Winter Warriors

why.

The lead Grizzly, Lang’s target, was already firing. Its first two shells had missed, but the third had hit a half-track down the road. Tracers from the 20mm guns were already surrounding it but they seemed to be brushed off by white monster that was coming for him. Lang took a brief breath and settled down, still tracking the target in his sights. It was so tempting to fire, but Lang resisted it. He waited for the optimum moment. Then, he squeezed the trigger and felt the furnace-like heat seep through the protective cape as the rocket soared away.

He watched it fly, needle straight, for the Grizzly. Then the second stage separated. It didn’t even have a chance to start spiraling before the time fuse ignited. The rocket exploded almost directly under the starboard engine of the Grizzly. Lang watched the whole nacelle erupt into flames; a brown and red streak stained the sky behind the stricken aircraft as it reared up. Lang saw the propeller detach. It spiralled away and broke up, lashing the fuselage with its fragments. Then, the pilot got the aircraft under control and curved away, still surrounded by the firefly tracers from the 20mm guns. The second Grizzly broke off the attack instantly, moving to cover it’s stricken team-mate. That’s what the Ami jabos did; they covered each other. Normally, there would have been two more aircraft to carry on with the attack on the unit but not this time. The two Grizzlies disappeared; the one trailing smoke quickly losing altitude.

Land peeled off the cape. The residual heat from the rocket blast stung his hands but he ignored it. There were cheers coming up from the vehicle crews, cheers that lifted Lang’s heart. He saw Sergeant Heim running over to help him with the cape and the clumsy launcher.

“Well done Sir! Superb shot! May I ask, sir, where did you learn to use a Fliegerschreck?”

Lang grinned, in relief more than anything else. It was the first time his men had referred to him with anything other than carefully-concealed derision. “I was the adjutant to the head of the team who developed this. It was my responsibility to write the operating manual and to do that I had to know how to use it. I must have fired fifty of these things.” Lang good-humoredly wagged his finger at the sergeant. “Never say that doing one’s paperwork doesn’t have its uses, Sergeant.”

A-38D Grizzly Hammer Blow Over the Kola Peninsula

Marosy saw the gray streaks coming straight at his aircraft but that didn’t mean much. If the spirals flew in a straight line, they could be evaded. The Germans had been more cunning than that. There was a flash as the main rocket separated from the booster, then the Spiral started cart-wheeling through the air, There was no way of predicting where it would go so it couldn’t be evaded. A turn could just as easily put the aircraft into the wild gyrations of the spiral as avoid one. It was purely a matter of luck whether the damned thing went into the aircraft or off into the sky. That’s what made the spirals so dangerous.

This time, the first salvo of spirals exploded well clear of the pair of Grizzlies. Marosy was lining up his aircraft on one of the self-propelled guns at the rear of the column when there was another streak of gray. This one had no time to start spiraling. It was still going straight when it exploded underneath his starboard engine. He felt the lurch as the R-3350 started to fly apart from the damage; heard the crash as the propeller ripped off the shaft and its fragments tore into the fuselage. Much more importantly, he saw the sea of warning lights as the aircraft’s systems started to fail from the damage inflicted by the warhead fragments. There was only one way to interpret those lights; Hammer Blow was finished. The best Marosy could hope for was to put her down somewhere reasonably safe. The worst was that the ruptured fuel lines would feed a mid-air explosion.

“Don’t look good, boss. We got fire out here.” Bressler’s voice was deadpan.

“Hitting the extinguishers now.” Marosy thumbed the buttons and glanced sideways. The fire subsided a bit, but not much. At this rate, the main wing spar would fail soon. That would mean Hammer Blow would lose a wing and spin in. A part of his mind recorded that he had broken off his attack and was trying to separate from the column he had just been attacking. Only a remarkably stupid pilot bailed out over the troops he had just strafed. There had been all too many cases of such pilots being killed on the end of their parachutes or being thrown into the burning wreckage of their aircraft. Another part of his mind recorded the streaks of 20mm tracer around him. Once they had been a matter of concern; now they were almost inconsequential compared with the danger he faced from his crippled aircraft.

“Hammer Blow, this is Lightning Bolt. You better get down fast, the under surface of your wing is falling apart. Fire is spreading in there.”

“Roger that, Lightning Bolt. We’re losing fuel, oil, structure, ideas and hope. We’re going in as soon as I can see somewhere to do it. Well away from the Krauts.”

“I hear you, Hammer Blow. We’re ready to do a pick up.”

Marosy looked out in front. There was some flat ground up ahead. The question was whether he could make it. Hammer Blow was giving up fast; the port R-3350 was overheating with the stress of keeping the aircraft flying. It was a question of whether he would run out of altitude before he could make somewhere a crash landing was possible. The A-38 cleared one ridgeline but doing the next was almost impossible. Abort that, Marosy thought grimly, clearing the next ridgeline was impossible. He swung the nose around, feeling the controls stiffen in his hands. Time was running out.

The pine trees were the next problem. Hammer Blow couldn’t quite clear the trees as she started to belly in. The tree tops lashed at the windscreen, thundered against the structure of the aircraft, and ripped the port propeller apart. Then, the A-38 flopped on her belly into a long, flat patch of snow. It was soft enough to absorb the impact but the crew were still thrown against their straps by the impact. Something caught the port wing, spinning the aircraft around. The tail broke off, sliding away from the main fuselage while the rest of the aircraft skidded to a stop.

“Out, out, out!” Marosy yelled. In the back, Bressler knew if he said ‘what?’ he would be talking to himself. He flipped up the aft canopy, heaved himself out and started to run. At some point he had grabbed the walkie-talkie kept in the rear compartment; he had no memory of doing so. By the time he and Marosy got to the treeline, Hammer Blow was already burning furiously. The explosion that destroyed the aircraft was almost an anticlimax by comparison.

“We’re coming in for a pick-up; be ready to get out fast.” Lightning Bolt’s voice was urgent.

“Negative on that Lightning Bolt. The snow’s feet thick. If you land, you’ll ground loop. We’re going to have to walk out. We’ll try and link with the partisans.”

“Roger Hammer Blow. We’ll spread the word. Good luck and God’s Speed.”

Marosy knew that was the minimum he’d need. If they didn’t meet up with a partisan group, their chance of getting home was slight. “Bressler, time to start walking. North I think.”

“Sounds good to me. Damned Spirals.”

Curly Battery B, US Navy 5th Artillery Battalion, Kola Peninsula.

“Is it safe?”

The AST AC Major commanding the bridge repair detail stared at the jury rigged repairs, his lips silently moving as he computed the risks. The bridge had been hard-hit by the German railway guns and the earthquake effects of the big shells meant that its structure had been undermined. Had it been fatally undermined? He didn’t know. His men — and women — had been working all night to get repairs done but were they adequate to take the weight of the great railway guns? He didn’t know that either. Yet the answer to both questions was critical.

“Is it safe, Tovarish Major?” Commander James Perdue repeated the question. Larry was rigged with explosives. C4 demolition charges were wrapped around the vital parts; the breech was stuffed with split propellant bags. The gunners had managed to squeeze fifteen of the bags in, more than 50 percent more powder than the breech was designed to take. Then they’d taken a sledgehammer to drive the tompion solidly into the end of the barrel. The gun crew had made a lot of rude jokes about that. Meanwhile other demolition teams had been at work on the battery fire control center, rigging it with both C4 and the contents of more propellant bags. The battalion fire control center had been detached and added to Curly’s train, giving the gun both battalion and battery command cars. A number of the magazine cars were empty and they’d been detached to save weight. Curly had been reduced from 14 cars to nine; Moe to eight. The surplus cars were parked on the sidings, also rigged for utter destruction.

“I think so, yes. But it will be a very near thing. You will send the diesels over first?”