The Australian troopships had an escort of course, the three Indian ships, two Australian cruisers and four more destroyers but that was barely adequate. !n addition to the surface ships, they had air cover from an Australian Navy air group based at Darwin, 36 Grumman F11F-2 Tigers and 24 A4D-7 Skyhawks and another group had been moved up to Java.
Once they were close to Thailand, they'd have land-based air support from there. That was good, the Thai Air Force was small but it had the latest aircraft money could buy. Perhaps too recent, there were stories that the new aircraft were proving hard to keep operational. It wouldn't matter though; the problem was, in the most likely area of confrontation, all the available aircraft would be operating at the edge of their range. If there was going to be a confrontation, the ships would be on their own, without air support.
Ladone fingered his orders. They were very clear, very explicit. The Australian troop convoy had to get to Rangoon. No if, buts or maybes. If it cost the entire escort to get the troopships through, then so be it. It was one of those last man and last bullet type situations. The problem was that, as usual, the people who gave the orders were neither the last men nor did they have the last bullet in their possession.
Chapter Eight Gaining Ground
Cockpit of Su-7 “For Maria Chermatova” over Malyye Derbety
It was quite like old times and it was nothing like old times. Charging through the tree-tops on his way for a ground attack strike at the Germans, it was almost like being back in his old F2G over France. Until he looked out of the cockpit of course. Then, instead of seeing Scott Brim's dark blue Dominatrix on his right there was a green and brown splotched Su-7, For Ivan Fedeev flown by his wing man Mikhail Boroda. The Su-7 was nothing like the F2G, in fact Colonel Tony Evans would have preferred his old mount over the new Russian aircraft. The old F2G had long legs by comparison with the fuel-guzzling jet.
But, the Su-7 had virtues all of its own, It was fast, even low down, and as solid as a rock. It kept going, and it fought hard for its pilot. He'd seen other Su-7s come back with damage that would have downed less solid aircraft and the ground crews had fixed them and sent them back to battle the next day. It could lift loads as well, he had two 2200 pound capacity hard points under the belly, and four 1100 pound hard points, two under each wing. Total theoretical load almost 9,000 pounds. Of course, if he carried that much, his tactical radius would equal his take-off run.
Still, he had napalm tanks under his belly and four 20-round S-8 rocket packs under his wings. And his two 30 millimeter cannon. His aircraft's name said it all. He was carrying the load For Maria Chermatova.
After The Big One, he'd flown F2H Banshees, then been sent to Russian language school for a while, then back to ground attack units. He'd flown the North American F2J-4 Dragon from carriers for a while, working his way up the command chain. Then, a little over a year ago, he'd been offered a 3-year tour of duty flying as an exchange officer with Russian Frontal Aviation. Bored with peacetime flying, he'd jumped at the chance. He'd done the three-month conversion course for the Su-7 then joined the 16th Guards Fighter Division. A proud unit that had been fighting the Germans since 1941. They'd made their names flying American aircraft, P-39 Airacobras, now they were back where they'd started, in the skies of the Kuban, it had been a long, long journey and the price paid had been frightful.
One thing had puzzled him when he came to Russia. Go down a street in any American town, and soon you'd see a house with a gold star hanging in one window, indicating a son or husband killed in the Second World War. He'd never seen anything like that in Russia. At first he'd wondered why, then as he knew more Russians, he'd found out. Every family in Russia had lost not one but many members during the long war. In fact, during his stay he hadn't found a single family that didn't have a long list of the dead to remember. Nobody knew what the total casualties were, some figures suggested more than a third of the population had died.
One sign was the shortage of men. Women were everywhere in the armed forces, maintaining aircraft and vehicles, when the pilots slept, the women were refueling and repairing their birds, taking oil samples for analysis, reloading guns and hanging ordnance from the racks. Those women were quietly desperate to find husbands and, in their hearts, most knew they would not. The best they could hope for was a temporary relationship, a “Campaign Wife” as the Russians called it. Prior to being sent to Russia, the American exchange officers had been given a quiet, private briefing.
“Because of the situation and the shortage of men, there are a lot of Russian women seeking partners. That means you. If you choose to enter such a relationship, you may do so but expect your assignment to Russia to be made permanent. We're in their country help them rebuild, to give, not to take.”
When Evans had met his ground crew, he'd learned that Maria Chermatova had been the grandmother of the armorer responsible for maintaining his cannon and loading the proper ordnance for the strikes. During the occupation of Nizhny Novgorod, the Germans had murdered the old woman and her entire family. His armorer was the only survivor; Evans didn't have any Russian relations so, when he had heard the story, he'd asked if he could name his aircraft for the old lady. The gesture had gone down well with the unit, it had marked the acceptance of the American Marine into the Russian Fighter Division. Ever since then, he'd fired his rockets and dropped his napalm “for Maria Chermatova”.
Now he was off to do it again. The Germans were moving a heavy armored force south on the Volzhskiy Road. It was threatening the northern flank of the Volga breakthrough that was taking back the last piece of Russian ground occupied by the Germans. Overhead, he could see MiG-19s were flying top cover for the heavily-laden Su-7s skimming through the treetops. The Germans had started the battle with few aircraft and most of what they'd had were gone now. Still, there was no need to take chances. He nestled the Su-7 closer to the ground, the old lessons still held good. Low and fast meant life. He'd shared those lessons with the Russian pilots and listened to theirs in his turn. One good thing about the Su-7 was its speed low down, he was holding just over 600 miles per hour. With a tactical radius of 200 miles, that meant each mission lasted less than an hour. Of course the down side was that they all flew two or three missions per day.
The Su-7 was bumping and jolting, something he'd noted in the old F2G days but the extra speed was making it worse. Some of the jolts were almost bad enough to tear the stick out of his hands. He spent every evening trying to ease the bruises out of his back but nothing much worked. Speed had another effect as well, he had a harder job staying ahead of the aircraft. The trees flashing underneath him gave precious little warning of sudden rises in the ground or obstructions lost in the haze. Tracers floated past his cockpit, he'd had even less warning of that. The two aircraft following behind him would deal with the gunner whoever he was.
There were clouds of smoke off to his left, that would be other fighters striking at the German movement. Evans had something different in mind. He'd noticed that the Russian pilots tended to strike at the head of a convoy. It was sensible, hit the leading vehicles, stop them moving and the rest of the convoy would pile up. Trouble was, they did it too often, so Evans was taking his section parallel to the German movement, he'd swing in and hit the rear of the convoy. With luck all the soft skins and command vehicles would be back there and the anti-aircraft guns up front.
More bumping and pounding, there was the wreckage of an old railway line under him now. Getting close to the time to swing around and in. The F2G had been no ballet dancer but the ponderous Sukhoi made his memories of trying to maneuver the vicious Super-Corsair a pleasant thought. The Sukhoi also had spanwise drift problems on its sharply-swept wings. They'd been fitted with wing fences but it was barely a partial solution. It meant that in a turn, a wrong move could cause the outer section of the wing to stall. That threw the aircraft into a flat spin and, down here, recovering from that just didn't happen. He was keeping the columns of smoke on his left roughly level with his shoulder, assuming the troop convoy was the standard length, the swing should bring them around just behind its tail.