Magestic 2, p.71
Magestic 2, page 71
‘We want a scrap, not a victory - not yet.’
‘Aircraft?’
‘The Luftwaffe now operates thirty medium bombers in Libya, and sixty fighters, some old Bf109s, a few of their more modern variants.’
‘Bit of a mismatch,’ I testily pointed out, again.
He nodded. ‘Our aircraft at the railway line have moved to a base fifty miles back, inside Chad, protected by the French Brigade.’
‘Leaving the RAF alone in the sand?’
‘The British have brought up an infantry battalion, and spread them amongst the bases. We’re supplying water, food, fuel, even ammo.’
‘But we’re not going to fight?’
‘Not yet,’ he carefully mouthed. ‘But the base deeper into Chad is … rather large, and well equipped.’
‘And the plan?’
‘Is to … wait and see what’s on their mind, then react according to the master plan, which is to delay a full-on fight till May.’
‘You have the British dispositions in Egypt?’ I asked. He handed me a file, and I started to read.
Jesus, it was all foot soldiers, a few Indian units, a few armoured car units. They had artillery, which was good, and anti-aircraft batteries. They operated two squadrons of Boeing Mark 4s, which was OK, Cessnas and Dash-7s for communications. They had, however, mined an area of the border, in fact several areas. But our British friends were relying on the fact that it was desert, and that large distances had to be covered; they would see an attack a long way off, and most of their units were well away from the border. From where the Germans now sat, they’d have to spend a week or two of churning up sand just to reach any British units.
The only bright spot in the British arsenal were the Boeings, since they had RPG racks and a good supply of ammo. The British now operated our half-tracks and jeeps, but that just put lightly armed infantry units in danger ahead of time, and in comfort.
‘Are the British asking for additional resources from us?’ I asked Jimmy.
‘At the moment they don’t see the need. I delivered the half-tracks and jeeps without permission - or even a request for them. They believe, quite correctly at this point in time, that the Royal Navy would blow the crap out of Tripoli and Bengasi, and anything moving along the coast road, plus intercept re-supply ships if need be.’
I cocked an eyebrow. ‘And their ships are impervious to medium German bombers?’
‘Ah, you’ve found the one flaw in their plan. Still, ships are hard to hit, even with lots of bombers, and the Royal Navy could pound the Italians and Germans at night.’
‘So,’ I sighed. ‘We wait to see what chess pieces move.’
‘I’ve asked Abdi to recruit more men, and to move onto a war footing.’
‘He’ll love that.’
‘I’ve sent him more half-tracks, jeeps, weapons and ammo, enough to give the British Governor there a heart attack.’
In the weeks that followed, the Germans conducted exercises in the desert, and slowly increased their numbers, but did not probe the borders. Their aircraft met the RAF Boeings in the south and waved, and that was all.
Meanwhile, halfway around the world, the Japanese were losing men to Mao, and not at all happy about it. They organised a major offensive, which we got wind of from Po’s spies on the mainland, but the advancing Japanese found Mao’s people to have moved back fifty miles. The Japanese surged forwards, bombing buildings as they went, but found no resistance till they hit a point some thirty-five miles forwards.
The Japanese High Command was pleased with the advance, and that the communists had fled. But two days after the advance, the Japanese supply lines started to be cut, bridges and rail lines blown up, convoys devastated with bombs place alongside roads. The communists came out of their caves and down from the hills on the fourth day and attacked from the rear.
Over a period of ten days the communists took heavy casualties, their attack a failure, but the Japanese had lost thousands of men and much equipment. The realisation in Tokyo was that remaining for many years would be very costly, unless the source of new weapons was cut off. They could hear our aircraft flying overhead each night – a deliberate provocation, but were powerless to intercept them, and growing more and more frustrated as each day passed.
Finally, in late September, they had had enough, and stopped food entering the colony from China. Food started to arrive by ship almost immediately, the ships not interfered with for now. People in the colony had to tighten their belts and cut down a bit, food prices rising, and we ourselves began to send grain ships. Po did an excellent job of bringing in supplies cheaply, since he controlled everything, and operated a fleet of two hundred ships. Oil came from CAR in Tanzania, and life went on in the besieged colony.
But the Royal Navy then went and did the unexpected, and dispatched four warships to the Far East to help with the food convoys. That move reduced the Royal Navy presence in Europe, and by four capital ships. They also dispatched an aircraft carrier with four support ships, something of a bold move considering the German build-up.
Across the endless sands of the Sahara, German half-tracks crushed beetles into the sand, a base of operation created at the oasis airfield. They didn’t know that their tea was made each day by one of Abdi’s men with black pointed teeth, or that he had a radio; that might have put them off their morning cuppa. We received coded messages, German numbers and units, Sykes collating their unit dispositions in London.
What was clear, was that the advance guard of many units were now in the country, a small fraction of the total men that the parent units offered. That meant that the rest of the unit would follow at some point. If all of the units present brought their full strength into Libya, they’d have enough men to take Egypt, more than enough.
Churchill received a briefing, things not looking good in North Africa. They dispatched additional units of light tanks and artillery, plus another two squadrons of Boeings, the Spitfire only just coming into service – and only now because we had given them a nudge. But even with the extra units they would hardly be at parity with the combined German and Italian strength on the ground, let alone in the air.
The Germans saw the reinforcements arrive in Alexandria, the Germans coded signals intercepted by Sykes, and the Germans soon knew exactly what they faced across the desert. They must have had little fear. The greatest fear for the Germans was still the Royal Navy, which was a force to be reckoned with.
For the Germans, the solution to their problems came in the form of the Italian Air Force, who now flew closer and closer to British warships, eventually dropping a bomb near one. The League of Nations convened, the Italians citing provocation from British warships close to their shores and to their supply routes to Libya. Well, given the layout of the Mediterranean Sea, it would have been hard for a Royal Navy ship to pass Malta and head to Egypt without passing Sicily, Libya, or an Italian supply convoy.
The net effect was that the Royal Navy avoided sailing too close to Italy or Libya, and tried to avoid the Italian convoys, but a week after the League had tried to arrange some semblance of peace around the Mediterranean, an Italian Bf109 shot down a Royal Navy biplane. The League reconvened, and again tried to bring some semblance of peace to the Mediterranean.
The Germans blamed the British for trying to starve the Italian and German troops in Libya, claiming that the British Empire wanted all of Africa. Well, the British probably did, but that wasn’t the point. Much shouting from the podium in Berlin resulted in reinforcements arriving in Libya from Germany. Abdi’s poor old tea boy was rushed off his feet with all the new arrivals.
In the hotel, we all waited the daily news, observing the build-up of forces on both sides. Another thirty half-tracks were sent up to Cairo, this time with 105mm fitted, plenty of shells, the British now offering a better anti-tank capacity. Fuel from Zanzibar made its way up the Red Sea, the British at least well stocked with that.
During October, the build-up continued in Libya, at a time when many of the Royal Navy’s capital ships were arriving in Singapore. But there were no skirmishes across the Libyan/Egyptian border, not least because the British troops were sat about the campfire a good sixty miles from the border. The action was all down to the Italians, used to provoke a conflict.
An Italian plane soon wandered over the Egyptian border, chased off, but the incident was reported as being over the Libyan side, complaints made. That was repeated a week later, followed by an Italian plane in the far south wandering a very long way from base and being chased off by the RAF over our railway. The poor old Italian plane limped in with bullet holes, a surprise to the RAF pilot, who had never fired a shot.
The Italian leadership threatened to defend itself from attack and from provocation, by using force. The British, bless ‘em, moved their air patrols back ten miles inside the Egyptian border, and inside the railway line, pointing out that fact to French and Swedish observers who had arrived from the League of Nations. With the French and Swedish men sat watching the skies, nothing happened for two weeks, so they went home with a bad dose of dysentery.
November 1st saw an Italian artillery piece fire at a point near a border checkpoint, the British-Indian soldiers running for cover. Just to be awkward in the face of clear provocation, the British left Egyptian officials at the border, and moved back ten miles, the Italians and Germans puzzling the move, but now certain that Britain lacked the will to fight.
Then, one day, Abdi’s man finally received the signal he was waiting for. He set three Good Morning grenades around the oasis, and legged it. At 7am, Germans sat on the makeshift toilet benches were rudely interrupted, the first blast killing ten and wounding twenty. The second blast caught Italians running around, twelve killed, thirty wounded, and the third blast demolished two German half-tracks.
Four days later, coffins draped in flags were carried from German transports, the crowds thick, the rhetoric strong. We had given Hitler want he wanted, a kick in the shins. He promised revenge against the perpetrators of this cowardly act.
In the hotel, Jimmy showed me a photograph of what appeared to be a four-engine transport, a German four-engine transport. ‘Transport or bomber?’ I asked.
‘Transport, as well as paratroops.’
‘What’s its performance?’
‘According to Sykes, its performance is terrible, but it is all aluminium. So, just to be a spoilsport, I’ve bought up all the spare aluminium around Europe and shipped it to Britain, as well as from around the world. There’ll be a shortage, which suits us – because we can sell some and make a few quid. But not to the Germans of course. And we’re building up a big stockpile of ore here.’
‘Germans copying us?’
Jimmy made a face. ‘Everyone is.’ He handed me a picture of a new Grumman fighter.
‘Nice lines,’ I commented. ‘Very nice.’
‘That fighter will hold its own against a Boeing Mark 4,’ he pointed out. ‘They’re being evaluated by the US Army … as we speak.’
‘Any performance figures on the new 109s?’
‘Abdi’s men had a nose inside a cockpit. If the dials are to be believed, then they are perhaps ten percent better than they should be at this point; better speed and altitude. They would tip the balance against a Boeing Mark 4, but the Boeing has a better climb rate, slightly better rate of turn, and more armour.’ He foraged around a coffee table and found another picture. ‘Focke-Wulf 190b, with dials that tip even the new Bf109. An aberration.’
‘How do they compare to a Spitfire?’
‘They won’t catch a Spitfire, but they are closing the gap.’
‘And the latest variant of our prop fighter?’
‘If it goes any faster the damn wings will fall off.’
With a break in the weather, we travelled up the coast and to a test site, to test a cruise missile. The missile now had a shiny plastic skin to help with sea corrosion, and sat on a ramp, a jet assisted take-off required.
‘What’s the range?’ I asked our guys, now wrapped up warm in a Parka.
‘This version: thirty miles.’
‘What do you mean, this version?’ I pressed.
‘We’ve fitted a small jet engine to a variant, a range of … maybe three hundred miles or more.’
‘Payload on this?’
‘Just under two thousand pounds for test purposes, but we’re sure we can go to four thousand pounds, but we don’t think that’s necessary to sink a battleship.’
‘No?’ I queried.
‘We originally had this aiming at the radio transmitter. Well, that’s up a tall pole at the very top of the ship, no good hitting that. So this will use a special sensor to fly at thirty feet and slam into the super-structure. After that it’s just a big RPG.’
I nodded. ‘Good idea.’
After a quick look over the missile we all moved well back, a flight of our prop fighters circling at two thousand feet. They would chase the missile and judge its performance.
‘Sir, out at sea is a US Navy destroyer with its radio on,’ the man explained. ‘It’s ten miles out, cruising at full speed and trying to be evasive.’
‘Have we removed the explosives?’ I teased.
‘I damn well hope so, sir. Just sand in there.’
They made ready, blew a whistle, and fired the damn thing. It shot up the ramp with a whoosh, its own engine firing just as it left the ramp. It wobbled to start with, but then settled down, out of sight quickly, the prop fighters diving down to try and follow it. We all walked to the radio van.
‘Five miles out, aircraft having trouble catching it, they’re flat out at full speed,’ the radio operator reported. ‘Wait … the lead plane has caught it, four hundred and eighty miles per hour.’
‘It’s only supposed to fly at four hundred,’ an engineer said.
‘Don’t you just hate it when that happens,’ I quipped, getting a look from Jimmy.
‘Approaching destroyer … destroyer on … fire.’
Jimmy and I faced the senior man. ‘Did you remove the explosives?’ I asked.
‘Yes!’ he insisted.
I turned to the radio operator. ‘What damage to the destroyer?’
‘Funnel has gone, sir, that’s where the smoke is coming from. Missile took their funnel clean off.’
Jimmy and I exchanged looks, then exchanged shrugs.
‘It works, doesn’t it,’ I said.
‘You take the phone call,’ he said.
I faced the senior man, and shouted, wagging a finger. ‘Stop damaging US Navy property! How many times have I told you!’
‘It was a successful test,’ he quietly offered, his head lowered.
‘Well done anyway,’ Jimmy offered. ‘Now test it, improve it, increase the payload and the damage it could do, and fit it to a tank recovery vehicle. And push the jet version hard, get its range up; it’ll never need more than five hundred pounds of explosives. Well done.’
The US Navy were not happy, they were overjoyed, despite the damage to their ship; we could now offer them a ship-to-ship weapon with a range of over twenty miles or more, maybe much further. If a shore battery of these weapons was operational, no ship could approach the shore, not with their radios on. With a heat-seeking version soon to be available, that ship would need to operate without engines and funnels to approach the shore, as well as no radio.
I sat down with the design team a week later, and looked at a model of the jet-propelled version. It would fly at four hundred miles per hour or more, would pack five hundred pounds of high explosive, but might reach as far as seven hundred miles, following a compass bearing.
I said, ‘Guys, any way that this could carry a fuel-air explosive?’
They gave it some thought. ‘It would need a timer, to judge the distance based on speed and time, then … deploy a parachute to stop, then … detonate the fuel-air a few seconds later as it drifts down.’
‘Put that on the drawing board,’ I ordered. ‘Do you need more people?’
‘We have plenty, sir.’
‘Then I want you to try and hit Lemming Base with one.’
They were shocked, then pleased, hushed conversations breaking out. I left them to have brain sex.
The motorbikes were now 250cc dirt bikes, and starting to look the part. Members of the Canadian Rifles had been testing them over rough terrain, and absolutely loved the bikes. Two had gone missing. The consensus was that the bikes could handle rough terrain, didn’t break down very often, and could travel at least a hundred and fifty miles on one tank.
I grabbed the bike team. ‘Well done on the bikes, very good work, men. Right, this is what I want. I want two hundred of those bikes, and I want them yesterday.’ Their faces dropped. ‘Then I want a version of them suitable for American roads, to be made by the car company and sold. There’s no hurry on the commercial version because there are already bikes out there, there is on the military version; call in what resources you need. In the meantime, I want all spare bikes handed to the Canadian Rifles.’
I gave them all a cash bonus, and found the Rifles commanding officer. ‘I want everyone to learn how to ride those bikes, starting with the SAS, SBS, Airborne. In the future, when we have enough, they’ll be used as recon vehicles and for general transport.’
‘We have two here that we … borrowed, and they’re excellent bikes.’
‘Rest are coming to you, put someone on it. Not literally, I mean ... on the project.’
With the Italians and Germans making threats, but not carrying them out, I returned to aircraft, and had a nose at the new Hercules prototypes, three now sat in varying stages of readiness. The first sat on the apron revving its engines a great deal each day, threatening to do something more exciting than just that any day soon. It was a monster of a plane, the biggest we’d produced, the inside big enough to play football in. They lowered the tail ramp, raised it, then lowered it again, over and over.
Then one day she was ready to fly the nest, but just powered down the runway several times. Things were checked, re-checked, and all was in order. She powered down the runway with a large audience on a rainy day, lifted up ten feet and landed. Well, at least the wings hadn’t fallen off, and the undercarriage was fine.
