The Williwaw, or the Williwarmer as it was disrespectfully called, was pretty much cobbled together as well. The starting point had been a Canadian attempt to fit an R-1830 radial engine to a Hurricane. That had been an attempt to make use of the airframes that were piling up in Canada after the Coup in Britain had shut down supplies of Merlin engines. The obvious candidate for the Canadian-built Hurricanes had been the Allison V-1710, but American aircraft needed all available supplies of that engine. So the complex job of converting the Hurricane airframe to a radial engine had started. Halfway through the effort, Hawker engineers had arrived with blueprints for a better aircraft called the Tornado. The only problem with the Tornado was that it needed one of two British engines, the Sabre or the Vulture, neither of which was available. So Canadians and refugee Brits sat down together and redesigned the Tornado to use the American-built R-2600 engine. It went into production in 1943 as the Chinook. It still equipped quite a few Canadian squadrons. More had gone to the Russians as Lend-Lease.
In the fullness of time, the Chinook’s performance was found wanting and more power was needed. That had led the engineers to shoe-horn an R-2800 into a developed version of the airframe to produce the Williwaw. 71 Fighter Squadron had only received its Williwaws a few weeks before and were still getting used to them. It was fast and agile, no doubt about that; but what Dale really wanted was a jet. Just like the Yanks and Krauts had.
“King Flight, this is Duffle. Come on down, target is green smoke, say again green smoke.” There were a string of numbers that gave him his coordinates. Dale did a wingover and dived down, followed by the other two members of King Flight. Hard to see in the fading daylight was a cloud of green smoke.
The green smoke was being lacerated by rocket fire. Dale shifted his finger and released his two 500 pound bombs. The snow-laden trees were approaching fast. He had just enough time to fire a quick burst from his cannon and that was that. Dusk was coming, time to go home. Behind him, the ground erupted as six 500 pound bombs speared the center of the green smoke cloud.
“King Flight, this is Duffle. Well done lads. Target had been done to a turn. Off you go; mummy’s waiting.”
Dale led his flight away, on the long haul back to their base. 71 Squadron had been lucky. Their base hadn’t been targeted by the Huns with their damned rockets. He’d heard that the American bases had taken a right pounding the day after the storm. That was the trouble with the Hun rockets. Their doodle-bugs were easy targets for a fighter or anti-aircraft units, but nobody had come up with a way of stopping the German rockets yet. There were even rumors that the Russians had captured some intact and were trying to copy them. Still, useful as they were, they still couldn’t replace a manned fighter-bomber.
“Break left, break left!”
The alert broke through Dale’s reverie. He hauled the stick over and rammed the throttles forward to full emergency setting. The Williwaw stood on its wingtip and spun left. Dale’s eyes grayed out as the G-force drove blood from his head. He still caught a glimpse of the attacking aircraft as they flashed by. Twin tail, single jet engine mounted above the fuselage. He-162s.
Dale reversed his turn, swinging in to attack the pair of German jets. It was too late, they were already far away and streaking back towards German-occupied territory. They were a hundred miles per hour faster than the Williwaws and were using every scrap of that speed to get clear. Dale had read the intelligence reports on the He- 162. They rated it well as a fighter but it had only 30 minutes of fuel on board. That meant its pilots were restricted to a single pass at a target. Unless they were over their own bases, they simply couldn’t hang around to dogfight.
The two retreating aircraft were the only ones. Dale had been half expecting another pair of He-162s to come out of the clouds, but the attack was over, barely a second after it had begun. There was a black stain across the sky. One of the three Williwaws in the formation hadn’t got the message in time or had been a bit slow in making his turn. The aircraft was now a funeral pyre on the snow below.
“Control, this is King-1 here. We just got bounced by two He-162s. We lost H-AB. The 162s got away clean.”
“162s? You sure of that?”
“No doubt. Single jet above the fuselage, twin tails. And they went through us like a bat out of hell. 162s for sure.”
“Confirm King-1. Control out.”
A hundred miles to the north, the fighter controller slipped her earphones back. There weren’t supposed to be He-162s on this front. That didn’t excuse King-1, though. It was the old case of endofmissionitis. They’d been on their way home so they’d dropped their guard. And paid for doing so.
“Curt?” The Seer looked around the dimly-lit room. A half-built car was in one corner, a pair of greasy, coverall-clad legs stuck out from underneath. Another half-person in even dirtier coveralls was bent over the side of the car, apparently working on where the engine should be.
“Socket wrench, quarter inch.” The voice came from under the hood. The Seer picked up the required tool and passed it to the outstretched hand. “Thanks.” The hand vanished inside the car again.
“Phillip?” LeMay’s voice came from under the car. There was a faint rumble and a wheeled platform with Curtis LeMay on it rolled out.
“Curt, the cover story’s out; we released an official statement an hour or so ago. It tells the world that a C- 99, on a routine training flight prior to assignment to the Air Bridge, crashed on take-off. No survivors. Nobody’s questioning it; no reason they should. That’s one good thing about the big birds going in. They’ve so much fuel on board, by the time its finished burning up the magnesium and aluminum, all that’s left are the engines. Nobody can tell what the thing was.”
“Hell of a thing to say about 15 men isn’t it? They burn up so thoroughly nobody can tell what they died in. Phillip, have you met General Francis Griswold? Commander, Third Air Division. Frank, this is Phillip Stuyvesant. More commonly known as The Seer these days.”
“Pleasure to meet you General. I see our current situation is much like our professional relationship.” Griswold looked puzzled. “I get the tools and you guys use them.”
“Very good, Stuyvesant. I used to follow the races where the yachts your yard built ran through their paces. Didn’t know it then of course. I was surprised to find you were the man who owned Herreshof behind the scenes. Always thought you were an aircraft man.”
“Got interests all over, Sir. The yachts were more a matter of love than anything else. Long time ago, I met a Navy Senior Chief who taught me how to handle a sailing boat. Sort of caught the bug. What on earth are you two up to here?”
“Frank needs a car for his family. Can’t buy a new one of course. So we got an old chassis, an engine and the rest of the parts and started to build one. No cause for complaint so far; project’s going well. Even with gas rationed the way it is, people still want a car if they can get one.”
“And we just burned up a couple of hundred thousand pounds of the stuff. Any idea why the big bird crashed, Curt?”
“Wing Commander is coming down tomorrow to tell me all about it. On the carpet in front of my desk.” Griswold gave a grim chuckle. There was a piece of moth-eaten carpet in front of LeMay’s desk where those who had explaining to do stood until their explanation met LeMay’s exacting standards. “You know what he’ll tell me? ‘I can’t understand it, Sir. They were my best crew.’ They always are, have you noticed that?”
“Can’t speak ill of the dead syndrome?”
LeMay shook his hear irritatedly. “Hell no; I could understand that. It really is the experienced crews who go in for idiotic reasons. Pure negligence on their part. The stupid, inexperienced crews don’t crash. You know why?
