Magestic 2
Copyright © Geoff Wolak
www.geoffwolak-writing.com
Part 5
Submariners
It wasn’t long before the US Navy came calling. I sat them down in the hotel bar, and ordered drinks for my guests, always the dutiful host.
‘Look, guys, we need to test the subs first. We don’t want any accidents,’ I explained.
‘Leaving aside the minor damage to our destroyer, how did you make it invisible to sonar?’
‘It’s coated with a special paint that absorbs sound. Metal transmits and reflects sound, this paint helps with that.’
‘And you invented this paint?’
‘We sure did, and no – you can’t have some. If you buy our subs it will already be on them.’
‘And when can we evaluate the sub?’
‘If that sub comes back with no faults in three months, then you can evaluate it – alongside our people. Fair enough?’
They seemed appeased, but only just.
‘How’s the new anti-submarine Goose?’ I asked, trying to change the subject.
‘It drops depth charges well enough, and has a sonar that can be deployed, both good innovations,’ they approved. ‘Coming back to the sub, we understand it has small and fast torpedoes?’
‘I hope you haven’t been spying on us,’ I teased. They waited. ‘Yes, the aim being to hit a ship faster so that it can’t turn away, and to do enough damage to crack the hull plate and cause a leak, not to blow a huge hole.’
‘Why?’
‘A ship with a leak has to return to port, if it makes it there at all. We’d prefer to damage many ships, than to sink just a few. The sub can fire ten tubes in quick succession – which I’m sure you already know – and can carry a hundred torpedoes. That’s a great many damaged ships returning to port whilst slowly sinking. If you want to buy the subs, then you’d have to adopt that philosophy.’
‘And against a small destroyer?’
‘The smaller the ship, the greater the damage; it would sink quicker. Our torpedoes also sink ships front on.’
‘Front on? There’d be no contact.’
‘We don’t need contact, because the torpedoes detect large lumps of metal using magnetism, and go pop.’
‘You could fire at a destroyer head on … and hole her?’
‘Yes. Our sub fights, it doesn’t hide.’
‘Best speed underwater?’ they risked.
‘Thirty-one knots.’
They were shocked.
‘Battery time?’
‘Three days.’
‘Three days? Jeez. And you can get thirty knots on batteries?’
‘We can also run the diesel engine at periscope depth - or even submerged; she has an air supply to run the engines for six hours.’
‘Range?’ they risked.
‘At a steady pace, about thirteen thousand miles; she’s a big sub, with large fuel tanks. Biggest problem will be food, in that the food will run out before the fuel ever does.’
‘And you can use your radio whilst submerged.’
‘Why, can’t you?’
They gave me a look. ‘We’re working on that. These torpedoes of yours; what’ll they do to a battleship?’
‘They were designed to crack the thickest hull, so they’ll make a hole … and the ship will start to flood. Slowly. Against a smaller ship they’ll cause more damage. But we could always test them if you have an old tub you don’t need.’
‘We’ll arrange a test when we … evaluate the sub.’
With the weather good the next day, not a cloud in the sky, I decided to take some time off, some family time – but without the kids; that kind of family time. I asked Susan to pack a bag, we grabbed two guards with rifles, and I dragged a reluctant Susan away from the kids. They had nannies, and a hotel full of interesting people, so they’d be fine.
We grabbed the boat normally reserved for rescuing downed pilots in the inlet or the Salish Sea. In Vancouver, we found a boat for hire, a cruiser that offered six cabins of a reasonable standard, and I startled the owners and crew with a quick offer, paying well over the odds. They quickly grabbed food and supplies, and we set off an hour later, up the Salish Sea and northwest. The water was calm, the sky clear, and we sat on the front of the boat, taking in the beauty of the Strait of Georgia. We even spotted a pod of dolphins breaking the surface in the distance.
Our first stop was a place called False Bay, an island of some sort in the middle of the Strait, and we dropped anchor in the sheltered bay, soon glimpsing inquisitive seals. Guls flew by squealing as the crew made us a late lunch, and then the crew left us alone to simply sit and stare at either ocean of the scenery.
Susan eventually relaxed, and we were not that far from the hotel anyway; they could always send a plane for us. A few of our planes did fly over, seaplanes on test runs down the Strait, or maybe pilots being put through their drills.
The day warmed up, clothes loosened or removed, hats placed on to keep the bright sun out. The boat bobbed gently, soft splashes heard, occasionally the splash of a seal or a wave moving pebbles on the shore. The midges were out in force, but apart from that the day was glorious. We didn’t say much, we just sat there taking in the scenery.
We spent the night at the inlet, the crew cooking a three course meal in the galley below, and we downed several bottles of wine. In the cabin later, laying down on separate small bunks in the dark, the boat moved at its anchor, the gentle rocking motion soothing us off to sleep, grey moonlight illuminating the cabin’s features as we lay there.
Dawn brought loud screeches from Guls, but at breakfast I was informed that they were local Grebe. Setting off early, the water calm, and again a hot day afforded to us, we set off up the Strait, halting at Blubber Bay for a quick look around. We went ashore, only to be mobbed by birds, and beat a retreat, save disturbing them.
The crew headed on up the Strait at a slow pace, and we both tried a little fishing off the back of the boat, Susan snaring a monster. It would end up in the pot later. We navigated our way slowly into Cortes Bay, although I was reasonably sure that the great Spanish explorer and conqueror did not visit these parts. Then Susan pointed out that Cortez was the Spanish explorer. Hell, it sounded the same. The crew cooked again, and the pace of life slowed right down, more wine downed as we listened to tales of Killer Whales and giant octopus.
The next morning we again set out early, but this time witnessed distant whales breaking the surface. We slowly navigated our way through narrow channels to Stuart Island, and dropped anchor an hour before sun-down, watching playful otters at the shoreline as the guards sat fishing. A large crab was caught, destined for the pot.
‘If Shelly was here, she would have a pot full by now,’ I commented. ‘As a kid, she could swim like a dolphin, no fear of the water.’
‘First time I swam in the sea was in Mombasa, when I was around fourteen,’ Susan idly commented.
‘You didn’t go to River View?’
‘Hardly, that was just for rich folk. And even then there was a waiting list.’
‘Yeah, I guess. We put it on the map.’
‘Some rich people did the full Silo Tour,’ Susan commented.
‘I heard about them.’
‘They’d stay a few nights at the house in Wales, visit the club and certain places, then a night in Mapley, one at the London Club, a few nights in River View, Mombasa, a few in River View Safari Park, a few nights in New Kinshasa, then here, Manson. They did the grand tour, and they normally read the books whilst they were there, or whilst travelling.’
‘Did they not visit where he was born?’ I wondered.
‘That was banned, save the area he was born being overrun.’
‘Just as well. I walked down that street once, with Jimmy, early on.’
‘Must seem like a long time ago,’ Susan suggested.
‘I have some vivid memories, and they seem like yesterday. Others are blurred. But I don’t really think back to those days, or my parents, or my old house.’
‘And ... Helen and your daughters?’
‘The girls are not girls anymore, they’re mothers themselves, so it’s hard to think of them in terms of girls; the idea of them as adults overrides the feelings you had of them as kids. They grow up and move on.’
‘How does our family life compare?’ Susan asked, and I wondered why. It was not like her to ask such a question.
‘It’s very similar, in a lot of ways. The hotel seems just like the old house, many of the gang the same, the mission the same. And Jimmy, he still acts as if he’s my dad – so no change there.’
‘It does seem odd, sometimes, the way he talks to you.’
‘He recruited and trained me when he was two hundred years old, and I was twenty three, so he was bound to be like a father figure. Sometimes we argued and shouted, and sometimes I countermanded what he said - and did my own thing, but mostly he was right in the planning. He left me alone to build up Africa; much of the work there was my work.’
The guards lobbed a fish towards an inquisitive otter.
‘You still take direction from him, even now.’
‘He’s still smarter than me, and he knows a great deal more. He looks at things, and sees things that I don’t. And if I wasn’t happy about him being in charge I would have never come along. Fact is, I missed him in Africa, and before that, missed his strength of purpose. It’s easier to get up each day and follow instructions, than to get up and try and think about what to do to save a world. And he can plan ahead better, a hundred incremental steps in his head. Things he’s doing now that may seem innocuous ... will have huge ramifications later. He’s always thinking.’
The Otter stole the dead fish away, up onto the shore, and started to eat the free lunch.
‘And if he wasn’t around, would you carry on here?’
I puzzled her meaning. ‘Yes. It may seem odd without him, so was fighting The Brotherhood, but I’d go on. I’ve been the elder statesman, and I hated it; you’re famous, but you can’t go out, and you can’t get any work done. The fame is like a prison cell in a reality TV series, everyone watching you take a crap. Starting again here is perfect, the alternative to be like Hal was. People must think that it was great to be me: houses, power, money. But they’d have to experience it to see how horrible it really is.
‘Being unknown is far better, because you can move freely and get things done. Being famous is what a lot of singers and the like crave, but when they get it they hate it.’
‘When I go back, I’ll be part of that curiosity, certainly now that we’ve had kids.’
‘So don’t be a hurry to go back,’ I said, getting an odd look.
An armoured personnel carrier stood growling outside the hotel a few days later, and we all looked it over. We found that we could squeeze eight people in the back, well protected by the armour. That armour might not stand up to a German 88, but would resist anything smaller. I gave the prototype to the tank brigade, ten additional vehicles now in varying states of readiness. The Major uttered a few rude words, and moved the fence again, recruiting a few more men.
Ngomo now enjoyed his own armoured brigade, the main battle tanks kept at a separate base some twenty miles from Mawlini. The brigade offered twelve main battle tanks, twenty of the lighter tanks, four recovery vehicles, and thirty half-tracks. The tanks had caused a stir at Mombasa docks when they arrived, breaking the first crane that had tried to lift them off the ship. A second crane, used to haul out steam engines, lifted out the tanks and placed them on the dockside. Under the cover of darkness, the tanks were driven in turn to the rail yard, just five hundred yards, and loaded onto a train. Covered in shrouds, they journeyed slowly up to Mawlini on a dedicated train, offloaded away from prying eyes and driven to the new base, the tanks still painted green and black.
They received a new paint-job, that of desert sand, several of our drivers having travelled out with them to teach how the heavy beasts worked. Camels were soon being blown to pieces a thousand yards out. As in Canada, Ngomo ran a dedicated tank brigade, and practised manoeuvres that involved the support vehicles, the half-tracks and jeeps. He had received the mobile radio detectors and tried them near the airport in Nairobi, radar sets tested nearby as well. His Air Wing now consisted of over a hundred aircraft, four squadrons of Boeing BII/3s and 4s, one squadron of 5s, and he could muster more than three hundred men who could fly well.
The British Brigade had found plenty of volunteers, most coming down from the UK, and now listed over six hundred men, all training hard to Rifles standard. Many had been tested on a Cessna, the best of the bunch being taught to fly the Cessna and a Dash-7, a few being taught how to handle the old Boeing Buffalos. The volunteers were all required to complete parachute training, desert familiarisation courses, attend jungle survival courses, and grew to be expert marksmen. And I still didn’t know quite how Jimmy would use this mob. After all, they could have been absorbed into the Kenyan Rifles.
Abdi was busy as well these days, harassing the Italians along a thousand mile perimeter, the Italians still holding Addis Ababa. Ngomo had just the fifty men in Libya, and that was all, around thirty Italians wounded each day around the occupied territory. His men were rotated out every two months, each sniper in the Kenyan Rifles given a chance to “practice”.
Forward Base
Rudd had been busy, but was at least trying not to waste too much money. Forward Base now offered a decent airport with a control tower, radar and radio direction finding, and a large hotel. Outside of the base, three smaller hotels sat in a cluster, motels for the workers nearby.
Our British Airways Super Goose aircraft now landed there on their way to South Africa or Rhodesia - and back, fuel topped up. Flights took off every day for Mombasa, engineers brought in or taken out, the more menial workers put on the train for an arduous twenty-four hour journey through the heat. They’d need those hotel beds when they got here.
East of the airport rested the Congo Rifles base, now sat in the exact same position that it had occupied in our world. It housed some four thousand locals being taught to fight, as well as being provided with English language lessons, maths, and basic geography – part of an ongoing education programme. The longer serving members of the Congo Rifles now patrolled the frontiers, protected the railway lines and roads, but also protected our valued workers in the mines.
And in order to keep those workers happy and productive, numerous hotels and hostels had been created, the facilities good. Given that the roads were still poor, a centralised city would have been of little use at the moment, and so small towns grew up around the mines, a few quality buildings created - brick or concrete with steel frames. Nearly all of the workers had been “inoculated” by Doc Graham, and sickness was rare.
Steffan had built more than thirty train bypass points along the track from Mombasa to the Congo, installing a telegram wire and employing dozens of operators. Those operators noted the train number and direction before hitting the Morse Code striker: “14-60, westbound, 11.03 hrs”. Track signals would be altered, and trains would wait at the bypass points for an oncoming train to pass. It was all very efficient, some twenty trains a day chugging along the main southern line.
Steffan had also devised a track testing system. It involved paper unreeling from one drum to another, pens held in place on arms that would shake as the track below varied from the norm. An engineer was paid to travel down the track every week, and to diligently observe the marks made. Where the pens jumped he would note the position, Steffan having positioned raised posts every mile – each post labelled with a sequential number. That particular section of track would be looked at in the evenings.
Roads were not very important at the moment because the world lacked any suitable trucks to trundle along those roads with their heavy loads. So everything went by train, the cost of coal for the engines tiny, the Mombasa Steam Company making a good profit for each load carried. The first ten years of track laying had been a massive loss to us, the following ten years of track usage would create a good profit.
Our track in the Sahara saw plenty of use, ore transported to Tunisia, loaded on boats for France and Spain. Unfortunately, the train stopped a few times a week to clear sand from the track. They had tried a snowplough, but that got stuck. When the track was blocked the engine driver and his team would jump down and clear it, typically a delay of less than an hour.
Mombasa docks had grown, and Po’s dry dock was in constant use, turning out ships to carry more ore. He had brought over five hundred ship builders and designers, many of the managers European, and they had in turn employed locals for much of the manual labour. Given that the steel was being produced locally, and cheaply - because Po supplied the ore, the capital costs of the ships were very good.
Yuri busied himself with a new town at the end of the Goma train line, not far from where our own Gotham City would have stood. He had first constructed a hotel, a good idea at the end of a track, and then built apartment blocks for those who worked near the train station. The workers loading the ore onto the trains needed homes, so he built simple and inexpensive houses and offered them at a reasonable rent. He made sure that the road to Forward Base was a wide and well-maintained road, and that buses ran the route; that way workers could commute if necessary.
But his main project involved the corporation, constructing their new headquarters near Forward Base, ancillary buildings, housing for the staff, offices for other companies who worked here. With a straight and wide central road created, premises either side, he built buildings that offered shops on the ground floor, offices above. A few became restaurants. He raised local and national police HQ buildings, and consulates for several countries, the British consulate the largest. Figuring that there were workers with money to spend - and little to spend it on, he opened a bar, a casino, and a brothel, the ladies imported and inoculated. The Congo was truly a nation state, because the first police office took a bribe from the first prostitute. Progress.
In September, 1935, Jimmy and I sat down with our latest financial figures. We had plenty of money coming in from the Congo, from Po, and from the profitable areas of the businesses. It was a case of priorities.
‘Submarines,’ I said. ‘Look what the Germans did in the war; they almost cut-off Britain.’
‘Submarines won’t remove German tanks from France.’
‘No, but they will screw with the Japs.’
‘We want the Japs … to behave in a certain way. Sinking their ships on day one will cause them to think … in other ways.’
‘Do we have enough subs?’ I pressed.
‘For the starting line, yes. More to be made afterwards.’
‘Then I’d say its either prop fighters, or long range bombers.’
We allocated money to both.
‘What about tanks?’ I asked.
‘I would increase the number of the light tanks for sure,’ Jimmy said. ‘The main tank will be noticed in Belgium, but very effective in the desert.’
‘How many do we need in the desert?’
‘Not many; they’d fire from a distance and move away. We can hit the other guy before he can hit us, and do a great deal of damage to any tank battalion.’
‘And Belgium?’
‘I’d want to deploy them after the Germans reach Paris, hidden before.’
‘After they’re committed and stretched,’ I said. ‘Hong Kong?’
‘It’s an infantry fight mostly, unless they sail their battleships in and pound the place. There we need a small, but well trained force.’
‘The Rifles?’
‘They … are a force for small operations; we’re not out to create an infantry to tackle anyone’s army. And they’re on track.’ He raised a finger. ‘What we do need ... is landing craft for tanks which, at the moment, don’t exist.’
‘I’ll go see the dockyard. What do our tanks weigh?’
‘Just under forty-five tonnes.’
‘A what, sir?’ the dockyard manager asked me.
‘A landing craft.’ I showed him a sketch. ‘We have tanks, and they weigh forty-five tonnes each. Sometimes, when the dockside at a place is all blown up, the British Army would put a tank or two on a flat-bottom boat and land it on a sandy beach, the tanks driving off, and up the beach.’
‘Ah, I see.’
‘So, have a think, make some drawings, think about a ramp, the weight of the cargo, how to beach it. I’d like a prototype very soon, but don’t take men off the submarines. You have other ships under construction, so use those crews or hire more men. Now, a flat bottom boat is unstable in choppy seas or … any other kind of sea come to think of it, because it has no keel. Think about stability, with all the weight low in the boat.’
Back at the tank factory, the manager said, ‘A snorkel? What’s one of those, sir?’
‘If our tanks tried to cross a steam that was four feet deep, what would happen?’
‘The engine air intake would flood, sir.’
‘And we don’t want that to happen, do we. So, if we know that there’s a stream, we fix a pipe to get the air, and off we go.’
‘Air, I see, sir. But the driver would drown.’
‘In which case, we need a few rubber seals and some plastic around the driver, so that he doesn’t drown. Same for the rest of the tank grew, I’d guess.’
‘I’ll … get right on it, sir.’
I stood staring at the line of tanks in the shed, twenty in a row, all looking mean and menacing. I dispatched another twelve to Ngomo. The Tank Brigade here had enough to train on, so the rest would be stockpiled for now.
Jimmy called me back to the hotel. At the hotel, he said, ‘An Italian cruiser just fired on a British warship, dead and wounded men. The British fired back, badly damaging the Italian ship, which beached itself in Abyssinia.’
‘It’s warming up a bit.’
‘I was kind of hoping it would simmer longer, by a year. But the Italians are not stupid, they know that they won’t win against the Royal Navy.’
‘Do we do anything?’
‘Anything we do will make it worse. So, we watch, and we wait, and we stand ready. The next logical step is an artillery duel on the Egyptian border.’
‘Would we assist the British?’
‘First, they don’t need any help against the Italians; they out number them and out gun them. Second, our toys would be seen and studied.’
‘Our toys are sat gathering dust in the desert,’ I reminded him.
‘They’re there … for if and when it all goes pear shaped, or the Germans join in early. And most of our toys down there are being used to train men ready for later. Oh, a note came from Jack. Dozen British soldiers killed by Arabs in Israel, the men trying to stop a riot near their base.’
I sighed. ‘We going ahead with that nuke test?’ I wondered.
‘No, it’s been delayed, but the scientists are all playing nicely, and they can see that we have the research cracked.’
‘Next meeting with the Americans?’
‘Postponed, now that they have all that they want. There are now fifty American scientists up there, forty British. We did, however, display a large fuel-air explosive going off, the crowd a little too close; they were all blown off their feet.’
I shook my head and smiled.
‘The damage done to the local trees was … most agreeable, and now they know that there are large bombs available that are … not atomic.’
‘We get the money? I didn’t see it in the figures?’
‘It’s a credit at the bank, and they both paid up, so we have a few extra quid.’
Later that day, as we sat in the Indian restaurant, a message arrived. Franco had started his coup in Spain, a year early.
‘Well that confirms it,’ I said. ‘This timeline is different. Order some more chicken curry.’
‘The British were due to help Franco,’ Jimmy noted as he ate. ‘To fly him from the Canaries to Morocco and assist him. They saw the socialist and communist elements of the Spanish political system as a threat.’
Franco vs Mister Sykes.
Sykes had asked to run the operation in Spain, an operation I was just learning about. Landing in Malaga, he contacted the leaders of the loose local alliance against Franco, and offered money, weapons, and men – army instructors who could teach others shoot. The help was willingly accepted.
Fighting broke out in many places, a few military commanders not quite sure where their loyalties lay. The coup was as botched as we had expected, the country split. Portugal, Germany and Italy supported Franco, Russia supported anyone who opposed Franco, whilst Britain and France did not get involved. Officially.
At their camp north of Nairobi, the British Brigade now assembled in groups, to be addressed by the senior officers.
‘Men, a fascist dictator named Franco has attempted a coup in Spain, and aims to become a dictator of that country. He’s supported by the Italians.’
They booed at mention of the Italians.
‘The Italians helped him get organised, and now the Germans are offering Franco help.’
They booed again.
‘We’re looking for volunteers to go fight. You’d fight as a team, you’d have good kit, good plans, food and money. But if something went wrong you’d tell them you’re a socialist – and hope they don’t hang you. Besides, if you do get caught you deserve to be hung! I’m going, so are most of the senior men. Over the next few days, make yourself known if you want to tag along and kick this Italian-backed upstart into the Atlantic. Those that do make it back alive get a bonus, and your normal pay.’
There were only sixty people who refused, many with local wives and young families, and now I knew exactly what Jimmy was up to. He took me down to the American Brigade a day later.
With the senior men assembled, he said, ‘As you may know, there’s a coup going on in Spain, a fascist dictator called Franco trying to unseat the legitimate government. He’s backed by the Italians and the Germans. If Spain becomes a dictatorship, with close ties to Italy and Germany, it will affect my business interests in the region – and that’s not allowed.
‘He has a small army, some horses, no tanks, a few lorries and armoured cars, and bolt-action rifles. It’s a large country, and he has his supporters, so it won’t be a walk over if we get involved. I’m asking for volunteers to go fight as an American Brigade, on the side of those Spaniards opposed to this coup. You’ll get normal pay, and a bonus when you get back - if you’re still alive. Go and discuss it with your men, draw up a list. You’ll have good kit, good supplies, but no aircraft like the fighter, and no tanks either. It’s a sniper war.’
‘Where do I sign?’ the Colonel asked.
‘Thank you, Colonel,’ Jimmy offered.
Out of the six hundred regulars, time served, five hundred and fifty volunteered. The newer members volunteered, but were told to stay and train with the Canadians. Kit was issued; rifles, ammo, webbing, binoculars, camouflage netting, the works – but no uniforms were to be worn. They would have a few fifty cal rifles and .223 rifles, 9mm pistols, but no AK47s. They were given automatic rifles, forerunner to the M1 Garand, fitted with basic telescopic sights. They could carry other weapons if they chose, and many made use of local hunting rifles that they kept, ammo bought by us.
RPGs would not be needed, or grenades, but Good Morning Grenades would be taken, Battery Grenades used to demolish bridges and buildings. Other supplies would be flown in.
The senior officers boarded Super Goose aircraft and flew directly to London, to a small and developing Heathrow Airport. Refuelled, they flew down to Malaga, landing on a dirt strip at night, Sykes arranging lights. With the plane departing, the senior men followed Sykes and the resistance leaders, lugging heavy kit.
The rest of the men journeyed by special train to Nova Scotia, where ships awaited to take them to Malaga, ships that Jack normally used for Jewish refugees, their captains used to strange cargos - and no questions asked.
Ngomo loaded six Dash-7s with goodies and handed the aircraft to British Brigade pilots, the men setting off on a long journey which followed the rail track to Tunisia. The aircraft didn’t have the range, and would refuel at a strip prepared for them in the Sahara.
Our aircraft blew up dust as they landed in Tunisia a day later. Refuelled, the planes flew along the coast to a point opposite Gibraltar, hopped across to Spain, and up the coast a short way to Malaga, Sykes and our colonel keenly awaiting the planes.
The pilots believed that they were carrying ammo, but the boxes contained gold, handed over to the resistance. The aircraft would remain, used for travel, for inserts, or as spotter planes, the airstrip in Malaga becoming command central.
The rest of the British Brigade set off along our handy railway line and up to Tunisia, where boats awaited for the short trip across to Malaga. They arrived a day after the first shipload of Americans docked in Malaga, that ship hosting four cameramen and six reporters, including Hemmingway and Orson Wells. When Jimmy showed me the list of reporters on the boat, I had to look twice.
‘Were they supposed to be on it?’ I puzzled.
‘Yes, they were journalists that covered the war.’
‘Wow.’
Our American Brigade and our British Brigade had both benefitted from a serious supply of bullshit training aboard their ships.
‘Why are you here to fight, son?’ a reported asked one.
‘I believe in the cause of the republicans, and I want to do my bit to fight aggressors and fascist dictators, sir.’
‘That’s a mighty fine rifle, and a … very large rifle. Were you a soldier?’
‘No, sir, my daddy bought it for me. I hunt possum with it.’
‘Oh. And what did you do in the States?’
‘I hunted possum, sir.’
‘Thanks, it’s … been good talking with you, son.’
Franco and his Nationalists were now up against over a thousand of the nastiest fighters you’d not want to meet on dark night, armed with sniper rifles with telescopic sights. I smiled every time I thought about it. But the Canadian Rifles were miffed, and wanted a word with Silo and Holton.
They stood with folded arms. ‘We … eh … not being asked to go fight in Spain, boss?’
‘Gentlemen, if you went to fight in Spain, then people would know that I sent you.’ He waited.
Someone raised a hand. ‘I sound American.’
‘And I sound British.’
‘I speak French, and I can put on an accent.’
‘You can’t all go, there’s a great deal of work to be done here,’ Jimmy explained. ‘Without you lot, we wouldn’t get the new weapons tested, and we wouldn’t develop tactics.’
‘Not everyone wants to go,’ they explained.
‘How many do want to go?’ I asked.
‘I reckon about three hundred,’ a senior man said.
‘And what damage will we do to the development work if some of our best people go?’ I posed.
‘The tank lads don’t want to go,’ they said. ‘Nor the pilots.’
‘Draw up a list of people who want to go, and their units and specialities. And Captain, don’t bring me that list if all of a unit is on it, or all of our specialists in one area.’
‘We’ll have it in a few days, boss.’
And a few days later they presented the list. Jimmy ran a finger down the list and ticked twelve names. ‘Bring these men to me,’ he ordered.
When the men had assembled, Jimmy said, ‘You’re down on the list for Spain, but I know each and every one of you – and your specialities, and you’re too valuable to waste. Spain will be a lot of sitting around, some shooting, then more sitting around. It’s not that clever, and it won’t be that much fun. You can choose to still go by resigning from the Rifles, but if you do the regiment will suffer, and I won’t welcome you back. If you go, you won’t ever come back here – and I have a big operation to launch in nine or twelve months. Dismissed.’
A command centre was created in our hotel, in a vacant room, maps pinned to walls, lists of men, details of kit and supplies. Big Paul ran the show with Jimmy, kept busy, telegrams coming and going at all hours of the day and night.
Our men on the ground, that would soon total fifteen hundred, split up and moved out along the Spanish south coast, a few groups moving inland, ambushes set up on roads from the north. The resistance groups would stop army convoys and ask who they were - and who they were loyal to. If they got the wrong answer they ran away and dived down, the signal to the men in the rocks above the road, who would open up on the Spanish soldiers.
I studied the reports, and found pockets of fighting in places that would someday be overrun by fat and pale Brits on holiday; Malaga, Marbella, Estapona, Torremolinos – most now just small fishing villages. I would pop in to the command centre each day, just to check the latest reports. We soon had one man wounded - from a bar fight of all things, another shot dead by mistake, one missing, but the reports listed some five hundred Spanish soldiers shot dead after just two weeks.
Our front line, marked on the map, moved ever outwards, groups travelling up the coast towards Barcelona. They avoided the cities typically, and sat waiting along the roads that led north. A few staged attacks took place with sometimes as many as sixty or more of our men, attacks against Spanish Army garrisons loyal to Franco. The newspapers soon reported that the “south” had broken away and was resisting the coup, Franco’s men holding the northwest, Morocco and the Canary Islands.
Winter, 1935, saw continued fighting in Spain, and more trouble in Israel, a few countries now condemning the new Jewish administration for is treatment of the Arabs, more countries condemning the British for allowing the treatment of the Arabs in the first place. Riots broke out in Trans-Jordan, and in French-controlled Syria and Lebanon, but they were just stone-throwers venting some anger.
I started to read the papers as often as Jimmy, the two of us soon known as the “two old nannies” as we sat together, the only sound being the turning of pages. We’d make comments as we went, or we’d bring each other’s attention to a story, sometimes debating it.
Italy, Portugal and Germany were now citing “provocateurs” in Spain, and outside interference from America. I smiled widely, so did Jimmy; this was exactly what we wanted. The embedded reporters had sent back numerous stories of Spanish soldiers rounding up civilians and executing them, and of brave boys from Pigs Town Kentucky fighting back. Movietone newsreels ran in the cinemas, our boys to be seen sniping at the Spanish.
A few of the lads admitted to being Canadian, some of the British lads giving stories of why they came to fight for a cause. Our middlemen journeyed down to New York and Washington and greased the palms of a few reporters and editors, making sure that the story kept going. And, in a time honoured tradition for Silo and Holton, we set a group of writers from our studios to write a script, a love story about a lad who follows his father to fight in Spain, meets a local girl – whose family are executed, and brings her home. They had the story outlined in a day, plots not complex in 1935, and we gave them a good bonus to get it finished very quickly.
Back in chilly old Canada, we raised more sheds for our cold tanks, now a hundred and twenty main tanks and three hundred lightweight tanks sat shivering. Fifty half-tracks went out to Ngomo, to be stored at his base under shrouds, all nice and warm. A further hundred jeeps were shipped to Kenya, to be stored ready for use. At Forward Base, a huge hidden armoury was created with thick concrete walls and metal frames, twenty thousand AK47s stacked ready, millions of rounds of ammo.
Our main tank now came equipped with a detachable snorkel, but the manager had sat down to eat with his aircraft buddies once too often. He called me to the testing ground, and now showed me a tank halting ahead of a water-filled, and very chilly looking ditch. The tank moved into the ditch, and stopped. Bubbles burst to the surface for a minute, the man smiling like an idiot, the tank moving out and onwards.
‘No snorkel,’ I noted.
‘Compressed air, thirty minutes. I figured that they used Mustard Gas in the last war, so we made the tanks air tight. It uses submarine and aircraft technology to keep the air-tank full. When the main intake doesn’t get enough air a valve opens, and the main intake shuts off if it’s in any water – the water can’t get in. The compressed air keeps the engine going. In fact, it runs at a slightly higher pressure and performance is increased, sir, like a turbo-charger. And the men can switch to internal air if there’s smoke or gas around.’
‘Excellent work, but does it push up cost and production time?’ I posed.
‘Oh no, sir, we have all the bits sat around the airfield as surplus. A few rubber seals, some special paint, and the compressed air equipment itself is easy to fit.’
‘Good work, very good work. We now have … a submarine with a 150mm gun. Any other innovations?’
‘It makes toast,’ the man offered, getting a wagged finger from me. ‘No, sir, it does. The Major had a toasting rack fitted inside and … well, they all wanted one fitted.’
‘They have a toaster … in the cabin?’
He nodded. ‘Runs off the engine, sir. They, eh, make toasted cheese sandwiches as they go, cup of tea, so that they don’t need to stop.’
I stared at him. ‘Well, that … saves time on journeys, I suppose. Any other useful attachments?’
‘They now have smoke shells. When they land they make smoke - so that you can blind the enemy.’
‘Good.’
‘And airburst anti-infantry shells. They could also be fired at aircraft, sir, timed fuses.’
‘And the lightweight tanks?’ I asked.
‘They have the waterproofing now, sir, and the men in the back have an air reserve for smoke and gas. Oh, and snorkels on jeeps now, sir.’
‘Sounds like you are thinking.’
‘The aircraft managers like to have a nose and make suggestions.’
‘If you put wings on a tank, you’re fired.’
At the prop fighter factory I had a nose at our latest variant, which they labelled as 22-6, whatever the hell that meant. It wasn’t any faster, but had a more powerful engine. If you opened the throttle you received more of a kick, and you could now inject oil onto the hot exhausts.
I faced a man. ‘Hot oil?’
He smirked. ‘It creates smoke, sir, and you look like you’re on fire.’
‘You sly old dogs; the fighter behind will break off. But a bit … defeatist, is it not? I don’t expect our pilots to lose an engagement.’
‘Might not be our pilots flying them, sir.’
‘A good point. Does it make toast?’
He laughed. ‘No, sir. But there is a piss tube, and a water tube.’
‘Let’s hope they never get mixed up in a barrel roll, eh?’
He laughed. ‘They’re colour coded, sir. There’s a small compartment for food now, for long flights and patrols, small mirrors to see fighters coming in behind, a quick canopy ejection system.’
‘Armour?’
‘Light armour around fuel tanks and the pilot, the critical controls, and the fuel tanks are self-sealing. The fuel tanks also have a yellow goo that reacts with petrol and seals ruptures. It’s all around the fuel pipes as well. It’s easy to apply and remove, but a nuisance if it touches any petrol. The guns are faster and more reliable, hardly a jam ever, and there’s more ammo available. She’s a tough old bird, we had one accidentally shot up -’
‘How?’
‘Towing a drone, sir. New young pilot got behind the drone and fired at length, putting thirty holes in the other aircraft. But she flew OK and landed OK, trim shaky due to the holes.’
‘And the young pilot?’
‘Still cleaning toilets, sir, and grounded.’
‘Was he a good pilot before this?’ I asked.
‘Yes, sir, good scores.’
‘Send him down to San Diego, have him re-do Cessna and Dash-7, two months, then give him another chance.’
‘If you say so, sir.’
‘I do,’ I emphasised.
Our submarines were now either in Vancouver and being fitted with toys, or undergoing advanced tests. None had sunk yet. I had delayed the US Navy as long as possible, then allowed a ten-man team onboard to evaluate “Nemo” - the subs all had names now, painted on the side. We had a Nautilus of course, Ghost, one called The Barry White – although few understood the reference, the Swordfish, Shark I and Shark II. Then we went and upset the US Navy again.
They suggested an exercise, a theoretical attack on San Francisco harbour by sub. We foolishly agreed. One of our subs, Swordfish, surfaced two miles out beyond the bridge, seen by a US destroyer hosting admirals to watch the games. It then turned out to sea for another two miles, being shadowed. The rest of our submarine fleet were around Vancouver, clearly visible in case anyone suggested that we’d cheat with two subs in the water.
At the prescribed time the Swordfish slipped beneath the waves, a flotilla of six US Navy destroyers and two coastguard cutters stood ready to detect her entering the bay, dummy depth charges ready. Our agreement with the admirals was that any ship hit by a dummy torpedo would withdraw.
The tide was coming in, and the currents under the bridge were a bitch at the best of times, the water not that deep. The first three destroyers set up a search pattern outside of the bay, sonar active, hydrophones ready, eyes peeled. The Swordfish put three dummy torpedoes into the side of the first destroyer, firing up at an angle, something that most subs could not achieve. After a few rude words the destroyer departed. Another ship joined the search, but our sub had vanished.
The second destroyer noticed something odd in the water a moment before two dummy mines blew, scaring the hell out of the crew. They withdrew after some debate. The third destroyer picked up an echo, a distinct echo, and called in another ship. Depth charges burst from their launchers, small explosions under the water causing plumes on the surface. They slowed and turned to have a look, three dummy torpedoes hitting them from the seaward side, their depth charges having been laid on the bay side.
Swordfish burst through the surface a mile out to sea, creating a huge white displacement of water, before slipping below the surface again. Inside the bay, not far from the new bridge, a destroyer pinged its sonar, coastguard cutters hunting around Alcatraz Prison, the jail now in its prime and fully occupied with dangerous men raising small birds.
A coastguard cutter then got shock of its life, its rear up-ended, its bow forced down, an almighty crash, men thrown to the floor. Peering over the stern, an angry Swordfish slipped under the water like the shark in the Jaws movie, its nose specially designed to ram other subs, a hydraulic dampener fitted to a large blade. The coastguard cutter now had a serious lack of propellers, and listed substantial damage.
Swordfish surfaced when the water grew too shallow, and sat in the middle of the bay, powering against the tide. The exercise was abandoned, Swordfish proudly leaving the bay on the surface. Since a US Navy admiral had been aboard our sub, they could not accuse us of cheating.
The exercise was a mistake, the US Navy both hugely interested in the subs performance - and damned annoyed - in equal measure, much banging of tables with fists in Washington and elsewhere.
And Jimmy, he said, ‘You can forget Pearl Harbour, it’ll never happen now.’
‘Maybe it wouldn’t have, given the changes to this time line.’
‘Maybe,’ he agreed.
‘What have our guys found wrong with subs?’ I asked.
‘Not much, if you compare them to this era. They have a list of modifications, but as it stands … those subs are twenty years ahead of the field. All they lack is aircraft.’
‘Aircraft?’ I puzzled.
‘The Japs have large experimental subs, aircraft in a hold that you can assemble, fly off a railing, or put in the water with floats.’
‘How weird is that.’
‘And they have subs that can ram other subs, which is necessary to destroy an enemy sub in this era; one sub firing on another with a torpedo is pissing in the dark. The Japs even worked on cruise missiles of a kind, launched from a sub. And the Germans, they dropped a radio-controlled cruise missile from a plane and sunk a British destroyer.’
‘And we think we invented that stuff in our era.’
‘It’s all been done before,’ Jimmy said, issuing a sigh.
The US Navy soon came calling, not a happy bunch of nautical types. Sat in the downstairs bar, they began with, ‘We’d like to hire you to invent us up something to find quiet submarines.’
‘Guys, there are two ways to detect a sub: sonar and hydrophone, unless she’s on the surface. And the fact is, we don’t know how to get around that. If we built a destroyer ourselves, with as many clever gadgets as we could magic up, we still couldn’t find our own subs.’
They weren’t buying it.
‘You know how to make them quiet, so you must know how to spot them!’
It was a logical argument, but not a scientifically sound argument.
‘Guys, we designed the damn thing to avoid sonar and hydrophones, so how could we build better sonar to detect the subs?’
‘You must have something, because right now we’re open to attack!’
‘You’re not open to attack,’ I emphasised. ‘We have spies all around the world, looking at other people making submarines, and they all show up on sonar. We … are the only ones with subs like these, and they’re years ahead of anyone else, and you guys will get to operate them. So … relax, huh.’
‘You’re sure that no one could copy your subs?’
‘Have you been able to fathom it?’ I teased.
They exchanged looks. ‘Well, no.’
‘Then if you can’t work it out, who could? You have people on the subs, and you still can’t figure it out. What chance does anyone else have?’
They seemed more relaxed when they left, and I didn’t have the heart to tell them that four of our subs would soon set sail for Hong Kong, British sub-mariners now being trained on them. One shock at a time.
Finding Jimmy, I said, ‘What’ll we do if the US Navy places an order?’
He took a moment. ‘May as well order up the next four from the shipyard, to keep them busy; they’ll take a year at least. Once the US Navy is operating those four they’ll be happy enough. Besides, they’ll give the subs a six month shake-down period of their own.’
‘And the variants we give them?’
‘Will be good, just a few gadgets removed.’
Christmas, 1935, saw Franco controlling the north of Spain – but not Madrid, a few areas of the south, but taking heavy casualties – unsustainable casualties. Malaga was a free and independent city, much of Granada and the south coast still free of Franco’s jackboot. The US media was reporting the conflict most every week, and a small army of American civilians had gathered in Washington to set sail for Spain, to go and fight.
Before Christmas I had taken Susan and the kids down to Florida, two weeks spent travelling around the state, much time spent on the Gulf coast in a hired yacht, often mooring in shallow inlets, dolphins and manatees glimpsed, even swum with. Mary and Toby both loved the water, both spending hours each day splashing around, Mary looking after her baby brother.
I slowed right down to a different pace, that holiday pace, but on occasion called Mary “Shelly” by mistake, Mary now a lot like her step-sister had been at that age. They even swam in a similar style.
We sat on golden white sands when the days were warm, and toured inland when it rained, Gator Farms visited, little snappers fed, their parents destined to be a lady’s handbag real soon. Political correctness was not yet with us, and animal welfare was a long way off. Right now, animals were to be shot at for sport.
The holiday was a contrast to what I knew was happening in Spain, but I figured I deserved a break. If not, what was the point in being over here, and in a simpler time? Here, people wanted to work, they wanted to please you, and they were polite. Cars stopped if they spotted another vehicle broken down on the road, help offered, and neighbours were right neighbourly to each other.
Compared to New Kinshasa, 2047, the people here did not stand out as being so different, but compared to London in the 90s there was a world of difference in attitude. Just meeting these people made me relaxed, even with Mary wandering off now and then. Everywhere I went, people would be polite and friendly, and service still counted for something.
The people here, they would have marvelled at the technology of 2047, but I marvelled at their attitudes, and at an innocence that had not been lost yet. I marvelled at people that did not give each other the finger as they cut each other up on the roads, and none tried to short-change me.
I blamed the sixties for the change in society, the attacks on society itself, and on the government. Those people fought for their rights, and women burnt their bras, but they never knew how much damage they were doing. They gained no extra freedoms, but they did inherit a more aggressive society, one where service and manners counted for nothing.
Women were liberated, free to have kids without being married, when the people here would have married first. In my day, women had three kids by three different fathers and lived off welfare. Here, they met and fell in love first, got married, worked hard and saved money, and then started a family. As my father used to say: build the damn nest, then lay the egg. Husbands and wives still rowed in this time period, but the women had more security here. And more respect.
The young women here wore long dresses, and did not get falling down drunk, their half-naked images posted on the internet for everyone to see. They didn’t do drugs, and they certainly did not desire tattoos. The employment opportunities were not there for them, not yet, but that was another mistake made by women in the sixties, their desire to compete with men. Because once they had the decent job, the men in their lives still expected them to run a house and family as well, twice the work, the human male taking a long time to change in attitude.
Even in 2047, women tried to juggle good executive jobs with raising kids, a constant struggle, and a battle that was never won, nor would ever be won. If only the women here knew what their granddaughters were in for.
Sat reading the papers with Jimmy, I noted, ‘Four thousand Americans.’
‘Was supposed to be around two thousand, I think,’ he said without looking up.
‘Our media campaign had an effect then.’
Those four thousand men, mostly Democrats - with a few socialists and communists amongst them, set sail in the cold winter of 1935 and headed to the much warmer Spanish coast. They all carried rifles, a few of the men with their rifles in cloth covers and looking like Davy Crocket, most of the weapons being hunting rifles. But a stockpile of decent rifles sat awaiting them in Malaga, as well as plenty of ammo.
The airstrip in Malaga was command central for our people, but had also become a magnet for the freedom fighters from around the world, a few South Americans returning to the motherland to fight. Our people made sure that the volunteers had weapons, ammo, food and water, and some local currency to acquire food and shelter with.
When a few German volunteers turned up in Malaga they were welcomed, given supplies and sent off. They never made it to their destination, the bodies hidden. A group of Swiss were told to leave straight away, or be hanged as spies. But a large group of Italian communists were genuine. Still, they were sent to a particular town north of Granada, just in case.
January, 1936, saw a new development. A group of “free German volunteers” arrived in northern Spain, to assist the “legitimate government”.
I said to Jimmy, ‘They’re soldiers in civilian clothes.’
He nodded. ‘But we wait. There are only three hundred of them.’
‘That we know about.’
He stared at me, and nodded. ‘That we know about.’
In the weeks that followed, we received reports of small field guns appearing, a few horse-drawn machineguns. Someone was supplying Franco with arms. The artillery pieces were used to pound defiant towns from a distance, but our guys snuck around the artillery positions at night, killing the operators and blowing up the gun barrels. The artillery pieces soon got larger, and the towns soon got pounded from a greater distance.
Then, one cold February morning, a report came in of German Dornier bombers landing at an airstrip in southern Spain, an area controlled by a town loyal to Franco, some two hundred miles up the coast from Malaga. It had started. Germany was going to force the issue one way or another, as they had done on our world, deploying the Condor Legion – created for just this adventure. And the planes did not come alone, a small army of men landing on the coast with them, a base set up.
With that key event, the British agreed to place warships off the coast with radar and radio direction finding kit supplied by us. The ships would sit ten miles offshore, and would not interfere, not that the British had any intention of interfering anyway. They noted aircraft coming and going, radio chatter, and signalled our colonel in coded Morse, some very rude words used to throw off the Germans listening in to us … as we listened in to them.
We made sure that the American newspapers ran the story of the German aircraft, the angle now being that American lads were up against German bombers. And Jimmy, he moved a reserve force up to Tunisia, Sykes grabbing an airfield in French-run Algiers, a remote strip that sat opposite Malaga across the Mediterranean, and was only a short flying time away.
In our command centre at the hotel, otherwise known as room sixty-two, the map board now offered small models of Dorniers. Big Paul said, ‘This’ll be the first time our boys go up against Germans.’
I studied the map. ‘Last time, Franco won. This time, if it looks like he’ll loose, the Condor Legion might just spark a war early.’
‘Those Gerry pilots are getting experience, ready for the attack into Belgium.’
‘Our lads are getting experience as well, soon to be the experience of getting bombed by Germans, but ... experience none the less.’
‘We’re spread out, those frigging planes won’t affect us – they’ll bomb the cities, wear down the morale of Mister and Misses Dago.’
‘Dago is slang for Italian,’ I pointed out.
‘Is it?’ he puzzled.
‘Brits use that term for anyone of a Club Med country. Like Rastas, Rastafarians. That culture came from Ethiopia, and had nothing to do with long hair and cannabis. So, what are those planes doing?’
‘Getting ready, fuck all else yet.’
‘And the German citizens brigade?’
‘No reports of where they are, but they ain’t frigging citizens.’
‘We have fifteen hundred Rifles on the ground, so I won’t be losing any sleep,’ I told him.
‘I have the SAS boys moving towards that airfield, to the hills above, to have a nose down,’ Big Paul reported.
‘Do they have Good Morning Grenades … by any chance?’
Big Paul smiled, and shrugged. ‘Not that I’d admit to.’
The Germans didn’t waste any time, and two days later pounded the centre of a town just fifty miles northeast of Malaga. A village was hit the next day. The news reached the US newspapers, and photographs taken of the aftermath were flown across to Algiers, where a Super Goose waited to bring them back. In 1936 terms it was instant media, pictures in newspapers just three days after the first attack.
A week later, a town was hit just twelve miles northeast of Malaga. We got the message, our aircraft dispersing to roads, most flying off to Algiers. The Royal Navy were warning our people, but our people possessed no fighters.
I said to Jimmy, ‘If they take a pounding, then the civilian population will give in, no matter how many soldiers we shoot.’
‘True. What … do you suggest?’
He was being sneaky, I could tell. ‘How about some old Boeing fighters?’
‘And how would the German’s react, and where would the planes have come from – they’re only operated by a few nations?’
I eased back and gave it some though. ‘Yes, it would look suspicious.’
He handed over a newspaper cutting. I read, ‘Texas oil millionaire donates twelve fighters for our boys in Spain. Well, that should sort the blame game out.’ Reading on, I could see that the newspaper was organising a fundraiser for more planes, and the planes were not cheap.
At dawn the following day the Germans took off, their radio chatter and radar silhouettes picked up by the Royal Navy. A signal went to Algiers, as well as to our colonel: “Nelly has dropped her knickers at last.”
The Dornier Do17s flew down the coast, thirty-six in three waves, the ocean providing warm air currents and little cloud. What cloud there was this fine morning hung in a thin layer around five thousand feet, the Dorniers cruising along at three thousand feet, knowing full well that the resistance possessed few serviceable fighters. Above them, at six thousand feet, a flight of German He51 biplane fighters cruised along, basically seaplanes without floats – and hardly fast enough to keep up with the Dorniers.
Ten miles from Malaga, the He51 pilots felt the impacts in their planes, soon seeing Boeing B11/4s streak past and climb. Radios were not working, jammed by the Royal Navy, the juice cranked up. Four out of six He51s plummeted to the ground in flames, the remaining two attempting to turn back, caught by the circling Boeings and shredded. The Dornier twin-engine bombers were now alone, heavy and slow, laden with bombs – and unaware of the action now taking place behind them. Their aircraft typically carried rear gunners and observers, but the men were absent due to a lack of fighter threat.
The twelve Boeings approached in a straight line, diving down, each with its own slow speed Dornier in its sights. The Boeings opened fire from six hundred yards, quickly closing the gap and streaking past, the Dorniers breaking formation, radio signals lost in the static. Six had burst into flames, four smoking as they descended. Bombs were dropped, since no Dornier pilot wanted to crash land with armed bombs.
The Boeings climbed, rolled over the top tightly and came straight down onto the next flight, the German’s already breaking formation. Thirty-six minutes of air combat resulted in four Dorniers crash landing, four getting away, the rest destroyed. There would be some table thumping in Berlin.
I read the telegram, and thought, ‘Fuck.’ I also thought that we had played our hand, and that we’d not find so easy a target again. The Germans had been secure in the knowledge that there were no fighters in the area, few in the hands of the socialists, and that had cost them, a mistake that they would not repeat.
Jimmy said, ‘We’ve kicked the sleeping lion in the balls, and pulled its tail.’
The Boeings landed in Malaga, American Brigade pilots at the controls, men who had been flown over to Algiers a few days earlier.
The Colonel assembled his men, the Colonel himself having been in the action. ‘Men, they know we have these planes now, and they’ll be right unfriendly the next time we meet. We have twelve aircraft, we have ammo and supplies, but they have a great deal more. We slapped those Germans about the face, but they’ll send reinforcements for sure. Disperse your planes; we can expect air attacks here anytime. Get refuelled, re-armed, and get ready. Thank you, men.’
He turned to the guy with the hand-cranked camera, wiping his brow with his sleeve. ‘Get that?’
‘Yes, Colonel, got it all.’
‘Fly it out with the photographs of the downed planes. And today!’
In his command centre, the ground floor of an old hotel where he and some of his men lived, he faced his team, placing down his flying goggles and leather cap. ‘They’ll be coming … a day or so, and they’ll be as mad as a hornets nest down your trousers.’
‘Will we get more planes?’
‘We were damn lucky to get these. They were a gift from a Texas oilman, but don’t expect any more any time soon. And tonight, when it’s dark, we can expect a little something from Herr Hitler.’
‘Right down the throat,’ his second in command said.
The Colonel said to his resistance liaison, ‘Go around the town, spread the word: all lights out after dark. Oh, and tell the townsfolk that we shot down all the German bombers.’
‘Do you have those new night sights?’ a man asked.
The Colonel smiled. ‘In a crate outside. Now, I need a wash and a bite to eat, so fuck off and do something useful.’
As darkness fell, the Royal Navy detected no silhouettes on radar, no radio chatter. At dawn the operators changed shift, yawning, and in need of a bunk. I had stayed up late and sat in the command room with many of the gang, the telegrams keenly awaited, but nothing about a bombing raid arrived. I was up early, checking the messages, but nothing. The German’s were having a day off.
The American newspapers reported the action, and that twelve Boeings had shot down thirty German bombers. Boeing would be pleased, since it was - in an odd way, good advertising for their aircraft. Newspaper sales were up, and editors were coming around to the idea that a good war story sold papers. Where they weren’t coming around to that idea, we were there to nudge them in the right direction. War by media had arrived.
Two days later the Royal Navy reported reinforcements arriving at the German air base, lots of them. The new Stukas had arrived, Heinkel bombers, more Dorniers, and Bf109 fighters – a match for the Boeings. But I had been fooled along with everyone else, and they were not Boeing B11/4s, they were B11/5 “specials”.
The special alterations were to do with armour plating, rate of acceleration improvement, and new ammo for the guns that included phosphorous. It was expensive ammo to produce, but was proving effective. One second after leaving the barrel, the phosphorous in the bullet did not just burn hot at the rear of the shell, it spat out; a single hit in a fuel tank and it was all over.
Two days later, after an annoyingly frustrating period of waiting for those of us at the hotel, the Germans launched a night attack, the target being our planes on the ground. The Royal Navy picked up the German radio chatter and the radar silhouettes, our base warned in plenty of time. The Boeings were made ready, lined up on the dirt strip – paraffin lamps at its edges, and took off into the dark night, flying at fifty feet straight out to sea.
The Germans had spies in the area, we knew that, and they may have reported the planes leaving for Algiers. Their bombers were not recalled. Half an hour later the people of Malaga heard the heavy drone of bombers, the house lights all out, families hiding in basements, or under tables.
The twelve Boeings had flown four miles out to sea, climbed and turned, small green lights on their tails allowing the aircraft to stay together. Through their night sights, those green lights were displayed as a bright green, almost white. With the altitude of the Germans fixed by the Royal Navy, the Boeing squadron climbed, circling around. A few minutes later their night sights registered distant bright spots. Climbing to a thousand feet above the bombers, the Boeings adopted a lateral line and spread out, each a hundred yards apart.
‘Now!’ the Colonel shouted, breaking radio silence.
The Boeings nosed down, invisible to the bombers, and fired from four hundred yards out, lifting their noses and firing across the wings of the advancing bombers. Flames erupted from those wings, the game up, the bombers now aware that our fighters could see in the dark. They dropped their bombs and broke formation, rear gunners firing at random, fingers of orange tracer reaching out into the black night.
The Boeings broke formation according to a pre-arranged plan. Turning, their noses came to bear on bombers fleeing, slow moving targets. A short burst of fire from our Boeings, and the bomber’s rear gunners had little time to find a target. Time and again the Boeings climbed, clearly seeing each other nearby, green lights visible from behind, the hot engines lit-up like daytime in the night sights.
Forty-five minutes of action resulted in another thirty German bombers streaking earthwards, most on fire. When the colonel ordered a withdrawal, it was after they could find no aircraft left to shoot at. They brazenly put their lights on, and set a course for home, a radio message sent out after landing.
It was 4pm in Canada, people huddled and waiting for news. Big Paul received the phone call, a coded message from a radio station in Nova Scotia. ‘Scratch another thirty German bombers, no casualties on our side.’ The morning newspaper headlines were already being written.
‘What’ll the Germans do next?’ I thought out loud.
‘Ground assault,’ Big Paul confidently stated.
‘No,’ Jimmy suggested, everyone now focused on him. ‘An all out daylight fighter campaign; they have the numbers, and they think they have the better planes.’
We exchanged looks. ‘Con trails over Malaga,’ I quipped.
‘Yeah,’ Big Paul began. ‘Fifty of theirs, twelve of ours.’
I faced Jimmy. ‘Can we win?’
‘We don’t want to win, we want a scrap.’
‘Come again?’ Mac asked.
‘We want to win the media war far more than the war on the ground,’ Jimmy explained before we walked off.
‘We’ll sacrifice a few,’ Big Paul said as he sat.
‘Get the Yanks in the war,’ Handy said as he left.
‘Fucking marvellous,’ Mac uttered as he headed out.
I sat with Hal later. ‘It’s like Coventry during the war. Churchill knew it would be bombed, but didn’t evacuate.’
‘War is war, it’s all hell,’ Hal noted.
I fiddled with my teaspoon. ‘During my time on Jimmy’s world I was ruthless, but it was easy – it was a shit hole of radiation and rusting metal. Here, I see these people and … fighting The Brotherhood seems like a lifetime ago. Here I care too much for the people, whereas over there they were just grubby-faced beggars in tatters of clothes, the cities gone. I’ll have to get back into that frame of mind; I’ve been enjoying building things too much. You know, back on our world, I think I changed after SARS. I went through a bad patch, then saw the world go on, and I needed that hope.’
Hal sipped his coffee. ‘We’re a few years away from the war, and conventional war is no picnic for the civilians. And those guys at sea, the Atlantic convoys; imagine putting your head down in your bunk and trying to close your damn eyes! Throb of the engine, then boom – and you’re on you way to the depths. That could screw with your sleep pattern.’
I tipped my eyebrows and nodded. ‘How’re the jets?’
‘We get some flying done in the bad weather; cold but clear days – the jets don’t mind it. The twin-engine fighter is looking good, three prototypes buzzing around. It could hold its own with say … an F4 Phantom from 1980.’
‘And the bomber?’
‘Second prototype flies real smooth; get a calm day and she glides along. Had her up at forty thousand and she didn’t complain, and she’ll push six hundred at thirty thousand feet.’
‘Heavy to land?’ I idly enquired.
‘No, she has flaps like Dumbo’s ears - and wings that you could build a house under. She’s a classy lady alright.’
‘Secondary flaps, yeah?’
Hal nodded, sipping his tea. ‘Main flaps, then a second set, and vectored thrust. I can put her down and stop in four hundred yards.’
‘Take off?’
‘Different matter all together. Without the catapult and ramp she likes a good long run-up. Jimmy has asked the RAF to extend a few British airfields without explaining why, airfields in Scotland.’
‘Anything being done on the Huey?’
‘Just this week they fitted a new engine and gearbox, the engine made from a new alloy, so lighter. We have lighter blades and transmission, so she has the power; they’re testing her now – inside the hangar.’
‘Inside?’
‘It’s a big ‘ol hangar. They put sandbags in the back, and power up. So far so good, the equivalent of two pilots and eight men lifted.’
I sat upright. ‘That’s as much as she’ll ever need!’
‘She’ll need a full fuel tank, and men with kit,’ Hal pointed out. ‘And door guns. If not, she’s just a toy.’
‘Armour?’
‘As good as anything we ever had in Nam, if not a hell of a lot better!’
‘Did you consider a Cobra?’ I asked, easing back.
‘We’ve got a prototype working. All we did was rip apart a Huey spec, and make the girl real thin, and single seat,’ Hal explained.
‘Single seat?’
‘In my day they had a gunner because they had complicated weapons,’ Hal explained. ‘We’ll have a thirty mil cannon that you’ll need to point your nose at the enemy to fire. No pigging missiles!’
‘Thirty mil won’t stop a Tiger Tank,’ I pointed out.
‘No, but she’ll carry eight RPGs, and they’ll crimp a Tiger if you hit it in the right spot. And the new aircraft RPGs are bigger and better; blast launched as well as a small rocket, folding fins stabilising them. They have a lot of kinetic energy.’
‘So a Cobra could be a tank killer,’ I thought out loud. ‘And, with a night sight, an invisible tank killer.’
‘Invisible – but fucking loud!’ Hal reminded me. ‘And the nuclear scientists up there, they can’t make head or tail of the aircraft,’ he said with a smile. ‘We call it the newcomer silly stare. And the fucking Huey … that had a few atom bomb guys saying it was impossible, and would never fly, till they saw it. Fucking eggheads!’
I laughed. ‘When do you reckon that jet fighter will be at a point where it has a decent mission package?’
Hal made a face as he thought. ‘A year. Don’t get me wrong, she’ll do the business now, but there are lots of little things to change all the time. A year from now she’ll fly a good mission profile, but without any electronics – and that’s the downside; manual navigation, manual bomb aiming. Guy in the back needs to be good, or it’s just a toy.’
‘Against a formation of German bombers?’ I posed.
‘Completely fucking useless. They’re flying at two hundred and fifty, you’re doing six hundred. By time you see them you’re past them, and if she slows she a big ugly target. I wouldn’t bother with her, but Jimmy has some plans.’
At dawn the next day the German’s lifted off, thirty-six Bf109 fighters. They headed straight for Malaga, the Royal Navy tipping off the base. But the Germans flew in three staggered groups, the formations at three thousand, six thousand, and eight thousand feet respectively, a mile apart; an attack on one group would result in a swooping counter-attack from another. The Germans were thinking at last, no doubt thinking about what failure meant for their commanding officer.
Our fighters turned their props, closed canopies, the signal given to take off. They took off one behind the other, little room for error, and flew straight toward the advancing German formations. Climbing at full power, our planes reached eight thousand feet … and kept going. The Germans met our daring dozen head on halfway to Malaga – and broke formation, expecting a diving attack. None came. The Boeings, high and fast, kept going, the highest German aircraft now a few miles behind them.
Our aircraft nosed down, a gentle angle, and picked up speed, the Germans scratching their heads, radios being jammed by a Royal Navy ship sat two miles offshore. The 109s turned to follow our aircraft, knowing we only had the twelve. Our aircraft were slightly faster and had the height, and in this race that mattered; the Germans could not catch up.
A crazy air race ensued, the Germans now on a course back to their own base, unable to radio ahead, but ground units had signalled the German base of the aircraft movements. By time the Boeings reached the German base, Good Morning grenades were going off at the perimeter, fifty cal sniper fire incoming. Heads were ducked, men running about. Our planes reached the German strip at full speed, at a thousand feet, and with eight improved RPGs on the wings.
Without a pause for thought, our planes fired down from five hundred feet, RPGs loosed off every second at enemy aircraft parked on the deck; it would have been hard to not hit something. Spanners were dropped, maintenance crews running for cover, anti-aircraft batteries opening up. Six Heinkels and two Dorniers on the ground blew apart. Trucks, fuel tankers, they all blew apart a second before the Boeings pulled up, one a little late and hitting the tallest building at over three hundred miles per hour. The uppermost floor of the building, used as a makeshift air traffic control centre, exploded, a dozen German staff officers killed, the building collapsing and on fire.
The other aircraft managed to get their noses up in time, skimming over the Germans at rooftop height and climbing steeply at full power. Smoke rose from the German base. At eight thousand feet the Boeings grouped and turned, the German formations all below three thousand, having tried to catch the Boeings. Our planes turned for home, unmolested.
Sat with Big Paul, I said, ‘If your planes fly higher and faster, make use of that fact.’
He answered the phone. Placing down the receiver, he said, ‘One crashed into the German control tower, and one crashed on landing. Pilot got out, but the plane is toast.’
‘So, down to ten aircraft. Still, there’ll be a few raised voices in the Fatherland today.’
‘We hit around ten aircraft on the ground, made a right old mess.’
I glanced at the map. ‘But when does the ground attack begin?’
‘If they go all out for the air strip we’ll lose it, but the planes can take off from fields or roads – so no big deal.’
The newspapers got their headline story again, as well as news of the death of a pilot. They listed another twelve men dead, those deaths being down to either being shot in the back by double agents, or men being shot in their sleep; it was hard to know which of the locals to trust.
The next morning the Bf109s again took to the air, but this time their staggered formations were spaced two miles apart, in groups of four, one group of four planes stretching their limits and trying to nose over nine thousand feet. German ground defences were now ready and manned, and their spotters were set up miles away from the airfield – but subject to intermittent sniper attack.
We couldn’t know what was going through the minds of the Germans at their base, or the leadership in Berlin, but they pressed home their attack. Our planes took off in plenty of time, flying in a wide arc over the sea and climbing. At eleven thousand feet they nosed down at the highest Bf109 formation, a flight of five aircraft. Those aircraft now broke formation, whilst trying to maintain their height. Two Boeings pursued each fighter, two Boeings left circling above whilst using their radios to coordinate the action, no jamming in effect today.
The fight was uneven, our aircraft ticking all the boxes; speed, altitude, rate of turn. The Germans had the numbers, but we had the height. The first three 109s were shot down, the fourth diving down towards his buddies. With good radio coordination, the Boeings eased their altitude lower in their pairs – lead plane and wingman, swooping towards the 109s and firing from five hundred yards out. After each attack they pulled their noses up, the power turned on, the 109s unable to follow, the spiralling duellist slowly loosing altitude after each attack.
At four thousand feet, eight 109s had been shot down, three damaged and now withdrawing. And our pilots kept their nerve, and their strategy. They kept turning and attacking, any 109s nosing up being chased, the Boeings getting the height first and opening up. By time the remaining 109s scattered they were down to seven aircraft from thirty-six.
Big Paul said, ‘Power, speed, height. If our boys stick to the plan they’ll win.’
I noted, ‘They can fly sixty miles an hour faster, climb faster, and can nose over ten thousand, the 109s can’t. It’s as simple as that.’
‘This time, but the Gerrys ain’t stupid.’
‘No, they’ll change tactics. Maybe … high altitude night bombing.’
‘They’d hit fuck all, the bombs dropping miles from the target!’
‘Then they’ll try a ground attack,’ I suggested.
‘I’ve pulled the Americans back to Malaga.’
‘Just … the Americans?’
‘Just the Americans, and the reporters.’
‘A crucible,’ I noted, keen to see the newspapers – when they arrived a day or two after printing, brought up on a scheduled Goose flight.
A day after the fateful air battle, a bomb went off next to a plane; the Fifth Column were now out in force. Locals were banned from the airstrip, extra guards posted. A bomb also went off in the Colonel’s hotel, while he was in the bathtub. He appeared with nothing but a hat and pistol, asking for some clothes.
The following night the local tavern exploded, killing six of our soldiers and twenty locals. The men were dispersed, forbidden from using local facilities, and to stay hidden around the town or in the hills. Four more of our men were killed the next evening, but this time by ladies who had seduced them; the ladies had opened a back door to Franco’s agents during the night. Fraternising was now banned as well, men grouping in tents out in the open, sentries posted.
Frustrated and angered, the Colonel ordered his men to their planes. They flew out to sea in daylight, straight out five miles before turning northeast. Coming in at wave-top height at full speed, they nosed up a mile from the German airbase, banked and nosed down, strafing the airfield, hitting planes on the ground.
This time, however, a flight of 109s had the height, and swooped down. One Boeing crashed, the rest landing with at least one hole each. The Colonel’s plane had been hit six times, but managed to keep flying. Seeing the damage, he said to his number two, ‘Got any sticky tape?’
The aluminium skin was folded back into place, taped over, and finally painted. It would have to do. Two cockpit canopies had been shattered, and the next flight would be breezy for their pilots. Discipline had gone, and it had cost us. Fearing an attack whilst refuelling, the Colonel radioed the units hidden near the German base to create a diversion. A daylight attack was launched, long range sniping started.
By 3pm our people above the German base were noticing men on the hills behind them, hundreds of men. They were surrounded, the Germans snipers now firing down as they advanced. It was a mess. A radio call went out for help, a few hours to sundown and a chance of escape; thirty men were surrounded by three hundred.
The Colonel uttered a few rude words, and took off with RPGs loaded, machinegun ammo topped up. This time they flew north over the hills, onto the plain beyond and dropped to the deck. Finding a nice hill, they circled around it at fifty feet, a new heading that would take them to the German base. They arrived an hour before sundown, and burst over the hills above the base, loudly announcing their arrival. Turning, they could see our people, signs laid out on the ground, and strafed the hills above at length, RPGs fired into groups of men or into farm buildings.
It was a mistake, a brave and foolish move. The 109s took off, circled and gained some height, then fell upon the Boeings as our planes bravely tried to help their colleagues on the ground. Our planes strafed the hills at length, firing at men moving around below – but ineffectually.
Four Boeings were shot down, the rest damaged, and they limped home, only saved by the setting sun ahead of them. Landing, the aircraft were in a sorry state, several men wounded. The reporters flocked around, the story recanted, a few stiff drinks downed by the men.
The drone of heavy aircraft registered little more than twenty minutes later, fires deliberately started near the base by spies - to help the German bombers aim. Our Colonel calmly sat with a drink in hand as the bombs fell, people fleeing. Only one aircraft was hit, but one other picked up shrapnel damage. Malaga was ablaze, the people terrified, and all because of a tactical error.
Two aircraft were left operable, their pilots taking off in the dark and chasing after the bombers. They caught up with the bombers, shooting down three and damaging two more before random fire from a rear gunner caught one of our planes. It spiralled down out of control. One aircraft limped back in, hit a hole made from a bomb and ending nose down, tail up, the pilot with broken collar bones.
Dawn brought a scene of devastation, a flypast by 109s confirming that. During the night, random falling bombs had killed thirty men, wounding thirty more. We were taking a beating. The reporters photographed the scene, the guy with the movie camera filming the aftermath.
The mood in the hotel was off, people walking around with heads lowered, everyone glancing at Jimmy. He could turn this around in a moment, but we wanted the casualties and the news. I finally cornered him.
‘I know what the plan is, but this really sucks.’
He blew out. ‘We got the photographs we needed, and we got the coverage. So yes, I’ll end it today.’
‘How?’ I puzzled.
‘An hour ago, our Canadian Rifles began an assault on Franco’s headquarters near Seville.’
‘You distracted them,’ I realised.
He nodded. ‘Franco believed our forces to be in Malaga, or east along the coast, and that they were getting knocked back; it lowered his guard a little. So, we wait a telegram. And, right now, a hundred Battery Grenades are going off around Seville, street to street fighting. Those of our men that survive the night will be picked up at dawn by Buffalo, at a pre-arranged spot. Oh, and the German Embassy in Madrid will need a paint job, probably some new staff as well I guess. And, the vast majority of the senior officers of the Spanish Army are by now … quite, quite dead.’
I informed those of the gang that still had long faces, cheering them. And the next morning we received telegrams. Two hundred and fifty men had gone after Franco, two hundred and ten made it out, thirty wounded. They had levelled many buildings, and Franco and his staff were now very dead, the news sent around the world – we made sure of that.
With the Canadians, the British, and the remaining Americans grouped north of Malaga, they moved east in convoy along back-roads, away from the coast, arriving at the German airfield two days later. It had been abandoned. They split up and spread out, hunting for pockets of Spanish soldiers holding out. A month later, and with a new government in power - a unity government, our people withdrew to Malaga and boarded ships.
Jimmy commented, ‘We gained Spain for the war, but we gave Hitler a flying lesson that he’ll learn from.’
When our Colonel finally returned by Super Goose, Jimmy requested him at the hotel. The man appeared down hearted and beaten. We sat him down with a whisky.
‘You made a mistake, and it cost a few lives, Colonel,’ Jimmy began. ‘But a good man would learn from that, and a great leader would use that like a knife in his side; always reminding himself of what happened. That experience … can be a great source of strength, and the pain of the memories we carry around help to remind us of a few realities. I don’t blame you for the deaths of anyone, you did a good job, and I want you to stay with us. If you want to avenge those men, teach the next group how not to make mistakes; brave, foolish, but magnificent mistakes.’
We gave him his back pay, a bonus, and told him to take a holiday for a few weeks. But we failed to mention the film now being rushed through, our Colonel the star of it.
The great untold story of the fight, one that would etch itself into the hearts of the Germans and enter into legend, was that of the thirty SAS men caught in the hills. A year later I would be shown an article attributed to Hitler: ‘These Americans fought like dogs, never backing down, fighting to the last man. With rifles, with pistol, with grenades, with knives, and then with their bare hands – and no surrender, spitting and cursing with their last breath. Thirty men killed or wounded a hundred and sixty of our best men. Magnificent.’
And they had been Canadian Rifles SAS, not Americans, just a handful of Americans with them.
Jimmy had commissioned a statue, and a memorial park in Vancouver before the fighting in Spain had even ended, the statue that of a young man in civilian clothes with a rifle, sat on a large purple marble base. On it were the names of the all the Americans who had died. He then contacted the US Army and asked if a similar statue could be erected at the bases we sponsored. They readily agreed, surprised to find the statues already finished. Now, US enlisted men in the regiments we sponsored would walk past the statue on their way in and out of the base.
A similar statue was dedicated in the Canadian Rifles base, a service held with the Canadian Government in attendance. And the American Brigade, they altered their base sign to say “American Brigade, freedom fighters.”
It was not fair to say that recruitment was up, since forty thousand people applying was something of overkill. The Brigade had entered into romantic folklore, our film being worked on in haste, the best stars of the current era in it. Its title was simple and to the point: American Brigade. And the oilman who donated the planes, he would play himself, no mention of us.
We recruited from the sponsored regiments, and then just the best men, five hundred men willingly released by the US Army and sent up. Seeing a photograph of the memorial in Vancouver, the American Press were most put out, screaming at the President to do something. He commissioned the War Memorials Panel to arrange a statue, Jimmy shipping them one in pieces. And it was a beauty. Put together, the dark purple marble reached twenty feet high, atop it a frightened looking young lad in civilian clothes, holding a rifle in one hand, protecting a woman and child with the other. Stalin would have been proud of us. The new memorial stood in a park in Washington DC, names already chiselled into it, with the men’s original home towns listed.
When the film was ready we checked it, making sure that it didn’t give us away. A few of the aircraft scenes were plastic models shot at night, the rest having been shot whilst the fighting was going on, Boeings over San Diego that we had supplied, hundreds or hours of film that the studio then cut-up. A village in Mexico, set above the coast, had been bribed with hard cash, and the villagers all had roles, their outbuildings blown to pieces on a regular basis, the sand thick with fake blood.
British twin-engine light bombers, stationed in Kenya, had been painted in German colours for a few days, filmed from many angles, even filmed dropping bombs. And in San Diego a few Boeings had been painted to resemble Bf109s. It was all quite realistic, actual film footage taken in Spain added in afterwards.
It premiered in Los Angeles, the stars out, and was copied thirty times to make sure that we hit many cinemas in many small towns across the States. We enjoyed full cinemas, young men staring wide-eyed up at the silver screen, and at the action, many of those young men due to take part in the Second World War.
Having seen the film, I figured the Germans would not be happy chappies. Their onscreen counterparts executed men, women and children for fun, and then ran away from the American Brigade after taking heavy loses. In our day and age it would have been laughed out of the cinema, but in 1936 they lapped it up. The President and his staff watched it together at a special screening in the White House, and opinions were formed, altered, and laid down for them, since the facts depicted were accurate, the aircraft real, the numbers shot down real.
Our Colonel, meanwhile, was having a ball, being named in the film. He had been in Los Angeles with us when the film premiered, and duly got himself invited to all the good parties. His favourite scene, and ours, was of the bomb at his hotel. The film hero came down stairs naked - his bits not shown to 1936 audiences – wearing just a hat and a pistol, cigar in his mouth. A woman stopped and shrieked, turning away.
‘Madam, have you never seen a naked man with a pistol before?’
The audience loved the film, the Colonel invited to Washington with a few of his senior men. Fearing a public backlash for inaction, the President decorated the men. Hell, it got him a few more votes. And we were invited down for a private chat.
Welcomed into the Oval Office, I considered that it was not that different to our era. They did, however, have drinks waiting. The Chief of Staff was present, three Generals and one Admiral.
Settled, after five minutes of innocuous chat about families and the weather, the President began with, ‘Boys, you make fine planes, you make very fine submarines, and you also train soldiers very well. You even fight a war very well, but I would expect nothing less.’
‘You’re too kind,’ I mockingly offered, getting a quick look from our host.
‘Some of my Generals … would like your kind assistance on modernising our army, but I figured you’d not be too cooperative. Besides, your clever aircraft and things … are expensive.’
Jimmy began, ‘If the question was: could we modernise your army cheaply … then I would say yes we can, and we’d be happy to help. You don’t need to spend a great deal of money to make good soldiers, like the American Brigade.’
‘And artillery and tanks?’ the President asked.
‘We can make cheap items, but they would not be our best work. Still, we can advise your procurement branch on what to buy, and how to operate them. The cost to you would be the same, but performance would be much greater.’
‘The men in the sponsored regiments; how do they compare to the average US enlisted man?’ the President asked.
‘Twice as good, at least.’
‘And these men in the Brigade?’
‘Four time as good.’
‘And these famous Canadian Rifles?’
‘Six times as good.’
The President glanced at his military advisors. ‘If those sponsored regiments received more money, their standards could be brought up even more?’
‘Yes they could, and we’d assist,’ Jimmy offered. ‘But I would start to split them into specialised units, as we do with the Rifles. And I would suggest that each man received training overseas for three months at a time; desert, jungle, mountains. If they were to ever go fight a war someplace, you can be sure that it would be in a most inhospitable place.’
‘The British in Africa would cooperate?’ a General asked.
‘My dear General,’ the President began. ‘Mister Silo runs Africa, not the British.’
‘You flatter us,’ I quipped.
‘There would be no problem with your men training in Africa,’ Jimmy said, hiding a grin.
‘And if those sponsored regiments were turned into the best fifty thousand men, in the specialities you mentioned, they’d hold their own against any other army in the world?’ the President asked.
‘They could be trained to that level, yes,’ Jimmy said. ‘But there are other armies out there with different cultures, some of which would never surrender or back down – ever. They would fight to the end, to the bitter end, and you would take heavy casualties should your men encounter them.’
‘How long would it take?’ a General asked.
‘I would suggest we construct a two year programme, which I’ll put into detail for you,’ Jimmy offered. ‘At the end of it, the chosen fifty thousand would be of the same standard as the brigade in Spain – but not all them would be pilots of course.’
‘How are your scientists coming along?’ I asked.
The President smiled. ‘I always have a whisky waiting for them when they come to brief me.’ The Generals laughed. ‘And we settle them for ten minutes first, otherwise they jabber like excited young girls. Seems that you have a plane that takes off by going straight up, and a bomber that’s bigger than this building.
‘I hope security is kept tight,’ I told them.
‘It is, very tight, but who would believe it?’ the President posed.
‘Hopefully, not too many,’ I added. ‘Do you … have everything you desire from the project?’
‘They believe that they could assemble a bomb in weeks,’ a General reported. ‘But they’re concentrating on the manufacturing process. No good having just the one.’
I took a moment. ‘No, one would not be enough – should they ever be needed.’
‘Can we talk about Spain?’ the President asked.
‘Is that in Europe somewhere?’ I countered.
Our hosts laughed. ‘I think so,’ the President said. ‘May we ask a few direct questions?’
‘Of course you can, you’re Americans,’ I said, getting a look from Jimmy.
‘Your Canadian Rifles killed Franco. Well, they raised his house to the ground and killed his entire staff,’ the President noted.
‘Do you have any proof … of that allegation?’ I said with a smile.
‘Not that would stand up in a court of law, no,’ he admitted, also smiling. ‘You … toppled a government using force.’
‘No, we went to the aid of the legitimate government,’ Jimmy pointed out. ‘Who sanctioned our actions in that country, since Franco was calling in outsiders to help prosecute his false claim to be dictator; all above board and legal. I even have a signed document to that effect.’
‘And the reason for your interest in Spain?’ the President posed.
‘If you look at a map, you’ll see that it sits in a prime spot. Having to go around it would be a detour for our aircraft, and having a hostile dictator running the place would be unsettling for the region in the decades ahead.’
‘Do you see yourself having business interests in Spain, or … land interests perhaps?’
‘No, other than to land aircraft at Madrid.’
The President took a moment. ‘And your view of Herr Hitler?’
‘Should he threaten Britain, or invade other nations in Europe, then I would lend my full resources to fighting him. My aircraft manufacturing skills would be given to the British in such an eventuality.’
‘Which aircraft would they get?’ a General asked.
‘They very best I could magic up,’ Jimmy told the man, holding his stare.
‘That would … put Britain well ahead of anyone else,’ the Admiral delicately broached.
‘Circumstances … would dictate. If Britain was attacked, I would respond. And, as we speak, the first of our four service submarines are in the hands of British sailors, an operational squadron.’
The Generals sat up. ‘An operational squadron?’
‘The British … have threats to their outposts that they need assistance with. You, sir, don’t suffer from such threats.’
‘We figured we’d buy the subs,’ the President stated.
‘You’ve not placed an order,’ I reminded him. ‘We’re not mind readers.’
Jimmy told them, ‘There is one sub we’ll hand to you for evaluation, and you can have it for free. We’re making four more, and they’ll be yours – if ordered by you. They’ll take a year to make.’
‘You said … a threat to British interests?’ the President nudged.
‘The British believe that the Japanese may move on their colony of Hong Kong in the years ahead,’ Jimmy said.
‘Where you have business interests and partners,’ the President noted.
‘I have business interests … everywhere, Mister President.’
‘Do you see Spain … becoming a communist or socialist state?’ the President asked.
‘No,’ Jimmy responded. ‘Since the Spanish politicians know that there would be fierce resistance, and more fighting. They’ll organise a unity government, fragile – but enduring I believe.’
Out of the meeting, and in a hotel, I commented to Jimmy, ‘A two year programme takes them to 1938, a long way from 1941 – if those soldiers were sat around. Expensive, and sat around.’
He took a moment. ‘True, but we now expect the war in Europe to start early, and for the American Brigade to be there in some capacity. When German tanks roll over them, the folks back home will see it, and there’ll be great pressure on the President. Besides, we’ll make good use of the same media outlets we used in Spain.’
‘And their kit?’
‘That … is an issue, since we don’t want them carrying AK47s till the war starts,’ Jimmy admitted. ‘So I’ve had our lads make up automatic rifles that are better, as well as cheap to produce. There are twenty thousand sat ready, which we’ll sell to the US Army after they’ve evaluated them.’
‘These rifles?’
‘Made from an alloy steel, but not a clever alloy, bottom loading magazine, maximum of thirty rounds, and reliable. You can fit a bayonet and an optical sight - and we now have thousands of cheap optical sights of three times magnification. There’s also a bi-pod machinegun version with a better barrel, still magazine fed, plus another that’s belt-fed. It’s their wartime kit a few years early, but better than the Garand. Oh, RAF just commissioned the Spitfire, Hurricanes to follow.’
‘And … our Boeings?’ I nudged.
‘The British want fighters that they can make themselves, in British factories, employing British workers.’
‘Ah, politics.’
‘We have given them some pointers though, so the aircraft will be better, and will match a Boeing Mark 5 and more. Spitfire will reach four-sixty in a dive. It climbs well, and it handles well.’
‘But, after Spain, will the Germans improve their aircraft?’ I posed.
‘They did before; it’s all a learning curve. I don’t expect them to come up with something much better, because I know Hitler, and he likes mass production and cheap kit. Right know he probably has one of the captured fifty cals on his desk, baulking at the size and cost. You see, it’s his call, and that makes our lives so much easier.’
‘Because he’s a dictator … and a twat.’
‘Succinctly put, young man.’
As a direct result of the meeting, all recruitment for the sponsored regiments was halted, those ending their twelve-month contracts let go, the good ones kept on and promoted. Considering those coming to the end of their year-long terms, we’d be down to fifty thousand in four months or so. Jimmy already had a hefty manual ready for the US Army Generals, and it involved keeping the men busy with all sorts of activities, no time to sit and think. There would also be an educational programme in the evenings, the men pushed hard.
Those that had not been inoculated would be sent to Africa within three months of signing on, where Doc Graham would inject them. He would also start injecting the NCOs with quarter strength blood, the same as we had done with the original Kenyan Rifles. Ngomo received a note, to create a base in the Congo that would hold four thousand men at a time, one near Mawlini of the same size. A rude note came back.
I replied, ‘If you spent less time with your many wives, you’d be on top of things, old man.’
Rudd had to increase Ngomo’s budget, and to help get the camps ready, or have his arms pulled off and be beaten with them. South of Forward Base, where mining city might be someday, a camp was planned near a train halt, our tractors soon to be clearing land in haste. The camp near Mawlini would be easier to construct, because the men were required to sleep in tents to start with, then under the stars. Fending for themselves in the desert was the whole point, and after six weeks the men would forget what a bed felt like. Still, they had to learn to tame their fear of the desert, and to master it.
Abdi was asked to send instructors, the new young Americans in for a shock. Still, the Somalis would typically – in a time honoured tradition – pick out the biggest man on the first day and beat the crap out of him in front of everyone, money offered to anyone who could knock them down. They would then challenge the men to a shooting contest and always win, a foot race – and easily win. After that, the blacks, the “Negroes”, were begrudgingly accepted, if not feared, a few even befriended.
Spain
Both we, and the French Government, made loans to the provisional Spanish Government, the gold bars we had handed over to be paid for at some point. We kept an eye on the uneasy alliance of former enemies, but at least most of the Francophiles were now dead, a “People’s Militia” duly raised. Madrid airport was now back on our Goose routes after the coup had halted the services, Brazil to Madrid flights always full. British Airways landed again, flights from London, and American Airlines ran a service direct from New York via the Azores.
The Germans were publicly stating that various governments had toppled Franco, the legitimate leader to their mind, but played down their own military campaign - and their losses. It wasn’t a stinging defeat for the Germans, since they had shot down all of our planes and bombed Malaga. Their withdrawal was for “political reasons”.
In a sneaky move, we asked the new Spanish administration for permission to build “emergency landing strips” for our airlines at points near the French border in the north, in the south, and on the central planes, in case our aircraft had to put down when flying over. They agreed, teams sent in, concrete runways to be constructed, facilities built and manned by locals. We would make sure that Goose pilots in training would land there once or twice a week.
The French Government then placed an order for twenty-five Goose aircraft, for a national carrier to be created. Jimmy surprised me and agreed, some of our stockpile used.
‘Why we giving the French planes?’ I complained.
‘To train some of their pilots, and to create a flying school in France.’
‘Oh. You’re being sneaky again. I thought we said the Germans would pinch them and study them?’
‘They will, but they’ll not be able to make the glue, the honeycomb, or the alloy – so these days I don’t worry about it so much. Oh, and I may not have mentioned it, but we’re slowly recruiting for a French Brigade, based in the Congo. Quite a few Belgians in there.’
‘Belgians … that might know their own land around Dunkirk,’ I noted.
‘You’d expect so, wouldn’t you?’
‘You would. Thinking about Spain, why don’t we buy up all the good land on the coast?’
‘Because … there won’t be any pale British tourists till 1975.’
‘Suppose.’
One effect of the Spanish Civil war, made a brief war by us, was that the Italians were now even more miffed with us. They had sent troops before the Germans, many of whom had been killed or wounded. The presence of the Italian communists had enraged the nice man in Rome, and we had armed those communists – many of which travelled home with their weapons. Well, there was little more we could do to upset the Italians.
In a move that was sheer spite, the Italians in Libya flew men across the Sahara, landed near our train track, and blew up large sections. Spoil sports. The next train was halted, and had to reverse to a bypass station. Telegraphs twittered away, another train loaded with spare rail near Mawlini and sent through Sudan towards the Sahara, to northern Chad. Abdi was then tasked with protecting the line, men flown over to Chad in Ngomo’s Buffalos. Camps were set up, but it was a long old border, and we could not put men along every mile of it.
The decision was taken to create two airbases, in addition to the dirt strip we already made use of. Materials were shipped up by train, including wooden huts, tractors, water tanks, tents. Make-do airbases were hurriedly thrown together, fuel sent up by train – lots of fuel, ammo stockpiled. The bases didn’t require a fence, since there was nothing for miles around, save the odd camel train.
Ngomo landed his staff in Buffalos, the airstrips checked and made ready, the first Boeing fighters dispatched. Ten days after the track had been blown, air patrols took off from three bases.
Chad was an independent republic at the moment, a brief spell away from the French, and they had no problems with us using their land, a few quid offered. What Chad did offer, was a bunch of former French Legionnaires, some of them quite suitable; they knew the area. The men were recruited into the French Brigade, given more money than they were currently on – which was very little, and posted to the airbases. There, they were handed jeeps and half-tracks, and used for patrolling the border.
Fourteen days after the track had been destroyed, two Italian planes were spotted. They landed near the train track, our Boeings pouncing and strafing the Italian aircraft at length, the immobile aircraft soon burning. That left their pilots with a long walk. Two days later our half-tracks picked them up, the thirsty men having no stomach for a fight, and took them back to base. Questioning was brief, but thorough.
With their planes overdue, the Italians moved aircraft and men to their southernmost outpost, an oasis, supply trucks refuelling the aircraft. Two three-engine transports lifted off to search for their compatriots, the Italians having no idea that we had placed aircraft on the border. I asked Jimmy if this strategy was wise at the moment.
‘We can’t have that track blown-up,’ he commented.
The Italian planes were engaged, shot down and left for the desert beetles to crawl over. Suspecting foul play, the Italians sent additional aircraft, this time with six Bf109s at the hands of Italian pilots. At the hotel, people were again staring at a map and awaiting news.
Two Boeing B11/3s spotted the Bf109s, and wisely legged it. The game was up. The Bf109s followed our aircraft, our pilots radioing ahead. The entire squadron at the base lifted off, another two Boeing B11/3s, and six B11/5s. With the Bf109s following our hapless pair in their older and slower Boeings, the rest of our team came out of the sun, the dogfight resulting in four Bf109s shot down, two escaping. On our side we lost one plane, its pilot killed, two shot up and collecting damage.
Ngomo asked about what to do next. We debated the matter in the hotel, finally asking the Chad authorities to request of the British that the British RAF now protect their northern border. Two days later the British agreed, three squadrons of Boeing Mark 4s dispatched from Kenya, which was just about all of their fighters currently stationed in Kenya. Ngomo dispatched thirty half-tracks and thirty jeeps, more men and more supplies, the trains kept busy.
‘This the start?’ I asked Jimmy.
‘I doubt it. We could make it the start, but not yet I think. This is … fine tuning, and training for the British.’
‘Live firing training,’ I commended with a nod.
The Italian aircraft didn’t return for two weeks, time enough for the RAF to settle in, and to get used to black soldiers - and even a few black pilots. Jimmy ordered that the bases be made permanent, concrete shipped up, steel, and thousands of sandbags. And I made sure that mobile radar and radio direction finding equipment was sent up to the bases.
A section of track in Sudan then blew up. Our trains carried spare track these days, and a works crew aboard, so the repairs were effected quickly. Still, it was cheeky. We offered the Sudanese money to police their border, and they agreed. Hopefully, Italians saboteurs would not get through, but air patrols were extended over Sudan as well now.
The Italians were a puzzle to me, since they seemed to be about emotions rather than military logic. Blowing up the track would achieve little, yet they kept at it.
And for the next few months they probed the border, often turning away if our aircraft had the numbers or the height. Then one evening a familiar sound resonated through the calm desert air; twin-engine bombers. They were German made, flown by Italians. The lights at the base they neared were put out, jeeps driven out with their lights on, half-tracks dispersed. Our Boeing Mark 5s took to the air along the darkened runway, night sights ready, the RAF’s aircraft operating without night sights yet.
Our planes circled and gained height, eventually getting position on the Italians at a point in time when the Italians figured they had our base spotted. The Italians began to drop their bombs. On the ground, the sandbags and slit trenches were coming in handy, the RAF diving for cover. Two RAF planes were destroyed, an unlucky hit, a half-track destroyed, plus two jeeps.
With the bombs released, our fighters were in position finally and opened up, the slow bombers easy targets. All six were shot down, one demolishing the cookhouse as it hit the desert. Our people woke the next day to find that their dirt strip needed a few holes filled in, but more than that, patrols came in and reported that other bombers had aimed at the track, clear and visible on the desert floor, and had blown ten sections of it. The repair crews would be busy.
And just what did the Italians have against our train track, I puzzled, a few rude words spoken at the hotel.
Jimmy tapped a point on the map. ‘That’s the only place heavy bombers could have come from, and still have loiter time to find the track or our airfield.’
‘If we bomb it, then it’s war in the desert,’ I pointed out.
‘Ground assault.’
‘If there’s a ground assault, then it’s war in the desert,’ I pointed out.
‘We can’t keep repairing that damn track every day.’
The British Royal Navy came up with the solution, and by accident. Two of their battleships, cruising off Libya, turned left when they should have turned right, and found three Italians warships coming head on. A game of chicken ensued, the Italians firing warning shots. The captain of the British battleship was not in the mood, and gave the lead Italian ship a broadside, well-aimed shots destroying the Italian ship in an instant. The second Italian ship opened up, a joint broadside sending her to the bottom.
The Admiralty in London were horrified, but what was done was done. And the Italians? They pulled back their navy, what it was, and their aircraft, a step back from war. With the massive superiority that the Royal Navy enjoyed, the Italians knew that they would never win. And the Germans? They had only just started to make warships again, their navy small in comparison to the Royal Navy. All it needed was a punch on the nose, and the Italians took a step back, and out of the boxing ring. For now at least.
We were all relieved, not wishing an early start to hostilities, but the bases along the track remained, as did the patrols; our people needed the practise.
The one side effect of the episode was the recruitment of former French Legionnaires, large numbers of them. They were all inoculated with quarter-strength blood product, so even those now in their thirties had the required fitness levels. Their training was similar to the other brigades, and included jungle warfare and parachuting. When the brigade members themselves asked about flying, Jimmy agreed, eight Boeing 4s allocated, a strip created.
Re-organising
In Canada, the American Brigade had caught its breath and reorganised, now over a thousand men in the unit - not including the tank brigade, its Air Wing now operating twenty Boeing 4s, a few old Cessnas and two old Dash-7s. The Canadian Rifles operated their own Air Wing, but now with a renewed interest; they wanted films made about them as well. The British Army contingent was kept to four hundred men, most of the training of the British being carried out in Kenya or the Congo.
The Canadian Rifles tank depot had grown again, now with four hundred men, thirty main tanks, sixty light tanks, sixty half-tracks, fifty jeeps, and numerous support vehicles. They operated their own radar and radio units, a field medical unit, and undertook combined exercise with the main Rifles force and the American Brigade.
South of the border, Jimmy had been busy, the Generals cooperating. Men in the sponsored regiments would start as infantry, and complete three months basic training in America, three months in Africa, then move on to further training, such as half-track, mortars, 105mm. Once the men had all that under their belts they would complete parachuting training in New Mexico, beyond which they could apply for a further unit. Those units started with Airborne, its size set at five thousand men to start with, existing US Army Buffalos and new Buffalos made use of, the Super Buffalo now to bee seen; it could drop eighty paratroopers.
As a parallel to the Airborne Brigade came the Mobile Infantry. They drove half-tracks and jeeps, fired 105mm, fifty cal machineguns and mortars, and would ride into battle. They had a limited anti-tank role, and their size was set at six thousand men. Support Command was an offshoot that would hold some four thousand men, many of them engineers or mechanics, armourers and fitters. They worked behind the frontline soldiers and maintained the equipment that was beyond repair by soldiers in the field. That included radios, half-tracks, and jeeps. Their one exciting area was low-level combat re-supply by parachute, flying into a war zone and dropping supplies to the troops by pushing pallets out of the rear of Buffalos whilst under fire.
Training Command ran courses on all sorts of things, but concentrated mostly on re-training, each man being required to attend a specified list of courses each year. The command would teach new radio techniques, vehicle maintenance, new weapons, and would act as umpires in war games. Their ranks were mostly made up of officers and NCOs, some six hundred men.
A MASH unit was a must, but with just three hundred men and doctors. They did, however, go by jeep, truck or halftrack, were completely self-contained and mobile, and practised arriving at an exercise by Buffalo, their tents and equipment in the back. They could even parachute in their equipment.
A US Rangers Brigade was created ahead of time, the aim being that their men would be even better than those of the Airborne Brigade, and more specialised. The Rangers would practise long-range operations by jeep and on foot, and would tackle mountain climbing and mountain fighting. They would have a climbing school of specialised instructors, and offer a Mountain and Artic Warfare School.
From the Rangers and Airborne would come men applying to the newly formed SAS and SBS, the US Navy a bit miffed at the SBS, but they would be involved. The structures of the SAS and SBS would be taken straight from the Canadian Rifles units, who would handle selection to start with. The aim was for five hundred men and officers in each of the SAS and SBS.
The Parachute School was an offshoot of training command, as was Sniper School, Jungle School in the Congo, and Desert School in northern Kenya. The basic infantry would be the backbone and the feeder unit for the others, the pecking order being SAS, SBS, Rangers, Airborne, then Mobile Infantry, but even Mobile Infantry were expected to reach the standards required. The training command also selected and tested potential pilots for the Mobile Air Wing. The “mobile” part meant that the Air Wing operated from remote forward bases, bases set up in deserts, jungle, on roads, or in fields, supplies brought in by Buffalo. They would practise seizing airfields with the other units, then flying in and operating from harsh conditions.
The one thing we didn’t involve ourselves with yet south of the border were either tanks or artillery; that we left alone. They knew we had tanks, but we kept the heavy beasts under wraps for now. What we did involve ourselves in, was a particular Canadian SBS officer who thought he was an inventor. He modified canoes, then specified re-designs, the new canoes popular with the men. Then he started on small boats with fast engines that could be used to assault beaches. We liked the design, and allocated him funds for twenty. He grabbed one of the fast PT-boat prototypes and painted it black, and began experimenting with ways of making it quieter, including blankets hanging off the back, and honeycomb around the engine. He succeeded in making the boats much quieter.
The man then asked an intelligent question. How small could we make a radar and radio set? Why, we asked. To put on the fast boat, and to then avoid larger boats. And he wanted night sights. We were quietly pleased, and sanctioned a small radar on a pole that had a range of about five miles – more than enough. Night sights were handed over and fitted, the boat also scanning the airwaves for enemy radio signals.
I then gave him an idea, and had torpedo tubes fitted either side. He loved the innovation, and practised against old hulks, cruising in at speed, turning and firing, and all done at night, no lights on the boat. The US Navy liked them as well, ordering a dozen on evaluation. I took four of those we had made so far, fitted torpedo tubes, and ordered them shipped to Hong Kong – but this time they’d sail, not be carried by a tanker. The transfer crews waited for a good weather forecast, then powered down the coast in a squadron. Refuelled north of Los Angeles, they stacked oil drums aboard their craft and set off, aiming to rendezvous with a cargo ship half way, another off Honolulu, and a third near Guam. We arranged for them to arrive in Hong Kong at night, and Po hid them; the Jap fleet would get a surprise.
The SBS officer also suggested that his men could be put ashore by submarine, and we agreed to an exercise with our one remaining sub. The men already had crude scuba gear designed for existing submarine emergency egress, and would exit the escape hatches in groups of two, swimming ashore. The following exercise involved canoes being pushed up and out of hatches whilst the sub was on the surface, the men going ashore in them at night.
It was painful to see the men in the basic scuba gear, gear designed for submarine crews to escape with. I gave them a budget - allocating them two aircraft engineers, rubber and plastic, and asked them to design better scuba gear. Oh, and our tanks crews might have an idea or two about air tanks, I told them.
They made rubber suits, fashioned harnesses, and created an air tank with a slow release, no pressure control. It filled a bag and you breathed from the bag. I sat with the engineers. ‘Could you not make a valve like the tank engines have; when you suck, it releases air?’
‘Air pressure would be too high for your lungs, sir.’
‘Then … reduce it somehow as it comes out.’
They got to work, and as the summer of 1936 arrived they had a few weird looking bits of kit to play with. Goggles that resembled pilots goggles were still used, and nose pegs, but now the men could breath air with a demand valve system. Then, all by themselves, the aircraft managers had a nose.
‘How about a CO2 scrubber,’ one said. ‘Air will last longer.’
‘You’d need a recycling system,’ another said, and I said nothing.
A few weeks later they had a small CO2 scrubber fitted to a valve, and the diver would breath the same air about three times over before it was finally expelled. The life of the tank had been greatly increased, the sizes made manageable, and our officer dived in the inlet for two hours, coming up smiling. Unfortunately, he went and boasted to his US Navy buddies, and now they were pissed off again.
What the US Navy did have, however, was the foremost research on pressure sickness, which they handed over. Dive deep and short, shallow and long, they said. And, we’d like to be involved with the new kit. I gave our man a good budget, putting a few engineers on it part-time, knowing full well what would happen next. Our aircraft engineers stood with arms folded and watched the diving, then huddled in a group whispering. A few days later they had a demand value air system for the jet fighter and bomber. Hal mentioned oxygen deficiency at altitude and it was altered, a small amount of pure oxygen in the mix.
The scuba gear continued to develop at a pace, the SBS guys liking the rubber suits and painting green stripes on them; they would come ashore and keep the suits on, do the recon, and leave with the suits on. In August, 1936, we had four divers swim from a boat into a secluded bay at night, come ashore and look around, then leave the same way. They had plastic bags for their weapons, so I took the piss. ‘Can’t our guys make underwater guns?’