That was a prospect he could not accept.
Nakamura was in an agony of indecision. His only chance of breaking through was to throw 21st Brigade at the ridgeline; doing so left him wide open to the flanking attack he feared. Holding 21st Brigade against that flanking attack would mean that the chance of a breakthrough on the ridge was seriously in doubt. His thought train was stopped in its tracks by a dreadful screaming wail. Nakamura knew what it was from the films he had seen of the fighting in Poland and France. There were dive bombers overhead. They were already in their near-vertical dives on his headquarters. Their engines and sirens howled as they dropped on their target. One thing the films had never made clear was just how devastating the sound of the dive bombers was to those about to be on the receiving end of their attack.
“They’re down there.”
Wing Commander Fuen’s gunner/radio operator shouted the words through the speaking tube to his pilot. The snarl of the engine and the whistle of the wind through the struts and wires separating the wings of the biplane made communication between the crewmembers difficult. Fuen hadn’t thought of that when he had evolved the air-ground coordination now winning this war.
Fuen wasn’t quite sure what was down there; only that it was important in the eyes of the forward observer sitting on Hill 223. That was the key to the whole system. The ground observer was the final word on what targets should be attacked. The pilots did as they were told. That was why a Wing Commander was taking orders from a Flying Officer. That had been one of the hardest battles Fuen had fought, making pilots understand that for ground support to be effective, it had to be controlled from the ground.
Fuen speculated quickly on why the forward air controller had selected this particular target. The man was perfectly placed; if Fuen had designed this battlefield, he would have put Hill 223 exactly where it was. It commanded the stretch of the Mekong that was suitable for crossing and a wide swathe of the country to the north. Probably he had seen people going to and fro to mark a headquarters, or an artillery battery making practice on the Thai positions. Whatever the target was, it wouldn’t be that much longer.
It was time. He flipped his sirens on, then pulled the stick back and rolled in the classic wingover into a vertical dive that was already becoming the trademark of the dive bomber. Behind him, each of the aircraft in his flight followed suit. They formed a long chain aimed at the target below. As it grew larger, Fuen saw that it wasn’t an artillery battery, even though nearly all the missions flown this day had been aimed at taking out the Japanese artillery. This one was just a collection of tents and vehicles.
A headquarters? Perhaps even THE headquarters? Fuen had high hopes. The Japanese had been spoiled by China. Only now were they learning what it was like to fight under a sky dominated by hostile aircraft. They concealed their headquarters and other vital targets well against observation from ground but were careless about being seen from above. Every army should fight at least one battle under hostile air attack.
The target was swelling fast. Fuen selected the largest group of tents. His bombsight was centered perfectly on them. A gentle press on the bomb release sent his six 50-kilogram bombs into the complex. By the time they hit, he was already hauling back on the control column, pulling out of the wild dive. He was skimming the jungle when he did so, moving fast from the pyre of smoke that marked the target.
There had been a loud bang during the dive; he thought his aircraft had been hit by gunfire. One of the wing struts had broken. The fabric around it was torn and flapping. Not so good. Still, we have to overfly the target on our way back to Nakhorn Phanom. His flight around him, Fuen led the way back to the target. The four V93s swept over the base; their four forwardmounted machine guns raked the area. Fuen saw the great rising sun flag and another he couldn’t recognize still standing. That has to change. His machine guns riddled the flags and chopped down the pole they flew from. As they roared over the toppling pole, his rear gunner added another long burst to the mayhem below.
An hour later he was standing with a maintenance sergeant, looking at the damaged wing. The wing strut had broken up further and the fabric was a mess. “Must have caught a bullet.”
“Possibly. There might be another explanation.” The Sergeant spoke carefully, but damage like this was becoming more common each day. He believed his Wing Commander had to know that. “I think the structure of the wing failed first and that broke the wing strut. Not the other way around. The strain of all these dive bombing attacks is more than they were designed for.”
Fuen nodded. The V93 had never actually been designed as a dive bomber. They would have to serve that way though, until the promised American dive bombers arrived. “You may well be right. Fix it, Sergeant. The Army still needs us.”
General Nakamura hauled himself out of the slit trench he had occupied and watched the biplanes vanishing on their way back to base. The warrior within him had to admire the attack and the way it had been carried out. The man within him had to wish they’d carried it out on somebody else. His headquarters had been devastated by the bombing and strafing. The tents were all down. Some were just shredded; others burning. The vehicles had been hit hard. The last two dive bombers released their loads directly into the park. The whole area was burning from the contents of ruptured fuel tanks.
“General Nakamura, sir.” General Watanabe was nearly in tears. “Our flags sir; our flags.”
Nakamura suddenly realized that the two flags that had dominated his headquarters area were gone. Then he saw the shattered wreckage of the flagpole and the tattered rags that surrounded it. The flags, our colors; given to the division by the Emperor himself. Lying in the mud like discarded rags. What would the Emperor say should he hear of such disrespect?
The sight of his division’s colors lying in the mud settled Nakamura’s mind. Japanese officers were indoctrinated with a maxim that dominated every other. ‘When in doubt, attack. Even an extemporized attack will seize the initiative and then the fighting spirit of the Japanese soldier will bring victory.’ That made the way clear and he wondered how he could ever have forgotten it.
“Watanabe, lead 21st Brigade in an attack on the enemy positions along Ridge 70.”
“Here they come again.”
The shout along the trenches filled Sergeant Mongkut with despair. The trenchline was a mass of bodies. Thai jungle green mixed with Japanese khaki in a chaotic tangle. Most of the bodies were hideously mutilated as a testament to the ferocity of the fighting. The use of clubs, spades, knives and swords at body-contact range was never likely to produce a pretty or attractive scene. Mongkut thought that his trench looked like a slaughterhouse after a bomb had gone off in it. That was, after all, a fair description of what it was.