Against the Tide Imperial: The Struggle for Ceylon (The Usurper's War: An Alternative World War II B by James Young (story reading txt) 📕

leaders each picking a VB-11 Dauntless as their prey. Unfortunately for the two RAF pilots, the twenty-four .30-caliber guns were more than enough to see one Spitfire off and severely maul the other. In exchange, one Dauntless spiraled away in flames and another was forced to jettison its bomb into Mogadishu below.

“What in the hell are the Wildcats doing?” Brown asked, taking a snapshot as a Spitfire flashed by on a beam run.

“Dying,” Eric snapped back as he watched two of the F4Fs plummet as flaming comets. Just as the victorious Spitfire began to circle around to try and draw a beam on the bombers, it exploded as four dark blue and grey shapes hurtled down on it from altitude. Two more Spitfires, similarly focused on the Avengers, also paid the price for failing to maintain eternal vigilance as they also were shot down by a group of gull-winged aircraft.

Those are friendly planes! Eric realized belatedly as defending aircraft were engaged by more of the newcomers. Turning to look south, Eric saw a large gaggle of aircraft approaching from that direction. Bringing up his binoculars, he saw all of these aircraft were also a uniform dark blue.

Where did they come from? The sharp crack! of exploding anti-aircraft fire and the Dauntless jostling brought him back to the task at hand.

“Cobb, take your boys after that tanker there by the pier!” Lieutenant Commander Brigante ordered.

Eric saw the ship in question, realizing there was a reason the squadron commander was pointing the target out. The large vessel was just starting to back away from the oil refueling terminal, froth underneath its stern indicative of full power.

“Red One, Blue One, roger!” Eric replied, looking left and right to see that his two wingmen had heard the conversation. Both young officers were staring at him, with Ensign Strange’s eyes seemingly as wide as dinner plates. As the rest of VB- and VS-11 opened their dive flaps and dove towards the fuel tanks below, Eric circled to his left above the long ship. Another volley of flak shook his bomber, the bursts far too close for comfort.

Those are some damn accurate gunners, Eric noted, lining up from the tanker’s stern. Reaching forward he grabbed the dive brake lever and pulled, feeling the Dauntless’s drag immediately increase. The subsequent movements were by rote, Eric feeling a grim familiarity with the process.

It was only when they nosed over that the routine was suddenly, irrevocably changed. Brown’s cry and the rattle of machine guns was something Eric forced himself to ignore. What broke his concentration, albeit briefly, was the bright flash and sudden fireball of Ensign Strange’s Dauntless exploding as a hurtling Spitfire shot it down.

Fucking asshole!

Rage burned through Eric’s chest, and his eyes briefly burned before he regained control of his emotions.

Lacking dive brakes of its own, the British fighter kept going at high speed after killing Strange and his gunner. Blue Two fired his machine guns after the Spit more in anger and frustration than any hopes of getting a hit. The utterly futile burst came nowhere near hitting the Spitfire, but the trigger-happy 20mm gun crew on the tanker’s bow had a much better angle. Eric whooped without shame as the British fighter was hit just as it started pulling out, its port wing fluttering away just before the remaining wreckage smashed into the water of Mogadishu harbor.

“Five thousand!” Brown shouted.

Shit, might want to actually aim this thing, Eric thought, putting his eyes to the sight. The tanker was not stationary, but was certainly just a bare step above helpless. As tracers flashed into this field of view, Eric depressed the button on his twin machine guns. Not sure if returning fire did any good, he concentrated on the task at hand.

“Three thousand!”

The Dauntless shook violently as something exploded with a thunderous roar roughly a half mile away.

“Holy shit, someone must have hit an ammo dump!” Brown shouted.

“Altitude!” Eric screamed, the tanker’s deck incredibly large in his sight.

“Two thousand!” Brown replied, panicked at having been distracted. “Nineteen hundred!”

Dear Lord, please do not be full of avgas. Despite the terror that suddenly gripped him at that possibility, Eric pulled the release without hesitation. There was the familiar vibration as the trapeze swung into the airstream, then the Dauntless shifting upwards as the half-ton bomb left from underneath. Eric braced himself and pulled back on the stick, the dirty brown water of Mogadishu harbor receding away from his field of view as darkness rushed in.

“Hit!” Brown grunted, just before the Dauntless was struck by metal debris from their bomb exploding.

Looking back, Eric could see flames shooting up from the tanker’s forward hold just as Blue Two’s bomb landed close alongside alongside. Scanning for his wingman, Eric saw the dark blue Dauntless at his eleven o’clock. Blue Two suddenly skidded, at which point Eric belatedly noted the long-nosed Italian that had elicited the maneuver. For his part, the Italian pilot barely managed to avoid smacking into the harbor, the tip of its wing dragging a briefly.

You son-of-a-bitch, Eric thought, cursing his inability to remember what the long-nosed Italian aircraft were called. Then it came to him: Folgore.

“Hold on,” Eric snapped, then put his own Dauntless into a tight turn to intersect the circling Italian’s. Smoke was pouring from the Folgore’s nose as its pilot added power to avoid stalling as he stalked Blue Two.

“Uh, si–” Brown started to say, then grunted as he was thrown into his belt.

He doesn’t even see us, Eric thought, dismissing Brown’s concerns.

As if to prove his point, the Italian fighter half-rolled to draw a bead on Blue Two, exposing his belly towards Eric. Gritting his teeth, Eric squeezed the trigger as he applied lead.

While he wasn’t either of his brothers, Eric had spent just as many years bird hunting with their father as they had. Whether the Italian pilot inadvertently jerked or was incapacitated by the stream of bullets erupting through his cockpit floor, the Folgore suddenly tightened its turn, went into a