“This is the Harvard I. A two seat advanced trainer. Compared with the Westland Wapitis you have been flying to date, it is an entirely different machine. A hundred miles-per-hour faster, it stalls at higher speeds than your old Wapitis cruised. It climbs faster, dives faster and will kill you faster if you do not take care. We will all work with these aircraft together. When you are familiar with handling a modern monoplane, we will transition to the Hawk 75, the Mohawk, fighter and you will become the first Indian fighter pilots.” Gregory Boyington looked at the group of pilots surrounding him. They were young, earnest and painfully inexperienced. “Just remember, there are two kinds of people on this planet. Fighter pilots and lesser men.”
Boyington had resigned his commission with the U.S. Marine Corps to join the Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company, run by Bill Pawley. He’d been under the impression that he would be going to China to fight the Japanese, but Pawley had taken a look at his degree in aviation engineering and his experience as a draftsman at Boeing and assigned him to the training program in India. Boyington’s age had been part of that decision as well; he was a good half-decade older than most of the pilots in the CAMCO program. Boyington had two responsibilities with CAMCO. One was to train the pilots in the three Indian Air Force squadrons in the arts of flying high-speed monoplanes. The other was to get aircraft production at the CAMCO plant in Bangalore off the ground. India also needed the ability to maintain its new Mohawks, Bostons and Hudsons. CAMCO was the answer to that need.
“How soon will we be able to fly the Mohawks, sir?”
“As soon as they, and you, are ready. The aircraft have to be delivered here, uncrated, assembled and test-flown. That will take some weeks. The delivery of Tomahawks to the Middle East takes priority. Then you must qualify on flying the Harvard before you can transfer to a Mohawk. After that, you will have to learn the operations demanded of fighter units. Intercepting raids, conducting sweeps for enemy fighters, escorting our own bombers. There is much to learn and little time. So we will start with familiarizing you with the Harvard.”
Elsewhere in India, Boyington knew the coastal reconnaissance flights would start converting to the Hudson while the flying boat squadron was set to convert to Catalinas. In that case, at least, the transfer should be relatively trouble-free. The first Indian bomber squadron was presently flying Audaxes and would be converting to the Douglas DB-7. If anything, that was more challenging than even the fighter conversions. The Audax was notoriously docile and easy to fly, but the hot DB-7s were anything but. “Right. The first thing to remember about the Harvard is that it has a retractable undercarriage. Don’t forget to pull it up after taking off and most especially don’t forget to lower it before landing. Failing to do so makes the accountants very angry.”
Boyington looked around at the trainees crowding around the Harvards.
God, I need a drink,
he thought.
Preferably several.
Short Sunderland Mark 1
F for Freddy,
Approaching Massawa, Eritrea
“So we ended up as droppin’ bombs after all.” Andy Walker sounded aggrieved. “Don’t tell me the Mad Bomber was right.”
“The top brass promised this was a once-only job. Lot of thin’s goin’ down tonight and we’re just a small part of it all.”
Alleyne was staring out of his cockpit, searching for the black shadows that would show another Sunderland making its bomb run. The original plan had been for the flying boats to make the trip to Massawa in formation and bomb the port in mass. He’d had to point out that his crews weren’t trained to fly in tight formations in daylight, let alone at night; he would lose half his aircraft to mid-air collisions. The Sunderland carried its bombs in an internal bomb room and cranked them out on underwing racks when needed; a maximum of four bombs at a time. That meant at least two runs to deliver the eight 500-pounders they would be carrying. The one thing his crews could do better than most was navigate.
Eventually, the planners had listened to reason. The aircraft would fly out alone and make their runs individually. One virtue was that the Italian naval base would be kept under a steady rain of bombs for a long period.
“Massawa cornin’ up.”
“I got it.” Alleyne made a few minor course corrections and lined up on the port. Incredibly, there were lights still on down there.
Had the Italians never heard of a black-out?
“Midships crew, open the side ports and wind out the first set of bombs.”
Noise increased as the side doors to the bomb room were opened; the controls felt slightly different as the bomb racks slid out under the wings. The Sunderland wasn’t built for this kind of operation; it didn’t even have a suitable bomb-aiming position. Alleyne was going to have to release his bombs by dead reckoning. He visualized the picture in his mind, trying to work out where the bombs would land in relation to the nose of his aircraft.
Far below, the lights of Massawa still twinkled. They went out just as Alleyne felt his bombs drop. For one weird moment, he wondered if their descent had caused the blackout. He saw flashes as the four bombs impacted somewhere in Eritrea. He was enough of a realist to accept that he couldn’t expect much more than that.
“Midships crew, get the second set of bombs out.”
He put his Sunderland in a long, gentle curve. The bomb room crew wound in the underwing racks, winched the remaining bombs into place and then got them back out under the wings. All hard, backbreaking work; all the more so when undertaken on a darkened aircraft over hostile territory. The people who had thought of this raid hadn’t allowed for that.
The reloading took longer than he’d expected. Eventually, the aircraft was ready. Alleyne arched around, making another run. By this time, the target as completely blacked out. He made his drop using the shape of the coast as a guide. This left him slightly uncertain as to whether he’d hit Eritrea.
Straining his eyes to make out details on the ground had taken all his attention. When he looked up, his first reaction was that a nearby area of sky was a little more solid than it should have been. His second was that he had a split second to avoid a collision with a Sunderland coming in the opposite attention.
He broke right, heaving the controls over and standing the big flying boat on its wingtip. By a miracle, the other Sunderland broke right as well. The two aircraft missed by inches. Shaking with nervous tension, Alleyne pressed the switch on his intercom. “All you bastards all right back there?”
“All right? All right, yoos ask? I’ve just shaken flamin’ hands with his starboard gunner, that’s how all right I’m. And the bastard had me wristwatch in the process.” Don Clerk’s voice was shaking. Alleyne guessed he knew just how close the two aircraft had come to colliding.
Reassurance is in order.
“That settles it boys. This night bombing stuff is for the birds. We’re goin’ home and that’s the end of it for this game. Top brass wants us to do this again, they can fly the flamin’ raids themselves.”
Natal Mounted Rifles, El Yibo, Northern Kenya
“All right, broere; get ready to move.” Sergeant Dirk Klaas passed the word quietly, although there was no real need to do so. What was about to hit the Italian positions opposite made any advance warning from a carelessly spoken word almost superfluous. The Transvaal Horse Artillery were about to wake the defenders up.
Flashes seemed to ripple along the horizon. There were two batteries back there. One had two troops of six 18-pounders; the other a troop of 18-pounders and another of 4.5-inch howitzers. The shells whined overhead, the pitch of the noise clearly defining them as being ‘outbound’. Klass had been in the South African Army a long time; he knew from the noise that only the 18-pounders were firing. The eight 4.5-inch howitzers were holding their fire in order to support the infantry when they made their approach.
Ahead of him, a series of flashes erupted in the Italian positions. Another pattern arrived before the after-images of the first shell bursts had fully faded. The 18-pounder had been criticized by European armies for being ‘too light.’ That relatively light shell made it fast-firing and that was critical when it came to keeping people’s heads down. Klaas had no doubt that the gunners were working like dervishes back on the lines, serving their pieces as fast as possible. He took a quick glance at his wristwatch and noted the time.
“Up, broere. Follow the shells in.”
The South African infantry surged upwards from their trenches, running across the gap that separated them from the bursts of the 18-pounders. Overhead, the sound changed slightly. The pattern of bursts lifted by about a hundred yards, slamming in on the second line of trenches that backed up the first. In their place, the howitzers dropped their shells on the first line trenches, cutting any wire that was in place and keeping the defenders pinned down. The lead elements of the South African infantry went to ground, covering the Italian front with their rifles and Bren guns. The next wave passed between them and closed on the defenders. Then, they too went to ground. The troops they had passed rose up again and assaulted the trenches.
The Italians fought hard. Klaas gave them that. They surged out of their dugouts, those that had not been crushed by the artillery fire, and met the assault with fixed bayonets. Lee Enfield crossed with Carcano. The men carrying them fought desperately; all knew when two men fought with the bayonet, only one would survive. Other men fought with entrenching tools, spades with their blades sharpened to turn them into a vicious battle-axe that cleaved their opponent. Some, a few, turned to run. Their reward was a bayonet thrust in the back or a skull caved in by a swing from an entrenching tool. Klaas never remembered the details of that fight. Only that he had waded in with bayonet and entrenching tool, and that the Italians had died.
At some point, the sun had risen. It was daylight when the South Africans climbed out of the advanced trenches they had taken and moved on
the second line. They left behind them a trench filled with bodies; some
Italian, some South African. Further behind them, another wave of infantry was crossing no-mans land and moving up to support the lead elements. Ahead of Klaas and his men, the 18-pounders and 4.5-inch howitzers were still pounding the main line of resistance.
That was beginning to crumble already. Klaas could sense it. There was a feel to a battle, a sense of its tempo, and he knew that this one was going to succeed. The Italians were already beginning to fall back; their positions abandoned or marked with small white flags. Klaas didn’t blame them. They had probably seen and heard the horror in the advanced trenches and wanted no part of it.
What started as an advance became a pursuit. Klaas’s sense of the battle was right. The Italians were giving up the ground and retreating. By the time the main line of defenses had fallen to the South Africans, the Italian infantry was already streaming to the rear, boarding lorries and heading north, away from the artillery fire and the men with bayonets that followed it. A few rearguards hung on; they bought just enough time for the rest of their units to escape. That didn’t matter too much, for one very simple reason. It was the whole reason why the battle had been fought here, at a small village in northern Kenya whose very existence was of so little consequence that a detailed map was needed to find it.
There was no water between El Yibo and the Ethiopian border.
Tomahawk II
Marijke,
Over the
El
Yibo Front, Kenya.
The sixteen Tomahawks were spread out, four flights of four aircraft each; all were hunting for Italian fighters. They would be coming to remedy the situation that had erupted on this front.
Hunting for the Italian fighters
was a phrase that echoed happily in newly-promoted Flight Lieutenant Pim Bosede’s mind. Gone were the days when the pathetic, obsolete Hawker Furies had run at the first shadow of an Italian fighter. Now, the Tomahawk ruled the skies and it was the Italians who fled at their approach.
“We see them.”
The message was from the Blenheim bombers below. The Natal Mounted Rifles reported the Italian forces that had been holding the front east of Lake Rudolf were in full retreat, heading north. The Italians themselves were in trucks; their Askaris, local auxiliaries, were on foot. That difference would be very important in the next few minutes. There were no real roads up here to disrupt the yellow-gray ground; only tracks, and few enough of them. The Blenheim crews knew where the Italians would be. The cloud of dust thrown up by the trucks drove the message home.
Here we are, come and get us.
The Blenheims did.
They swept over the column of lorries, dropping their load of 250-pound and 40-pound bombs on the troops beneath. Compared with the blast of the bombs, the patter of fire from the single machine gun arming each aircraft were of little account. The effect of the attack on the convoy was disastrous. Many of the lorries were hit. They started belching black smoke and blocked the track. The others turned off in a desperate attempt to escape. Their tires broke through the thin crust of hardened mud that covered the ground and spun helplessly in the fine sand underneath. The infantry in them knew that their ride northwards had just ended. From now on, their retreat would be on foot.
