Stuart Slade: Winter Warriors

“Something old, something new, something borrowed, all of it midnight blue.”

Captain Karl Newman chuckled as his CAG, Commander Pearson, dropped into a seat. “We have our new airgroup then. What we got?”

Pearson flipped through his clipboard. “Eighty eight birds; five squadrons of 16. Two fighter squadrons. One with FV-3 Flivvers, the other with F4U-7 Corsairs. Two light strike squadrons with F4U-4 Corsairs, one heavy strike squadron with AD-1 Skyraiders. Difference between fighter and light strike is a bit academic really. They’re both trained for either role. In addition, we’ve got a detachment of four F4U-4N night-fighters and another four Adies equipped with APS-20 search radars.”

“FV-3s? We got a new version of the Flivver?”

“They’re the new bit, along with the F4U-7s. The FV-3 is similar to the Air Force’s F-80B Shooting Star, only it’s got a hook and folding wings.” Pearson spoke with satisfaction. The older FV-1 and FV-2 had fixed wings and they’d caused handling problems on the deck. The jet fighter was far faster than anything else in the fleet; hence the nickname ‘flivver’ after the 1920s sports car. “They’ll do 557 on the deck, 580 higher up. Rate of climb is 4,870 feet per minute. That’s forty, fifty miles per hour faster than the 262 and it climbs almost 1,000 feet per minute faster, ‘bout the same edge over the 162. The U-7s aren’t so shabby either. Can’t compete with the jets, well, it’s about as fast as the 162 on the deck where it matters so I guess it can.”

“And I guess the U-4s are the old. So, what’s the borrowed?”

“Our heavy bomb squadron was Mames, but I talked to the CAG on the Evil Eye. They’ve got two heavy bomb squadrons, were going to be one of Mames and one of Adies. So we agreed to swap our Mames for their Adies. We’re switching everything that goes with them now. Better for both of us; we get Adies, they have two squadrons of the same type.”

Newman nodded. The Martin AM-1 Mauler could lift heavier loads than the AD-1 Skyraider and was a touch faster, but the Adie had an awesome reputation for toughness and reliability despite some worrying instability problems. But then, both aircraft had been rushed into service. The deal to swap squadrons made sense to him; the skipper of CV-11 Intrepid must have thought the same.

“Loadout?”

Pearson flipped another page on his clipboard. “The usual. Rockets, five inch high-velocity aircraft rockets and 12 inch Tiny Tims. Thousand and two thousand pounders, rocket-boosted sixteen hundred pounders. Some five hundreds. Napalm of course. Mines and torpedoes, more than usual. Rumor is we’re running cover on a convoy, a big one. To Murmansk. Guess the powers that be want to get as much supply through as they can before winter really sets in. Expect we’ve got the torpedoes in case the Kraut fleet comes out.”

“If only.” Newman’s voice was loaded with longing. “Nobody’s ever put a battleship at sea down with airstrikes before. Good time to be the first.” The German fleet was still orientated around its battleships. They only had three carriers, and one of those had been captured from the British. Third Fleet had twenty Essex class carriers with more than 1,950 aircraft, including those on the Gettysburg. Five more of the big CVBs were on the way, three would join the fleet before spring next year. “Anything else I should know about?”

“Notice anything about our airgroup Captain?” Newman looked down the list. “All single-seaters.”

“That’s right. It’s the same right across the fleet. All the multi-crew birds have gone. The Beasts went a long time ago and nobody misses them, but the Avengers have gone as well. Even on the last cruise, when a couple of the carriers still had them, they were short of crews. Now, they’re all gone. No flight engineers, no navigators, no gunners, nobody. All single seaters, just pilots. Odd that. I’d have expected it to be the other way around: plenty of aircrew, shortage of pilots. I hear the ASW hunting groups still get their crews but the rest of us are running mighty short.”

“I guess the Air Bridge must be draining off the aircrew. Running that must take a lot of manpower. Still, it is odd that it’s hitting us this hard. It’s not just you CAG. We’re having difficulty getting aircraft mechanics and hangar deck crewmen. Bear that in mind. We’re short-handed on the decks; it’s going to take us longer to turn birds around and a lot longer to repair cripples. Anything else?”

“No, Skipper, not unless you count some more Foo Fighter sightings.”

The two burst out laughing at the thought. Every so often a ship reported some highly anomalous radar contacts. Very high altitude, relatively slow moving, usually inland over Canada but sometimes over the sea. Always on the edge of radar coverage and peculiarly hard to get a hold on. As if the radar pulses kept slipping off them. The Foo Fighters led to all sorts of weird explanations, the usual clutch of secret weapons and (from the pulp magazine devotees) space aliens. The scientists had explained it. There was a thing called the Jet Stream, a very high-speed current of air that circled the globe. The B-29s had found it when they’d started their ill-fated career and a lot of problems it had caused them. Apparently, every so often, a pocket of moist air got caught up in the Jetstream and floated around in it until it dispersed. Those pockets were remarkably stable and could last for hours. While they did so they gave a solid radar return. That made sense. Radar shadowing from moist air pockets down at sea level were a constant problem, so why shouldn’t the ones high up be the same? No, the Foo Fighters were nothing to be concerned about. Just a natural phenomenon of no great consequence.

No importance at all.

“That damned fool will kill us all.” Sergeant Heim swore, fluently but quietly. After all, nobody knew who was listening these days. It was true though, that damned Captain from the staff, that perfect perfumed prince from Berlin, seemed perfectly determined to kill them all.

The convoy wasn’t a big one. A half-track with a quadruple 20mm gun at the front, another with a squad of infantry, then two big Henschels towing the first pair of 15 cm sFH 18s. Then, another halftrack with infantry, one mounting a 37mm anti-aircraft gun and two more Henschel 10 tonners with the other pair of sFH 18s. A second half-track with a 37mm gun then four British-built AECs carrying ammunition. Another quad twenty on a half-track and one more halftrack with the rest of the infantry bringing up the rear. Almost more escorts than escorted in this convoy. That made it like every supply convoy on the Kola Peninsula. Russian Partisans and Ami Jabos saw to that. And, right in the middle of the convoy rode the thing Heim considered more dangerous than either, a staff officer desperate to break the pristine, decoration-less monotony of his uniform with a medal or two.

“We must get the guns into place by evening.” he had said. “The Jabos will not fly in winter,” he’d claimed. So now this artillery battery, his artillery battery more the pity, was moving in broad daylight. Something no sane person did when Ami Jabos were on the prowl. Even moving at night was getting dangerous, the Ami Night Witches saw to that. A country so rich it could put radar sets on ground attack aircraft, Heim shuddered at the thought. The Night Witch struck from the darkness and never gave any warning of its approach. Perhaps moving in daylight was better.

Heim’s eye was caught by a flash in the sky up ahead. The sun reflecting off a cockpit perhaps? There was a chance, a slim one, it was a Luftwaffe fighter but the odds weren’t in their favor. He scanned the area with his binoculars; they were good ones, taken from a dead officer. There were lots of those over the years. At first he saw nothing. When the truck lurched a little he caught a glimpse. Two engines, a nose that stuck far, far out in front. Damn it, he thought, Grizzlies, just what we needed. Probably four of them, carrying rockets, a couple thousand kilos of bombs or, horror of horrors, jellygas. Six .50 machine guns and a 75mm gun that stuck out of the nose like the unicorn’s horn gave the aircraft its distinctive appearance in the recognition books. The Beechcraft A-38D Grizzly to give it its full and proper name. Where would they be coming from?