Then the airship had taken off, taking out a few of the remaining Mustangs as effortlessly as if it had been swatting gnats, before heading south east.
Excalibur was the name of the airship. It had never been seen before, a myth whispered fearfully in the corridors of power of Britain’s enemies. A bogeyman, a tale to frighten children into doing what they were told, a ghost in the darkness.
5 Empire’s Revenge
Air Admiral Walker gazed out from the bridge of the aerial dreadnaught Warcry. Around him the bridge staff hustled and bustled issuing orders, checking navigational charts against landmarks, initiating weapon checks, reviewing staffing rotas and busying themselves with the innumerable tasks required to keep a warship the size of a small town running.
The Air Admiral didn’t hear any of the noise blanketing his senses. His mind was far away, wandering out over the orange tinted whiteness of the clouds lying out before him, drinking in the sight of the pre-dawn Spring sky as the dark bruised purple faded down into jasmine on the horizon. As the sun rose blindingly orange, casting shining rays of white into the sky, the purple waxed into iridescent blue and the clouds blazed red and orange as if the sun had set them on fire with its shining beams of light. The beauty of a sunrise was never lost on Admiral Walker. No matter how filthy man’s deeds were, nature always provided a counterpoint of beauty. Today, nature would struggle.
“Admiral, the fleet has now crossed the German coast twelve miles north of Bremerhaven,” Captain James coughed politely as he disturbed the Admiral’s reverie.
Admiral Walker shook his head slightly, collecting his disparate thoughts.
“Inform Whitehall immediately. Signal the fleet to escalate to full red alert. All hands to battle stations,” Walker commanded. “Patch me into the fleet.”
Klaxons blared and red alarms flashed as James carried out the orders. To his left and right Walker could see the giant bullet like forms of the Wellington and Warspite lumber slowly into position on the flanks of the Warcry, their giant gun batteries revolving slowly into place. The two sister ships of the Warcry plus the Warcry itself formed the 1st Air Fleet. The three were amongst the largest aerial dreadnaughts in the British Imperial forces, each easily capable of levelling entire armies. Never before had their combined might been deployed but today Britain expected. Today the British Empire lashed out against the murderers of its King and Emperor. Today Germany would suffer.
“Sir, you’re patched into the fleet,” said Captain James as he handed Walker a radio handset.
Walker took the handset, cleared his throat and spoke to the fleet.
“Good morning gentlemen. Today is the day we have all trained and drilled for. For twenty years our Empire has known little but peace and harmony. We have never needed to defend our frontiers against our enemies as they have respected us just as we have respected them and their rights. Today we go to war under the cloud of the murder of our King. We go to war under the cloud of the senseless deaths of the hundreds of citizens of Glasgow. And today we will avenge them. Britain expects every man to do his duty as do I. May God and Brittania bless us all and bring us home safely.”
Despite being encased in a sealed glass bubble it was cold on the prow of the Warcry. Gunner Hanley traced the intricate frostings on the outside of the glass, feeling the chill seep through the glass and into the tips of his padded leather gloves before nipping the flesh of his fingers. It was lonely too, despite the organised chaos on the decks just below the sealed gunnery turret. Hanley pulled his furred jacket collar tight around his throat and adjusted his rough woollen scarf his Auntie Mabel had knitted so it covered the nape of his neck. He always got a draught down the back of his neck no matter if he was half way up a mountain in a howling gale or stuck in a gunnery turret and his Auntie Mabel had insisted he take the scarf she had knitted for him. Satisfied he’d done his best to foil the chill he continued to scan the cloudless blue skies above for enemy aircraft. Gunnery duty on the upper half of the dreadnaught was nothing more than a punishment duty. No aircraft except the dreadnaughts could reach this height of 40,000 feet. Hanley doubted he would have much action even when the fleet descended to bombard its targets. The German Luftwaffe was severely under strength as indeed was much of its military despite this Hitler chaps best efforts to beef it up. Still someone had to do the job he supposed.
Hanley checked his two Browning heavy machine guns, flicking the safety on before adjusting the weighty ammunition belts to ensure they didn’t snag on anything.
Servo motors whined and hissed as Hanley rotated the ball turret in all directions. Ahead of him stretched the open sky with a blanket of clouds beneath. Behind him the huge grey bulk of the Warcry dominated. Hanley could see Gunner Brown in the next gun turret going through the motions of checking his weapons. The Warspite and Wellington hung menacingly on either side, the sun catching the many glass gun cupolas on their upper surfaces.
“All anti aircraft gunners to full alert. Bandits at one o’clock low climbing fast. Positive identification of Messerschmitt Me262 jets. Full alert!”
Hanley jumped as the voice of Lieutenant Potts the chief gunnery controller blared in his ears through the headphones.
Servos whirred as Hanley whirled the turret to a one o’clock facing. Adrenaline pounded through his veins as he prepared for his first live engagement. With jet planes too! They had been briefed that the Germans had been experimenting with jet engines and they may have even developed them far enough to put on planes. It looked like intelligence was right for a change. Only jet planes could reach the heights the dreadnaughts cruised at.
Bright red sparks of tracer bullets spat from the lower gun turrets of the Warspite and Wellington, filling the air with a hailstorm of lead. Hanley could feel vibrations running through the superstructure of the Warcry as her lower and side gun turrets opened fire on the approaching menace.
Hanley’s mouth was dry and he gulped rapidly to try and calm himself. His hands were sweating and he could feel a trickle of sweat working its way down his spine.
“Upper gun turrets prepare to fire. Bandits at one, two, ten, eleven and twelve o’clock. The sky’s full of them! Fire at will. The 262s are armed with rockets and could do the dreadnaughts serious harm,” Pott’s voice was calm despite the pressure he was no doubt under.
Three dark green shark like planes screamed past Hanley’s line of sight, the sun glinting on the pilots’ glass canopies, black swastikas emblazoned on their wings.
“Damn,” Hanley cursed under his breath, fear making his fingers fumble the gun trigger. And then he found it and pulled. The guns chattered manically, battering out a song of lead and death. Hanley frantically tried to track the speeding targets and failed terribly, his shots flying wide as the planes flew gracefully up high above. Why aren’t the Mighty Midgets out there? This is where we need them, he thought feverishly.
An explosion rocked the dreadnaught and shrapnel bounced off the thick glass around Hanley, leaving deep scratches in the glass.
A dark green streak roared over Hanley and he desperately tried to bring the turret round to shoot.
“Gun Team Gazelle, cover Warcry’s bow. The 262s are attacking from below and overshooting high. Take them as they come up.”
Hanley and ten others were Gun Team Gazelle which was located on the prow.
“Wilco sir,” Hanley sweated profusely as he twisted the guns round to face the bow.
“Gazelle! Three 262s incoming!”
“Check,” Hanley said, his gloved fingers slipping on the smooth trigger.
And then they were there. His guns chattered and he tracked the lead fighter, aiming in front of it, glowing red tracer bullets whizzing through the thin air in a slight curve before finding the fuselage of the enemy plane and ripping through the thin metal, penetrating the fuel tanks. A ball of flame swallowed the sleek outline.
“Yes! Got one!” Hanley continued firing at the remaining two jets as they streaked high and away chased by flowi
ng streams of bullets.
“Good God! They’ve got the Wellington!” Pott’s disembodied voice sounded ethereal over the headphones.
Hanley started to his left and saw that the Wellington was under concentrated attack, gouts of flame erupting along its flanks as multiple rockets from the 262s found their target. The Nazi planes swarmed around the Wellington like deadly flies around an elephant, cannon fire raking along the exposed sides where sheets of thick plate armour had been blown off. The giant airship was in a gentle dive, heading earthwards. Here and there sporadic machine gun fire sprang ineffectually out from one of the remaining gun turrets, desperately flailing at the flies that tormented their parent.
One by one the 262 jets peeled away as they ran low on fuel leaving the wounded giant to suffer as it sank slowly down through the cold blue sky, trailing fire and smoke behind it in a long dirty streamer. Then abruptly it was gone replaced by an expanding yellow cloud tinted with green and blue. Hanley swore he could see white bolts of lightening sparking through the explosion. The Warcry shook and creaked as the shockwave expanded through the atmosphere, rippling through the air blowing away wisps of cloud as it did so.
The Wellington was gone.
“Inform Whitehall we’ve lost the Wellington,” Admiral Walker’s voice sliced through the shocked silence on the bridge. “Inform them that I shall be asking questions about the lack of intelligence relating to Luftwaffe air power.”
Despite his calm exterior the Admiral was shaken. No loses had been expected from the raid on Germany. The fleet had barely crossed the border and had already come under attack and suffered a grievous loss. Five thousand men crewed each dreadnaught. Five thousand men were lost and five thousand families would grieve.
“Signal the Warspite to stop and prepare to launch drones.”
Walker cursed himself quietly under his breath. The drones should have been prepared and launched before crossing the border but no air attack had been expected. The excuse didn’t sit well with him. He was at fault, as his superiors would no doubt point out to him.
The orders were belayed to the cargo hold where a hundred drones were stored in their crates. The drones, popularly called the Mighty Midgets, were grey metal spheres five foot in diameter powered by small energy crystals. They carried twin fast firing cannon more than capable of dealing with the majority of air and ground targets. What made them unique was that they were unmanned, controlled by analytical engines that masqueraded as brains. The drones were stupid, incapable of distinguishing friend from foe, but so long as you were on a dreadnaught or stayed out of the range of their mechanical eyes they wouldn’t shoot at you.
It took several hours for both the Warcry and Warspite to deploy their drones. Their cannon needed to be greased and loaded, ammunition fed into them and ratcheted into place. The analytical engines were fed complex and detailed programme cards, metal wafers with thousands of tiny holes punched into them. Thousands of intricate cogs whirred and clicked as they fell into the holes sending tiny pulses of electricity down wires into the nerve centre of the engine where motors hummed, calculations were performed and decisions were made.
Once the programme had been assimilated, the metal sphere would rise into the air, hover for a second and then shoot out of the hold into a defensive position around its parent dreadnaught, delicate sensors scanning the heavens for anything large enough to pose a threat to its homeship.
Walker waited impatiently and nervously for the drones to be deployed. Impatiently because he had a timetable to stick to. Nervously because, as he’d discovered, the dreadnaughts were extremely vulnerable to attack by small fast moving planes armed with rockets and they were sitting ducks.
Finally, at long last, all the drones were deployed, hovering in place around the two dreadnaughts like a cloud of midges around a tree.
“Full speed ahead, take us straight to the Hanover target.”
Power hummed and surged as the vessel slowly gained speed and ploughed ahead to its designated target.
“Prepare the main batteries. Our target will be in sight within half an hour,” Walker said as he swivelled compasses across the map laid out on a large table.
“Notify damage crews to prepare for anti-aircraft fire. The target is expected to be heavily defended,” Walker ordered, wondering how reliable this intelligence was.
“Take us down to firing height. Ten thousand feet should do it.”
The main batteries on the air dreadnaughts were different from those on their close cousins, the sea dreadnaughts. The gun barrels were longer and of smaller calibre but the shells were fired at a much higher velocity ensuring a flat trajectory and excellent accuracy. They were lethal.
Admiral Walker paced to the front of the bridge and peered through the thick glass. The Warcry was descending through the cloud layer with Warspite not far behind. Water and dampness trickled down the glass before being swished aside as the large windscreen wipers were switched on. The fluffy whiteness outside smothering the warship, seeming to press chokingly in on the ship but then it faded and cleared as they passed down and out into the sky below.
Beneath the clouds it was a different world. The sky was still cold and clear but here and there rain could be seen smudging the skies in the distance. The cloud layer was white and clean up above but down here the dirty earth seemed to have stained it and it became a blanket of greys, merging together to hide the bright sun that struggled to throw its light on the ground far below. Occasionally the cloud layer broke and rays of pale golden yellow slanted down, brightening the green fields and emphasising the relative darkness of the surroundings.
“Admiral Walker, the target is in sight. Straight ahead, sir.”
Ahead of the airship rolled flat fields of green and brown, a fertile patchwork of farmland interspersed by tiny white farm buildings. Large stretches of woodlands interrupted the sprawl of fields, standing bare in the March winds.
Walker picked up a pair of binoculars and trained them on the slash of concrete and tarmac that had been gouged into the greenery. The airfield sprang into focus. Walker could see planes taking off but couldn’t identify them. They weren’t 262s anyway, thank God. He was still shocked at the loss of the Wellington, a totally unexpected setback.
“Firing speed, Jenkins. Have the Warcry circle the airfield. Order battery one to fire ranging shots,” Walker ordered.
The airship slowed slightly and turned gracefully to starboard. The airship shuddered as engines grinded into action turning the four huge gun batteries slowly to face the doomed airfield.
The whole ship shook and the very air vibrated as battery one blew out a massive shell. The entire bridge was lit up from the flash of fire emanating from the muzzle of the first gun barrel and a cloud of blue tinted smoke billowed away in the wind. The sharp smell of cordite prickled the noses of the bridge officers.
All eyes strained hard into the distance at the grey smudge on the greenery. A giant column of flame erupted just beyond the target, dwarfing the nearby airfield.
Within seconds there was another boom, this time from the nearby Warspite. Another explosion blasted the ground near the target, spraying vast amounts of soil out over the landscape.
A second gun on the Warcry spat out its deadly cargo. This shot was far more accurate, hitting the runway and throwing concrete aside as fire mushroomed skywards.
“Make a note of that range, Jenkins. Let the battery gunners know the Warcry will fly towards the target at firing speed and to compensate as necessary. Notify the secondary batteries to fire at will. No civilians are to be shot at or I’ll want to know why.”
One by one the remaining six main guns fired on the helpless airfield. Each shot was true as were the seven shots from the Warspite.
Walker cursed quietly as he surveyed the target area. Dust and smoke hid the airfield from view and the damage could not be assessed.
A sudden commotion on the bridge made Walker turn round to see Jenkins scanning the nearby sky along
with Potts, the gunnery officer. Potts was speaking rapidly into his radio mouthpiece while Jenkins was giving a count.
“ ….twenty, twenty five, thirty…. Thirty Me262s incoming fast. Some appear to be carrying rockets. They’re backed up by forty odd Me109s.”
Just outside the bridge windows, Walker could see three dull grey metal balls with bronze bracings, the Mighty Midgets, floating into place, weapons facing the incoming enemy.
The jets closed fast leaving orange flame trails behind them. Suddenly the three Mighty Midgets whooshed away spent ammunition cases spilling out behind them as they engaged the enemy jets. Two of the jet planes shattered in a blazing fountain of sparks and fiery fuel. Another spun away towards the ground, a broken wing fluttering in its wake like a sycamore seed. A white parachute flared behind the jet as the pilot bailed out only to be punctured by streams of shells from the Mighty Midgets. The parachute collapsed, looking like a blown away dandelion seed as it followed its dead owner to the hard ground far below.
The destrution of the three lead planes seemed to galvanise the German pilots as the Me262s jinked, dived and rocketed into the air in evasive patterns, trying to avoid the streams of bullets that followed their every move.
“Ignore those things! Don't stand and fight! Pull away and gain height!” yelled the oberleutnant over von Strom's ear pieces. Von Strom could barely see the globes that were firing on them but he could easily see the muzzle flashes against the grey hide of the frightening bulk of the British dreadnaught. He obeyed his superior and pulled back hard on the stick in tandem with the rest of the squadron, feeling the wonderful plane that was the Me262 'Swallow' blaze high above the lumbering hulks. Streams of tracer fire from the uncountable multitude of gun turrets followed them but were unable to hit the fast moving jets. Superior German technology; with it we shall rule the world, von Strom rejoiced. He noticed a gap in the Britishers defences. “Oberleutnant, the dreadnaught below is of the same class as the one we destroyed earlier today. There are fewer defences to the rear.”
An Atlantean Triumvirate Page 8
