Analog SFF, May 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  I looked over their files. The section was part of a squadron that called itself the Duxford Rascals, named by their former leader, a fellow who went by the nickname “Spanky.” He had been killed in action a few months before this mission. Section leader Vince “Gramps” Doyle, flying the original Walkin’ Cane, was leading the four-plane “green flight.” His nose art depicted a withered old man clobbering Hitler with a stout cane. Charlie “Chatterbox” Power, Jay “Booger” Simpson, and “Crazy Joe” Walker were the remaining pilots in the flight.

  Solomon “Preacher” Roper, the yellow flight leader, flew Bully Pulpit. Turner “Reb” Ashby, named for a Civil War ancestor, flew Black Knight of the Confederacy. Bill “Butch” McNair and John “Spud” Hottle rounded out the flight.

  I was starting to wish the laws of physics allowed time travel and not just snapshots of quantum echoes of the past. I really longed to save these guys, but all I could do was reenact their final flight, trying to change a key event.

  None of them were old enough to die. I remembered a quote by a Mohawk chief named Hendrick, looking over his warriors on the eve of a battle. “If they are to fight, they are too few. If they are to die, they are too many.”

  * * * *

  The big day arrived. The simulator was set up to launch from the snapshot made before Gramps and his section vanished. The slower bombers were out of sight to the southeast, not yet threatened by fighters, and unescorted, over Allied-held France. The German fighter squadrons that had engaged the bombers were poised to launch as we crossed selected waypoints.

  I adjusted my gear and settled in to the cockpit simulator. This rig was essentially just the insides of the cockpit, with all the controls and gages, topped by a bubble canopy. Inside the cockpit was normal space, and its surface insulated me from the bizarre physics of the simulator chamber in which it sat. It was part reproduction, but many of the parts were originals. Some were removed as obsolete or unnecessary during civilian Mustang conversions of a bygone era or recovered from wrecks. The virtual plane the nanoticle simulator would create around the cockpit would bear the markings of a fighter group based in Leiston, with no nose art or name. Gramps and his squadron were based at Duxford. I would be looking for Mustangs with checkered nose cowlings. My oxygen mask was snuggly in place and delivering good air. I checked my radios for the proper frequency, preset my throttle, prop, trim, and turbochargers for the airspeed and altitude, and gave Wendy the thumbs up. She closed the hatch on the simulator as I gave the checklist one last quick scan.

  The air filled with an interference pattern as the laser hologram that would program the initial conditions fired up. The walls of the chamber faded as the nanoticles, the tiny virtual synth-space particles that created the simulation, materialized from whatever mysterious zero-point-energy place they come, and linked up to make an incredibly powerful massively parallel processor, capable of simulating matter, gravity, you name it. Don't bug me with the details. As long as I understand the stock market, I'll hire people like Wendy Taylor and the eccentric Dr. Rostov to do the dirty work.

  A pronounced chill came over the cockpit as the tiny processors recreated the conditions at thirty thousand feet. The roar of amplified ripping silk filled the air and shook the cockpit as the simulated Merlin engine came to life. I don't know how Wendy managed it, but I could even smell aviation gasoline and hot oil. The simulated Mustang materialized around the cockpit, and my gages responded. As I scanned them, my peripheral vision revealed blue sky materializing above and pink-white clouds with occasional patches of gray sea below. The early morning sun was ahead to the right and would be an annoyance for the next hour or so. I kept one eye on the clock, the other scanning the sky as the last minute before the snapshot wound down. As the second hand neared the mark, the simulation reached lifelike clarity. In the few seconds remaining, I fired a short clearing burst on my guns, blasting away the tape that covered the gun ports. It wouldn't do to have my new companions chide me for forgetting to test my armament.

  The moment arrived, and the planes appeared at ten o'clock, ten miles distant, and a thousand feet lower. For the uninitiated, pilots picture their horizontal situation as an antique clock face. Twelve o'clock is straight ahead, six is straight behind, ten is off to the left and slightly forward.

  “Holy crap, anybody else see that flash?” the radio crackled.

  “I did. Its like the sky suddenly changed color a little.”

  “I saw that too. Hey, bogey at four o'clock, ten miles!”

  “Easy Booger, looks like one of ours.”

  “Jumpin’ jeepers, how'd he sneak up on us like that? We must be snoozing.”

  I keyed my mike. “Green flight leader, this is Hellfire out of Leiston. I had a sick engine this morning and got a late start. They said I should try to join up with you guys.” I eyed the clouds below nervously, looking for what I suspected would be an Me163 Komet rocket plane, a tiny thing with a bullet-shaped fuselage and swept wings like a swallow. Those little pests are fast and can climb nearly straight up. They're usually lightly armed and can't stay in the air long, but it was the only threat in the area. I'd seen accounts of one armed with a special weapon that could account for a sudden loss of an entire squadron. “I was wondering when you guys were going to spot me. Put your heads on swivels. We're in enemy air.”

  “Hey, Hellfire, is it? You know a guy named Bill Blystone? Used to wrench for us, transferred to Leiston.”

  I can't say Wendy didn't warn me. These were more like real pilots than AIs, and they probably had connections all over England and the States. It was going to be difficult to avoid getting tripped up.

  “Cut the chatter, guys. That's not appropriate information over the radio in enemy airspace.” A flash of motion from the cloud below caught my eye. A black speck emerged thousands of feet below Gramps and his companions. “Green flight, break left, yellow flight, break right. Bogey below you, straight down, rising fast off the cloud layer. Me 163.” As I broadcast my warning, I was already advancing my propeller RPM.

  Green flight executed a neat section turn to the left, while yellow flight did an equally pretty one to the right, just as a streak of dense grey smoke erupted from the nose of the Komet. That was no slow-firing cannon, that was a rocket pod. I watched in relief as the cloud, which had resolved into hundreds of spikes of smoke tipped with tiny sparks, shot through the space where the Mustangs would have been. I checked manifold pressure and RPM and advanced my throttle, then dropped my left hand to the rudder trim wheel to compensate for the torque. My plane began to accelerate.

  “Hoooo-leee shit, what was that?”

  “I don't know, but Hellfire, you can fly on my wing anytime."

  I keyed my mike. “Well, boys, I suspect he only has that one shot, and he should be about out of fuel by now. Let's see if we can keep him from getting home.”

  The Komet, no doubt blinded by the smoke from his own weapon, shot through the gap between the two flights, which were not in position to go after him, and probably had not had time to advance power from cruise. The tiny rocket plane arched over toward the west, behind the fighters. It would have been a good choice, but he evidently had not noticed me. As he came over the top and lined up on the Dutch coast for the glide home, I slid in right behind him. A quick burst found his fuel tanks, and he must have had enough of the notoriously touchy hypergolic bipropellant for one last burst of speed, because he exploded instantly. His tiny plane totally disintegrated, and the pilot emerged from the fireball engulfed in flames and writhing. In all my years of simulations, I'd never seen anything like it. I've seen AI pilots close up many times, but never one that appeared to be in agony. I watched him fall to the cloud deck and never saw a chute.

  I didn't even have to drop my external fuel tanks and a quick glance told me the other planes still had theirs, as well. The mission was still on.

  “Hellfire, this is green flight leader. Nice shooting. Too bad you just shot down something they say the Krauts don't
have. Would have made a nice score. But you're more than welcome to come down here and join us.”

  With my excess speed, I closed with them easily. “Green flight leader, I've been briefed. Sounds like we've got a fight coming, and I'm a little surprised you guys are using the radio so much.”

  “Shoot, Hellfire, that's our style. Heck, we hope the Krauts know we're coming. They just took a shot at us, and not only did they miss, we picked up another plane! If they keep it up, we'll be a whole wing by the time we get home.”

  “That'll be enough, Chatterbox. Hellfire, Gramps. I'm the squadron leader today. Pleased to have you aboard.”

  As I closed with them, I considered the situation. This was a section, not a full squadron, and I wondered if that was part of the ruse. Gramps could not say it, but considering the diversionary nature of their mission, they may have been ordered to use the radio liberally. That may have been part of the reason they were killed in the real mission. Or maybe they were selected because “Chatterbox Charlie” would be with them. Maybe they were not just heading into trouble. Maybe they were trouble magnets.

  They say bomber escort missions were hours of boredom interrupted by moments of stark terror, but I found the first leg of the flight entirely pleasant. The cloud deck broke up just inland, and the view was spectacular, but mostly I was just enjoying the company. I didn't say much for a while, I just listened to the jovial patter, while scanning the sky for signs of trouble.

  Preacher spotted the bombers first. “Gramps, Big Friends at two o'clock, right where they should be. Been expecting to see them for a few minutes now. Funny, one second, nothing, the next second they were just there.”

  Oh, great! They spotted another limit of the simulation. The bombers were still a hundred miles away. Preacher must have eyes as good as Yeager and Anderson to have spotted that.

  “Check your oxygen, Preacher,” Gramps advised.

  Not long after that, I spotted the first enemy fighters. “Bogeys at nine o'clock, maybe thirty miles.”

  Gramps looked to his left. “Tally ho! Got ‘em. Okay, boys, get ready for a fight.”

  I watched the enemy planes, wanting ever so much to go bust up a few, but I smelled a rat. “I don't know, Gramps. Those are Bf 109s, and they don't look like they're interested in our Big Friends.”

  “Bee Eff? Look like Messerschmitts to me.”

  I shook my head. Man, was it easy to get tripped up by period terms. The historically correct Bayerische Flugzeugwerke designation for the plane was rarely used in the war. “That they are, Gramps, but I think they're a diversion. I'll bet they have inexperienced pilots in them, hoping to draw us away so the Focke-Wulfs get a clean shot at the Forts.”

  “Roger.” There was a long pause. “Diversion. Right. Okay, guys, keep the mission in mind.”

  “Little friends, this is Sweet Rosie O'Grady. Are you our escorts?”

  “Roger, Rosie. Be there in a few.”

  “Hey, can anybody see any red on their tails?”

  “Naw, they're the hotshots with the checkered noses.”

  “Swell. Not many of them, either.”

  The bomber crews did not seem all that thrilled to see us. It occurred to me that the Red Tails were escorting the main body of bombers for which we were the diversion. “Guys, do you know why they were looking for red tails?”

  Gramps answered. “They were hoping they drew the 337th, instead of us. I met some of those guys when they were the 99th. They were attached to my unit at Anzio.”

  “Those colored boys? Why would they want a bunch of darkies?”

  “Hey Reb, ain't your plane the ‘Black Knight?’ That's one of their nicknames. I always figured you was just trying to pass.”

  “That does it, Spud. I'm a cuttin’ off your bourbon ration.”

  “Hey, I've heard they've never lost a bomber they were escorting to enemy planes.”

  That was not quite true, but the legend was powerful, and not far from the truth. Evidently the bomber crews believed it, likely from direct experience. “So I've heard,” I commented. And then an idea occurred to me. For me, simulated combat has always been a game, something I pursued for individual enjoyment and to rack up an impressive score. So why had I spent a fortune to come here and experience this terrible time? Why had I just passed up an opportunity to go bust up a bunch of unskilled pilots, a setup almost identical to the classic “ace in a day” mission? I've never enjoyed bomber escort simulations ... they're time-consuming, difficult, nerve-wracking, and it always bugged me if somebody screwed up and we lost some. If we failed to protect the bombers, so what? This was only a simulation.

  But it certainly didn't feel like a simulation. I was keenly aware that the ten Flying Fortresses just ahead of us each carried ten men, with a job to do, and most of them would die or be taken prisoner if we failed to defend them. Dozens of German planes were converging on them, each carrying a pilot with loved ones somewhere down below. They might or might not be Nazis. They were men defending their homes from people intent on dropping huge iron bottles full of high explosives on those homes.

  And those tons of high explosives were being dropped in hopes of hitting some target of strategic importance and thereby shorten the war.

  And I, we, had a job to do. “Guys, do you want to know how those guys from Tuskegee chalked up that record? They're not in it for glory, and they don't give a rat's ass about their score. They're disciplined. They know their mission is to stick with the bombers and defend them. They don't go off chasing after fighters.”

  It was a little hard to tell, with several radios transmitting at once, but I believe I could make out cheers from our Big Friends. Pretty damned sophisticated behavior for AIs. I wondered just how much personality Wendy had managed to copy from their originals.

  “Duxford Rascals, this is Gramps. Hellfire just nailed it. Let's show the Forts a checkered nose is as good as a red tail. Jerry likes to attack from the front of the formation, or from above. A tight formation of Forts will rip ‘em up if they hit from the sides or behind. Yellow flight, blue flight, take up position ahead of the bombers and break into elements. Green flight, red flight, follow me. Break into elements to the right and left.”

  So, blue and red flights? Nobody said anything to contradict him, so maybe the radio chatter was part of their instructions after all. Either that or we had a squadron that was half phantoms.

  “Hellfire, since you forgot to bring a wingman, you want to join my element?”

  “I'll come up topside with you, but I don't need a wingman.”

  “Pride goeth before a fall.” Preacher's voice.

  “You wanna give me your widow's address before the shootin’ starts? I promise I'll console her.” That was probably Chatterbox.

  What could I tell them? I had enough kills recorded, flying solo, to account for most of the Deutsche Luftwaffe? That I learned to fight on a gizmo called a computer against simulated pilots that were dumber than stumps, with wingmen that were no better? A good wingman can practically read your mind and works with you with minimal and very simple communication. But the simple simulators I first learned on, and which most hobby pilots learn on, made wingmen useless, or worse. So I developed tactics for fighting solo, including the situational awareness to know where all the planes around me were, and what they were up to. I have since learned to fly with a wingman, but there are maybe a dozen pilots in the world I consider good enough to trust my six to, and, frankly, these guys, none of whom had hit sixty missions yet, were not on the list.

  “I've lost too many. I don't want the responsibility. I can take care of myself.”

  I could sense the stunned silence over the roar of the Merlin.

  Flying with a wingman has been doctrine for US fighter pilots since the first World War. The tactic is well proven. It saved lives and increased the success of our forces. They believed in it, heart and soul. But many notable aces, especially among the Germans, had mastered the art of solo combat out of necessity. The
scores of the top US aces were tiny by comparison to people like the six I had tackled to prove my point to Wendy. I was better than the best the enemy could offer. Oh, and by the way, I'm a magic man from the future, and I can't be killed. There was no way I could tell these guys why I didn't want a wingman.

  I considered the tactics they would probably use. Unlike the movies, where the best pilot leads the attack, smart leaders usually took the wing role for themselves. They put the newbies, fresh out of training and used to shooting at towed targets, out front, where they could focus single-mindedly on the target. The old pros, who had achieved that status by learning to keep a careful watch all around, defended the asses of their aggressive but careless young charges. And the old guys usually got plenty of chances to fight. The rookies were good bait.

  That was more or less what I had in mind. I would be backup wingman for the two high elements. But I could not be everywhere at once, and I didn't want them counting on me. I would be like Richthofen, on the edges of the fray, diving in to save a comrade or pick off an unwary enemy.

  “Bogeys at twelve o'clock high,” Preacher announced. “Fifty miles, closing fast. I make out twelve—no, sixteen. Focke-Wulfs. The long-nosed model by the way they're moving.”

  Not good news. I hate Focke-Wulfs, especially the long-nosed later models that were designed for high altitude. They were as tough as P-47 Thunderbolts and nearly as ugly, with the blunt-nosed look and circular cowling of all fighters with radial engines. Their thick fuselages with small bubble canopies gave them a muscular look. The Thunderbolt was called “the Jug” because of that appearance, and I suppose the somewhat smaller FW190 could be called the soda bottle. They were armed like tanks, with multiple rapid-fire cannons intended to shred bombers, they were fast, and they tended to have excellent pilots. I frankly would rather have been up against an equal number of jets. And if anybody disputes my assessment that they are ugly airplanes, try looking over your shoulder and seeing one pointing those big guns at you, and you'll soon share my opinion.