Of course, no drop ‘tank’ was ever truly empty and when it hit the ground the highly inflammable vapour within it, still, in most cases, under pressure, would probably explode like a fireball. Normal practice was to jettison drop tanks over the sea before landing back on board but this was not peace time any more.
Both the Princess Royal and the Indefatigable, with two light cruisers, the Penelope and the Galatea, and five destroyers in hand would part from the Perseus and make a high-speed dash to be in position to commence a thirty-minute bombardment of the coastal forts guarding San Juan Bay and suspected military targets up to eight miles inland in the vicinity of the Santo Dominican capital.
Operation East Wind was designed to be, and would indeed be, a terrifying demonstration of firepower.
Alex Fielding stepped onto the Flight Control Bridge, situated on the third level of the Perseus’s island just in time to see the first two of his Goshawk IVs roar off the carrier’s bow. They had been among the aircraft sitting down below in the hangar deck, while the aircraft loaded at Norfolk for delivery to the Hermes, fresh from her working up trials off the Scottish coast and in the Western Approaches to the English Channel, still occupied much of the deck topsides.
Notwithstanding the Hermes had commissioned within a month of the Perseus, with the main Goshawk production lines now established in New England, at the huge Gloucester-Camm Works outside Philadelphia, and the major Empire flight training programs now coming on stream in Virginia and north of the border in Alberta, Canada, given that the Ulysses was temporarily out of commission and time was of the essence, it had made excellent sense to deliver Hermes the balance of her air group – and over forty ready battle-seasoned surviving pilots and ‘back seat’ crewmen from the Ulysses – at sea rather than freight them and their brand new flying machines all the way back to England.
Perseus’s aft elevator was hard at work bringing Goshawk’s and Sea Eagles up from below. For the coming hours, only four of the scouts and a pair of the bombers, fuelled and bombed-up as the ship’s QRA – quick reaction alert – flight would be sufficient.
However, ahead of the forthcoming ‘big op’, the hangar deck would become one of the most explosive places on the planet as the tanks of seventy or more aircraft would be topped off with high-octane aviation spirit, gun boxes and bomb racks would be filled full, and torpedoes and rocket packs winched and heaved onto hard points below fuselages and wings.
After what had happened to the Ulysses, extra non-flammable packing and fire-suppression systems were to be urgently installed in all the new carriers; as yet, there had been no opportunity for either Perseus or Hermes, to have their forward or stern aviation spirit mains modified. There had been no time for that. It had been nothing short of a miracle that both ships had rendezvoused as planned and that the aircraft transfer had been achieved with only minor incident, several relatively inexperienced pilots only getting down on the Hermes after two, or in one case, three attempts.
Alex watched his Goshawks climbing.
It was hard to believe that the men of his old squadron – No 7 (New York) Squadron of the Colonial Air Force – whom he had led out to sea that first day, only seven weeks ago, remarkable as that seemed, carrier landing virgins to a man, were now among the most experienced and battled tested ‘flight deck jockeys’ in the Navy.
Of course, of the original dozen or so men, five were no longer alive. A couple of others had not cared for the odds, stayed in the CAF, another had gone ashore to instruct at Virginia Beach; meaning that only Alex and three others of the old guard were still aboard the Perseus.
War, as the old-timers used to say, is Hell.
Fun, too in a macabre, exhilarating way but nonetheless, Hell…
Alex had already known that combat was the cruellest of taskmasters from his own hard-won, harum-scarum experiences down on the Border. And also, that if a man chanced to survive his first trials by fire he was changed, tempered forever by the heat of battle.
The second pair of Goshawks rumbled past, picking up speed, hurtling over the bow, dipping and then rising above the waves, turning to starboard to climb up to their assigned quadrant of the grey Atlantic heavens.
There had been questions about ‘the submarine threat’ at the final command briefing in Hampton Roads.
“That situation,” the Task Force Commander had smiled, ruefully, “is under control, gentlemen.”
That had raised a lot of eyebrows.
Rear Admiral Sir Anthony Parkinson had gone on to explain further, albeit a little vaguely which was not at all his style: “Special measures have been taken; we do not anticipate the submarine menace to be a major factor in the prosecution of Operation East Wind.”
Alex Fielding was sceptical.
Nobody had shown him the magic wand!
Presently, the Hermes was driving through a squall some ten miles away to the south east. Both Princess Royal and Indefatigable had forged ahead of the carriers to conduct a full-bore offset shoot; just to blast the cobwebs out of their main battery turret crews. Both carriers were in relatively close company with their light cruiser guardships – the Ajax was twelve hundred yards off Perseus’s starboard beam, the Cassandra, was staying close to the Hermes – while a ‘chase’ destroyer zigzagged in the wake of each carrier ready to react instantly if an aircraft went over the side, ditched or crashed.
In retrospect, even a couple of months ago, nobody had really worked out the half of the basics of operating the big new carriers; true to form, the Navy had worked it out in quick order. Even a month ago, not even standard cruising stations had been established, now everybody took the new practices for granted.
Perseus’s Captain, Patrick O’Mara Bentinck, one of the men who had written what were now only the first chapters of ‘how to do carrier operations’ well over two decades ago, had had the inevitable talk with Alex about whether or not, in the circumstances, he ought to ‘sit this one out?’
Alex had already had that conversation with the ship’s CAW, and fast-found firm friend, Commander Andrew Buchannan.
Both men had made their points, because that was their duty, and given in gracefully. They knew this was his last ‘outing’ aboard Perseus and that, understandably, he wanted to go out with a bang, leading from the front and in their hearts, Patrick Bentinck and Andrew Buchannan knew he was the man best qualified to be the master of ceremonies over the target.
That was another completely new innovation.
With so many aircraft in the air it was no longer good enough to allow individual squadron, flight and section commanders to call the shots; somebody, had to retain the big picture in his head and to keep the show on the road when, as was likely to happen, the confusion of battle intervened and the attack faltered, or became dispersed. One day, not long ahead, there was talk about ELDAR and scrambled telecommunications making it possible for a high-flying ‘command and control’ aircraft to safely hang back many miles from the battle and for a master of ceremonies to conduct operations from afar. However, for the moment nothing was going to supersede the Mark I human eyeball or the wily old scout pilot’s brain it was attached to.
Alex’s Goshawk was being modified to carry a one hundred gallon drop tank under each wing to enable him to loiter over San Juan for up to forty-five minutes – five to ten before, thirty minutes during the attack, and another five to permit him to assess the results afterwards – and still have a twenty percent margin of safety when he got back to the Perseus, which at no time during the operation would risk approaching nearer than eighty-five nautical miles from the Santo Domingo coast.