Chapter Thirty-Two:
Further Preparations
The Tu-2 medium bomber, named Zaichik, was being buffeted by the prop-wash of the B-25 that it was keeping close formation with. The pilot and co-pilot fought with the controls. They would normally have given the bigger bomber a much wider berth, but the whole point of this practice was to get as many medium bombers and fighters tucked in and stacked above the Lend-Lease B-25J as possible.
Everyone had been told that the B-25 had a magic box inside of it that would ward off some electric anti-aircraft round that could feel their plane and explode, when it got enough close to your aircraft. These Yankee cannon shells did not even have to hit you to explode, but had some kind of built-in electronic sensing device called the VT fuse. He had no idea what VT stood for, but the electronic machine in the B-25 was supposed to keep the anti-aircraft shell from killing them, by tricking the fuse into go off before it should. They joked that it better be a long a very long distance away to work.
The magic box only had a limited range though, so you had to fit as many planes as close as you could, above the bigger American bomber, as the shells would “feel” the magic box, and explode below. The pilot hoped far below. Bombers in the VVS were not used to flying in tight formation, so there had been some crashes, but hours and hours of practice were paying off. He didn’t know how long their new-found discipline would last, once they started falling out of the sky. They were told to be like a school of fish if one falls you tighten up and get in closer. Easy for them to say, sitting behind their big desks, back in Paris.
He wished he was flying the B-25, but that was for Vlad, and not him. All his friend Vlad had to do was to fly the route to, and from, the target. He didn’t have to worry about crashing into other planes. They had to worry about crashing into him. They were told that if they crashed into the B-25, their families would be killed, and no one wanted that. Yet, the tighter you could get in formation to the big bomber, the better your chances, and the chances of your friends, were, against the American anti-aircraft shells.
The thundering sound of the box of planes made a noise he hadn’t heard in well over a year. Not since the Allies changed the route that their raids took in 1945 had he heard the sound of five-hundred or more pairs of aircraft engines droning on towards their destination. The Soviet engines have a higher pitch to them and a little background whining noise that was noticeably different from the engines of the big B-17’s and Lancasters of the Yanks and Brits. They also flew noticeably lower and were much smaller aircraft.
They definitely seemed to be faster, but that could be because they were closer going overhead. The thing that actually got his attention was the unusual formation. They seemed to be clustered as close as possible to what looked like a bigger bomber. He thought it looked like an American B-25. The fact that the B-25 looked bigger gave him some perspective on how much smaller the other bombers were compared to the B-17. It was as if they expected the B-25 to protect them from harm.
He would have to figure out a way to get a hold of his contact Philippe. Perhaps what he was seeing would be of some interest to someone in England. From what he was hearing the Soviets were about to attack once again. He did not want his centuries-old enemy and recent ally to be harmed. It was comforting to know that if things got too bad he and his family could possibly get across the channel and join his cousin in exile. He had endured the boche, but he did not know about les Russkoffs. They were a different animal. At least with the boche you knew exactly where you stood and could play up to their sense of superiority. With les Russkoffs, you didn’t know where you stood. Plus their language, and even their body language, was so very different. Even the way they laughed was more sinister than that of les salles boche. Perhaps it was just a matter of familiarity. Whatever it was he was going to help the devil he knew, rather than the one from the East.
Yes he would track down Philippe and pass on his observations about the strange behavior of the newest invader to strut over his homeland. They too would pass, just as the Germans had. He was confident of that.
The frontend loader lifted the piece of paving stone along with hundreds of others and let it drop in an avalanche of dirt, dust and gravel onto what was to become another airfield for the VVS or Red Army Air Forces. All in all the Soviets had tripled the takeoff capacity of the areas used by the Germans in 1940 for their Battle of Britain. The Soviets had an immense advantage over the RAF’s previous opponent, the Luftwaffe. Their planes had the range to reach all of the British Isles along with a longer built-in loiter time. They could take off and reach their intended targets and loiter for hours in some cases. The typical Messerschmitt Bf-109E of 1940 only had a loiter time of ten minutes during the first Battle of Britain.
Our piece of paving stone landed near the top of the pile and when the bulldozer leveled the pile with its weathered side up, once again facing the French sun. This is the side that saw quite a bit of history before it became part of this runway near Dunkirk.
It was first laid down on the corner of Rue Clemenceau and Rue du President Poincare. Today it is near the Plaza Jean Bart within sight of the Bell Tower.
The Dunkirk area and its excellent harbor, has been much disputed over between Spain, the Netherlands, England and France, over the past few centuries. At the beginning of the Eighty Years’ War Dunkirk was briefly in the hands of the Dutch rebels from 1577. Spanish forces under the Duke of Parma, re-established Spanish rule in 1583, and it became a base for the notorious Dunkirkers.
The Dunkirkers were legalized pirates for the Spanish, and for close to eighty years, were a thorn in the side of the British and Dutch. They captured hundreds of coastal vessels and even joined some to the great battles of the day. They are credited with designing the frigate in order to evade the blockading Dutch and English. A ship fast enough to elude a ship-of-the-line, yet strong enough to run down and destroy any other vessel of the time.
Our piece of paving stone saw the boots of many an invader from the Spanish, to the French, then back to the Spanish, and briefly, the Dutch, and so on. Not that it cared whose boots were gradually wearing it down. In 1658 even the British owned it, but they sold it to France in 1662 and, it had remained in French hands until 1940. Then the hobnailed jackboots of the Germans took a good millimeter off our stone.