“Operation Louisville Slugger”
Naval Combat Air Patrol (CAP)
Yellow Flight
4,193 feet above sea level
404 miles per hour
Over Lion-Sur-Mer, France
05:59
“Yellow Flight Leader reporting; we appear to have forty eight fast-moving Tu-2 level-bombers, at eleven-angels… they have slung ordinance, appears to be torpedoes, or very large bombs of some kind; request permission to climb to altitude to intercept.”
“Negative Yellow Flight; we need you down low to deal with attacking torpedo-bombers not intercepting high-flying ‘probable bombers’; copy?”
“Copy.”
“If they come down low, then they are your meat… over.”
“Copy. Over.”
Bridge,
U.S.S. South Dakota
English Channel,
Off Le Havre, France
06:01
“Admiral… sixteen bogies just popped up on radar out of nowhere, and we have unofficial radio chatter urging us to open up with every gun we’ve got. Apparently it’s some kind of jet-bomber…”
“What do you mean ‘from nowhere’? Never mind… How unofficial is the request?”
“It came from a CAP flight… Red Flight I believe.”
“Johnson’s the flight leader… He’s a rookie… A CAP flight… never mind, we can’t take chances. Give the order to fire on anything that can’t be positively identified as ours. Belay that, it’s probably a couple of those twin-engine British Meteors; that strayed into our airspace after those missiles. Order the lookouts to keep an eye on ’em, but don’t shoot, until we have a positive identification.”
2,556 meters above the U.S.S. Missouri
06:01
“Red One… Red Four… I’m on his tail when he climbed taking fire from tail gunner… left wing hit… I’m going in…”
“Red four get out… get out…”
Listening to the Yankees’ radio traffic, Yuri celebrates in his mind, his first air-to-air kill.
Got my first kill! That will teach you, Yankee! Never try and shoot down a Terror Bomber from the rear! Now, to do as I was trained to do. Split-S… flaps… damned anti-air… they didn’t train us for all this! This is too much for me to make it. It’s like a wall of explosions. Ha! They’re shooting in the wrong direction. What are they shooting at? Never mind, if you die… just die killing them. Line it up just like training. That ship is huge. Much bigger than the Soyuz, the ship we used for our training. Steady… steady… release, NOW! Pull up… pull… pull… now, go, go, go! Speed is my only defense. Look in periscope; no one following. Ahh, too bad Yakov is down. Looks like two ships hit; such explosions. I even feel a little pity for the sailors. They are just pawns of the capitalists; pawns that needed to be killed in order to save the vast majority of the proletariat; kill a few, save many. Keep your mind on survival Yuri. Keep your mind clear. Make haste, lest a Shooting Star come up from behind…
Bridge,
U.S.S. South Dakota
English Channel,
Off Le Havre, France
06:01
“I can hear ’em, Admiral. It’s those Buzz-Bombs alright.”
“Give the order to fire. Fire with all we’ve got. Put up a wall of lead to the east, so that they’ll have to fly through it… FIRE damn it FIRE!”
Yellow Flight
Over TF 87,
English Channel
06:05
“Yellow Flight to control… Those bombers just dropped torpedoes that deployed parachutes. Better get word to the battlewagons to watch for torpedoes in the water.”
Yellow Flight
Over TF 87,
English Channel
06:11
“Yellow Flight to control, those torpedoes appear to be circling after they hit the water. Someone better warn those battleships.”
Red Flight,
Over TF 87,
English Channel
06:13
Jeezus H. Freakin’ Christ! They just got the South Dakota and the Mighty Mo! Fuck, now they’re shooting at us! “Red Flight, climb to 12,000 feet… wait make that 4,000 meters… Damned NATO metric… Oh no, they got Willy!” Jeezus! Can’t these knuckleheads tell which ones are the bad guys? “Climb Red Flight… CLIMB! They’re shooting at anything that flies.”
Damaged Bridge,
U.S.S. South Dakota
06:26
“Lay back Admiral, you’ve been wounded. Corpsman over here!”
“What hit us George? What in the hell was that? The flames… the fire… smoke… what’s that God-awful smell?”
“I don’t know Sir, it all happened so fast. We didn’t even have time to react… Sir? Sir? Never mind, Corpsman. He’s dead. ALL HANDS, PREPARE TO ABANDON SHIP!”
Washington D.C.
July 11th, 1946
06:21
“What the hell happened out there today Leahy?”
“Well, sir it appears that the Reds have made operational the German Arado Ar-234 jet bomber… Hitler’s ‘Blitz’ Bomber. They came screaming in at less than 315 feet under the radar floor and power-climbed to 6,000 feet, dive-bombing the battleships. All our attention was concentrated to the east, where the Buzz-Bombs were coming out of the sun.”
“It kind of reminds me of what happened at Midway, where all the Japanese concentrated on shooting down the torpedo planes, failing to notice our dive-bombers coming in.[24] Then, the gunners that did see them, thought that they were British Meteors jet fighters. We have eyewitness accounts that Admiral Mitscher ordered them not to fire until it was too late. We just had no idea that the Soviets had an operational jet bomber.”
“The real killer though, was some torpedo-bombers that used the Russian version of that Italian Motobomba FFF circle-torpedo. It can be dropped from up to 4,000 meters, and its descent is retarded by a parachute. Once they hit the water they circle in an ever-increasing radius until they hit something, or their motors stop. The Italian version was copied by the Germans, with their… ah here it is… the LT350, and now the Soviets apparently have their own version, the 45-36AV-A.”
“Here’s the report sir. The South Dakota is at the bottom of the English Channel, with over 750 casualties, including dead, missing and wounded. The Missouri is a floating hulk and is being towed to Portsmouth, England. They sustained 591 casualties.”
“Why did the South Dakota go down so fast?”
“She was hit three times, by 1,000-kg armor-piercing bombs, then she took two of those torpedoes. The first one struck just fore of her superstructure portside, the second one slammed into her armor belt amidships, on the starboard side. Either the third bomb, or the first torpedo, penetrated into the forward magazine causing it to explode spectacularly, which broke her back. This is like HMS Hood, which went down in three minutes after a lucky hit by the Bismarck’s main batteries.”
“The Reds are cashing in on their captured German wonder-weapons and their ‘guest’ scientists. You say it was a jet bomber?”
“Yes sir, and some Tu-2’s with those damn circling torpedoes. Something old, and something new.”