Magestic 2, p.50
Magestic 2, page 50
‘And the British Army will have men and machines tied up in the Far East,’ I pointed out. ‘Sat waiting for the Nips to attack, and defending Hong Kong!’
‘And they’ll be fighting a war in North Africa,’ Mac added. ‘Against the frigging Italians!’
Jimmy said, ‘It would be nice to effect a surgical strike, a knockout blow, which is still one of my hopes. But we also need the men and the machines gone, we can’t have the Jap Army just go home – and then hope for the best. We’ll inflict casualties … because it’s necessary.’
‘And civilians too,’ Hal noted.
‘This is not our era, this is 1935,’ I reminded him. ‘And the war will kill thirty million people.’
‘I’m aiming at a lot less than that,’ Jimmy emphasised. ‘So, opinions?’
Mac asked, ‘How’d we use our weapons, and drag it out a bit?’
‘By being stealthy,’ I responded. ‘With high altitude night bombing, with submarines, and with Special Forces. We affect the outcome battle by battle, and adjust the plan as we go. We keep a score card.’
Hal said, ‘And just when … does the States get involved?’
‘Not until they’ve been attacked or provoked,’ Jimmy pointed out.
‘So they sit on the damn sidelines?’ Hal asked. ‘While we fight?’
‘They did the last time,’ I pointed out. ‘And if we knock back the Japs in Hong Kong, no Pearl Harbour.’
‘I’ll try some propaganda,’ Jimmy suggested. ‘And I have a few senators and congressmen in my pocket. Still, it’s a pacifist congress right now.’
‘Do we need them involved?’ Handy asked.
‘To destroy the German land army and occupy Germany - yes we do!’ Jimmy stated. ‘With just the British, it will drag on. And then there are the post-war years, and the Korean crisis and others. Question is, do we let events unfold at their own pace, or do we make our own pace – and our own war?’
‘We set our own pace,’ Mac encouraged. ‘Seems like it’s just us anyway.’
‘That pace,’ Jimmy began, ‘would be to slowly harass the Italians in North Africa, to allow the tension between Britain and Italy to grow, to get involved in the Spanish Civil War, and to provoke Germany into involvement in North Africa ahead of time. We’d defend Hong Kong and provoke the Japs, hoping that the world is distracted. We make a plan, and we tie it all up in one go.’
‘And if the Germans move sooner?’ Sykes asked.
‘We both know they’re not ready, so if they move they’d do so in a half-hearted way,’ Jimmy responded. ‘Everyone give it some thought, and make your opinions known to me. In the meantime, I want the American Brigade to be rapidly increased in size, without losing quality too much. I want the Canadian Rifles increased as well, and the Nepalese Rifles.’
I faced Sykes. ‘How are the Nepalese coming along?’
‘Hard as nails, good fighters, very disciplined,’ he enthused.
‘How many?’ I asked.
‘Just over two thousand.’
‘Make that just over four thousand,’ Jimmy instructed. ‘OK, thank you everyone. And get thinking.’
Telegrams flew off to Rudd, asking for the Kenyan Rifles to be increased in size. We also asked him to send us as much money as he could, all reserves, and to sell diamonds. We then instructed Ngomo to create a British Brigade within the structures of the Kenyan Rifles, and to recruit six hundred men.
Ngomo was ordered to send fifty men to Libya, and to harass the Italians. Building projects in the Congo would slow up to assist with the war effort; money would be needed. A few rail track projects were sidelined, but one new track was commissioned, one that cheekily followed the Egyptian side of the Libyan border, from our Saharan rail line deep into the country and towards the coast.
Po was asked to slow up any new or planned projects and to send us what money he could, and to ship more ore and oil to Canada. He was immediately worried. The remaining Kenyan Rifles in Israel were withdrawn, the Israelis now having to rely on their own militia, but we allowed forty instructors to remain in the Negev Desert.
In Canada, we made plans and got busy. Stores of weapons were shipped to Kenya, some to Hong Kong, our mighty arsenal emptying. Our staff started to think that sales were booming. Our Cessna and Dash-7 aircraft were slowed in favour of other aircraft, but much of our stockpile was shipped to Kenya, forty of the Dash-7s “donated” to the RAF in Britain. They were unarmed, but could have RPG pods fitted, as well as night sights. They could also be used for recon, and for small unit inserts.
Additional Boeing B11/4s were ordered by the Congo Corporation, forty of them for use in North Africa if necessary. They would be stockpiled for now. Production of our prop fighters was cranked up, and a new variant prototype designed. It offered a few enhancements, including more bomb stations on the underside of the fuselage. Engines had improved a little since the last variant, and the prop fighter would get a bit more power and fuel efficiency.
Production of the Goose and Super Goose were eased in favour of the bomber variant, even though we had orders for the commercial aircraft, and the jet fighter team were told to get a move on. They were tasked with producing the next variant quickly, eight prototypes for advanced testing, and to test the existing aircraft to destruction. Up to now we had been gentle with the lonely prototype.
But most of the new emphasis was on the jet bomber. There was only one, and she was being treated kindly by pilots and ground crew alike. Jimmy ordered a second and third prototype as a priority. When those two were flying, the first was to be tested to destruction, an expensive exercise.
We requested of the British that additional RAF pilots learn how to fly the prop fighter and the jets, another hundred young men soon to be heading towards the subterranean delights of Lemming Base, and its pungent spa. Meanwhile, I headed off down to San Diego, to the shipyards, and met our engineers.
‘Those fast patrol boats; I’ll want ten, and quickly - we have orders for them.’
‘Jeez, that was quick.’
‘Yes, so get them made. Hire the staff, set up a team, and get on the case. Now, come with me.’ I led them to the senior managers. ‘OK, we have orders for the small fast boats, which is good, and I’d expect another twenty to be ordered in six months.’
They were pleased.
‘We’ve also discussed the subs with the British, and they’re keen, so I’m going to need you to hire extra staff, and get the subs finished well ahead of schedule. Cost is not an issue, time is. If all goes well, we’ll have orders for ten or twenty.’
They were pleased again, but already pushed.
‘Guys, I know you’re pushed, but be thankful that we have orders, and that you have well-paid jobs. Have inspection teams created for the subs, and go back over everything. If the initial trials are a disaster, you’ll all be out of work.’ I faced my engineers. ‘Bring down some men, and some paper systems.’
‘We tested the double hull,’ they said. ‘Navy fired at it with all sorts.’
‘And?’
‘It’s very strong, even on the receiving end of a twenty pound artillery piece. Navy were impressed.’
‘Good, that’s progress. When the first sub is ready and on its way to Vancouver you’ll all get a bonus. Let me know. Thank you, gentlemen.’
Back in Canada, I inspected the dry dock after landing near it, encouraging the builder’s foreman to finish it quickly for a bonus. At the hotel, I greeted Susan and the kids, then sat down and drew a picture. At the half-track factory, I got the senior men together. They had already been nudged to greatly increase production of jeeps and half-tracks, two hundred jeeps destined for the British in East Africa, sixty more half-tracks to be stored with the Kenyan Rifles.
‘Guys, I think we could sell a vehicle that’s not a jeep, and not a tank. Have a look at this drawing.’ They gathered around. ‘It has four large wheels, a lightly armoured base, a turning turret with a thirty mil gun and a fifty mil gun, and a radio. And that’s about it. The key feature … is speed; I’d want forty miles per hour from it, and over rough terrain, so a good suspension is key.’
‘What kind of armour?’
‘It doesn’t need to survive if put up against a tank, it would drive at infantry and shoot, so modest and light armour. If it can survive a fifty cal hit, that’s about enough.’
‘It looks like the armoured cars that the British have,’ a man noted.
‘Ours would be better,’ I said with a smile. ‘I want a prototype - real soon, and we’ll see how armour and speed is traded-off. Go to work, people.’
‘Would you like an aircraft engine in it, sir?’ a man asked, making everyone laughing.
‘If it works, yes. But let’s see about fuel consumption, eh. And the cost of production. If we get it right, I think we could get orders for three or four hundred.’
They blinked, and got to work, and I went to have a look at the tank. The poor old tank had been hit many times, its surface scratched.
‘Poor baby,’ I told it, a soothing caress of its main gun.
Its chief engineer closed in. ‘Need something, boss?’
‘A thousand of these would be good.’
‘She’s a beauty, but expensive – and hard to make. But I did have an idea about pre-caste sections that could speed that up. But we’re short of metal.’
‘There’s more on the way, lots more, so grab what you need,’ I told him, still studying my wounded beast of a tank. ‘She needs some friends.’
‘She has a few.’
I faced him. ‘She does?’
‘Next door.’ He led the way. There, lined up with their guns drooped, sat thirty tanks in a line.
‘What a beautiful sight,’ I let out, the man greatly pleased.
‘They’re not fast, but they will take anything anyone anywhere has to offer, and smile right back at them.’
‘What’s the production time?’ I asked.
He made a face. ‘Right now it’s about three a month.’
‘Tell me you know of a way to get that figure up.’
‘I reckon I could turn out thirty of these beauties a month if I had a few extra men, a few extra machines.’
‘Tell your boss I sanctioned fifteen a month, when the ore arrives. But what about the engines?’
‘They’re working on a new version, and they reckon three months, sir.’
‘I can wait three months.’ I pointed. ‘Do they have radios?’
‘Yes, sir, run off the engine. They have a CO2 scrubber off the aircraft, filters so the crew don’t breath smoke on the battlefield, water and food stores inside – so they don’t have to get out, a water-heater from a Goose inside, so a cup of coffee when they need it. They have piss tubes –’
I whipped my head around. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Rubber tubes you can pee down - it goes straight out, and a bag for a sit-down whilst you’re inside, and a hatch to dump it in.’
‘Oh. Shell capacity?’
‘Fifty two,’ he said proudly. ‘Six thousand rounds of fifty cal ammo, and now one of those night sight things.’
‘Aiming and accuracy?’
‘It has a good telescopic sight that makes your eyes go funny?’
‘Sorry?’ I puzzled.
‘You have two eyepieces. One shows you the ground ahead with a two times magnification, and one with a crosshairs and adjustable magnification up to twelve times. You can see someone both small and large at the same time.’
‘I’d guess that you’re supposed to find the target with the smaller lens, then close your eye and use the larger lens.’
He shrugged.
‘Let me know if anything gets in the way of fifteen a month.’
In the hotel, I went and found Hal that evening. ‘Hal, how’s that Huey?’
‘She flies well enough, but the engine needs work, and it’s just the one engine at the moment.’
‘They’d come in handy in Hong Kong, hopping across the islands, doing inserts.’
‘Without a better engine, or two smaller better engines, she’d struggle with six men in the back.’
‘Has Jimmy said anything about it?’ I asked.
‘It’s not a priority, no.’
‘OK, I’ll chat to him about it, but they’d be useful for inserts. You seen the tanks?’
He nodded. ‘That armour they have – it don’t exist in our time, it’s new. Far as we know, you could hit it with a nuke and not bend it; one of those German 88s would bounce right off. We dropped a two hundred and fifty pound bomb from a fighter - and it survived a direct hit. That’s what a Stukka could chuck at it.’
Sitting with Jimmy later, Toby now asleep on me, I asked about the Hueys.
‘Sure, they’d be good for inserts,’ he agreed. ‘But we’d need a better engine, and right now everyone is flat-out busy.’
‘Well, when they get some time, I’ll give them a nudge. We only need twenty or thirty to drop the SAS in.’
Before I turned in, my residence now larger than anyone else’s, I found Hal again. ‘How about … same engine, very thin body, armour plated, thirty mil cannon on the nose.’
He stared at me. ‘That would be a Cobra then.’
‘Anti-tank function. Give it some thought.’ And I left him with that thought.
A few days later, Jimmy sanctioned a Cobra for the anti-tank role, especially in the desert at night. Even with our crude night sight it could chew up a tank from above, or attack a fixed enemy position, and the Italians or Germans would be powerless against it. Rommel, The Desert Fox, was destined to meet Hal in a Cobra.
Thinking of old war movies, I popped into the airfield control tower, and found the man operating the radio direction finder. ‘Listen, who makes these sets?’
‘They make them at the radio factory, sir.’
‘Ah, well – yes, of course they would. Thanks’. I descended a flight of steps and into the dimly lit radar room. Grabbing the team leader, I said, ‘How’s it going?’
‘The range gets better all the time, and the clarity. We now have a separate unit that you operate when you have a bearing; it gives height.’
‘Ah, clever stuff. Who … makes them?’
‘They make them at the radio factory, sir.’
‘Of course they do.’
I pointed my driver towards the radio factory, and found the factory boss. Shaking his hand, and not recognising the man, I said, ‘You make our radio direction finding kit and radar.’
‘Yes, sir, factory unit next door, all very secure and top secret.’
‘That’s … good. Got a paper and pen?’ He readied himself. ‘I want a mobile radio direction finder, fitted to a truck.’
‘We have them, sir,’ he said with a puzzled frown.
‘We do?’
‘Yes, sir, for remote airfields with no control tower. A few in central Canada.’
‘They work OK?’
‘Oh yes, sir, good range.’
‘Fine, then what I want is for a mobile version that could be used by the British Royal Air Force.’
‘Well, they are detachable, not built into the truck.’
‘Excellent. I want thirty units as soon as you can make them.’
‘I’ll get right on it, sir.’
‘They’d be shipped to Kenya when ready, with an engineer or two, and some instructions. Next: radar.’
‘It’s coming along, sir,’ he keenly reported.
‘And is it mobile?’
‘Just this we week started to fit a unit to a truck. Bit more bulk than the radio sets, and it needs a separate generator - a petrol generator.’
‘I’d like a mobile radar as fast as you can, then tested, then made robust – to survive a boat journey and then be used in the desert, and I’d like twenty of them.’
‘We’ll get right on it, sir.’
‘Send me a work schedule and time estimate at the hotel, please.’ I stood. ‘How are sales?’
He followed me up. ‘Great, can’t make enough of them.’
‘Oh, you know about radio jammers?’
‘Yes, sir, we make those as well.’
‘I’d want jamming sets with the mobile radio direction sets.’
‘We have a few dozen sat around now, sir.’
‘Good. Keep me posted. Oh, send a mobile set of each to the Canadian Rifles and give them instruction on how to use the sets, and second pair to the American Brigade.’
‘Right away, sir,’ the helpful man offered.
When I informed Jimmy, he just nodded. ‘British are developing radar sets that have antennas twenty metres square. And at the moment, the Germans don’t think they’re necessary, and the Japs didn’t bother with them.’
A few weeks later, in the middle of a rainstorm, Churchill and Sykes landed on the inlet. We made them hot drinks in the hotel bar, bags taken in. And I handed our guest several boxes of Cuban cigars.
‘Kind of you, very kind of you, Mister Holton,’ Churchill offered.
‘They’re from my plantation in Cuba, so I’ll have them shipped to your club on a regular basis.’
‘Kind of you,’ he repeated, lighting up. ‘So, Mister Silo, and dear Mister Holton: you seem to be militarising Kenya, which makes some people, in some quarters, most nervous.’
‘They have nothing to fear,’ Jimmy told him. ‘But I am well connected in Africa, as well as everywhere else, and I see the Italians as a distinct threat to the region.’
‘As do we, as do we.’
‘So I’ll defend my interests if necessary, but not directly. The equipment we’ve been shipping will be handed over to your men in the area, with instruction: jeeps, half-tracks, radio direction finding of aircraft, the works. And the Boeing fighters.’
‘That’s good of you. It’s unusual, highly unusual that the British Empire should take handouts for its military, but when it comes to you pair we are but the underdogs. But there are no signs of any clever aircraft heading to the region..?’
‘We’ll hold them in reserve till they’re needed,’ Jimmy informed our guest. ‘And right now there’s no war to be interested in.’
‘I’ve spoken to the RAF pilots returning from the Lemming Base,’ Churchill began, and I hid a smile. ‘And they inform me of some quite fantastic aircraft and inventions.’
