The Ostrich was a big plane but Phol was flying it gently, making tiny adjustments as he lined the nose up on the area in front of the Guardhouse. There were two gun buttons on his control column, one fired the six .50 caliber machine guns in the wings, the other the four 23mm cannon under the nose. He'd decided to use only the ,50s on this run, the 23mms were primarily anti-tank guns with a secondary air-to-air role. Against infantry, the fast-firing M-3 Brownings were the weapon of choice. Those and the six 250 kilogram bombs he had hanging under his belly.
Beneath him he could see the figures moving forward, seeming to stop and look up at the aircraft descending upon them. Off in front of him were the blotches of the field guns, sandbags piled in front to give the gunners a modicum of protection as they served their pieces. Even as he watched there was a belch of white smoke from one and an almost simultaneous black explosion on the Guardhouse. Still holding out then. Another slight adjustment on the controls and the nose of the diving Ostrich centered on the nearest of the field guns. Six of them, that was unusual; a Japanese infantry battalion usually only had two. Didn't matter, as he pulled out, his gunfire would rake along the line.
“Two, follow me down onto the guns, three and four hit the infantry.'7 Some of the men on the ground were kneeling, firing back with their rifles. If ever there was a forlorn hope, shooting at an Ostrich with a rifle was it. Phol almost imagined he could hear a “ting' as a rifle bullet bounced off his armored belly, the belly that had a double layer of armor that could stop a 20mm shell cold.
Then, he squeezed the trigger on his control column and heard the roar as his wing guns poured fire at the men below. Poured fire literally, the usual allocation was one tracer round in five but the Ostriches had every other round tracer. A red sheet poured from the wings, washing over the guns below him. His thumb depressed and held the bomb release switch. He felt the thumps as each 250 kilogram bomb was released. One, two, three, four, five, six. A stick right across the field guns or so he hoped. Then Phol pulled back the control column easing the Ostrich out of its wild dive. That wasn't as easy as it sounded, the Ostrich was nose-heavy and more than one of its pilots had become so fixated by the targets on the ground, they'd left pulling out too late and flown straight into the ground.
Phol made it, his heavy aircraft skimming a few tens of feet over the grass. In the mirror behind him he could see the boiling black and red cloud from his bombs and those of Djiap-Two. Then Djiap-Two burst out of the cloud, its silver skin stained from the explosions but safe and racing across the airfield after him. Ahead was a road, and as every good ground attack pilot knew, roads meant targets. This one led to the village. If the airfield was holding the first wave of the attack, there was a good chance the follow-up units were backed up there.
He was right, a group of trucks escorted by a foolish-looking armored car with a cylindrical turret. Phol shifted his grip slightly, adjusted the flight path - and as the pipper in his sight touched the armored car, squeezed the trigger of his 23mm guns. Those guns had been designed to stop a German tank, slicing through its thin topsides and into its fuel and engines. Penetration equivalent to 25 millimeters of hardened armor steel at 400 meters.
The armored car didn't have anything like that level of protection. It was designed to frighten Chinese infantry and was proof against rifle tire, no more. The first few shots landed short but the rest marched into the archaic-looking vehicle and tore it apart. As the shells from the V-Ya cannon ripped into the plating, there was in a spectacular display of instantaneous destruction. The whole vehicle was thrown backwards, the turret with its short-barreled gun flew into the air, the wheels were torn from the body, some burning, some spinning, one rolling down the road towards the trucks.
Even as the armored car was chopped apart. Phol was lifting the nose, just enough to walk the stream of fire into the trucks. More black clouds of smoke and flame, the Ostriches bursting through them as Djiap-One and Djiap-Two ran past the village and started to turn and climb away, ready for another pass at the troops attacking the airfield.
Headquarters Section, Japanese 2nd Battalion, 143rd Division
What had happened was something totally outside his experience. His head was fuzzy, shaken, the thoughts in it disjointed and dispersed. They just wouldn't come together. Although he didn't know it, he was staggering in the clouds of dust and rolling black shroud of smoke. To Major Utsunomiya, air support was a small light bomber tike a Ki-51 or Ki-71 that turned up from a nearby landing strip, dropped a few hand-grenade sized bombs then watched as the Chinese panicked and left their positions.
The silver monsters that had roared across the battlefield, spewing death and destruction beneath them, the yellow tigers painted on their tail fins snarling defiance, they were something from a different universe. Utsunomiya had heard Germans talking about ground attack aircraft on the Eastern Front, the Russian Sturmoviks, the American Jabos. the Australian Ostriches. He'd heard the stories of cannon fire, of bombs and rockets, of the American's frightful jellygas but he hadn't understood them, not until now.
Overhead, he saw the sunlight flashing off the silver paint as the aircraft climbed away, doubtless getting ready for another pass. Over the trees, from where the village sat, a column of black smoke rose. Burning trucks. Utsunomiya had guessed that the soldiers waiting for the way forward to be cleared would have been amusing themselves with the village girls. The Ostriches had probably been the worst form of coitus interruptus imaginable. The irreverent thought shocked Utsunomiya's mind back into military gear. If his men were in the open, the Ostriches would slaughter them all. They had to get into cover and the only way to do that was to take the Guardhouse ahead of them. Almost by remote control, he swung his sword over his head and pointed it at the building. “Charge! Follow me!”
The machine gun in the Guardhouse seemed puny, pathetic, after the Ostriches, Utsunomiya couldn't believe it had pinned him and his men down for so long. The guns had knocked most of one wall down, just leaving a pile of masonry rubble. Utsunomiya leapt up it, his feet scrabbling for a second as the broken bricks rolled and fell but he was up and over. In front of him a Sergeant was trying to point one of the machine pistols at him. Too late, the katana swung and Utsunomiya saw the man's left arm fall as the sword lopped it off. Then he swung again and the man's head fell from his body. Another soldier was in the cloud of dust and he fell as one of the Arisakas pumped half a dozen rounds into him. The Ostriches had failed; the Guardhouse was secure.
Cookhouse, Lawn Mwuak Airfield, Thai/Japanese Indochina Border
“We're next. You'd better get out of here while you can, mother.” Airman Ronna Phakasad saw the Rising Sun flag flutter up over the Guardhouse. The air strike had been vicious but not vicious enough. Whatever else the Japanese were, cowardly they were not. They'd pushed on and taken the building while the aircraft came around for another pass. That took courage and skill.
“And leave my nice kitchen for those animals? I think not young man. This is where I...” The rest of the words were cut off as a crash shook the building and dust filled the air. Somehow, the surviving Japanese gunners had got at least one of their pieces back into action and were firing on the cookhouse. There was a crackle of automatic fire outside; the Japanese infantry were pushing inwards. Ronna grabbed his Browning and started firing short bursts, chopping down the figures as they came towards him. Then, a series of loud pops as 50mm mortar shells dropped down on top of the men outside. The Japanese knee mortars. Ronna fired again moving methodically from left to right. He never made the full swing for a 75mm shell hit squarely onto the firing port.