Assault on Zanzibar

by E. C. Williams

  Captain Murphy was on deck now, and quickly ordered every available small arm on the Charlie roused out and fired out the mystery aircraft, which had made its turn and begun another bombing run.

  But with both RKN vessels blacked out, and firing back, the enemy airship was now gaining altitude. Her bombing became more random, and killed nothing but fish. Finally, either out of bombs or frustrated by the invisibility of her targets, the thing gave up and flew away to the north.

  Sam consulted his watch, and found to his surprise that the entire action had lasted only a bit longer than one bell. It had seemed like hours.

  He paced around the Flag Box in a fury of impatience while Murphy took reports from his department heads, and Kendall presumably was doing the same. Finally, a signal from Albatros to Flag reported no damage. Shortly thereafter, Murphy approached him, saluted, and reported formally.

  “Commodore, I’m pleased to report only minimal damage from tonight’s attack. The near-miss started a few planks on the starboard side, below the waterline in way of a stores locker, but the pumps are staying well ahead of the inflow, and the Carpenter reports that repairs will be completed before the end of the morning watch.”

  Sam returned Murphy’s salute, and replied, “Thanks, Ben. Plan on a working breakfast with me, Dave, Al, and my staff, and we’ll do a hot washup of this action. It’s given us a lot of things to consider. The Pirates achieving the ability to attack us from the air is a significant change.”

  “For sure, Commodore. I’ll be there.”

  Neither Sam nor any of the officers “invited” to breakfast with him got any more sleep that night.

  Sam paced the (now, and for every night henceforth, totally blacked out) quarterdeck of Charlemagne, turning over in his mind all the possible implications of this new weapons platform the Pirates had devised. His staff, Dave, Al, and Ben Murphy were frantically preparing for what the Commodore had called the “hot washup”, interrogating everyone who had been on watch at the commencement of the action, and anyone else who might have anything to add. To further this, Sam ordered the crews of both vessels held at action stations until nearly dawn, so they got little sleep themselves.

  As Ritchie cleared away the remains of their hasty breakfast, and replaced the empty coffee jug with a full one, Sam abruptly shifted from the small talk that had prevailed while they were eating – he was a firm believer in the rule “no shop talk at meals” – to his agenda.

  “Now, what the hell kind of plane have the Pirates come up with – and how can they propel it – or even get into the air -- with their rackety old diesel engines, ajili ya kutomba?”

  Sam had learned to swear a little in Swahili during his adventure ashore, and liked to show off.

  “I think I know what it is, Commodore,” Dave Schofield spoke up. “It’s something our forefathers called a ‘zeppelin’. Or sometimes a ‘dirigible’”.

  “And what’s that? Or those?”

  “A lighter-than-air craft, like a balloon, except rigid, and propelled by engines. As far as I can tell, it must have looked something like this.” He took a sketch from a folder and passed it to Sam.

  The sketch made no sense to him at first; then, with study, he saw how the thing might fly. It was roughly tubular, or sausage-shaped, pointed at the ends. A protuberant cabin with windows under the front, or bow, was obviously the pilot’s station. A cruciform arrangement around the stern could be the rudders and elevators. And what were obviously engines with propellers hung below it and slightly off the centerline, just forward of the tail structure, mounted on struts.

  “Would it be a hot-air balloon, Dave? I mean zep … dirigible … whatever you called it.”

  “I don’t think so, Commodore – not enough lift, probably. And open flames would be dangerous to what I’d guess would be a structure of fabric over a bamboo framework. I’d say gas, likely hydrogen. That’s what the ancients used, or something else called ‘helium’, but I don’t even know what that is, so I doubt if the Pirates do, either.

  “And I think this photo explains a mystery we noted some weeks ago.” Dave pulled a series of aerial photos from his folder and passed them to Sam. They showed a very large building in various stages of construction.

  “This is the biggest building in Stone Town – actually, it’s on the edge of Stone Town, near an open field. It went up in record time. We didn’t know what it was for at the time. I now think it’s the hangar for their zeppelin. They assembled it inside, and store it in there during daylight hours. That’s why we never detected what they were doing.

  “You may remember, Commodore, that I wanted to bomb this structure when we first realized just how large it was gonna be, just on general principles. We had a chance to kill this baby in the womb.”

  “Yes, you did, Dave, and I forbade it. As you may recall, we had just three operational Puffins at the time, and you wanted to use all three in an attack on a structure the uses of which you could not explain to me – despite continuous photo-reconnaissance overflights. For all we knew at the time, it could have simply been a commercial warehouse for trade goods – and you wanted to risk our entire air arm to destroy it? Of course, I forbade it. I probably would have said ‘no’ even if you had accurately described what the hell the building was for, because, as I have told you repeatedly, we simply have too few planes to risk any in offensive operations.”

  Dave felt his face grow hot, and knew that it had turned bright red. Well, that’s me told -- again! he thought. When will I learn that I have LOST this argument!

  Kendall broke the awkward silence that followed. “So … how’ll we defend against this beast?”

  “Well, for one thing, we won’t make their final approach so damn’ easy for ‘em by helpfully lighting up their targets like Christmas trees,” Sam said. “From now on, no deck lights, except for one dim red anchor light, and all lighted interior compartments are to have their ports completely blacked out from sunset ‘til sunrise.”

  Everyone nodded; this common-sense precaution had already occurred to most.

  “But what interests me most are ideas on how to destroy this thing, this ... zeppelin,” Sam said. “My first thought was anti-aircraft fire. Can we elevate our big guns enough to fire at a flying target?”

  Dave bit his lower lip to keep from speaking – he didn’t want to risk another snub from the Commodore, so he wanted the idea to come from someone else. But inside, he was shouting, fight aircraft with aircraft! The damned thing would be fish in a barrel for my Puffins!

  Todd Cameron, Sam’s CSO said, “We could probably jury-rig a mount for one-inchers that would allow them to elevate enough. The problem then would be drawing a bead on the target in the dark – I’m assuming the Pirates will continue to pick moonless nights for raids.”

  “And – good news -- we’ve got a week or so of mostly moonless nights to look forward to,” Ben Murphy said, a copy of the nautical almanac in front of him. “Don’t the Mafia sisters mount powerful searchlights? We could recall one or both to Chole Bay.”

  “Eish! And leave the north coast without a close-in patrol against gun-runners? No!”

  “Aye aye, Commodore. Then, since our black gang cobbled together those searchlights, couldn’t we do the same again?”

  “Maybe. Todd?”

  “Should be able to, Commodore. I’ll put the engineers onto it right away. May not be possible right away, though.”

  The conference continued through most of the forenoon watch, with a nearly-continuous stream of messages issuing from it to the two vessel XOs for immediate action. It broke up just in time for elevenses and dinner. After that, almost everyone not already frantically busy on the taskers resulting from the conference started the tedious business of a dead shift – one performed without the aid of main engines – of each vessel from her present anchorage to another, on the opposite side of the bay, and closer together. They did this by kedging – taking an anchor out to the length of its cable by boat, dropping it, t
hen heaving the vessel to it with the windlass.

  They finished this by the end of the afternoon watch, at which time, instead of setting the dog watches, a minimal anchorage watch was kept and the rest of the vessels’ crews knocked off to rest until just before moonset, predicted for 1948.

  During this interval, Sam, too wound up to sleep, paced Charlemagne’s nearly-deserted quarterdeck, and pondered the tactical situation. The conference had discussed at length, and Sam had ultimately vetoed, the alternative of simply putting Charlie and Albatros out to sea for the evening. This would make the zeppelin’s task of finding its targets, already difficult, virtually impossible. It was the simplest solution to the problem.

  But Sam wanted to do more than simply evade the enemy airship; he wanted to destroy it. Hence, his veto of that idea.

  But with typical self-examination, he asked himself if a sortie wasn’t the better part of valor tonight, and perhaps for several nights, while they took a more thoughtful, less hurried approach to the problem of defense? He wondered if he had allowed his own impatient preference for aggressive action, even in defense, to over-rule prudence.

  He shook off these thoughts – literally, with an angry shake of his head. Too late now. The die was cast. No more doubts or reservations.

  The sudden shrill blast of bosuns’ calls startled him out of these reveries , and the shockingly-loud voice over the ship’s PA system: “All hands! All hands to action stations! This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill!” It couldn’t be time yet – could it?

  He strode over to the binnacle, and looked at his watch with the aid of the dim red light. It was precisely 1945. It was time.

  There was a roar of feet on wooden decking as seamen rushed topsides to their stations. Sam heard at his side “Good morning, Commodore – or rather, good evening,”– Ben Murphy, shaved, showered, and in full uniform, had obviously been up for a while, if in fact he had ever slept.

  “Evening, Ben,” Sam said, returning his salute, and walked aft toward the Flag Box, his own action station, where he found Tod Cameron, and the flag runner and signalman, waiting for him. They all saluted him, too, and he returned it. He wondered, briefly, at all this saluting – when aboard a vessel, it was customary to salute the Captain (and a flag officer, when embarked) only once a day, on first encounter in the morning. Then he reflected that it probably felt like a first encounter, under the circumstances.

  Forward, a Puffin was hoisted from its cradle and swung over the side. Sam had, to Dave’s delight, decided to have a pursuit plane standing by, ready to take off and engage the zeppelin at Sam’s order. This would be a last-ditch, desperation measure. The Puffin would be at considerable risk from friendly AA fire, and, worse, if it chased the zeppelin away from Chole Bay, of getting lost in the darkness.

  The two small boats, hurriedly equipped with searchlights, were launched, and had pulled away to predetermined anchorages. The engineers of both ships, by prodigies of frantic jury-rigging, had cobbled together MG sets from P-250 pump engines s and reverse-wired electric motors, and had fabricated powerful searchlights, using carbon arc lamps and parabolic glass mirrors. They had been able to do so quickly because they had a workable design in the lights for the Mafia sisters – the new lights were exact copies of those. The boats’ callsigns were Archie and Betty.

  Sam order the lights mounted on small boats, rather than Charlie and Albatros, because all assumed that they would become immediate targets for the airship. From what Sam had seen of Pirate aerial bombing, he didn’t think targets as small as the boats were in much danger. He hoped, in fact, that they would draw the initial attention of the airship, although he knew that couldn’t last long, once the muzzle flashes of AA guns on Charlie and Albatros gave away their new positions.

  Now came the waiting – but not for long. Just before moonset, a radioman brought Sam a signal from Mafia Utukufu, reporting confirmed detection of the zeppelin.

  Since a rhumb line between Stone Town and Chole Bay passed over the northern part of Mafia, Sam had tasked the Utukufu and her sister with listening for the airship’s engines – audible at anything under about a thousand feet – and, upon hearing them, to try to confirm detection with their searchlights; the message told Sam that the enemy airship was minutes away. Sam ordered the signal at once repeated by flashing light to Albatros and the searchlight boats.

  But the zeppelin’s cruising speed was apparently much slower than they had assumed – not very surprising, Sam supposed, since it had two not-very-efficient diesel engines – and the minutes stretched out into a full half-hour, while tension rose to the stretching point.

  Finally, the clatter-and-bang of Pirate diesels became, first faintly audible, then gradually louder. Sam had ordered the POs in charge of the searchlight boats to wait until the airship sounded as if right over the bay before lighting it up. First one light beam appeared, stabbing at the night sky, probing for its target, then the other, the beams crossing, then finding the zeppelin. It was a dull black, and looked to be several hundred feet long -- longer, in fact, than Charlemagne.

  As Sam had hoped, it turned at once toward the nearest searchlight beam, from Betty; at almost the same moment the two vessels opened fire with every one-incher available, as well as rifles and carbines. The sound of gunfire was almost continuous. It was impossible to tell if they had scored any hits; at any rate, the beast continued, seemingly unperturbed, toward the source of Betty’s searchlight beam. As the beam followed the airship, becoming vertical or nearly so, it dropped two bombs. When they exploded, with loud booms that drowned out the AA fire, the light went out.

  Sam’s heart dropped into his boots. He had not thought it possible that the zeppelin could hit so small a target. He had not taken into consideration how easy the searchlight beam made the enemy bombardier’s targeting solution.

  Still apparently undamaged by the storm of fire put up by the two warships, the zeppelin turned with ponderous dignity toward the other searchlight boat.

  And Betty’s light came back up, illuminating the airship’s tail!

  Sam turned to the Flag signalman and snapped, “Forester to Betty: whiskey tango foxtrot, interrogative.” “Forester” was a new callsign for the flag. The PO made the signal by flashing light, and the boat quickly answered. “Missed us break splash shorted out light now fixed break no damage no casualties over” the signalman recited as he read the reply out loud.

  “Answer: Bravo zulu. Out.” Sam replied, and heaved an enormous sigh of relief.

  The zeppelin then attacked Archie, with even less result – her light stayed on and fixed on the airship. But it turned, undaunted, toward the nearest of the two warships, which happened to be Charlie, her position clearly shown by the muzzle flashes of her AA fire.

  Which, like that of Albatros, appeared to have been completely ineffective.

  Sam snapped, “Charlie, cease fire. Bull, take off at once and engage enemy airship.” His phone talker relayed both orders, and, after much shouting, Charlie’s AA fire died away. Before the report from her last shot had died away, Dave’s Puffin had come up to full power, taxied away from her side, turned into the mild evening breeze, and was beginning its take-off run, ignoring the buoyed taxi-way, which in any case was unlighted and invisible to him.

  Archie and Betty still had the zeppelin caught in their beams, and Sam watched as she slowly approached. Charlemagne must be invisible to her now, unless some fool had left a porthole un-blacked-out. Sam guessed her bombardier was going to drop blindly on Charlie’s position as last seen outlined by muzzle flashes.

  Her diesels were clearly audible now, and Sam, and everyone else aboard Charlemagne, watched as she crabbed slowly along, the gentle south-easterly breeze on her starboard beam. Sam fixed his gaze on the enemy airship; he intended to observe from which part of her the bombs dropped.

  When she appeared to be directly overhead, and Sam’s belly muscles were clenched tight, she dropped two bombs. A part of Sam’s brain noted,
with detachment, that the bombs seemed to drop from a small hatch in the aftermost part of the crew cabin; another part expected sudden death, as they seemed headed directly for Charlie’s quarterdeck.

  All on the quarterdeck held their breath as the missiles quickly dropped out of the searchlight beam and became invisible. There was a simultaneous, audible gasp as the bombs exploded – harmlessly, well away to starboard. The enemy bombardier had overshot his target.

  The sound of distant firing abruptly reminded Sam that a friendly plane was now airborne, and in danger from friendly fire.

  “Forester to Albatros, Flash: cease fire at once. Repeat, cease fire at once.” The shutter of the signal light began to rattle frantically before Sam completed the “repeat” phrase; his phone talker and the signalman were aware of the danger to the Puffin.

  Although the signal light was shielded to minimize visibility from overhead, the zeppelin’s pilot must have caught a glimmer of a flash, because the airship made a hard-a-port turn and headed back their way. That glimpse apparently wasn’t enough for the bombardier; the zeppelin passed well forward of Charlie and dropped no more bombs. Instead, it turned in a northerly direction.

  Archie and Betty still had the airship caught in their beams, but the further away it flew the more attenuated the light would become, until they would lose sight of it.

  “Come on, Dave! What are you waiting for?”

  “Sir?” Todd Cameron, at his shoulder.

  Sam didn’t realize he had spoken aloud. “Nothing,” he replied.

  As if Schofield had heard him, Sam heard just then the characteristic sharp bark of the Puffin’s one-inch gun, distinctly higher-pitched than the shipboard version. He caught just a glimpse of the airplane as it intersected a searchlight beam. He noted that the Puffin was attacking the airship from below, and guessed that Dave was going for the aircrew module, or the engines, or both.

  Just then, the zeppelin made an abrupt climbing turn, and both searchlights lost their target. The beams stabbed around the arc of sky where they had last spotted the enemy craft, but fruitlessly; the lights were now probing at their extreme range, and the ends of the beams dissipated into darkness revealing nothing but the occasional startled night bird. Sam marveled at the ease with which the ponderous, slow airship had evaded the lights, and wondered why she had not tried that maneuver before.