Of course, if they had known then what they know now they would have locked their little girl away in a monastery!
Hindsight being the one perfect science…
“No news is not bad news,” Cuthbert Collingwood observed sympathetically.
“Where are we with the Achilles?” The Governor of New England asked, raising his tea cup to his lips.
Things were really bad when a man could not rely on a good cup of Darjeeling to sooth his angst.
“We still have no idea if there were any survivors, sir,” Collingwood reiterated. “However, since we met yesterday the RNAS flew one of its Albatross high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft along a mission track which overflew eastern Cuba, Guantanamo Bay, Port-au-Prince, Santo Domingo and western Hispaniola.”
The London Aircraft Company had a long history of designing lightweight, high-performance aircraft, and for ‘thinking outside the box’, innovating regardless of Air Ministry or Royal Air Force requirements or operational specifications. The R1-Albatross had the potential to be the LAC’s most revolutionary product yet, seemingly so far ahead of its rivals that it had very nearly created a new genus of aircraft.
Although still powered by twin turboprops – Derby-Royce Wyverns rated at over 2,500 horse power – by constructing eighty percent of the airframe from wood to minimise weight, the Albatross was capable of flying at nearly four hundred miles per hour in level flight at altitudes of up to forty thousand feet. Basically, it was as fast or faster than any propeller driven aircraft in service in any air force anywhere, and higher-flying than practically any other aircraft.
The LAC had already prototyped a bomber version of the Albatross capable of carrying a two-thousand-ton payload on raids against targets up to a thousand miles away.
There were precisely three pre-production R1-Albatrosses in New England, in Florida undergoing operational evaluation and proving trials with the RNAS at the St John’s River Experimental Establishment. The Albatross was so secret that any reference to a ‘super plane’ being test flown was embargoed, and such reports which had leaked into the public domain had instantly been quashed as ‘imaginary sightings’, written off derisively as ‘unidentified flying objects’, with witnesses who claimed to have seen one of the marvels in the flesh, cavalierly dismissed as ‘delusional’.
“We don’t think the Cubans or the others even knew the Albatross was there,” Cuthbert Collingwood chortled. “Anyway, we photographed the harbours of Santiago de Cuba and Guantanamo Bay, and the port of Santo Domingo. What I’m being told is that the two big cruisers that ambushed the Achilles are holed up back at Guantanamo Bay, along with at least one destroyer and a large merchantman, which we think is probably the Weser. At least one of the big cruisers appears to be leaking bunker oil.”
“Why haven’t the beggars made themselves scarce?” De L’Isle asked quietly.
His companion became grim.
“Frankly, if they want to skulk away in Guantanamo Boy that’s fine by me. In any event, the more I think about it the more I’m convinced that Achilles wouldn’t have gone down without one Hell of a fight. Those two big beasts we photographed this morning might well still be licking their wounds!”
“I see… Where are we with Jamaica?”
“There is heavy fighting ongoing in the streets of Kingston. Elsewhere, we still hold about two-thirds of the island. Problematically, the enemy is landing fresh troops more or less at will now. Worse, they’ve landed medium artillery on the north coast.”
Collingwood carried on.
“We know Matthew Town on Great Inagua Island was attacked this morning and that there are significant enemy forces ashore as I speak. We only had a small garrison, eighteen Marines supported by about thirty militiamen on the island. This can only be the Triple Alliance laying the foundations for an island-hopping campaign against the Bahamas, or setting up a staging post for an invasion of southern Florida.” He pursed his lips. “You must give me a free hand to interdict these operations, sir!”
De L’Isle shook his head.
“If it was up to me, I would be sorely tempted to give you a free hand Cuthbert,” he confessed. “It is not. Moreover, as strange as it may sound, I can see good reasons for staying our hand a little longer. When we hit back, we must do it with as much weight as possible, presently, our forces are not yet all in position and we’d be feeding ships and aircraft into the fray piecemeal. In any event, that is academic. London is adamant. The eyes of the World are on us and more importantly, I thoroughly understand the primacy of sleepwalking into an avoidable general war with the German Empire.”
For all that Cuthbert Collingwood might appreciate the big picture, he had equally pressing local operational imperatives.
“I ordered HMS Devonshire and her screening destroyers to put to sea at noon. The Armada de Nuevo Granada seems to be putting to sea en masse from its bases at Vera Cruz and Corpus Christi. They seem to be organising their fleet into two distinct types of fighting column: firstly, the older ships, including vessels we’d derisively dismiss as ‘ironclads’, slow, coal-fired but some of them carrying medium calibre, five- to nine-inch rifles; and secondly, modern oil-fired turbine-power ships with if not contemporary, then 1950s or newer fire control and communications systems. The latter are at least ten or so knots faster than the former, although there are only a handful of small cruisers in the mix.”
“I saw a report saying the Cubans and the Dominicans may have brought their big-gun-ships out of reserve?” The Governor of New England prompted.
“Yes, fourteen-thousand-ton cruiser hulls mounting up to eight twelve-inch guns in four twin turrets. The oldest of those ships would have been launched in the late 1920s!” Collingwood shook his head. “They are relatively slow boats, coal-fired, with old-fashioned nineteenth century reciprocating engines. Hardly any armour protection…”
“But packing quite a hefty punch, nonetheless?”
“True,” the admiral conceded. He hesitated. “We are going to get pilloried when it transpires that the Triple Alliance has been quietly mobilising everything, and I do mean everything, to hand without us apparently noticing anything amiss.”
“Yes, but then we are dealing with quintessentially secret, closed societies run, especially on Santo Domingo and Cuba by theocratic regimes which make it hard, if not impossible, for outsiders to know what is actually going on inside them. I’m also cognisant that strictures preventing close surveillance of our likely enemies’ coasts, the pre-hostilities prohibition of reconnaissance over-flights and the disinclination of the people of New England to fund the Colonial Security Service other than at a bare subsistence level, have all been contributory factors in our apparent blindness.” Philip De L’Isle had finished his tea. China clinked as he put down his cup and saucer. “I’m sure that when future historians come to rake over our mistakes, they will note that in many ways, it has been our policy to turn a blind eye to German mischief in the Indies, without which our foes would almost certainly not have been so emboldened. That said, who among us could have envisaged that the so-called Vera Cruz Squadron, would so swiftly be at the heart of an unambiguous assault on the Empire.”
Cuthbert Collingwood nodded vigorously.
“Those bloody ships are still, so far as we know, officered and crewed by Germans under that cad von Reuter’s command!”