Winds of Change (Empires Lost Book 2)

by Charles S. Jackson

  ‘A-for-Able’ had taken off from the flight deck of HMS Formidable ten minutes earlier, the leader of Red Flight’s trio of F-3C Sea Furies, and he’d taken them due west, skirting the edge of the jagged mountain ranges that rose high above the desert south of the Cairo-Suez Road. Blue and Gold Flights were off elsewhere, assigned their own targets as available RAF and FAA combat aircraft rose to meet the full-scale assault that was developing along almost every front. What aircraft that were available were spread thin as it was, and few experienced pilots held any illusions regarding how they were likely to fare against the massive numerical superiority of the Luftwaffe and the RAI.

  McTavish had received target coordinates not long after take-off and had taken his flight in at full throttle, staying as close to the ground as he dared to avoid German radar as the desert rushing past below his wings began to glow with the first rays of morning. When the finally did run across enemy fighters – he knew that would be a ‘when’ rather than an ‘if’ – they would at least have the sun at their backs as the engagement opened… something that might count for a lot in the desperate cut and thrust of aerial combat.

  “Looks like a dust storm brewing on the horizon, laddies,” McTavish observed, checking both the watch on his wrist and the folded map that lay within a clear-plastic pocket fitted to the upper thigh of his flight suit. “It’ll nae get here quick enough for my liking,” he added softly to himself, then continued: “Ninety seconds to turn… we’ll be crossing the front lines any moment now…. prepare to come about to three-three-seven on my mark… now…!”

  The trio of fighter-bombers banked sharply as one, all turning away from their original course with perfect precision and coming onto a north-westerly heading. Close off to starboard, smoke and dust rose in a towering pall over the desert where German artillery continued to pound Allied rear-echelon positions. It looked bad enough from the air; McTavish had no desire to find out how much worse it might seem from the air.

  Another instant and they were roaring across their own front lines, the earthworks and men on the ground thinned out almost to non-existence so far south, in the foothills of those towering mountains. The terrain was too uneven and unpredictable in its consistency to allow armoured vehicles to safely move there, and nothing more than a token defensive line had been established as a result.

  Fortunately, that situation appeared to be the case on both sides of the front. The trio of fighter-bombers passed directly over the heads of an entrenched line of Wehrmacht infantry just seconds later, their approach a complete surprise as they were still flying far too low to be detected by enemy radar. One or two light flak guns within range – obsolescent 20mm Flakvierling-38 models – opened up on their retreating forms as they powered on but reactions had been far too late for there to be any hope of a hit.

  Streaks of red tracer criss-crossed the sky behind the lines as 20mm shells fell uselessly away, well short of their targets. One thing that did happen however was that an alarm was immediately raised regarding the approach of low-level enemy aircraft from an unexpected direction: Red Flight was still invisible to radar at that point, but they no longer possessed the element of surprise.

  Hauptmann Hans-Joachim Marseille took his J-16A fighter into a wide, banking turn to port and climbed to three thousand metres, tilting his wings one way and then the other to allow a clear view of the surrounding desert below on either side as he climbed. Behind him at his starboard rear quarter, Leutnant Rainer Pöttgen followed as his wingman, both men members of the 3rd Staffel of the elite fighter unit Jagdgeschwader 27. The sleek, swept-wing jets were painted an overall sand-yellow across its upper surfaces, with sky blue underneath and a nose cone of pure white to match a similar white-painted band about its fuselage close to the tail.

  With a length of better than ten metres and a wingspan greater than twelve, the shark-like fighter was a generational leap ahead of the piston-engined Focke-Wulf J-4 it was now beginning to replace in front-line units. Gaping intakes for its pair of Junkers Jumo turbojet engines were fitted at the point where the leading edge of each wing blended into the sleek body, their exhausts projecting from recessed fairings on either side of the rear fuselage. Original prototypes of the J-16 (Messerschmitt build number 262) carried the engines in two pods mounted beneath the slender swept wings however these were moved inboard to the wing roots following extensive testing that showed notable improvements in roll rate and structural stability.

  It was on the rudder of their aircraft that Luftwaffe pilots noted their victories as ‘kill bars’, and Rainer Pöttgen’s rudder carried just six such bars – making him an ace all the same. The leutnant had earned the nickname of ‘Fliegendes Zählwerk’ (the ‘Flying Adding Machine’), however the name had been accorded for reasons totally unrelated to his own exploits or flying abilities.

  Leading the rotte formation ahead of him, the rudder of Marseille’s jet by comparison was almost completely filled. At the very top, a large ‘100’ was stencilled in gold paint and surrounded on either side by a wreath of similarly-coloured oak leaves. Below that – basically filling the rest of the available space below – were another fifty-four kill bars. Nicknamed the ‘Star of Africa’, Marseille’s stellar career as a fighter pilot had earned him one of the highest awards the Wehrmacht could give: the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds.

  “Of all the luck, Rainer,” Marseille growled, only half joking as turned his head this way and that in search of targets. “The final push going in on all fronts and we’re stuck here running nursemaid to the frontschwein below with a ‘no-fly’ zone right on front of us!” By which, of course, he really meant ‘me’ every time he used the term ‘us’. “How is this an effective use of resources?”

  “Now you’re just being greedy, Mein Herr,” Pöttgen answered with a dry humour in his tone. “Shoot any more down and they’ll have to put another tail on to cope with the extra bars…!” As Marseille’s regular wingman, he’d been witness to many of the man’s 154 victories, and his nickname had been accorded in recognition of the mundane task of ‘following the pilot around’ and tallying them up.

  “Pah…! There’ll be no bloody enemy aircraft left by the time we get into the thick of it!” Marseille moaned dramatically, dismissing his wingman’s remarks without comment. “We’re within spitting distance of these bloody mountains – which anyone would be a fool – to try flying through, and with everything going to shit everywhere else, why should the RAF commit anything to this part of the line that’s so bloody quiet?”

  “Perhaps you could ask them yourself, Mein Herr,” Pöttgen suggested, the friendly sarcasm in his tone changing instantly to one of predatory nature as he spied something moving fast below them off to the east. “I have a low-flying contact to starboard, heading our way at high speed in the lee of those very mountains. Three Tommi fighters, if my eyes do not deceive me…”

  “Well done, Rainer!” Marseille praised in return, quickly locating the aircraft Pöttgen had spotted and immediately entered into a tight turn toward an intercept course. “Seems we may have a little excitement after all…! Doubt we’ll be able to catch them head on, but I shouldn’t think we’ll have any trouble catching them up.” The J-16A launched itself forward as he pushed the throttles to maximum thrust, nosing the aircraft down into a shallow dive as his airspeed began to increase dramatically. Behind him and to starboard, Pöttgen followed closely, the identical jet fighters hurtling down out of the sky like a pair of winged, golden rockets.

  The Sea Furies howled past directly above Reuters’ and Schiller’s heads a moment or two later as they continued on their north-easterly journey, completely uninterested (fortunately enough for the Reichsmarschall and his aide) in launching an attack upon the command vehicle below, or any of the multitude of armoured vehicles clustered together awaiting advance. McTavish was quick to pass on what they’d seen all the same – the presence of a huge, mobile armoured force to the west of the Allied lines was definitel
y something others needed to know about as quickly as possible.

  “Scheisse…!” Reuters snarled, returning to his full height as he spoke. All of the officers present had ducked their heads instinctively as the aircraft had hurtled past overhead, having been given no warning whatsoever save for a cry to take cover at the last moment.

  Even as they watched the raiders depart, one of their accompanying Wirbelwind flak vehicles to the north turned the muzzles of its 23mm flakvierling cannon toward them, the gunner’s superlative aim aided substantially by the search and ranging radar mounted atop the broad, squat turret. There was the horrendous ‘ripping’ sound of firing as the ‘Devils Sewing Machine’ opened up and a cascade of tracer reached out toward the nearest of the three fleeing aircraft, blasting it to pieces and spraying the wreckage across a wide area as flames and black smoke rolled into the air.

  A few more seconds passed before the men about the command vehicle were again forced to duck their heads in reflex, this time also throwing their hands desperately to their abused ears for protection as Marseille’s and Pöttgen’s J-16As howled past in hot pursuit, their flight path almost identical to that of the Sea Furies they were chasing. As loud as the radial engines of the F-3Cs had seemed, the Schwalbe’s twin turbojets at full throttle were positively deafening by comparison. Everyone in the vicinity of their passing as much felt the rumble of their roaring engines through their bodies as their ears were abused by the sheer, screeching volume of sound they produced.

  “A fine lot of use you bastards are!” Reuters snarled after them, glaring at the pair of jets as they too hurtled away toward the northern horizon. “We’d have been no better than black smears on the landscape by now, had they been looking for us!”

  “Thank the Lord they weren’t after us!” Nehring exclaimed with some relief, shaking his head slowly.

  “The Devil take them!” The Reichsmarschall snapped sharply in return. “We might’ve survived the encounter, but you’re a fool if you think those cheeky buggers didn’t get an eyeful of exactly what we’ve got lined up and waiting here…” Nehring’s face fell as that observation sunk in. “Two of them got away and I’ll bet you a year’s pay they’ve already reported our force concentrations back to their HQ.” He spat angrily at the ground as he moved to the rear of the command vehicle with obvious purpose. “Prepare to advance, herr general: if we don’t get ready to attack right now, then odds are we’ll have something coming down on our heads in the next few minutes…!”

  “Jawohl, Mein Herr!” Nehring exclaimed instantly, diving inside the command vehicle himself and sliding a radio headset over his ears.

  McTavish caught the Wirbelwind’s destruction of ‘Red-Two’ in his peripheral vision as they swept over and past the mass of enemy ground forces. He cursed inwardly but kept his eyes on the view ahead: if there was time at all to mourn the loss of a good friend, that time would be later; he and his other wingman had managed to make it past intact, and right now all that mattered was that they carry on with their mission as ordered.

  He immediately radioed in the positions of the assault force they’d just flown straight over the top of. He could think of no obvious reason why it would be sitting around, completely inactive, while the rest of the DAK was assaulting along every front to the north, but neither was it has business to try and fathom it. The extent of his duty was to pass on the information to others to do with as they saw fit, and that he did.

  No sooner had he done so than the pair of fighter-bombers swept up over the crest of a series of low hills west of the northbound Genaiva Road and they found their mission objective before them: the Hummel self-propelled guns of Third Battalion of the 155th Panzer Artillerie. They were still firing as the battery came into view, but that ceased almost immediately as the pair of enemy aircraft were spotted.

  It had been something of an oversight that no flak protection had been assigned the unit. Perhaps the likelihood of any credible aerial threat making it through the fighter screens and AA batteries along the front line had been considered so remote that there seemed no need. Whatever the reason, the gun crews were about to pay a heavy price for their omission. Working with the precision of a well-oiled machine, the pair of Sea Furies split formation and lined up their attack runs on individual guns as the SPGs belatedly gunned their engines and began to withdraw.

  Tracer from 13mm machine guns mounted above the huge turrets of some of the closer Hummels reached out for them, but none of those red streaks came particularly close. The Sea Furies pulled up sharply as they drew near their chosen targets, a pair of cylindrical napalm canisters tumbling end-over-end from beneath each aircraft as they climbed away.

  Fire burst forth in huge clouds of red and black as the canisters struck the ground, long channels of boiling flame engulfing two of the self-propelled guns and incinerating them. Huge explosions threw earth high into the air seconds later as their ammunition and propellant charges cooked off, whatever wreckage left disintegrating in the process.

  The fighter-bombers banked tightly around, intending to make another pass with their cannon on another two unlucky targets, when McTavish spotted something yellow, sleek and shark-like streaking toward him at incredible speed.

  “Bandits, Evan! Bandits at three o’clock…!” He called out the urgent warning to his wingman. “Bugger this lot,” he added quickly, adjusting his course to counter the approach of the new threat. “We were supposed to send ‘em packing and we’ve done just that… time to offski…!” They might have only destroyed two of the twelve guns in the battery, but 3rd Battalion was withdrawing all the same. Their position had been compromised and that meant that even if these two aircraft caused no further damage, there was every chance of a counter-attack from some other source now their existence was known.

  McTavish and his wingman were now in far too much trouble of their own to give any further consideration to the self-propelled guns that had been their primary objective. They were both experienced combat pilots and in general terms could have been considered the equal of Marseille and Pöttgen in a straight-out, fair fight. The fight they were in however was anything other than fair: the J-16A fighter was at least 120 kilometres per hour faster than the F-3C at any altitude. It was true that the Sea Fury could out-turn the Schwalbe at lower speeds, but Marseille was well aware of that fact and had no intention of allowing his prey to gain the upper hand.

  Sub-Lieutenant Evan Jones made the mistake of trying to flee – something that was patently impossible in an aircraft so much slower than its pursuers as to make the whole idea almost laughable. He pushed his Sea Fury to full throttle and headed for the deck, the aircraft’s belly no more than a few metres above the rutted, rocky surface of the Genaiva Road as he sought desperate acceleration, trying to stay as low as possible as if daring the faster but less-manoeuvrable enemy to follow him down to such a dangerous altitude.

  As the German jets hurtled in from above at close to top speed, McTavish instead continued to turn in toward them, the intention being to bring his own guns to bear. He was ultimately unsuccessful – the combined speed of approach was too great for his aim to match – however it did also allow him to elude his attackers’ guns in return for the same reason. The two jets thundered past just a few dozen metres away down his starboard side, the roar of their engines shaking his airframe with their passing.

  Marseille ignored the passing Sea Fury and powered on, closing rapidly on the retreating shape of Jones’ aircraft, while Pöttgen, seized by the excitement of the moment, made a small but crucial error of judgement.

  “I have him, Mein Herr!” Pöttgen exclaimed as he broke formation and attempted to match McTavish’s turn; something that was completely impossible in so fast an aircraft.

  “Stay on me, Rainer!” Marseille snarled desperately, recognising his wingman’s mistake in an instant. “You can’t match him in a turn, you bloody fool! Stay on me!”

  Craning his head back over his right shoulder, he could just see his
wingman banking around to the east, the Sea Fury – which had already been engaged in a turn of its own in any case – quickly coming around onto his tail.

  “Scheisse…!” Marseille spat angrily, realising he now had the unenviable necessity of choosing between continuing his attack and bailing his wingman out of trouble. There was never any decision to make: he instantly pulled back on the stick and banked away from his own pursuit, swinging around in a wide turn that allowed him to maintain most of his speed advantage. He struck a savage pocket of low turbulence at the same time, causing the whole plane to shake violently and almost causing him to lose control as the stick shuddered in his hands.

  “Ahh… Mein Herr… I may be in a little trouble…”

  “Do you think so, Rainer?” Marseille observed sarcastically through clenched teeth as he attempted to turn in tighter now and G-forces pressed him into the seat. “I’m on my way… try to keep him off you for a few more seconds…”

  The simplicity of that huge understatement did little to belay the tension in Pöttgen’s tone as he finally realised the danger he was in. His tight turn had sacrificed a great deal of speed, and powerful as his Jumo engines were, the turbojets weren’t as efficient at producing thrust at lower speeds. McTavish was very quickly turning onto the leutnant’s tail and would likely be in a firing position in a few more seconds, meaning it was now far too late for Pöttgen to dare breaking off the engagement.

  Although the Schwalbe was much faster than a Sea Fury, any attempt to break away now would leave him vulnerable for a short period of time while he tried to accelerate away in level flight … more than enough time for an experienced pilot to make a kill. Judging by the squadron leader’s command insignia displayed on the F-3C’s fuselage sides, Marseille did not doubt for a moment that the man definitely had skill.