“Can’t see anything, Boss.” Sergeant James Morton squinted hard. There had to be something down there. The Germans had staged a major offensive, both sides of Lake Oneda, and had run into heavy opposition. There had to be supply columns moving up behind the lead German elements, there just had to be. Nothing was moving in daylight, the Grizzlies and Thunderstorms were seeing to that. So, the supplies had to be moving up at night. Which lead back to Lieutenant Quayle’s question. Was anything moving down there, and if not, why not?
“They could be man-packing stuff, Boss. We wouldn’t see that on the radar.”
“No way Jimmie. The krauts have thrown the best part of their Army Group Vistula into the attack. Lot of tanks, even if they are moving slowly. There’s got to be gas trains and ammunition moving north. Don, anything you can see out the back?”
Donald Phelan looked out through the glazed portion of the F-61s central fuselage nacelle. The whole rear section of the nacelle had been made transparent; why Phelan couldn’t quite work out. Probably it stemmed from the Black Widow’s ancestry as a night fighter somehow but it did seem excessive. Technically, Phelan was the aircraft’s gunner, controlling the quadruple .50 caliber machine guns in the turret on top of the fuselage. His real job was to look out for targets on the ground below. The F-61s had been replaced as night fighters by the faster, more agile Grumman F-65 Tigercat, but they’d found their role as night intruders. They could lift a fearsome array of bombs and rockets, while their SCR-720 radar had proved very useful at finding targets in the darkness. It was a pity that radar wasn’t showing anything now.
“I’m going to try a bit further south. The Germans may be moving north more slowly that intelligence is suggesting. That would mean their supply convoys will be further back.”
Evil Dreams turned south. Her R-2800s droned steadily, her radar swept the ground ahead of her. This was the hard part, actually finding something to shoot at. Once she had a target, Evil Dreams had the bombs and rockets, not to mention her four 23mm cannon, to do something fairly disastrous to it. But first she had to find it. The minutes ticked by, slowly draining the fuel from her tanks.
“Hey Boss, got something.”
“Worthwhile?” There had been all too many times when a F-61 had expended its bombs and rockets on a target of little value only to have a rich group turn up when she was on her way back home, her racks and magazines empty.
“Collection of vehicles; definition isn’t good enough to count how many.” There was a rustling of maps in the bulky radar compartment. “OK, there’s a railway junction ahead. East-west line meets a north-south line. I think the contacts are clustered around the buildings at the junction.” The resolution of the SCR-720 wasn’t that good, it was barely adequate to show that the targets were there.
“OK, we’ll take them down.” Quayle swung Evil Dreams around in a wide curve, getting her lined up on the radar contacts below. There was nothing to be seen down there. Every unit on Kola knew that keeping itself blacked out was essential if they were to survive. The Americans had their sophisticated Black Widows with their array of weapons and radar. The Russians had their partisans on the ground, all too ready to spot a target and steer in one of the little night-intruder Boomerangs. The Germans had their night fliers as well; everything from the old Hs-123 biplanes to Ju-88Gs and He-219 night-fighters. An array of nocturnal pests whose activities condemned the troops on the ground to a night of sleepless darkness.
“Target’s in front of us now Boss.” Quayle reached down and selected the inner bomb racks. They had something new, a device that allowed three 500 pound bombs to be carried on a single pylon originally intended for a single 1,600 pound weapon. The price paid was that the triple rack was draggy and pulled their speed down. That’s why a wise pilot dumped those bombs first. Next step was to put the nose down, taking Evil Dreams into a long, quiet dive that allowed him to throttle the engines back. No point on giving the targets more warning than I have to.
Morton quietly read the range to the cluster of targets on the ground ahead. Then, he stopped; they were too close in for the radar to be effective. It didn’t matter. Quayle had seen the shadows of the buildings in front of him and had lined up perfectly. Then, he punched the bomb release and slammed the throttles forward. The big Black Widow leapt forward with the added power from its R-2800s. Staring out of the back transparencies, Phelan saw the ground erupt with the six explosions from the bombs. Then two more, bigger, fireballing blasts.
“Secondary explosions, probably fuel or ammunition going up. Whatever had been down there, we’ve hit something.” He paused a second. “Problems Boss. We’ve got a bandit out here. I’m picking up Lichtenstein emissions and we just gave him the flaming datum to end all flaming datums.” Morton scanned his radar warning equipment.
There was no indication where the enemy night-fighter was, but it was out there and it had a good idea where the intruder it was hunting could be. Phelan slid away from his observation post and climbed into his gunner’s seat. If they couldn’t find the enemy night-fighter, defending against it would be his job.
In the cockpit, Quayle was weighing odds. The fighter couldn’t be to the south or west of us, otherwise we ‘d have picked it up. It had to be north and east, probably on its way back to base. And it had to be above us. In daylight that would be a bad disadvantage for Evil Dreams but at night, things were different. The lower aircraft would be hidden against the shadows of the ground; the higher aircraft would be silhouetted against the brighter sky. Provided the differential wasn’t too great, the plane below had the edge. Quayle remembered something else; an urgent intelligence warning that German night-fighters carried upwards-firing cannon. No. Here, now, being below was good.
As Evil Dreams turned, her radar scanning arc cut across the sky, searching for the hostile night-fighter. The Germans had a radar warning system too; one that could detect the SCR-720. That was probably how they knew Evil Dreams had been in the area.
“Got him, Boss. He’s turning our way but we’re behind, below and outside his curve. About 5,000 yards ahead. Closing steadily, his speed’s around 200, perhaps 250.” Quayle glanced down, Evil Dreams was doing just over 330 mph. Within two minutes, they should be able to see the target. Theoretically, it was possible to do an entire intercept using radar sightings but nobody ever did. They waited to see their target first.
“He’s straightening out Boss. Probably going to reverse his turn.” That would make sense, the German pilot would be snaking, trying to expand the search arc of his radar. This time though, the turn would take him right across the Black Widow’s nose.
“Got him! There he is.” Quayle ran the identification through his mind. Twin radial engines, twin tailplanes, glass cockpit extending to the nose. A Heinkel 219. That was good, they were the best night fighters Germany had and downing one is a real prize. The German fighter was dark against the sky. To cut down shadows, the Germans painted theirs dappled gray. The Americans used a darker slate gray.
“Turret locked forward, Boss; transferring gun control to you.” Phelan settled back. His turret was now part of Evil Dreams’ forward-firing gun battery.