, or maintainers necessary to regularly conduct full mobilization drills. Graðr was brittle. They’d only fully mobilized their air defenses maybe twice in the time since it came online. There was rust on gears that had never really turned to begin with. Even then, they had defeated repeated attempts to smash down the great wall of Asgard. Today, however, was a new day in a new year.
The last Foxbats would find no satisfaction or revenge. The F3D-3Q Stormknights of Electronic Fighting Squadron Thirty-Three were armed with innocuous but expensive pods filled to the brim with electric fury and directed a swarm of angry and dangerous Firefly drones. German airborne radars were worth about as much as an umbrella in a hurricane. They could allegedly track-on-jam, but that was a lie—and one that could be exploited with ease.
VFQ-33 had sent the Foxbats howling after empty air while VF-13 came around their flank, ready to deliver the coup de grâce. The Black Cats’ second volley polished off the dregs of the three best fighting wings of the Luftwaffe. Bobby watched the final moments of dozens unfold on his tactical information display and his CTV. The tracks were in green hieroglyphics. King Tutt was in his plane—and Bobby could speak his language. His eyes swept up and toward the view from the aircraft’s infrared search and track. The grey-white vision was his sole view forward. His seat in the Vindicator didn’t really have much of a canopy, just a sunroof. Bootleg and Connie could claim five kills from six Sparrows. This was their first combat flight, and they were already aces, and the day was not over yet.
“Splash two!” You could tell that Connie was grinning, and so was Bobby. He relished the kill even though he was a God-fearing Catholic, like all his family. His hands did the Devil’s work, but these Nazi bastards had killed Joe in ‘43 and nearly killed Kick.
His mother's cries when the Navy man had come to their door still haunted him. He remembered how his father looked at him. Bobby and his father never got along, but he could read every unspoken word on his tear-streaked face and quivering lips. His father wished that it had been him—not Joe. Bobby had dedicated himself to one task. He would avenge his brother—not for his bastard father but for his mother. He knew it would not bring her peace, but there was no peace to be had, only war.
The voice of their squadron commander, Captain Dick “Akagi” Best, came over their radio frequency, “Packard One, Felix One. Grandslam. Requesting picture.”
“Felix One, P-Packard One.” Their Army Air Forces talker could barely hide his stress. “Wait one.” There was a painful pause, “Felix One, that is non-advisable. We’ve got a wall of bandits here. Uh-we, we are tracking at least three-nine-seven, hold on, four-six-four bandits. Wait one. We’re trying to clear our own picture.”
“Hot diggedy darn.” Connie groused on the aircraft’s intercom. They kept pointing toward Denmark. They had work to do, but parsing through the sea of contacts was hard enough. It was like finding a needle in a haystack.
Another pause lasted three minutes, “Packard, care to give us a bogey dope?”
“Hold on, Dick—Felix One,” there was another awkward pause as the Black Cats slowed and formed up. “Felix One, Packard. Target. Designate… Group two-three. Hostile, four-six contacts, Farmdart Dog. Bearing, bullseye one-three-zero. Range, one-five-one. Angels, three-two. Flanking southwest. Speed one-two-one-five.” Four squadrons of Nazi manned rockets, their Starfighter, were coming out to greet them.
“Packard, time to intercept?”
“Felix, ETI, five minutes.”
“Felix One, Firebreak One.” It was VFQ-33’s skipper, Commander Wallace F. Short. “Music is on, Akagi. We can lure them off you but burn through in… two-four-nine seconds. Don’t let ‘em splash us, Dick.” Short and Best had both been at Midway when the Navy had sunk three and damaged three more of the IJN’s eight big flattops. They were the old hands in a new war.
“Firebreak One, just keep the music on. I’ll buy ya a boilermaker in the O-Club.”
One of the other Black Cats called out on the net, designating a target. The aircraft had a limited ability to share illumination, allowing aircraft to share targets. Bobby chattered with the other RIOs to find the remaining Ju 390E Melon AWACS. They had snapped the tip of the Luftwaffe’s spear, and now they would take their eyes, or they’d be cats caught in a rat trap.
“Got ‘em, Boot?” Connie pressed. His breathing was heavy, rasping over the intercom.
Bobby’s mind was on his work. His eyes raced down a list of signature patterns that had been in the mission brief. It was their latest and best intelligence; letting it fly had been a gamble. Make it count, Bobby. He double-checked the other RIO’s work as he ranked the targets on his TID. A stopwatch, Joe’s stopwatch, was clasped in his palm.
“Think so…” Bobby answered as six high-power radars came alive over Jutland. Two of their guesses had been wrong, but now they knew. Dumb bastards.
Akagi came back, “That’s it, drop ‘em, boys.” The battle cry of Fox Three echoed from a dozen Vindicators as forty-eight AIM-47 Super Falcon active-seeker long-range air-to-air missiles surged toward Occupied Europe. Three failed to accept guidance from their launch aircraft’s AN/AWG-4 fire control radar as forty-five punched up to Mach 4 and soared up into the sky, disappearing into the clouds.
Bobby started the stopwatch. “This is for you, Joey,” he whispered.
“Felix One, this is Packard One. Firebreak diverting northeast.” The EW birds from VFQ-33 were turning and running. “ETI, three minutes. Position, zero-seven-seven. Range, five-eight. Angels, three-five. Flanking northwest.”
“One to group, break and engage on my mark. I’ve had it to here with this noise.” Best had hands of steel and was asking the same of his men. They were going to keep their noses, and their radars pointed toward Denmark to let their missiles get closer before they went pitbull and turned on their own seekers. Even as the Nazis barreled down on them, there was only an electromagnetic blanket preventing their demise at the hands of a bevy of missiles—one that was being stripped away every moment.
Every second felt like an epoch. The volume of his own breath nearly deafened Bobby. The silence was violent in its unpleasantness—an unwelcome, unraveling calm before the storm. The missiles were halfway over Jutland when their seekers turned active.
“Pitbull. Break.” Best’s voice did not falter. The Black Cats wheeled like the heavy horse of ages past. Connie pushed the nose up as he broke right and lifted the aircraft into an intense turn. The experienced pilot broke etiquette and shouted, “TALLY HO!”
Bobbie was slammed into his seat as he pressed his transmitter, “Packard One-Four, Felix Nine. Bogey Dope.”
Before one of the air controllers could answer, another aviator screamed over the squadron net, “SPIKE! MUD! THAT’S DANCEHALL! MUSIC’S GONE! ” Ground-based radars had burned through VFQ-33’s area jamming and had acquired them with their search radars.
“Felix, defend south, eleven missiles, bearing nine-three. Turntable.” The voice of the controller on Pontiac was stern and cold. He was no longer sweating the wall of Nazi jets. The squadron broke south, and they switched on their defensive jammers. The Nazi’s SA/L-5 was mostly a danger to slow movers at this range, but if the Luftwaffe could fire eight missiles, they would fire eight dozen if you gave them the opportunity. Bobby snapped awake Irish Goodbye’s AN/ALQ-7 DAPER self-defense jammer.
Hope this damn contraption works. He looked down at his watch. One minute and fifty-eight seconds. Their Falcons should have reached their targets. May chaos reign in the Devil’s Hall.
MESSERSCHMITT Me 304G-6 STERNENKÄMPFER, II22/35I, No. 9574
OVER THE NORTH SEA, APPROX. 85 NMI WEST OF ESBJERG, REICHSKOMMISSARIAT DÄNEMARK
OBERLEUTNANT HANS SCHENCK, LUFTWAFFE
3 STAFFEL, GRUPPE I, JAGDGESCHWADER 22
1042 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945
“MEIN GOTT! EMILE! SCHEISSEEEEEAAAUUUGGGGHH—” The voice of the Ju 390E’s fighter director faded, replaced with the deafening sounds of shearing metal before a sickening pop and haunting static. A hiss that followed horror like a shadow.
Schenck looked down at his instruments. His eyes glazed over with fear. His gruppe had been chosen to sortie and engage the presumed American fighter wing operating west of Jutland. They were supposed to reinforce the Dobermänner fighting beneath the coward’s cloud of electric jamming.
Now there was only a desolate quiet on I Gruppe’s frequency. He switched his second preset channel, the Geschwhader frequency. There was only silence. He switched to the third and final preset, the emergency ground control director. The wall of noise made Schenck wince. He couldn’t make out any one voice, only a chorus of panic and desperation—full of rage and curses. There was a single desperate voice mewling for calm and order.
Scheiße. He switched the radio back to the gruppe channel and was treated to his Staffelkapitän swearing at the Gruppenkommandeur. “YOU JEW-DOG, YOU DID THIS! YOU BASTARD! YOU COWARD!”
“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! GET OFF THE AIR, YOU PIG-BRAINED SHIT EATER!” The Major shouted in response. “Bavarian cow-fucker.” He seethed into silence, “Alright. One-Red and Four-Yellow activate your radars. Let’s see if we can find anything. No, verdammt electrics. Everyone energize your—” His voice cut off just as Schenck did as he was ordered.
The radar defaulted to search, 90° arc out to a range of 60 kilometers. Nothing. His breathing picked up. They were being vectored to intercept the American fighters, but there was nothing. How could there be nothing? They had the best fighters in the world. The best pilots in the world. The Dobermänner must’ve already broken the Yankee’s nose. This couldn’t happen. The Allied dogs could not hope to match the Reich. The war had changed in ‘43. They were going to win. They had to win. The Reich would not lie.
Schenck looked up and right toward the center of their formation. They were arrayed into four lines, about three hundred meters of altitude separating each Staffel. There was a smudge of black smoke. Schenk was no ace. He was no Red Baron or Hartmann. But he had seen enough combat over the eastern killing fields to know what that was.
Oh no. Engine burst.
The improved G model of the Me 304, with its larger shoulder-mounted wings, was an excellent fighting aircraft. The Junkers-RVO Jumo 79 turbojet, however, did still have the issue of detonating toward the end of its 400-hour depot service interval.
The radio was filled with swearing as voices cut each other off.
“Damnit! Anyone see a chute?”
“Was that a fish?” There were no contrails—the clouds were dense but grey enough that spotting a white dinner plate-diameter missile was possible. The aviator’s heart and eyes raced as they darted from side to side and down to his radar. Still nothing.
“Fish in the air?” The air seemed to tighten as the aircraft in the Staffel started to jink and put space between each other.
“My ex-wife says nothing! Anyone see any incoming?” Schenck double-checked his instruments. His aircraft’s forward and rear radar warning receivers were cold. That did nothing to ease his nerves—they weren’t reliable to begin with.
“I see a chute!”
“My radar has nothing! Where are these basta—” The voice was cut off as Schenck watched a white-metal dart race against a petrified-grey sky coming from the left.
There was no shrieking cry from the plane’s ex-wife. They had no side-aspect RWRs; such luxury was reserved for formations like Jagdgeschwader 52.
“FISH IN THE AIR! EVADE!” The gruppe’s adjutant howled into the radio before his aircraft came loose around him. The formation shattered like crystal glass. A dozen jets hurtled lifelessly toward the water as the others broke and dove away.
Flares and chaff exploded outward from the defending jets, screaming away from the scene of a murder. A third of their number, gone in an instant. When did their damned Flak-Raketen get this good? His Rottenführer’s aircraft was sheared in half, a mess of flame and broken metal. It plunged toward the sea before Schenk could react. His schwarm jinked left and down. He followed.
The adjutant did his best to reorganize the disordered fighters, howling into the radio. Their assailants did not remain hidden for long, which was odd. The Allies usually hid behind the horizon and their cowardly jamming. These ones came barreling out of the clouds, turning from specks into screaming devils. It was a squadron of de Havilland-English Electric Lightnings. Where are the Americans? The Starfighters punched into full reheat, their forward radar warning receivers screaming as loud as their engines.
The pilots bayed for blood as they released a wave of L-3 ‘Große Hati’ (Ru 311 X-7) semi-active missiles. Each Me 304G had three of the larger L-3 and a pair of smaller, newer infrared L-5 ‘Kleine Hati’ (Hs 307 X-9) heat seekers. Half of the Lanzenreiter went wide as a wave of jamming blinded their fire control radars.
The British aircraft continued to accelerate as they dumped chaff and fired back. The Anglo was still outnumbered by more than two to one but continued to close.
Schenk’s rear-aspect RWR lit up red. Its razor-sharp tone pierced straight through the headphones of his leather aviator’s cap. Well… shit. It switched from an air search alert to a fire control lock in a blink. The adjutant and Staffelkapitäne howled orders once more as his own aircraft bayed at him in a mix of tones and warnings. Their idyllic wedge of Prussian lancers once more turned to a swirling, diving mess of contrails, Düppel, and flares.
There was no grace or honor here.
Gravity strained Schenk as he pushed his aircraft to the limit to keep up with his rotte leader. They dove north before swinging south, nearly colliding into a schwarm from 2 Staffel—they had not been without a director for years. Schenk had only ever known the voice of a man in a Kran or in a bunker, vectoring him to an unsuspecting Red Air Force flight. He had always been the hunter. Now, he was prey.
Schenk dumped his remaining chaff. A Sparrow went wide astray for a moment before it snapped back to its senses. It came back around, proving itself more maneuverable than any rocket Schenk had seen. It acquired his rotte leader, who entered a jink without saying anything. The move forced Schenk to push his aircraft closer to the missile, which streaked over his canopy before the white spear detonated just under the leader’s right wing.
Schenk could not react before the frag impacted the front of his aircraft, shredding his radar and puncturing his body like a duck at a hunt. Every muscle tensed and flexed. The pain was sharp—white hot—before it overwhelmed his nervous system. The husk of his rotte leader’s Sternerkämpfer lifted up and seemed to float in place long enough to cleave his left wing off, detonating the Baby Hati on his wingtip.
His aircraft hurled into a flat spin. He felt himself fading into the shock that gripped his body. Ardenline snapped enough life into him to keep himself awake. He gave it opposite rudder, killed the engine, and a second later hit the drogue chute.
Blood flowed down his flight suit and over his seat. His head bobbed as red drops hit the front of the canopy. He had done his best to recover from the spin, and his aircraft was suspended in the air, descending with all the grace of a brick.
His eye caught the mirror on his canopy ribs. A pig-nosed pot-bellied Lightning was chasing after an easy kill, him. The cannon burst turned the aft quarter of his jet into tatters, yet it remained in one piece. His aircraft was an older airframe, built when the Reich’s metallurgy was at its prime.
A round of 30-millimeter detonated above his shoulder, just level with the neck. The frag and explosion removed a grapefruit chunk of flesh from where his collarbone and shoulder met. It tore the left side of his face as if he had been dragged on gravel. He felt blood pour down his face. His eye hung down on its nerve, tapping the side of his oxygen mask like a pendulum. Like one final insult, a large piece of shrapnel, probably from his own aircraft, severed his right hand at the wrist, leaving it dangling, clasped around the yoke.
The aircraft rolled left. He could no longer command his body, let alone his aircraft. He was master of nothing, not even his own expiration. His head was pointed to the west. A massive aircraft he had never seen before dove like a vulture after him. He still could not understand how this had happened.
FLIEGERHORST 8I—CELLE-WIETZENBRUCH
SOUTHWEST OF CELLE, EASTERN HANNOVER, GREATER GERMAN REICH
HAUPTMANN JOCHEM KOPP, LUFTWAFFE
FLIEGERHORSTKOMMANDANTUR CELLE
1145 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945
"I DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR HOSES. GET THEM FUELED! IF YOU CANNOT GET THAT TRUCK STARTED, GET FUCKING SOME HORSES! I NEED THEM IN THE AIR! NOW!” Captain Jochem Kopp was in a fit of fury. The work before him and the airfield command unit was immense, and they had no time to spare. They had not even gotten a warning. The order was “go.” So, they were going. He felt his voice turn hoarse from shouting and felt sweat soaking through his uniform from sprinting. This is not how I wanted to spend my birthday.
Celle-Wietzenbruch was one of the Luftwaffe’s most prized possessions—a 1st Class aerodrome. It was home to Jagdgeschwader 1 and their Sternerkämpfer, a pilot school with a capacity of 400, and a technical campus with a capacity of 1600. They put their squadron of alert fighters into the air within two minutes. They were preparing I/JG 1 and III/JG 1 for a minimal interval take-off—a procedure they had only practiced at half this scale, but their orders were clear—send everything up and let the Krans and the Graðr Gau Operation Centers deal with them.
“HAUPTMANN!” A voice cried, Kopp pivoted on his feet and found a mechanic with a grease-smeared face waving at him from beside a nearby telephone box, the receiver wedged between his ear and shoulder, “IT’S BASE CONTROL. ADJUTANT GROSSE! URGENT!”
Kopp took a deep breath and once again broke into a sprint, only taking a moment to curse silently at his leather riding boots. “Kopp here. What is it, Major?”
“We’ve just lost Warden One, Three, Four, Seven, Eight, and Eleven. Ground control is overwhelmed. I need you here to put together a fighter director team. Get students from the school if you have to. We just—”
“AIR RAID!” A voice shouted from somewhere on the other line. “Batteries engaging. They’re too low! And fast!”
Kopp winced as Major Grosse dropped the phone. His voice became distant, “Scheiße, where are my Fliegerfaust teams? Get them deployed now… Damned Allied dogs.”
“We need to get the aircraft airborne!” Kopp shouted into the handset
Grosse picked up on his end, “What? No! They aren’t fueled!” A tremor of anger and fear reverberated in his voice. A K-75 (Pm 301 V-5) launch interrupted Grosse, one of the 10-meter-long missiles shot into the air in a plume of white smoke. More followed as Celle-Wietzenbruch’s three K-75 Wesser and K-125 (Pm 333 V-12) missile batteries began to scream into the sky. “Jochim, are you there?” The base’s adjutant pleaded as Kopp dropped the phone and sprinted toward the flight line.
The taxiways were loaded with Sternerkämpfer ready to launch as the ground crews finished readying the stragglers. He waved his arms and screamed at the top of his lungs, “GO! GO! RED START! RED START! GO, YOU BASTARDS!”
He saw the first Allied jet come over the horizon. It was unlike any aircraft Kopp had seen before—a blunted nose, a single underslung jet engine, and stubby delta wings. It took him a second to realize it wasn’t an aircraft. There was no cockpit.
What the fuck is that? Amerikanischer Maikäfer?
The weapon rolled onto its back and disgorged a continuous volley of small bomblets as it streaked down the runway. A second later, there were a pair of sonic booms.
Two?
He looked to his right and saw another missile moving perpendicular to the first. A third, on a parallel course to the second, came past. For a moment, the air was filled with spinning green tins and lily-white parachutes. There were hundreds of them. It almost looked like something out of a parade.
The second weapon slammed straight into the main base complex building. The tins came down and started to explode. One took out a fuel truck which burst into a cherry red fireball as the others produced smokey puffs of death. The third weapon slammed home. Jochim saw smoke rising from the technical campus. The first missile exploded a second later, no doubt at the pilot school.
His mind raced as he looked hopelessly at the flight line. The pilots froze as ground crew ran for cover. He watched the first Starfighter explode. The secondary explosion knocked him down, and he watched the chain reaction of fire and steel tear down the taxiway. Other aircraft at other points of the lines exploded. They burst like balloons. All of them were loaded with jet fuel, missiles, and cannon rounds. The ground crew ran straight into mines. They were torn apart. Bits of man and a storm of blood joined with raining jet fuel and aircraft parts. Shrapnel filled the air, singing a soprano ballad of woe as they whistled overhead. Smoke started to fill the sky as the base’s fuel began to burn.
The first two pilots tried to take off, only to see the runways smashed by the parachute bombs. Dozens of craters cracked through the concrete, leaving jagged heaves lifting into the air. The first Me 304 was struck directly by one of the mines and disappeared in a flash of fire. The gear of the second dipped into a crater and sent the rocketship-shaped fighter rolling down the runway before it burst into flames.
Barely thirty seconds ago, the air base was a testament to the Reich’s power. Now, it was a smoking charnel house covered in mines and cracked concrete. Blood flowed from Kopp’s ears, debris coated the ground, and shrapnel had torn his clothes. The captain moved to get on his feet. He kicked something. Something metallic.
Schieße.
NORTH AMERICAN F3J-3 VINDICATOR, IRISH GOODBYE, #90021 / AK 209
OVER THE NORTH SEA, APPROX. 95 NMI WEST OF ESBJERG, REICHSKOMMISSARIAT DÄNEMARK
ENSIGN ROBERT “BOOTLEG” KENNEDY, USN (GSF)
FIGHTING SQUADRON THIRTEEN
1044 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945
“Fox Two!” Connie growled through gritted teeth. An AIM-9 came loose and bisected the Farmdart hanging from a drogue. It disintegrated without pomp or circumstance. This was not a dime-store serial. It was cold and dull. Flames, flesh, and falling steel rained around them toward an uncaring sea in a dreary sky.
That makes nine. They had four more Sidewinders left.
“BLOODY GOOD HUNTING!” A British voice cried out over the tactical radio channel—out of proper etiquette.
“Last aircraft, state callsign,” an annoyed Best growled in response.
“This is Red Martlet leader. You that rotten-mean Super Force?”
“Martlet Red One, this Pontiac One Actual. Stow that chatter. Pertinent transmissions only.” Their talker bird’s commander was on the net and did not sound pleased.
“It is bloody pertinent!” Crowed the Brit.
“Is this guy really arguing with a full-bird Valk?” Connie asked over the intercom.
“Sure seems like it,” Bobby answered.
“Store that noise.” The colonel seethed, “Felix, Martlet Red. Divert east. Bullseye 107. Full burner. 100-plus bandits are on track for intercept. We’re working on vectoring the 55th F-G and 376th F-G your way, but we’re still talking with their talker birds. Martlet Red, what is your fuel state?”
“Pontiac, Martlet Red. Ten minutes at full reheat. We need gas—and quick.”
“Affirm, Martlet Red. N-K-A-W-T-G. We’ve got tanker birds at Staging Point Niagara.”
“N-K-A-W-G-T? What is that tripe? When will you Yanks learn to speak words and not letters!”
The colonel replied the second after Red One finished speaking, “Right after we stop taking your dates for a drink.” The British commander didn’t reply.
The haphazard Allied formation turned toward the cavalry as two more fighter groups came screaming out from the other side of the Atlantikwall. They’d killed two fighter groups but didn’t have the fuel or ordnance to take on two more.
A few minutes later, the talker bird came back, alerting them of incoming friendlies. Crossing the horizon were two massive squadrons of F-98 Crusaders. The olive-drab fighters, with their hapless smile, came streaking overhead. They were armed to the teeth—a pair of Sidewinders on each cheek, their innermost weapon station had drop tanks, and there were Sparrows on the other four pylons.
“Happy Hunting! Give ‘em what for!” Akagi transmitted over the tactical frequency, “Enough game for everyone today.”
Another few minutes later, the Lightnings and Vindicators started to see the Allied pickets as they rocketed toward SP Niagara over Devil’s Hole. They were the 55th’s third squadron, more Crusaders. Bobby almost felt bad for them, that they were the ones left to hold down the fort. Maybe their time will come too.
The group flew through one last bank of clouds before they crested into the sunlight. The first sunlight they had seen in hours.
Staging Point Niagara was busy, filled with gleaming silver metal at work. A dozen KC-97 Stratotankers were partially occupied filling aircraft of various makes, mostly American F-100 Super Sabres, but there were a few of the RAF’s new Cyclone fighter-bomber, which they had rushed into production after the US had refused to export the F-110 Spectre. A set of six EC-121 Warning Stars made lazy circles in the sky as a pair of KC-132 Globemaster IIs approached from the north to refuel the KC-97s. It was an airport in the sky and a watchtower stationed to stop any German attempt that tried to interdict the stream of Allied aircraft heading to reinforce the fight over Norway.
BOEING B-52B STRATOFORTRESS, UNSTOPPABLE III, #44-83938 / L3 40 SBW
NEAR TØNSBERG, REICHSKOMMISSARIAT NORWEGEN
CAPTAIN HENRY “HAL” GRAHAM, USAAF
535th BOMBARDMENT SQUADRON, 381st COMBAT BOMBARDMENT GROUP (VERY HEAVY)
1152 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945
Captain Hal Graham pulled his yoke back forcefully. His Big Ugly Fat Fucker’s eight engines were using the last of their water injection to give him every ounce of thrust as they rocketed up from below the radar horizon up to launch altitude. He looked at his altimeter. It read 33,324 feet. Only a little more.
“Little John, you ready back there?” He asked over the intercom, his voice shaking a bit. God, he was nervous.
“Everything is warmed up. Just give the word, skipper,” his bombardier replied.
Hal looked out the window and saw the air dancing with chaff. “How’s our eck-me holding up?” Trusting electrics was still madness—but they had no other option.
“Green! No way they can spike us. Firebees are putting out a whole lot of music,” his ECM officer shouted from the compartment behind the cockpit.
They hit 40,000 feet. Ahead of them, the previous flight of bombers was turning back toward Scotland, entering a shallow dive. He took a gulp of air, “John—hit it!”
“Weapons release! Bay opening!”
The aircraft lurched right and then left as the two pylon-mounted AGM-22B Orion air-launched ballistic missiles released, and their rocket motors ignited. They soared out into the clouds. The bomb bay opened a moment later, and the painfully slow process of deploying their payload of 8 AGM-42C Popeye missiles began.
“One away.” The aircraft shook, “Two away."
AGM-42 Popeye was a semi-ballistic inertially guided missile with a 300-mile range and a 1500-pound payload, procured under the HAVE SLEEP program. In this case, Unstoppable III’s cans of spinach were packed with 1500-pound penetrators.
“Foe Hammer Group, Chevrolet Two Three. Red Blow Through. Bandits bulleye, 1-5-9. Range, 3-1. Angels, 30. Speed, 1000. Hot. Say again. Hot. Nine contacts, Farmdart. Foe Hammer Disengage. Steer left for 3-4-0. Turntable. Anvil Frost is vectoring to defend.” This WASP Valk captain had been directing for the entire day and had remained calm and collected, though she told just them that Nazi jets had broken through and were heading to kill them.
How come we get to deal with the only sonsabitches not dumb enough to dive into a furball?
“Three away.”
“Negat, Chevrolet Two Three. This is Foe Hammer Six. Not giving up my run. Krauts can chew on it.” Not only did he want to complete the mission, but he also didn’t want to lug his payload of guided missiles back to Iceland. “Richardson! Son, get ready on that egg-beater!” The BUFF’s lone gunner was back alongside his ECM sergeant and controlled the M6A3 rotary cannon in their empennage by radar alone. “Handy, you got that noise on?”
“Yessir, music’s on!” the ECM man answered.
“Four away… Five away.”
As each missile dropped, their electric brains were updated with a precise location reference that the plane received from a magnetic navigation system aboard an RC-125 RIVET SIGHT at Staging Point Helmcken.
“Hell, me neither. Come and take it!” It was the voice of Foe Hammer Eight, the B-52 on his right. The rest of the squadron started squawking, they weren’t going to bail.
“Six away.”
“Last aircraft, state callsign,” The valk’s voice was smooth as ice, and just as cold.
"Seven away.”
The Texan at the helm of Eight was a man who Hal always thought had a few screws loose. It wasn’t much of a surprise when he answered with, “Can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man!”
“Eight away,” his bombardier chimed. “Bay doors closing… and closed!”
“Check’s here. Let’s dash!” Hal and his co-pilot began to turn their whale of a ship around, “Foe Hammer Six, Winchester. Breaking off.”
The three-ship flight of bombers turned away. Another three were climbing behind them, ready to take their place. The air vibrated with the sound and the movement of millions of dollars worth of munitions, hurtling toward Nazi Germany and Occupied Sweden. The target list was longer than Hal’s arm. His bomber’s targets were at a Nazi mine complex in Sweden, something about bunkers that made use of special dirt for computers. He fell asleep after hour one of the briefing and had been woken up, rather rudely, for hour three.
“Foe Hammer, Chevrolet Two Three. Bandits are splashed. I’ve a message for youse,” the Valk’s New Jersey accent crept through a practiced professionalism, “‘Send beers to 82nd F-I-S.’” Graham could hear her smile. He did as well. It was a damned sight better price than dying, “You’re cleared to Staging Point Victoria along Corridor Easy Tare Sugar Three One Six. Maintain 400 knots.”
LOCKHEED-GRUMMAN F-27B BLACKCAT, DIVORCE PAPERS, #200121 / NM 101
NEAR KARLSTAD, REICHSKOMMISSARIAT SCHEWDEN
COMMODORE HENRIETTA “BUNS” NAKAMURA, USN (CTF)
DEPUTY COMMANDER, AIR GROUP, CARRIER AIR DIVISION THIRTEEN / MISSION COMMANDER, JACK KNIFE
1152 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945
The weather was downright awful. Flurries and pea soup. It was actually worse than what the weather nerds had estimated, that made Commodore Nakamura smile. This was just about the worst weather to fly through, which is exactly what they wanted. She took a deep breath under her air mask, she was nervous. Everyone was rusty, even her. The last time she had flown in something Pre-Departure was in ‘43. She had spent most of the last year flying Crusaders over the Volga before the Old Lady had blighted her with a star. She relieved and annoyed that she wasn’t flying—but she had a bigger role today, flying Sicko in the Basement of an F-27B Blackcat.
Only douchebags fly this shitbox. Guess I’m a douchebag now.
The bird was the squadron commander’s bird, the three seat variant of the Navy’s F/A-XX super predator. She was lucky that the CO of Fighter Squadron 191, Command Jack “Hoshi” Wigbrand, was a decent guy—even if he was a bit weird. She had taken his seat and he was riding wizzo—in the seat of a dead man. His Wizzo had gotten himself killed on a IRON HAND mission over Bourges.
It felt odd. She wasn’t a pussy driver. Her old ride, As Per My Last Email, was an Ultra Hornet but it had been lost to a bird strike last January; just two days after Buns had her F-98 Crusader, Comedy of Errors, shot out from underneath her above Stalingrad. That was a shitty week. Despite the fact Buns was locked inside the of fuselage of the aircraft without so much as window she had a better view than Hoshi and their pilot, Lieutenant Greighson “DASZON” Bartol, and their wondrous sapphire-lined canopy. She had CrystalDome—the Enhanced Controller Operational Environment System—which made the made EOTS and EODAS of the rest of the fleet look like a shitty Snapchat filter.
ECOES combined with the F-27B’s PYTHIA computer allowed Buns to look in any direction and see the outside world in 16k. She was in a glass bubble, a human placed into a super information bubble. The Basement earned its name because early model F-27s had solely relied on an augmented reality headset in a capsule light by two small main displays. Apparently, “being stuck in a zero natural light cave while going Mach 2.5” was unpopular. The CrystalDome was not for everyone. Buns has know more than one aviator or NFO who qualified for NGAD-N, only to have overwhelming vertigo and motion sickness once in the Basement. It was a bit too Minority Report for her, even if she’d never actually seen the movie, just a gag from an episode of American Dad she’d binged after being wounded in 2038 after getting into a tussle with a squadron of J-35s.
Currently, Buns’ eyes were locked onto a couple of highlighted red outlines about 25,000 feet above their formation—the last element of the final squadron of Sweden-based Me 304s. Don’t look down, Hans. Not that he’d see anything if he did. The Nazi jocks would never know that there had been 113 fast movers right under their noses.
She kept her eye on the radar and their location as spoke on the radio, “Crystal Ball to Div. Two minutes.” They were approaching their release point. They needed to get clear of those Starfighters before they made a sharp, short climb to altitude to give their standard ordnance additional range—then the fun would begin.
Operation JACK KNIFE was the largest concentration of OLYMPIAN airpower since Operation LEVIATHAN in December 1942, when the CTF unleashed an Alpha Strike on Truuk. Since then, the CTF had never operated more than a few flights at any one time. Spare parts were tight, and personnel were in high demand. The planning for this mission, under the wonderful name ARGENT PIXIE, had begun in September 1944. The run-up allowed AIRCERFOR to gather eleven squadrons: two F-27A/B Blackcat, four F-35F Panther II, three F/A-18H Wasp, and two EA-18R Howler.
“Daszon, Hoshi, it’s time. Let’s kick it!” Nakamura hit a physical button beside her PYTHIA display. It transmitted the same signal to each ship in JACK KNIFE, a one word message. Cassandra.
Go time.
Buns was pressed into her seat as the Blackcats’s pair of A100-GE-103 variable cycle engines went afterburning and cranked up to their max thrust, a combined total of 104,243 pounds. The NGAD-Ns came screaming out of the clouds first, followed by the Panthers and then the Ultras and their Howler sisters.
“Hoshi…” Buns started as they rocketed up.
“Nada.” He took a deep breath, “Lot of search. Nothing at us—yet.”
The Blackcat was a rocket ship, but the Panther, Wasp, and Howler weren’t slouches either. The Panther, particularly. It outwardly looked like an F-35 Charlie, but it was totally redesigned to utilize the next generation of advanced carbon composite, high entropy alloys, and ceramic matrix variable cycle engines. The Wasp, and its airborne electronic attack derivatives, could in theory beat a Panther—but not today. Having a main weapons bay with three AGM-158s came with trade-offs—and that wasn’t even counting the six weapons pylons loaded with stores.
PYTHIA had synced the radars and EO-DAS from the entire group to give her a clear picture of the skies for hundreds of miles. Buns had a crystal ball in her hands and a magic mirror on the wall. They had a better picture of what was happening to the Luftwaffe than the Luftwaffe—the benefits of a sensor supercluster.
There was pandemonium in the air and panic on the ground. The EW sniffers would record every transmission for the intel guys to chew through. Holding patterns were drifting toward each other. Hundreds of aircraft that should be heading to the furball over Southern Norway were burning fuel and waiting for more orders. The Sector/Gau Operations Centers had not received the order to move to their hardened shelters—if they even had them. Good. The mess turned even more chaotic as the BUFFs from FREIGHT TRAIN slung their regards at volumes that made Buns blush. Bold Orion was getting one hell of an opening number.
The Gennies ALBMs would hit targets deep in the Reich—especially their synthetic proppant refinery in Silesia. Their Popeye SLAMs were aimed at the Grängesberg-Blötberget REE complex, which was probably the Nazis’ most coveted asset outside of the Reich Defense Organization’s main facility at Peenemünde. They had taken over Sweden for it, and now—hopefully—they were going to lose it.
Hoshi, despite his squadron billet, was running Wizzo for Buns, an impressive act of humility. Especially since the Blackcat clan were usually the most condescending of douchenozzles. They called themselves Tomcat Eaters and were so shoved up their own asses that they burnt tongue on stomach acid. Buns, by trade, was a mere Ultra peasant to them. “Okay, we’re starting to get hit with search, concentrating on the Wasps. Not serious yet.”
Buns grimaced, “That’ll be the external stores.” It was to be expected, but so far, the Nazis had not demonstrated the capability to track Cert aircraft, with the exception of some short-range OLYMPIAN-grade air defense systems at critical nodes near Berlin, Grängesberg-Blötberget, Peenemünde, and the Ruhr.
She started scrolling through the aerial targets and tallying priority. She had a dozen Foxbats circling just north of Flensburg. They have to go. There was a pair of Melon AWACS taking off from their airbase near Schwerin.
“Okay, we’re getting a lot more X and S-Band our way. Increasing in power, they’ve got the scent.” Hoshi calmly relayed as JACK KNIFE wordlessly split from a single column into three wedges.
“Here we go.” Buns clicked away at her station before she hit transmit. The order was six words in all. The words were so sweet in her mouth that a smile creased her face under her mask, “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings.”
A dozen EA-18R fired up their CATARINA jamming pods. The electromagnetic hell-storm they unleashed on Europe jammed everything from PESA radars to shortwave radio. The “Ultra Hornet” might have been the Naval dump truck of the 2040s—but it had power for days and could sling more rock ‘n metal than a coked-up Atlas at a Foo Fighters concert. However, that still meant they had about five minutes at full tilt.
It took a second for PYTHIA to clear the fratricidal jamming, and she revealed just how they had kicked the nest. The lazy orbiters, free of their overwhelmed ground controllers, took no orders as an order to head north—at the same time.
Traffic, amirite?
As the Luftwaffe panicked and Graðr crumbled under its own weight, the Certs made use of their Sunday Punch. Weapons bays and pods opened. They let slip the dregs of their pre-Departure arsenal. Everything that hadn’t been bookmarked for emergencies or development programs. It was a motley wall of hurt, mostly AGM-158F Common Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile mixed with AGM-189D Supersonic Common Attack Missile-Extended Range and AGM-188B Stand-in Attack Weapons.
Now that they’d handed off their housewarming basket, they just had to say hello to the Luftwaffe on their way home.
CONSOLIDATED-VULTEE F-106A DELTA DART, FOR DAN, 666-S6 / 44-27559
NORTH OF KRISTIANSAND, REICHSKOMMISSARIAT NORWEGEN
SENIOR FLIGHT OFFICER MARY-GENIEVE “JEZEBEL” LAROUX, USAAF (GSF)
666th FIGHTER-INTERCEPTOR SQUADRON (WOMAN), 666th FIGHTER GROUP (INTERCEPTOR, WOMAN)
1207 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945
The furball extended for at least fifty miles along the sides of the compass and across no less than 25,000 feet of altitude. The aircraft dogfighting at 20,000 feet not only had to keep a bead on their targets but watch for falling wrecks coming down from 40,000 or 50,000 feet. The brawl had reached a steady state of about four-hundred aircraft on either side. The Huns were losing ‘sonics as fast as the CAAF was rotating squadrons out of the fray to get them gassed up at Staging Points off Norway.
The growl in her ear finally grew to an annoying, but satisfying, fevered pitch. Missy pulled the trigger on her yoke, and the Foxtrot Sidewinder accelerated off the rail. The Messerschmitt 304-E, one with enlarged centered-mounted wings, was being chased by no less than eight Sixes. He tried to dive away. The Krauts thought speed was the best defense—but you can’t dodge a Mach 2.5 missile in a rocket ship that isn’t even hitting Mach 1. Missy’s AIM-9 got him, detonating just behind the wing. The aircraft crumbled and tore into two large pieces. The rest of his squadron was rendered into a ticker-tape parade of broken steel and burning aluminum.
Are these bastards really the Luftwaffe? They can’t fly for shit.
“Broad One to Group.” It was Colonel Cochran, “Gather ‘round, ladies—Motor City has a whole mess of bandits heading our wa—Hell with that—Farmdarts three o’clock low. Devil, up and at ‘em!” Missy’s four-ship flight kicked into full burner and pushed into a steep dive. “Harpy, loop south and kick ‘em in the ass. Angel, get in there and clock those Fuldas! Those ‘saders boys need some help.” Missy just caught a glimpse of Colonel Cochran at the helm of her two-seater F-106B, screaming into full burner toward the Fuldas with the rest of the 667th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron.
Two squadrons of missile-armed Farmdart Ables were screaming after a squadron of F-98 Crusaders fighting a pair of Henschel Hs 283 Fulda squadrons. The Fulda was an ugly, barrel-shaped fighter that, despite its looks, was damn quick (for a subsonic) and agile. The jocks in the Crusaders were holding their own, taking their time, killing the Fuldas with boom and zoom. What in His good name was Jack chattering about? The talker birds and Valks had handed off terminal intercept to their squadron and group commanders with their back-seater combat-intercept controller-officers.
“Punch straight through them!” Missy cried on the tactical channel. The freak burst with voices the second after she finished.
They tore straight into a tiered wedge of Farmdarts, slinging more than just words, going faster than the speed of sound. The Krauts scattered like rats, having tunneled vision on the Crusaders, as the four Sixes cut straight through their formation. Missy put her ship right between the wings of the leading Me 304s, lighting off another all-aspect heater in the process.
Missy got one with guns. The burst from the M6A1 Gatling caught the rocket just to the rear of the canopy. The aircraft lost control and slammed into its wingman, both were consumed in a fireball—one that nearly caught Missy. The air was now alight with chaff and burning magnesium as American and German flares filled the air. The squadron punched through the Farmdarts and looped straight into the furball-within-a-furball as the 665th Fighter-Interceptor-Squadron came back down from the south after the scattered Messerschmitts, who were now easy pickings.
Missy, still at full burner, dipped under Cochran’s F-106B by feet and spat a burst at a Fulda, which went wide. She re-acquired another and pulled the trigger. This time the 20-millimeter rounds blasted the cockpit, which was glazed pink as the jet dropped into a shallow, listless dive toward the dirt.
Fifteen Nazi jets were splashed in the first thirty seconds of the engagement. Missy had gotten her fifth kill. She was an ace and had the gun-camera footage to prove it.
Allied command and control had been reigned back to a minimum—allowing pilots to scratch that dogfighting itch, but the Krauts seemed to have lost their minds. Missy watched a Me 304 try to win a turn fight against an F-106 from the 665th. They 665th gal immediately got on his tail and put a Sidewinder down his exhaust before he could even complete one circle. Really, who taught these jokers how to fly?
The chatter on the tactical radio was constant—dozens of voices—often cutting each other off. Missy focused on her surroundings and not the noise. She kept her energy up as she took another pass at a Fulda, but one of the Crusaders got it with his gun.
The Farmdarts, or what remained of them, were running. The Barrels kept fighting as their numbers dwindled. One was able to put a 25-millimeter Gaust-gun burst into a Crusader. The American pilot punched out just as the Fulda pilot lost track of the ball and slammed his flying barrel into the spinning F-98C.
The entire clash lasted maybe three minutes, but at the end, there was a lone Fulda running for the deck and five Farmdarts breaking into a full sprint. Only the Fulda and two of the Farmdarts managed to get away as Cochran called the group back to order. She herself was interrupted by a talker bird.
A distinctively British talker overrode their frequency, “Broad Group, this is Voxhall Three. Clear bore. Friendlies incoming. Steer left for 0-2-0, climb to angels 40.”
“Voxhall Three, Broad One. Wilco.” Jack was none too pleased.
The RAF fighter group came into view a few moments later. They had just completed their final leg of travel on their U-shaped course from England to Norway. It was a Hell of a sight. They were arranged in perfect lines, like a cavalry troop ready for the bugle call. They were clearly organized by squadron—seven in total—two of the new ‘sonic Hawker Cyclone, three of the mainline subsonic Hawker Hunter, and two of the chunky Supermarine Scimitar.
“Will you look at that? They finally deigned to show up,” Missy mused. She looked down at her instruments—checking her fuel—for a moment before she looked back and saw a sky crisscrossed with contrails racing south. “Jiminy Crickets! Volley fire!”
The British had unleashed their Sparrows in two massive volleyed launches—clearly, something was coming for a fight. She smiled. She didn't have much gas left but not nearly so little as to turn down a fight.
BOEING EC-125F SENTRY, SKYGUARD DE VILLE, 543-J1 / 44-13213
STAGING POINT CUMBERLAND, OVER THE NORTH SEA, APPROX. 50 NMI WEST OF BERGEN
LIEUTENANT GENERAL JAMES DOOLITTLE, USAAFR (GSF)
GENERAL COMMANDING, OPERATION NORTHERN WIND / CHIEF OF STAFF, ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY AIR FORCES
1211 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945
Jimmy Doolittle watched as the radar contacts on his display merged. It was a violent display of information—overpowering, really. It made him uncomfortable, actually. He almost knew too much. He felt like he was playing God or playing with tin soldiers, but it was real.
Seven hundred Luftwaffe fighters had given up on waiting for orders after they had lost their link to their ground controllers. They were heading for their fighters over Southern Norway. Thankfully the Luftwaffe’s attempts to vector fighters east, over Sweden, to bypass their fighter barrier had fizzled. The Nisei Spectres and Thuds had intercepted what few had gotten those orders.
The CAAF’s fighters had expended a lot of fuel and ordnance stopping the piecemeal attacks over the last half-hour. The BUFFs were finishing their runs and starting to head home, but they still needed to be protected. He would not allow the Allied Air Forces to suffer another Black Thursday.
He put on his headset and plugged it into the console, “Commodore Nasbee, do we have an idea of where JACK KNIFE is?” he asked via intercom.
“General, they’re still radio silent. We’re not getting much through their jamming, it’s all fratricidal, but we can’t help that right now, sir. Buns—Commodore Nakamura has a sense of drama, so she won’t be anything more than fashionably late.”
LOCKHEED-GRUMMAN F-27B BLACKCAT, DIVORCE PAPERS, #200121 / NM 101
NORTHWEST OF HALMSTAD, REICHSKOMMISSARIAT SCHEWDEN
COMMODORE HENRIETTA “BUNS” NAKAMURA, USN (CTF)
DEPUTY COMMANDER, AIR GROUP, CARRIER AIR DIVISION THIRTEEN / MISSION COMMANDER, JACK KNIFE
1224 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945
Missiles were in the air before verification that the order to engage had been sent to the rest of the aircraft popped up on Bun’s PYTHIA display. That made her chuckle. Four Raytheon AIM-300 Phoenix II Long Range Engagement Weapons dropped free from Divorce Papers’ own bay less than a second after she pressed send.
Thirsty are we? I mean, yes.
Two were aimed toward the steel funnel trundling toward Norway, which had already had their clock cleaned by the RAF—but there were still hundreds of the second-line fuckers in the air. Someone needs to even the odds. Plus, Buns had gotten the greenlight from Cat Mitscher, still AIR/CERFOR, to use what munitions they took off with. Buns would happily take ‘Smoke ‘Em if You’ve Got ‘Em’ and run with it.
Plus, killing Nazis made it easier for them to punch back home.
BOEING EC-125F SENTRY, SKYGUARD DE VILLE, 543-J1 / 44-13213
STAGING POINT CUMBERLAND, OVER THE NORTH SEA, APPROX. 50 NMI WEST OF BERGEN
LIEUTENANT GENERAL JAMES DOOLITTLE, USAAFR (GSF)
GENERAL COMMANDING, OPERATION NORTHERN WIND / CHIEF OF STAFF, ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY AIR FORCES
1225 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945
“Looks like one Hell of scrap is on us,” Doolittle noted to one of his Cert minders, Lieutenant Michelle Ro. She was at the station to his immediate right and had just finished a conversation with the skipper of an EC-121 talker bird and was now shifting down a list of who to call next.
“Sure sounds like it,” she didn’t even turn away from her screen, which was zoomed into a portion of the North Sea east of Aberdeen. Her voice was driving fighters from England along the sky bridge to Norway, ensuring the talkers handling the individual groups were working together and that no one was getting lost—or colliding.
Doolittle looked to his left to see his other minder, Senior Chief Petty Officer Leysohn Benton, go white. “Oh shit.”
“What is i—” Doolittle looked at his own screen to see dozens of missile contacts suddenly appear east of Jutland. “Oh shit.” He flatly answered his own question.
“Oh shit,” Ro chimed in, her screen reflecting the same data as Benton and Doolittle’s.
They were faster than anything he’d seen before, not American, nor German—almost certainly Cert. They call it OLYMPIAN for a reason, James. They raced across his display at Mach 4. That’s a lot of rockets, gee willikers.
“This Nakamura of yours sure knows how to make an entrance.”
CONSOLIDATED-VULTEE F-106A DELTA DART, FOR DAN, 666-S6 / 44-27559
NORTH OF KRISTIANSAND, REICHSKOMMISSARIAT NORWEGEN
SENIOR FLIGHT OFFICER MARY-GENIEVE “JEZEBEL” LAROUX, USAAF (GSF)
666th FIGHTER-INTERCEPTOR SQUADRON (WOMAN), 666th FIGHTER GROUP (INTERCEPTOR, WOMAN)
1226 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945
All out of Sparrows, but not out of the fight. Missy pulled the trigger, and the burst of 20-millimeter AP-I caught the nose of the Farmdart that was daring enough to enter into a head-on with her Six. The pilot punched out as his Me 304 tore itself apart. He came free less one leg. Sorry, Hans. Don’t be a Nazi next time.
The furball had gotten a lot smaller and a lot denser. She rolled her aircraft over into a dive and watched a Supermarine Scimitar collide into a He 279 Faucet ground attack aircraft, which for some reason, had joined an air battle. As Missy dodged jets, an Fw 324 Fauna nearly got on her tail, but it got jumped by a pair of supersonic F-100 Super Sabres. Their M3A9 revolver cannons blasted the twin-engined delta-wing multi-role attacker into bits. Missy had lost track of her flight in the confusion—and voice radio was no use.
She was nearly bingo fuel, her last sidewinder was a dud on its rail, and she had maybe two more bursts of 20-mike-mike left—but she did have nine kills.
As she looped down and around, cutting through the cloud of jetwash, chaff, flares, and zooming planes—she looked at the continuing stream of German fighters. They had the qualitative and quantitative edge—but fighters tanking at a staging point or trucking over the North Sea were of little more than emotional support when five Jagdgeschwahders rolled in all at once.
She let off one more burst of 20-mike-mike at a smoking Farmdart. The grey smoke turned an inky black, but it continued to limp away. Missy turned west and looked over her shoulder.
Six Farmdarts exploded at once. Then another five. Then an array of Nazi fast movers, little more than dots, turned into puffs of black smoke.
What in the hell?
LOCKHEED-GRUMMAN F-27B BLACKCAT, DIVORCE PAPERS, #200121 / NM 101
WEST OF KRISTIANSAND, REICHSKOMMISSARIAT NORWEGEN
COMMODORE HENRIETTA “BUNS” NAKAMURA, USN (CTF)
DEPUTY COMMANDER, AIR GROUP, CARRIER AIR DIVISION THIRTEEN / MISSION COMMANDER, JACK KNIFE
1228 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945
“LAS! LAS! LAS!” Nakamura painted the nearest Farmdart. It lasted two seconds before its main fuel tank ignited, and the aircraft crumbled and exploded.
The Blackcat’s 150 kW flashlight was the third most powerful airborne laser fitted to an aircraft in 2042, only surpassed by the Air Force’s LONE WARDEN 1500 kW laser fitted on a C-47 Dreamwarrior or the coke-fueled fever dream that was the PLAAF’s Laser Dragon 3000 kW laser fitted on a Comac CR 949.
LONE WARDEN had been close to a total failure; Yellowstone-class defense cruisers and Pallas-C missile batteries provided most of the homeland missile defense during Second Sino. The AL-2s sat on the tarmac like Dumbo without ears because of their constant issues with their power cells. That was still better than the Laser Dragon, as it exploded over the Forbidden City during President Xi’s birthday celebration in 2035.
As Buns acquired her next mark, Daszon howled, “Satan One, Fox Two!” An AIM-9Y Sidewinder Total Enhancement Package (STEP) came free from the bay and streaked after a Starfighter.
A scythe of ghost grey fury materialized in the clouds. Carrier Division Thirteen had fought this war by proxy, but no longer. They wracked up 174 kills in five minutes.
“Crystal Ball to div. RIP AND TEAR. KILL ‘EM ALL.”
Two of CVD-13’s elements turned left and hauled after the last elements of the Nazi reinforcements while Buns took her element—a squadron of Blackcats and three squadrons of Hotel Hornets—toward the furball.
She watched one enterprising Wasp driver descend on a Farmdart like a condor on a deer, letting off a long burst of etsy—electrothermal chemical—20-mike-mike, which sliced the Nazi F-104 in half. 20-millimeter AP-frag at 3 km/s will do that to ya.
Buns painted her next target, which disappeared into a ball of flames before bursting. The fight became a feeding frenzy as the Cert pilots tore apart the Luftwaffe. Buns began to pick off German jets that were ducking and diving in the furball.
Gennies, please, don’t light us the fuck up. That would be cringe.
COMBINED AIR OPERATIONS CONTROL, ALLIED AIR DEFENSE COMMAND
“MOUNTAINTOP,” CAMP GRIFFISS, BUSHY PARK DEFENSE ANNEX, RICHMOND-UPON-THAMES, UK
GENERAL OF THE ARMY FRANK M. ANDREWS, USAAF (GSF)
COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, COMBINED ALLIED AIR FORCES
1850 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945
Andrews clipped the end of a fresh cigar the commander of the Cuban Expeditionary Force had graciously gifted to him. He paid no mind to the main display as he struck a match and carefully lit the gran corona. He rose from his seat and stretched his back and neck before sitting back on the tabletop. The blue computer light reflected in the glazed painting hanging on the wall. It was the panorama of the Great War with the fall of the Red Baron at its center. It no longer felt inauspicious. Who the Hell decided on that painting anyway? Oh, it was Churchill, wasn’t it?
He exhaled a puff of smoke into a fine ring before rising to feet. He opened the glass door to the main floor.
“You can’t smoke here, sir.” Rear Admiral Jeung was already back to his antics.
“I am clearly not smoking, Admiral,” Andrews sternly replied. He took two more steps and scanned the room. Technically, he was not actively smoking the cigar, and the bastard Jeung had pulled enough stunts like that before. “How are we?”
“The staged withdrawal is going off without a hitch. Better than anyone expected. We haven’t got anyone on our heels. Somebody in Berlin finally pulled the plug.” Jeung almost sounded confused.
“Hmmm. What’s with the long face, Joseon?”
That landed like a slap on a date. Jeung looked at him as if the general was suffering moderate to severe rapid-onset mental retardation, “I’m from Torrance.” The entire room stopped working for a moment.
He heard someone behind him mutter, “Asshole.”
Evidently, he had been offensive. One never knew with the Certs, but they’d tell you when you did, “Oh, yes. Uh. Apologies. I didn’t take you for a Californian.” Andrews returned a confused, blank stare.
“I didn’t expect the Germans to give up and take the L.”
Andrews raised a quizzical eyebrow, “The L?”
“The loss,” Jeung answered.
“Ah.” Andrews hadn’t been one for understanding the Cert’s dialect, but he wasn’t that dense. “Well, we’ve gotta… grab that vee!”
“Uh…” Jeung scoffed awkwardly, “What kind of vee, sir?”
“Victory!” Andrews answered with a bit of petulance. It was obvious what he meant.
His adjutant leaned forward behind him, “The typical construction is double-u, for win.”
“Ah, well…” Andrews felt the back of his neck go red with a hint of embarrassment, “Nevertheless…”
“Yes, sir,” Jeung answered politely. He seemed to be holding in a smirk and a laugh.
“Combat assessment?”
“Our BDA people’ll need a week to gather the data, let alone process the stuff. But off the dome? We’re in the ballpark of a hundred losses on our side total, and no less than fifteen hundred on theirs—minimum. But, we have no solid idea of how many we got on the ground. I will say after JACK KNIFE’s ordnance started hitting targets—their SOCs shot down at least fifty of their own birds by accident.”
Andrews scoffed and then chuckled. “Heavens, we really turned their brisket.”
Jeung’s face turned stony, “You’ve gotta be punking me. No one says stuff like that.”
Andrews bristled at that comment, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Jeung.” He pinched his nose and sighed, “But you people did excellent work today, and none of this would’ve been possible without your people. So, thank you.” He paused for a moment and patted his stomach, “Pardon me, I am in need of a smoke, a shit, and a sandwich.” He would match the Cert’s frankness with his own, “Care to join me?”
“I, uh- generally don’t share a toilet with someone, but if—” Andrews raised a palm at the Cert, Jeung smiled and chuckled, “I still have work here, sir. But I appreciate the offer for dinner. If I may, we—my staff—were planning a Korean-style BBQ for later tonight or tomorrow if you care to join us.”
“That is most tempting, but I am quite famished—apparently, a pack of cigarettes isn’t a satisfactory replacement for lunch.” Andrews offered a handshake, and Jeung accepted. He gave a tremendous handshake for such a small fellow. “Why are they all so damned strange,” he tutted to himself as he left.
COMBINED AIR OPERATIONS CONTROL, ALLIED AIR DEFENSE COMMAND
“MOUNTAINTOP,” CAMP GRIFFISS, BUSHY PARK DEFENSE ANNEX, RICHMOND-UPON-THAMES, UK
REAR ADMIRAL CHARLES E. JEUNG, USN (CTF)
CHIEF OF STAFF, CERTAIN CRITICAL FORCES-EUROPE / CO, SPECIAL PURPOSE TASK FORCE INTERCEPT
1851 LOCAL, 17 JAN 1945
“Oh, thank god. He’s gone,” Carl took a deep breath, as did every Cert in the room. “Jesus, Jenny, I thought he’d never leave.”
“Carl, you need to deal with your boyfriend,” Master Chief Petty Officer Jennifer Menedez chastised him. “Fuck ‘em or dump ‘em.”
Jeung pointed a raised eyebrow with more authority than a knifehand could ever dream of possessing at Menedez, “Excuse me, Chief?”
She went rigid. Her pupils turned to needles, “Everyone was thinking it, sir.” Menedez had gone to the same elementary school as him. Their mothers had terrified the PTA together. They’d enlisted together before Carl had gone mustang after First Sino. He might be a traitor, but never forgot his folks.
“Jesus Christ, Jenny,” Jeung put his head in his hand, “Do I look like Mint Tyler?”
“Good god, no—you’re nowhere near as hot,” she replied a little too quickly.
Jeung gave a confused look. He turned and looked down at his list of Many Things that he still needed to work through. “Do you think it would’ve been appropriate to Default Dan—”
“No,” every Cert in the room answered with a profound and shared exasperation.
Jenny put a tender hand on his shoulder, “The Old Lady herself said I had to kill you if you filed another 214-J, sir.”
“I think Kanto might actually if I do…” He shrugged, “but that’s a future Carl problem.”
How does Germany get this advance technology to begin with? Also as was talked in the papal appointments, do other sets of people from the future give technology to the Germans?
Excellent entry! You did a great job shifting the perspective back and forth, I especially liked the air strip bombing and Missy dogfighting.