The bridge below was growing fast, stretched like a ribbon over the dirty brown of the Mekong. The pipper on the bomb sight built into the Ostrich's nose was just touching the roadway where it transitioned to the bridge. Phol held it there, watching the ribbon swell and widen underneath him. He was totally focused on his bridge now, ignoring the sounds and sights around him. Then, as the bridge raced towards him, he squeezed the bomb release. The two 500 kilogram bombs under his belly went first, followed by the four 250 kilogram weapons under his inner wings.
Then his nose seemed to race along the bridge as he pulled the nose up. Sure enough there were trucks and bulldozers on the Indochina side of the river, the engineers that had put the bridge up over night. A pretty good engineering feat, thought Phol, and no good deed should ever go unpunished. He squeezed both firing buttons on his control stick and felt his Ostrich almost stop dead in midair as all ten guns opened up at once. The road in front of him vanished in a smoking cloud of red dust as the hail of 23mm and .50 caliber ammunition ripped up the laterite surface. And everything on it.
“Bridge is down. Both bridges down!” From the rear seat, Kusol Chale's words were almost a cheer. As he brought the Ostrich's nose around, Phol could see he was right, where the bridges had been was a boiling mass of black smoke, the shattered southern end of the wooden structures already sticking out. On the southern side, he could see more figures running around, vehicles trying to get clear. Including tanks, the squat, ugly little Japanese light tanks. They were a priority target and he started his dive towards them.
Again the lurch, marked this time by a shriek and screaming lines of fire as his eight RS-132 rockets leapt out in front of him. The tank laager seemed to vanish in the explosions but Phol had learned too much to assume that meant anything. Even the lightly-armored Japanese tanks needed direct hits to destroy them and the Russian-designed, Australian-made rockets just weren't that accurate. Time to go home, get another load.
“Laylas, Laylas!” Kusol's words slashed through the intercom. The gunner-observer spun his seat around on its mounting and shoved aft to man his 20mm gun. Behind the Ostrich formation, a group of shapes were diving on the ground attack aircraft, coming in fast, very fast. The swept wings immediately identified them. Kusol had been right, they were Japanese Army Laylas. More than 200 miles an hour faster than the Ostrich, fighters, not ground attack bombers. In other words, in any language, trouble.
“Laylas! Formation break up, everybody get down on the deck and run for it.” Close to the ground, flying between the trees and down valleys, the Laylas couldn't use their speed. That way, the Ostriches stood a chance. Not for Djiap-Five though. The Laylas had closed dreadfully fast and three of them had concentrated on the extreme left hand aircraft. The rear gunners were all firing but their hand-held cannon just couldn't track fast enough to follow the Laylas and they hadn't saved Djiap-Five. It was going down in a long, gentle dive, both its engines trailing thick black smoke. Even as Phol watched, the dive steepened and ended in a rolling black and orange ball.
Then Phol heard the sound of Kusol's 20mm gun thudding. He pushed the nose down faster, trying to get into the safety of the treetops but they were far away and the Laylas were too fast. He felt Djiap-One lurching and shuddering as the 20mm guns on the Laylas ripped into its structure. If anything, the heavy armor on the Ostrich's belly made things worse, causing the fragments from the shells to bounce around inside, rather than exit through a thin skin. The control panel erupted into a sea of red and yellow warning lights an instant before Djiap-One rolled on its back and dived vertically into the ground.
F-72C Thunderstorm “Fan-Seven” 22,000 feet over the Mekong River, Thai/Japanese Indochina Border
It looked like the old P-47, that was for sure, but it wasn't. The Thunderstorm had an R-4360 engine rated at 3,450 horsepower, 1,150 more than the R-2800-63 in the P-47. It had contraprops to absorb all that extra power and, most importantly it had four 37mm cannons in its wings. Not the low-firing, low velocity M-4 that had armed the P-39 series but the later M-9, designed with all the experience of the brutal war in Russia and the combined skills of Russian and American armorers. Equally adept at anti-tank and antiaircraft worked, the M-9 had more than 50 percent greater muzzle energy than the M-4. That translated into range and hitting power. A lot more hitting power; there were few single-engined fighters that could take a hit from an M-9.
Yesterday, Squadron Leader Nual Hinshinant had been using his guns as ground attack weapons. The Japanese had crossed the Mekong and the Air Force had been thrown in to hold them while the Army moved up ground troops. Today was different. Early this morning, the Japanese Army Air Force had appeared in strength, creating chaos with the heavy Ostriches flying ground support for the troops. More than a dozen Ostriches had gone down said the reports, a lot more had been badly shot up. So now, the Thunderstorms were flying top cover, although what an F-72 could do against the jet-engined, swept wing Laylas, Nual couldn't guess. Third Wing was moving into Nakhon Phanom with its F-80s. perhaps they stood a better chance but even the F-80 was obsolete compared with the Layla.
A bright flash in the sun from up ahead. “Bogies, 1 o'clock high.” The four Thunderstorms accelerated as the pilots applied power, climbing in an effort to gain altitude before they were spotted by the unknown enemy in the sky. They didn't manage it, not quite. Nual saw the lead fighter in the hostile formation, hostile because it was dark against the light sky and that meant it was painted gray and green, not the natural metal silver of the Thai fighters, change in shape and angle over. They'd almost made it though, the Thunderstorms might not have gained an altitude advantage but they'd denied it to the Japanese. The approach would be the classical start to a joust, head-on; balls to the wall, and then the first to lose their nerve broke right.
They almost collided head on in their stubborn determination not to be the ones to break. In the seconds as the two formations closed, Nual recognized his enemy. Gails, Ki-84 Hayate the Japanese Army called them. Radial engined, just like the Thunderstorm. Slower, but more agile, two nose-mounted 13mm machine guns, some carried a 20mm cannon in each wing, others replaced the single gun with a pair of 13mms. It was rumored some carried 20mm guns in the nose as well. The Japanese had never made much of standardization. Fast firing guns, to fill the sky with bullets but lacking the range and hitting power of the Thunderstorm's 37mms.
At the last second, Nual and his fighters broke right skidding away from the Japanese group. The Japanese didn't, not at once. They went upwards, the pilots hauling back on the stick, pouring in power from their engines, yanking the Gails upwards as if they were mounted on rubber bands stretching across the deep blue sky. Then, the Japanese formation broke, their leader arching over on his back, the rest bursting away as the Japanese pilots sought one-on-one combat with their opponents.
The unexpected maneuver had given the Japanese back the high bounce position, and their leader took full advantage of it. He was coming down on Nual In a beautiful pursuit curve, one calculated with all the expertise that the superbly-trained and exhaustively-experienced Japanese could manage. It let him pick the time and place to open fire on the clumsier Thunderstorm. The Japanese chose to close to point-blank range and threw a hailstorm of bullets at the swerving Thai fighter. He didn't try for accuracy in the swerving pass, but paddled his rudder backwards and forwards, filling the sky with bullets, saturating the area through which the Thunderstorm had to fly.