with crews. But there was a strange air about
Admiral Vian looked at the five stately liners plowing through the waves behind him. If everything did go wrong, he would have to come up with a battleplan that gave two light cruisers and a dozen ASW destroyers a fighting chance against the whole German Navy. That was a interesting professional challenge.
The last of the German fighters never really made it into the battle. They were still climbing after launch, their cold engines laboring with the effort, when the American FV-2s slashed into their formations. The American pilots had already firewalled their throttles. In terms of initial position, they had the speed and height advantage. The price they paid was that they were fighting with one eye on their fuel gauges. The gas-guzzling jets had nothing like the endurance of the piston-engined birds. The Shooting Stars were designed to carry wingtip tanks, the FV-1 had small ones that actually made a slight improvement on the performance of the aircraft in addition to the fuel they carried so the pilots had kept them on when dogfights started. Range was still too short though; so when the FV-2 had arrived, the smaller tanks had been discarded in favor of an improvised “Thule Tank.” Those had twice the fuel capacity but its length and weight over-stressed the wings. So the American aircraft had dropped their tanks as they approached the German ships. That left them short on fuel compared with the Corsairs but there were plenty of those bent-wing, piston-engined birds following behind. They’d finish the job if the Flivvers left anything behind them.
The German CAP had 32 aircraft up. Two had been lost when their engines had faltered on takeoff. One pilot had drowned under the
The odds against them, bad to start with, were escalating fast. The FV-2s picked off the weakest and most vulnerable of their foes. The days of chivalry, of a seeking a ‘fair fight,’ had long gone. The Navy pilots in their dark blue Flivvers did what all skilled fighter pilots did; they picked out the most vulnerable of the possible targets, separated him, then swept in and scored the kill. Twelve of the Ta-152s died that way, their aircraft ripped up by the concentrated firepower of the six .50 machine guns closely grouped in the Shooting Star’s nose.
The fighters that hit the climbing Ta-152s had scored big, but their dive had taken them out of the battle. It would take the more than two dozen FV-2s time to climb back up and rejoin the dogfight. In the meantime, the remaining American fighters were on their own. Lieutenant James Talen was painfully aware of that. His section of FV-2s had picked out a group of four Ta-152s and tried to bounce them but they’d been spotted on the way in. The German pilots had hit their throttles and kicked in the GM-1 and MW-50 boost that made up for some of the performance deficit inherent in trying to fight jets with piston-engined aircraft. Ahead of him, the section of Ta-152s had split, trying to scissor the attacking FV-2s.
The German fighters were going for the lead section of FV-2s and had already scored, their heavy cannon armament tore two of the lead FV-2s apart in mid-air. Talen’s section evened the score on the spot. His own machine guns shredded a Ta-152s from nose to tail as it flashed past. His wing man scored a less spectacular but equally deadly kill. His burst was short and sharp and it scored exactly where it mattered most. The enemy cockpit disintegrated in shower of shattered Perspex and ripped metal. Somewhere in that mess, the German pilot died with his aircraft.
Talen heaved back the stick and poured on as much power as he had, climbing out of the dogfight. Nobody hung around in a furball, none who wanted to live anyway. The smart guys got in, scored their kills and got out. That’s what Talen did. His FV-2 outclimbed the Ta-152s by almost 1,000 feet per minute and they were left behind. His section was out and clear. Time to look for another victim.
Jets were fast, but they had a problem. Their speed and their wing loading meant they were less agile than the Ta-152s. Lieutenant Meissen was well aware of that. He also knew that the surging power from his engine wasn’t going to last much longer. He had five minutes worth of GM-1 boost and about twice as much MW-50. Once that was gone, his Ta-152 would be weighed down by the empty tanks and now-useless boost equipment. Most skilled German pilots preferred the older FW-190D-9 to the Ta-152. When both aircraft were without the engine boost, the Dora-nine was a lot more agile. The problem was there were so few skilled German pilots left. The experten, Hartmann, Marseille, Molders, were all gone, swallowed up by the Russian Front. So, the novices and the average pilots who were left, they flew the Ta-152 and hoped its engine boost would let them survive. The boost also wrecked the engines but Meissen had a shrewd suspicion that wasn’t going to matter too much.
Some of the dark blue Ami jets had set off after a group of Ta-152s that were coming in from the west. In doing so they’d lost track of Meissen’s group. He couldn’t chase them. Even with GM-1 his fighter as too slow for that. He could arrange a near-head on match. There, his cannon would tell. He had four 20mm guns in the nose and wings and a 30mm firing through his engine block. He saw the FV-2 racing towards him, allowed for deflection and squeezed the trigger just so. The Shooting Star blew up, turning from an aircraft into a ball of fire, spewing parts and fragments. The Amis walked into the ambush beautifully, the section had been torn apart by the heavy guns of the Ta-152s. Four down, no loss. The aircraft from the
Jim Nichols was trapped. His FV-2 was in the middle of a group of German fighters that had boxed him in. He was unable to climb out of the formation and unable to break clear without giving the lethal cannon on the Ta-152 a clean shot. That left him fighting to survive. Nichols barrel-rolled his aircraft then flipped away; a wingover that lead to a steep dive. That was a mistake, the Ta-152 was aerodynamically clean and its low drag meant that it picked up speed fast in a dive. Too fast, an inexperienced pilot could stall his aircraft out. Then, that low drag meant it picked up speed so fast in the post-stall dive that it hit compressibility. At that point, its controls locked and it dived straight into the ground. The pilot was no more than a helpless spectator.
That didn’t happen here. The German pilot was good; he allowed his aircraft to build up enough speed to close the range on the diving FV-2 and no more. Nichols saw the Ta-152 sweep in behind. Its nose and wings started to flash just before the blows of the cannon shells started destroying his aircraft.
Out of the corner of his eye, Hans Braun saw the Shooting Star explode. He swept around to try and emulate the feat. It was hard, terribly hard. The FV-2s were all over the German fighters; slashing at them, ripping with their fast-firing .50s. As soon as he got into position to take a shot, another pair of FV-2s would dive on him. They forced him to turn and leave his prey. Agility was all very well but only the Ami novices were hanging around to dogfight with the German fighters. The experienced pilots made slashing passes through the formation. They picked their men and shot them out of the sky. Braun had no idea what the losses were like. All he could see was the skies filled with the midnight blue jets. Glimpses of Luftwaffe gray were getting rarer.
Another FV-2 was heading away from the fight, trailing black smoke from the fuselage.
