by Stuart Slade
“How do you know that?” Igrat’s curiosity was piqued by the offhand comment.
“There was a major confrontation between BHP and a group called Hoskins. Basically Hoskins was a front for a consortium of the big British steel makers who didn’t like the rise of BHP and wanted to kill it. Their attitude was that if they couldn’t stop Australia making steel, then they wanted to control the way that steel was sold. Lewis believed in constantly reequipping his factories so that they were at the leading edge of technology. As a result, Australian steel was the cheapest in the world. Even with shipping charges, it was cheap enough to be a major threat in the UK home market. Anyway, the British steelmakers put a lot of money into setting up their rival to BHP but lost out.
“The important thing from our point of view is that, once they had won the trade battle, BHP cut a deal with the British backers. BHP would take over their raw steel production and go into partnership with them in a new joint venture to make alloys steels in Australia. That was typical. BHP has a long track history of amicably swallowing its competition rather than killing it. I think they can look at the Indian steel industry the same way. It will be a long, long time before India’s steel production will meet the country’s full needs and BHP would be happy to fill the difference in a cooperative manner. From India’s point of view, BHP doesn’t just supply product and better quality raw materials than can be sourced in India, but technology. BHP has been in the game long enough to start its own R&D; making its own developments and building its own plant when it had something better than it could buy. As a result, BHP is scrapping more plant in a year than India can buy at this stage. I think Lewis and his BHP can provide India with a useful mentor, and see a profit in doing it. BHP like profit, they like it a very great deal, and they do think long term. So they’re a good partner for us.
“So, give Lewis the proposal packet and the word on how we see things and why. Make sure Lewis knows that we’re in this long-term. He doesn’t need to know what we mean by long term, of course. This is part of another investment I’m planning. I’ve got a guy called William Pawley of the Intercontinental Aircraft Corporation of New York looking into setting up an aviation company in India. Pawley has been a primary exporter of American aircraft to India and I’ve arranged for him to obtain a large number of machine-tools and equipment from here. If India is going to get a big pile of ex-British and ex-French military aircraft, they’ll need to maintain them. That’s an opportunity for us. Lillith’s done the financial projections and she’s rubbing her hands with glee.”
“Doing well by doing good again?” Igrat firmly believed that virtue brought its own rewards, although her definition of virtue was rather different from the accepted norms.
“Politically, yes. The policy of the present United States government is that the old colonial empires should be dismantled and their constituent countries placed on a firm economic footing.” Stuyvesant paused for a second, then continued. “The empires falling will happen anyway and its better they go quietly than fighting the process every step of the way. We’re helping the inevitable along by investing in the economic development of the Commonwealth countries. If it does us some good in the process, so much the better.”
Short Sunderland Mark 1 F-Freddie, Over The Eastern Mediterranean
The fifteen flying boats were spread out in a loose gaggle; the three G-class boats in the middle with the dozen Sunderlands surrounding them. The first leg of the flight from Great Britain to Gibraltar had gone very smoothly, as had the refuelling at the naval base. That had simply taken time, although they had been fortunate there were specially designed refuelling barges manned by trained marine crews at Gibraltar. The great naval base was equipped to refuel many flying boats during the course of the day, so a full squadron in transit had been only an inconvenience.
Privately, Alleyne believed that this would be the last time they might see such luxuries. In the future, operating from extemporized bases would mean refuelling from drums or unpowered barges. That would take hours. Lack of properly trained ground crews would put the work of handling of the fuel nozzles and opening/closing the aircraft fuel tanks in the hands of his own crews. The bellies of the Sunderlands were stuffed with oil supplies and minor spares, while their accommodation was occupied by the squadron’s immediate ground crews. All that meant they would be able to operate, for a while at least, away from any fixed base.
“Gunners, keep your eyes open for hostile fighters. We’re getting into range of Italian airbases by now.”
“Do you really think that the Italians will attack us?” Sir Wilfred Freeman was sitting in the co-pilot’s seat, looking out across the Mediterranean.
“If they know we’re Australian, yes. We’re still painted up in 95 Squadron markings, but how long the ruse will hold, I don’t know. There’s fighting going on in East Africa; if Italy hasn’t invaded Egypt yet, she will soon. I was half-expecting to hear that the invasion had started before we left Gibraltar. Come to think of it.” Alleyne keyed his radio. “All aircraft, drop down to one thousand feet. Say again, one thousand feet. Keep your eyes skinned for wop fighters.”
Without knowing quite why, Freeman was suddenly positive they would be attacked. He scanned the sky, certain in his own mind that the appearance of Italian fighters was a question of when, not if. It was with almost a sense of relief that he spotted a group of six shadows against the clouds scattering the sky above them.
“Squadron Leader, two o’clock high.”
“Got them.” Alleyne was terse. “All aircraft, we have hostiles coming in. Drop down to two hundred feet and tighten the formation up. BOAC aircraft, try and stay out of the way. We’ll put up a screen around you.”
“Ever so grateful, old chap.” The voice on the radio was impossibly British.
“I don’t envy them.” Freeman sounded sympathetic. “Unarmed aircraft, waiting for fighters to attack them.”
“They’ll have to get past us first and the Eye-ties will be in for a nasty surprise when they try. They can’t get underneath us; that’s why we came down so low. And they’ll have a hell of a time from our turrets and beam guns.” Alleyne was confident of that. His Sunderlands had twin .303inch machine guns in nose, dorsal and beam positions, a quadruple .303inch tail turret, and four fixed .303s in the nose. They’d already proved they could give a good account of themselves against the best the Luftwaffe could offer. Once again, his stomach clenched slightly at the thought of the work his squadron had volunteered for and then been forced to leave undone.
Above them, a flight of six Italian fighters were peeling off to dive. Alleyne looked hard at them; radial-engined monoplanes with a curious humpbacked design,. Fiat G.50s. Agile as all hell, but lightly armed and no armor. They are in for a nasty surprise.
The Italian pilots were inexperienced when it came to attacking heavily-armed, multi-seat aircraft. They’d done the traditional peel off maneuver; each aircraft taking its turn to do a wingover and enter its dive. As a result, they were coming in from the stern quarter in single file. Each fighter in turn would be the target of the concentrated firepower of at least three flying boats.
The Australian gunners were experienced. They’d fought fighters before and knew how to go about driving them off. They held their fire until the lead fighter was in close. Then they filled the sky around it with bullets.
Looking over his shoulder, Alleyne guessed that at least 16 machine guns were firing on the leader. He was almost masked from sight by the hail of tracer fire. The Italian fighter burst into flames and continued its dive downwards to plunge into the sea.
Behind him, the Italian number two was also lost in the glare of the massed tracers. Its path was marked by a black stream of smoke. It first turned orange as it mixed with fire, then ended in an explosion of ruptured fuel tanks.
The third fighter saw what had happened to the two leaders. He skidded away as the machine guns tracked in on it. Alleyne guessed it had been hit. His gunners stopped firi
ng when it veered away. Ammunition on the Sunderlands was too precious to waste on aircraft that had already broken off their attacks.
That left four fighters circling the formation of flying boats. The Italian fighter pilots didn’t lack courage, but they had the sense to realize they were up against something much more capable than the aircraft they were accustomed to facing. Two split away and came at Alleyne’s Sunderland from head-on. That was a bad mistake.
Alleyne swung his nose slightly and opened fire with the four fixed nose guns, reinforced by the twin guns in his upper and nose turrets. Tracer fire envelopd the attacking fighters. They sheered away. One developed a thin stream of whitish gray smoke from its engine. It was last seen heading away, losing altitude.
Three fighters left.
The fate of their flight-mates left the remaining fighter pilots wary. They tried a few more tentative probes. Fierce return fire drove them off each time. Eventually, they turned away and headed for home. Italian fighters were very short-ranged, Alleyne had read in the intelligence briefings, and they lacked combat endurance.
“Any damage to report?”
There were a few holes from long-range .50-caliber machine gun fire, but the flying boats were essentially undamaged. Critically, the fighters had never even got close to the big G-class boats in the center of the formation. Beside him, Freeman was nodding contentedly. “Nicely done, Squadron Leader. I wonder if they’ll come back with their friends?”
“I think that’s very probable, Sir.”
Training Area, 11th Infantry (Queen’s Cobra) Division, Kanchanaburi, Thailand
His rifle had its bolt carefully wrapped in cloth to stop it rattling. All his other equipment was either wedged in place or carefully padded to avoid giving warning to the troops waiting in the defensive position ahead of them. Before setting out, he and his men had jumped up and down to make sure than there wouldn’t be the slightest sound to betray the assault. It had looked strange, but there was good sense behind it. Noise was the enemy as much as the ‘troops’ in the dugout.
Corporal Mongkut Chandrapa na Ayuthya felt the thin white tape laid out by the reconnaissance squads in no-man’s land. He was leading his section forward to its bounce-off point some hundred meters short of the enemy defenses. He had the picture in his mind: the zig-zag trenches, machine guns carefully positioned to cover the wire with an impenetrable hail of fire. Their instructors had been quite clear about what would happen if there was a deliberate assault on the position in daylight. The machine guns would slowly swing backwards and forwards, spraying the barbed wire entanglements while the troops struggled to get through. If the machine gunners did their job, the men would die on the wire. Some of the instructors had told stories of a great battle in far-away France, at a place called the Somme. A place where 60,000 men had fallen in a single day because the wire had held and the machine gunners had been skilled at their work. Mongkut couldn’t even begin to conceive of that many men dying in a single day. It was almost his entire Army being wiped out.
The instructors had explained that night attacks were one way the devastating effects of barbed wire and machine guns could be offset. They had also explained that coordinating and mounting a night attack was one of the most difficult and complicated operations an Army could undertake. Faced with the alternatives of heavy casualties in assaulting fixed positions or learning the skills needed to fight at night, the Army elected to take the latter route. That was why Mongkut was following the white tapes in the middle of the night.
His hand felt the knots in the tape. His section reached their assembly point. His men spread out beside him, crawling close to the ground in case observers from the enemy should see them. Any second now, the assault would start. The seconds stretched into minutes. Mongkut felt the coldness of the night bite into his bones. Even in a tropical climate, the night air could have a chill to it. Especially for men lying motionless on the ground.
After what seemed to be hours, the horizon behind him lit up. A roar marked the guns firing. Mongkut recognized the howl overhead as outbound artillery fire. Shells crashed into the positions in front of him. It was real artillery fire. Live shells filled the air with fragments. That was the signal for the assault. He pushed hard with his feet, jumping up as he shouted out his first order since the move to the front.
“Follow me!”
All along the line, Thai infantry rose to their feet. They sprinted towards positions hit by the sudden blast of artillery fire. They swept over the trench, bayoneting sandbags representing French soldiers manning the defensive line. They shot others that were “hiding” in the bottom of the trench. Mongkut saw a gaping black hole in front of him. He guessed it was the entry point to a dugout. Almost by instinct, he tossed a thunderflash inside. The interior light up.
His section was spreading out, ready to beat off a counterattack from the defenders; Mongkut had the firm belief that, if sandbags actually came to life and attacked him, it would be time to retire. There was another shout of “follow me!” Mongkut saw his officer ordering them forward. It was time to attack the second line of defenses.
Two hours later, the battalion assembled while the instructors evaluated its performance in the night attack. After general comments and praise for an attack carried out well, the officers and NCOs were taken to one side for individual briefings. Praise in public, punish in private, thought Mongkut. His lieutenant and one of the foreign instructors sat down at a table with him.
“You and your men did well, Corporal. You were quick on your feet and you followed the shells in closely. You overwhelmed the trench in fine style and were quick to set up your defense. You grenaded the dugout without delay. But, you should have followed that up; you can’t be sure that the grenade got everybody down there.” The foreigner produced a picture of a dugout with a deep, narrow pit in the bottom. “This is called a grenade trap. If the men inside are quick, one of them might have kicked your grenade into this and saved everybody. Also, you didn’t clear the trenches on either side of you. That could have cost your entire section their lives.”
“There didn’t seem time to do everything, Sir.” Mongkut saw his Lieutenant look surprised. It wasn’t expected for a junior to speak up like that. Respect for position and rank was deeply ingrained. Yet the foreigner actually seemed to approve.
“It’s hard, isn’t it? You have to secure your section of the trench, grenade the dugouts, clear the sections to either side of you and make sure you are linked up with the rest of your unit. Yet, you also have to be ready to receive a counterattack and get ready to follow up your own advance with an assault on the enemy second line. Everything at once.
“I wish I could tell you how to do it all, but I can’t.” The foreigner smiled sadly, shaking his head at the memories of trench warfare that flooded back to him. “All I can say is, remember everything you have to do and do what you can as the circumstances demand. If you have to leave things undone, leave them; but never forget you have left them undone. It’s deciding what to leave undone that’s the hard part. You’ve heard of Generalship? Well, this is Corporalship. Generalship wins wars but Corporalship wins battles. Remember that. And, for last night’s exercise, a qualified well-done.”
Mongkut saluted and left, feeling ridiculously pleased with himself. Inside, the German instructor made a mark in a file he carried. “Good NCO material there. I like the way he spoke up. We have to encourage that, you know. It’s the NCOs who will make or break any maneuver the Army tries to make. They have to be taught to think for themselves.”
“But … The infantry lieutenant tried to get his mind around a concept that did not involve the blind obedience he had thought was ideal.
“Think on it this way. You guide the unit and decide what it must do. But it’s the NCOs at the sharp end who have to decide how to do, it then and there. That corporal shapes up well. We’ll have to watch him and help him grow. He might even make Sergeant one day.”
“Or an officer?”
> The Lieutenant meant it as a joke, but the German advisor nodded thoughtfully. “Possibly. Time will tell.”
Government House, Canberra, Australia
“The sovereign?” Thomas White made his question sound like an answer. The other two heads in the room nodded.
Fadden shrugged “Now, obviously there’s a lot of details to work through, both from our side and across the Empire, before we get a new currency up and running. But, as I say, the basics are pretty clear cut. The one thing we can’t do is wind back the clock. Our new currency is not going to have the British economy backing it in addition to the Empire, nor will it have the Bank of England and Whitehall looking after it and moderating the whole show. The sterling stood on its own two feet, not something we can say for our sovereign. The wider market has had little exposure to it directly over the years other than via London, so they’ve got no measure of its value, and without that yardstick, pessimism just snowballs.
“So, we have to establish a value for our pound against the sovereign. Just pinning it to gold will calm fears and get business moving again. But it’s the rate that is critical to the sort of business we get, and no matter what rate we set, its going to step on someone toes just as they’ll be stepping on ours. If we undercut the Kiwis, or more likely they undercut us, the Indians, Malays, whomever we cross swords with, will have a diplomatic bone to pick with us, as we with them. As I say, we won’t have London to balance the scales. The right way to do things would be to set up a bank specifically to run the sovereign; they’d buy the gold from the producers, mint the coin, set the rates, issue any notes and do the whole business.
