Against the Tide Imperial: The Struggle for Ceylon (The Usurper's War: An Alternative World War II B by James Young (classic book list .txt) 📗

dimly heard his tail gunner, Radioman First Class Willie Brown, shout a warning about two of the French fighters coming in from seven o’clock high, but did not break from his preparations. As Brown cursed and opened fire with his twin .30-caliber guns, Eric watched Red flight pitch over into its initial dive.

Red One was hit, he thought, seeing smoke streaming back from the squadron commander’s aircraft. Lieutenant Commander Hitchcock was a first grade asshole, but Eric had watched enough men die already in this war.

“Sir, break right!” Brown screamed. Eric reacted instinctively, skidding the laden SBD to starboard. It was not a moment too soon, the roar of an aircraft engine suddenly loud as radial-engined French fighter plunged past their port wing tip. Eric had a brief flash of a spiderwebbed canopy and a red smear on the glass.

Holy shit, Brown! Bringing his eyes back forward, Eric realized they had overshot his intended push over point.

Goddammit! Moving quickly, Eric extended the Dauntless’s dive brakes. The metal structures extended from the wings, immediately slowing the SBD just before Eric pushed the nose down. Looking through the windshield, he saw with great relief that the French cruiser had reversed course to throw off Red flight’s dive. Black puffs of smoke burst around the lead three dive bombers, tracers arcing up towards Lieutenant Commander Hitchcock’s smoking aircraft.

Pull out you idiot!

As if the man was hearing Eric’s mental plea, the trapeze cradle underneath Hitchcock’s aircraft extended to swing the 1,000-lb. bomb clear of the SBD’s propeller arc. Before the device could finish, a French heavy shell burst just underneath the SBD’s starboard wing. As if smacked by an angry toddler striking his toy, the wing flipped upwards then snapped off, fluttering back in the wind. With the sudden loss of lift on that side, Hitchcock’s Dauntless snap rolled, its bomb arcing off crazily under the forces.

Dammit! Nausea rising up, Eric ignored the rest of the outcome as he bent to his own bombsight. Manipulating his own bomber’s stick and rudder, he aligned the crosshairs on the French cruiser just as Red Three’s bomb hit its bridge. Debris and what he could only assume were some members of the French cruiser’s crew spewed out of the brown-black fireball. Focusing on the ship, Eric gently manipulated the Dauntless’s rudder to keep the now circling ship within the aim point.

“Four thousand…” Brown began counting down, looking at the altimeter mounted in his position. “Three thousand.”

Thank God you’re alive. Eric saw the flashes of the French vessel’s automatic weapons winking up at him. With a sharp crack!, one of the vessel’s 90mm anti-aircraft shells exploded off their port wing. Eric felt and heard fragments pepper the airframe, but did not take his eye off the sight. With minor adjustments to his stick, he kept the aim forward of the now-burning bridge.

“Twenty-five hundred…” Brown said, his tone clearly indicating it was time to release the bomb. With his aimpoint just behind the French tri-color painted atop the second turret, Eric toggled the bomb release. The Dauntless buffeted slightly as the 1,000-lb. bomb swung out into the slipstream, then lifted as the half-ton weapon was released. Eric immediately hauled back on the stick, vision darkening as the blood rushed from his head.

The vessel was the French cruiser Suffren. With her captain dead on her bridge, command of the vessel had fallen to her executive officer. Unfortunately, the French officer was not made aware of his new promotion in a timely manner. It was only as the cruiser was taking no evasive action and there was no communication with the bridge that the commander realized the damage that had been wrought forward. By that time, Eric’s bomb was completing its descending arc that terminated between the Suffren’s two stacks.

The 1,000-lb. bomb had been intended to penetrate a capital ship’s decks. As such, it pierced the Suffren’s decks all the way to the forward fire room before detonating on that space’s deck. Unlike the unfortunate Trento a few hours before, the Suffren’s boilers burst, the vented force adding to that of the American high explosive to burst internal bulkheads and the vessel’s sides. With the cruiser moving at twenty-five knots, the sea’s force flooded the space so quickly that those in the midst of being scalded to death were mercifully drowned by the chilling waters.

Blue Two’s bomb, released high and early, exploded off the Suffren’s starboard bow. Close enough to shake the cruiser and pierce her hull in the bow, the sum effect was to detract even further from the vessel’s buoyancy via the insidious gradual flooding forward. Blue Three’s weapon had the opposite problem, being released so low its fuse barely had time to arm before hitting the extreme end of Suffren’s stern. Passing through the structure, the weapon detonated between the rudder and middle prop, rendering both useless. Shuddering, the heavy cruiser remained locked in a starboard turn.

The blue gray ocean seemed to be rushing up towards him until it was lost below the Dauntless’s rising nose. Eric could feel the aircraft still sinking as his sight dimmed, the g-forces of his pull out shoving the blood from his head.

Oh fuck. Simultaneously with a massive blast that shook the SBD, the dive bomber leveled off a scant twenty feet above the water. Eric quickly closed his dive brakes and shoved his throttle forward as tracers arced above his canopy.

“Ow! Goddamit!” Brown shouted from behind him.

“You okay, Brown?”

“Got some metal landing in the cockpit, sir!” Brown replied. “You hit that bitch right amidships!”

Eric ignored the urge to turn and look back at the cruiser. Instead, having gained some airspeed, he brought the Dauntless around to the designated heading for rendezvous and checked for his wingmen. Ensign Stanley Van Horn, Blue Two, slid into position on his starboard side, but Blue Three was ominously absent.

“Blue Three, Blue Three, Blue One,” Eric said, keying his microphone.

“This is Blue Three!” came the confused voice of Ensign Robert Strange, Yorktown’s newest dive