Polyesterdelphian Tribune
Annalise Blathermukl reporting
The rains have set in, and the young people of the Armee Air Arm chafe at the wait for good weather. Even the foggy rain doesn't keep these folks down though. They have a nonchalance unique to the young as they play cards for matches, and drink the strong Air Arm coffee.
These are proud boys and young women, proud of their new "crates". This wing has recently been re-equipped with the Freestate's newest bomber, a ship from the Alexi Zubr papermills nicknamed the" Zoober" by these cheerful youths.
It's a roaring Goblin of Canvass and Steel that screams aloft in the shortest of sunbrakes to drop it's load of "eggs" on the Enemy's rear positions.
Intentionally avoiding population centers, they give supply dumps, military trains, and troop concentrations a good "pasting". I recently made a harrowing flight with one of these brave crews, and it was no picnic!
We woke about 3AM to prepare for the run, timed to arrive over the target at dawn. Coffee and Donuts fortified us for our ordeal. We filled our thermos bottles with the hot brew and braced against the chill outside our canvas barracks.
Our Pilot-Captain, Jack Vanzant of Testorton smiled a dog-tired smile at me as he gathered his crew like a group of goslings into the Command Tent for AM briefing. Grizzled Major Timance gave the briefing with a wall map, and a sawhorse table of aerial reconnaissance photos. Our job this day - save lives by obliterating a large artillery ammunition depot behind enemy lines.
The boys looked serious as they paid close attention to the briefing, the Major outlining the safest approach, and highlighting Republican Anti-Aircraft positions, the famous Ack-Ack. An extra chill thrilled down my spine as I saw the many big guns that would be probing to take our lives. It's wonderful to see that no-one in this flight is quailing at the work that's been cut out for them by "The Brass".
A few questions, and we're out again into the damp cold for the pre-flight inspection. Every join, screw, rivet and nut seems to be examined and passed. Ammunition is loaded aboard for the heavy machine guns that will hopefully keep the PDRs dangerous fighters at bay. I mustn't think too much about them, they give me the feeling of jumping into a school of sharks, swift powerfully finned death. Some of our 'crates' won't be coming home, and it's a thought everyone here must keep pushing to the back of our minds like an ill fitting cap.
Soon the Bomb Loaders come, burdened with the heavy, fat, finned 'eggs' that are the kernel of our endeavor. Someone produces some chalk, and everyone takes a second to scratch something clever into the paint of the bombs. Much of it unprintable here, and some giving the addresses and names of such of the enemy as is known to us.
Now it's time to "saddle up". We clamber into the great bird. As large as it seems outside, suddenly, inside, the space feels as cramped as a sardine tin. I wiggle into my assigned space, a tractor seat next to a celluloid film window laced with steel and aluminum girders. Suddenly I feel how fragile a flying craft is. I must rest my feet with care on the slim plywood floor, a careless move might put my foot through the hardened paper-fibre skin between me and the Aether,
The rest of the crew settles in; Captain Vanzant with his rakish hat dons his radio-headset, his co-pilot, a Lt. Mouse of Roach Harbor runs through the check-list, she has tufts of blonde hair that stray out of her cap, and her smile is comforting. Lt. Mouse doubles as the Bombardier once we are over our target, she claims she can plant one of her "eggs" into a chimney with a new device, though I shan't speak of it further for security's sake.
Sergeant Bruimble, whose huge mustache makes him look like a Musketeer out of the pages of a Dumas novel grins at me in comradeship as he squeezes by to settle behind the blue-black steel of the machine-gun. Lastly comes Specialist "Zappy" Hersdzukken, the youngest of us. Despite his cherubic youthfulness, he holds one of the most serious positions on board, that of radio operator. On him we depend to find our way to the target location, and to maintain all important communications with our escort fighters. I wonder what he'd be doing if there was no war, dating a girl, and drinking phosphates at the corner drugstore I imagine. Instead, he is huddled in his flight gear over our lifeline, a box of wires and tubes whose mysteries his young mind has had to quickly master in this National Crisis.
I'm shivering, my fingers already numbing around my pad and pencil as I try to note my impressions. The powerful resinous chemical smells of airplane dope, fuel oil and kerosene. the arcs of Ozone from the radio equipment, and the sizzle of static from the radio headsets. Finally the check is over and the ground crew shouts "Contact!" and the great fans begin to turn. The sound is tremendous! Hundreds of Horsepower whirl the propeller blades into a typhoon that soon has us rumbling cacophonously across the grassy field. My heart is thrown into my throat as we bounce a few times, and then Lurch into the air with the grace of a goon-bird. I now understand why our breakfast was so small!
The Vibration is tremendous, exhilarating and soon, I become numb in my sitting parts. It's cold up here,the fume of my breath begins to make a jack-frost pattern on the tubes and girders that surround me, and the sensation of wonder grows as, looking DOWN, through the warbling plastic, I see a cold purple-blue seascape of cloud reminiscent of a Max Parish painting.
I can't hear it, but I feel my heart pounding hard in an anticipation that becomes more unbearable as each second ticks by like iced molasses. It is a long ride in the frigid protean gloom to the battlefield, harder even because of the harsh adrenalin coursing one's veins.
Zappy gives me a distant look, his wireless is talking to him, though I cannot hear it. The tight lines around his eyes tell me everything, "Incoming!". The shark school of ugly open-mouthed Dardo Fighter-planes has already spotted us. The fight is fast after the long painful wait. My discomfort is forgotten as I strain my eyes to sight the enemy. I never see him. To my surprise there appears a hole near my hand, another nearly a foot above it. Our machine has a whole range of new vibrations, the machineguns, now sputtering a waterstream of tracers out into the dark blue sky.
Ice fills my veins now, I realize how near death we really are. I'm trapped up here in a small wooden crate filled with explosives, like a Founder's Day Fireworks Stand, and nothing below to catch us if we fall. Everyone else has something to occupy them, to distract from the gut emptying fear. Brumble gives the captain a thumbs up. I think he's gotten a hit on a Dardo. That makes me feel half a breath better.
A tap on my shoulder, and I jump with unconscious fear, it's just Zappy. He smiles grimly and points out the window. I can't see it at first, but then I catch a tiny shadow through the warped plastic of the window. It's a plane, not a the distinctive Dardo, but something else. I feel elation, a cold breath brings down the panic as I watch the fighter spin and flash as briefly as a tree glimpsed in a lightning storm. Then it's beyond my line of sight, leaving the retinal after image of our Falgore fighters! I could kiss it in my glee.
That's short lived though. A black rose blooms outside. I sense more than feel the shock. It's Ack Ack, and it rapidly gets worse. Soon we are in a broiling rapids of it. The harsh rocking and jolting makes me fear we'll come apart. Can I feel more heart squeezing terror than I do now? I don't think it's possible, Then I see off our wing a sister ship, I think it's Captain Cod's, then it becomes suddenly a comet, a long tail of black behind it, as it plunges an eerily slow ballistic arc away and down. I can never forget, so burned into my mind it will be, first the left wing folding and falling away like a paper crane, then from the darkness of the fuselage the image of a man, windmilling his way to his final resting place, no chute to save him. The Horror is complete.
I remember everything seeming to slow down and dim, and the fire of the harsh coffee of the morning rises up, burning my throat acidly as it comes back to visit. Mercifully the Air Force is equipped for such emergencies- there are many uses for brown paper lunch-bags.
I can't tell if the roller coaster of turbulence is growing less, or I'm just becoming accustomed to it. Now and then a near one still seems as if it will kill us, tearing us apart, as careless as a child playing with a moth. Fragile and helpless we are, yet the people around me are stern and solid. Do they not know fear as I do, or has familiarity bred contempt? I cannot say. But this is bravery, the knowledge of death, and yet unflinching adherence to duty. We could quit, we could turn around, I almost very much want to, I nearly need to, but I know we must go on. Still it's there, the knowledge that no one would reproach us in word, but we would live with the shame of those who survived by not going all the way... A hard fate. We go on.
Now is the hour, the minute, the seconds. Our target is sited. Lt Mouse moves to the greenhouse-nose and puts her head to the bombsight. I feel the bomb bay doors open. The plane levels and we are now at our most vulnerable, flying straight steady and true. Then I see the burst of the Sun! it gleams from the metal outside like a furious God. I am blinded to the effects off the drop. I cannot see. I feel the shudder and jump as the "stick" of bombs are released, and Lt Mouse mouths "Bombs Away!" at me. The engines rev faster and we climb quickly. Fear mingles with renewed hope. I ache for home, we seem to move so slowly. I burn with impatience! If only I could get up and pace, or occupy myself somehow... this waiting is horrid! I'm afraid to hope. Then I notice something very wrong. What is it? What's this new terror? it dawns on me... We are past the rocking of Ack-ack. Our flight turns placid as before us stretches the beautiful calm green of countryside in the sun. Nothing has ever looked so peaceful and beautiful before! My shaking hands are handed a cup of coffee. I spill much of it, and it's hot, but also comforting and I smile at the people around me.
Soon I spot our home field, the canvass tents and familiar cross shapes of aircraft below us soon dreamily drift closer, and before long at all the pitch of noises change, A massive Jump and jolt, and we are terrestrial once more. As amazing a ride as humanity has ever offered is now over, yet strangely I miss it. I half want to do it again. I now understand something of the bravery of the Air Arm's fine young people, and it's profound.
Later we are debriefed. We learn our raid was a success, a stockpile of shrapnely death denied our enemies, many a grumbling hairy mudfooted infantrymen will live another day due to our exploit, and some number of tank crews have been spared a fiery death. But our cost was high. 8 planes left here. We were among the four that returned from the raid. Two others found refuge in other harbors, "crates" riddled with machinegun holes and unable to go further.
The Major gives us all a round of good stiff Potomacanian Burbon before we drag ourselves leadenly to the tents for an all-too-short daytime nap. Another Day, another paycheck for these true heroes! Duty, Honor, Fraternity... The words they live by. This is what is best in a democracy. Each person an individual, with hopes and dreams waiting to be fulfilled, or cut short, but not to be ignored. We observe the loss of Cpt Cod's crew, and Cpt Lewson, Cpt Blondotter's and Cpt Globlerth's. 19 men and women gone from the globe, but not from our memories or our hearts. It is for them we must carry on. "¡No pasarán!"