Sergeant Mike O’Neal grinned openly as he received his orders. The Scimitar tank – technically classed as an armoured recon vehicle – had been upgraded for fighting against infantry, while continuing to possess a light anti-tank capability. The Japanese would have nothing to counter it.
“Advance,” he said, as the data package unsealed itself. The tank moved out of the garage where it had been hidden from Japanese prying aircraft, before heading down towards the battlezone. He grinned though his VR helmet; the interfacing with the tank’s sensors, which were in turn linked into the battle management software, was pointing him in the exact direction he had to go.
“We have around seven Japanese light pieces of junk,” he said, confirming that the other two crewmen had heard. The five other tanks in the force spread out behind his vehicle, preparing their weapons. Encrypted data bursts flashed between them, designating targets from sensor data.
“I see them,” the driver said. “Advancing onwards.”
O’Neal smiled to himself as the Scimitar moved on, around the defences, and onto the battleground. Australians cheered as the tanks moved on, British flags displayed on their sides, and waved cheerfully.
“I confirm targets as Japanese Type-95 tanks, active on the battlefield,” O’Neal said, recording for future studied. “Main gun… locked?”
“Locked,” the gunner confirmed.
“Fire,” O’Neal ordered. “Blast them to hell!”
The Scimitar shuddered once as it fired an antitank shell at the leading Japanese tank, which exploded with a billow of fire. The other tanks fired as well, blasting through other tanks, even as their companions realised the danger for the first time.
“They’re firing back,” O’Neal said, and the Scimitar shuddered. The Japanese shell hadn’t even dented the armour. “They can’t touch us!”
“Shame about the mud,” the driver muttered, as the Japanese tried to flee. It was too late; a hail of fire destroyed the remaining Japanese tanks before they could escape. A streak of fire lanced out from the Japanese infantry and splattered against the armour. “What the hell was that?”
“Some kind of bazooka?” O’Neal guessed. The tank’s sensors were already working on it; he took direct control of the machine gun and fired madly at the Japanese troopers, who were cut down in seconds. “It didn’t hurt us.”
“Better warn the Fireflies,” the driver said. “That was too close.”
The Australian 1st Armoured Division had been raised far quicker than it’s commanding officer, John Northcott, would have believed possible. The Japanese blockade was very determined around Australia, but one fact was clear; whenever the numerically-weak Royal Navy put together a convoy-escort force, the Japanese had no hope whatever of sinking her. Nearly a thousand Firefly tanks had been delivered from America, enough to rearm the Australians with proper tanks.
Major General Northcott peered down at the satellite map. The orbital reconnaissance wasn’t complete, according to the future personnel, but it was a dashed sight better than anything he’d seen in the Great War. The two Armoured Divisions, accompanied by lorry-loads of infantry, had finally been given the command to advance and wreck havoc in the Japanese rear. They’d been moving fast since then, along roads and across country they knew very well indeed, and the Japanese had no idea that they were coming.
They can probably see our dust trail, Northcott thought wryly. The convoy was raising enough dust to hide an entire… well, armoured division. He grinned; he didn’t know if he would ever be a Governor in this strange altered reality, but if he won the coming battle, then…
“Enemy ahead,” his radio buzzed. The handful of SAS men – one innovation from the future that he approved of – had been feeding him location details for the Japanese. It didn’t seem sporting, somehow; the Japanese didn’t stand a chance.
“All men,” he said, wishing that they’d had enough of the little radios to equip everyone with them. “Australia expects that each and every one of you will do their duty,” he said, and knew that it wasn’t enough. “The Japanese ahead are infesting our soil, infecting our land with their foul presence,” he said. “We are going to kill each and every one of them.”
The cheer, by rights, should have been heard in Tokyo. “Advance,” he bellowed, and his tank led the charge.
The runners he’d positioned in strategic locations hadn’t been able to get off a warning; the first that General Masaharu Homma knew about the Australian advance from the south was the sound of explosions ripping through the rear of the Japanese lines. As the sound mounted, and the desperate signals from the western prong grew as the jamming ended for a long moment, he knew that the battle was lost.
“Dig in,” he ordered, lifting his own pistol. An explosion sounded to the rear of his new rear and his spun around. Spearheaded by the tanks that had destroyed his tanks with no losses, Australian infantry were counterattacking, flushing Japanese soldiers from their foxholes and captured trenches with ease and skill. He cursed; the Japanese were caught in the open… and then the aircraft came back, bombing the Japanese positions with their deadly firebombs.
General Masaharu Homma had only seconds to know that the battle was lost… and then a FAE bomb swept him, his staff and their supplies into oblivion.
Chapter Thirty-Two: Encirclement
Allied Headquarters
Bergen, Norway
5th June 1941
“Where the hell is my goddamned support?” Patton bellowed, pacing around swinging his stick. “Blasted allies!”
“It’s already lined up for you,” Major Bloodnok assured him, ignoring the comment about allies. Patton had a lot on his mind. “We have precision weapons ready; they just need targets.”
“Splendid,” Patton said. “Explain this to me again; the RAF transport does what?”
“It’s a transport converted to a tactical bomber,” Bloodnok said patiently. Despite a great deal of effort, the only tactical support that the Americans had been able to scrape up were Dauntless Dive Bombers from the carriers, which had at least been fitted with Napalm bombs. “It orbits the battlezone, out of range of enemy fighters…”
“And yet you give it an escort,” Patton injected.
“And it drops one of its precision bombs on the target you select,” Bloodnok said, ruefully aware that Patton wouldn’t be interested in the technical details. The RAF Hercules had been spared from transport duty, simply to assist in the conquest of Norway. The weapons, American-designed MOABs, had been mass-produced for the invasion.
“Good enough,” Patton said. He waved a hand at the chart. “My troops are advancing across Norway, but very slowly. How many more helicopters can you supply?”
Bloodnok shook his head grimly. Patton had almost the entire strength of the 27th Reserve Squadron, one of the Operational Conversion Units, almost seventy helicopters that had been pressed into operational service, along with Puma squadrons and an entire deployed RAF tactical radar system. In all, nearly one hundred helicopters and twenty VTOL Harriers had been deployed to Norway, testing the supply logistics to the limit.
He shook his head again. Patton, to give the devil his due, had seen the importance of the airborne forces at once, assigning elite American forces to be transported behind German lines and hammering away at German strongpoints. The 1st Airborne Corps, as everyone was calling it, was the first joint formation in existence, although Bloodnok knew that Patton was screaming at the American factories to produce an indigenous helicopter version.