Winter Warriors

north, were flying while the sophisticated Canadian and American aircraft were grounded. Not that it surprised him. He had come to the conclusion that the Americans couldn’t fly unless they were surrounded by every technical luxury known to man. The Canadians were being dangerously contaminated by their close proximity to the Septics. Brumby sighed. Poor Canada, so far from civilization, so close to America.

He leaned forward, bringing his nose closer to the glass paneling that made up the nose of his Dragon Rapide. It didn’t really help him see better through the falling snow; but it gave him a comforting illusion that he was. In any case, he was flying largely by instruments. Looking through the snow was an effort to warn him of trees and other obstructions. He quickly spared a thought for the four Russians sitting in the passenger compartment behind him. They were squeezed in with a load of supplies and ammunition. A Russian ski patrol, a bunch of Siberians, had hit problems and lost some men. They’d also been caught by the storm and had to hole up, so they were short of food. A few hours earlier, they’d got a message through. They hadn’t asked for help but simply reported their situation. Brumby had been asked to take his Matilda down, deliver the supplies and replacements, pick up a wounded man and bring him back. It was what the little Dragon Rapides did all the time.

According to the map, he was nearing the target coordinates now. It was hard to know for sure. The snow flattened out the landscape and destroyed the contours that would have helped him find his way. Brumby wasn’t that worried. He’d been a bush pilot for years before he’d volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force. In that time, he’d done everything from flying cargo to taking part in the Flying Doctor Service. He had one of the new navigation gizmos the Septics had come up with. Gee, it was called. A master transmitter and two slave transmitters created a grid on a cathode ray tube in his cockpit. It allowed him to plot his position within two or three miles; that was far better than anything he’d had before. With a little luck, the troops on the ground would hear his engines. It was hard to believe but sound carried well in the snow. They would signal him in.

Brumby strained his eyes and peered harder through the snow. Was that a flashing light? Matilda was barely a hundred feet up and doing less than a hundred miles an hour so the weak flash seen through the whiteness was more than adequate warning. With the aid of experience and Gee, he was practically dead on. He cut the two engines on his wings back still further and allowed the Dragon Rapide’s skis to touch the snow in a perfect landing. The little transport kissed the snow, bounded slightly and then came to a stop.

“Everybody Out! And take the cargo with you!” The four Russians didn’t understand the words but they understood the gestures and the urgency in the words. Around Matilda, figures on skis had loomed out of the whiteness and surrounded the aircraft. Brumby clambered out and picked out a figure who seemed to be in charge. He was the one who was telling the four new arrivals what to do and where to go.

“G’day, mate. Got a wounded man for me?”

The figure looked at Brumby in confusion. “Please. Officer come.”

Another figure joined the group. “Tovarish Lieutenant. I am Stanislav Rnyaginichev. Lieutenant also. Please, call me Knyaz.” Knyaz looked at the Dragon Rapide in amazement. It seemed such a flimsy aircraft to be flying in this foul weather. But the biplanes had established an incredible record for doing the impossible. This one was painted gloss white except for a rippling of very pale gray and even paler blue. Even the circular markings were vague and indistinct; just a slightly darker shade of the pale gray. Or was it blue? It was hard to tell. The colors seemed to run into each other.

“Thanks mate. You got a wounded man for me to take out?”

“Yes. We bring him now. He is badly hurt and needs help very much. And we have some papers and documents we captured from the same ambush.” Knyaz looked at the aircraft again. This was something that had come with the Americans, the determination to get the wounded out and to the best treatment they could provide. There were those who said the Russian Army didn’t care about its wounded. That wasn’t true; they’d always done the best they could. The truth was that a poor army with massive casualties didn’t have much it could do. Then the Americans with their wealth of equipment and treasure had arrived. It was overwhelming. Knyaz almost resented it, but he reminded himself that, when he had gone down with pneumonia, he’d been flown out on an aircraft just like this one.

“Right mate, put him in. Need to get out fast.”

Knyaz nodded. His sergeant barked out a string of orders. To one side, Kabanov watched with satisfaction. Now, the ski group had four new Drugs. Even though he was the lowliest of the Brats, their presence meant that he wouldn’t be doing the humblest and most unpleasant details any more. Then he saw something quite unexpected. Under the cockpit of the C-66 was a dark gray maltese cross. A kill mark? In this aircraft? Knyaz had noted it as well.

“Tovarish, you have killed a fascist aircraft?” In this was the unspoken part of the question.

“Aye, my friend. About three weeks ago. Tilly and I were doing a delivery to a Partisan unit when we got hit by this Fokker. Well, the Hun tried to do us in, but we turned inside him and headed for the deck. Anyway, that Fokker followed us down, right down to the deck. I slowed Tilly right down. We were doing about sixty and that gave the Fokker real problems. Every time he tried to hit us, he overshot. We were thirty, perhaps forty feet up when we saw a valley and went down it. That Fokker, he was a real determined bastard. He wanted us dead, no mistake about that. He kept trying and we kept swinging out of the way. Tilly here drove that Fokker mad I can tell you. Couple of minutes into the valley, there was this line of pines, the tall ones. We flew straight at it. The Fokker saw his chance and came barreling in. Last moment, Tilly stood on her wingtip and turned out of the way. That Fokker, he couldn’t match the turn and he plowed straight into the trees. Brass back up top are still arguing about whether it was a kill or not. But Tilly and I are here and that Fokker isn’t, so I know who won.”

Knyaz had lost track of the bulk of the story but he got the essentials. “He was a Fokker D.XXI? That would be an Finnish aircraft then. To kill one of those treacherous fascists is very good.”

Brumby laughed and clapped the Russian lieutenant on the back. “That is as may be, me old mate. But that Fokker was a Messerschmitt.”

Bridge, KMS Graf Zeppelin, Flagship, First Scouting Group, High Seas Fleet, North Atlantic

The weather was changing. The howling wind that had driven the rain in blinding sheets had dropped and with it the seas that had rolled the Graf Zeppelin dangerously close to her inadequate stability limits. That was the good news. The bad news was that the temperature had dropped as well as the wind. That combined, with the movement of the ship north, changed what had been rain to a mixture of rain and slush. It froze into a sheet of ice when it touched anything. Overhead, the gray masts and yards were turning white with ice. Ice was heavy, it weighed tons, and it added weight in the worst possible place. High up, it reduced Graf Zeppelin’s already precarious stability reserve.

The weather expert said that this was a temporary stage, a transient condition that marked the trailing edge of the storm. Already, they were crossing the boundary between the storm system itself and the clearer weather that followed it. Captain Erich Dietrich hoped the weather forecast was right. If it wasn’t Graf Zeppelin would be in trouble.

“Captain, when can we launch?” Admiral Ernst Brinkmann snapped the question out. It was one that needed an immediate answer. The Scouting Group was supposed to find the convoys that were the objective of this whole mission. The battlefleet was following a few hours behind them to the south and east. They were still laboring through the full force of the storm. When they emerged, not so far in the future, Admiral Lindemann would want to know where his targets were. He was not a man to wait patiently for the information. As if in partial answer, the sun broke through the thin clouds overhead. A weak, watery, indistinct sun, but the sun none the less. Dietrich took this as an omen.

“We can start bringing the aircraft up to the flight deck right away, Sir. They have to be loaded and armed on the hangar deck, and they have to warm their engines up here. That should not take long. I can have a deckload ready to go in.” Dietrich paused, calculating the times needed. “For a scout mission? I can have twelve Ju-87s on the deck, each with a 250 kilogram bomb and two 200 liter drop tanks, ready to fly in 45 minutes.”

“Very good. Communications. Order the Werner Voss to ready a force of 18 aircraft to launch at the same time. Same load. Also to have their remaining twelve Stukas loaded with a 1,000 kilogram bomb for anti-shipping strike. Have them ready six Ta-152s as escort. The Boelcke will