cthulhu said:Things are going too well for the Si-Fan.When will the heroes and villians opposing him strike back?!
I hope will see a couple of more updates before you leave for Spain, Yog.
Ditto ...me too
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Ditto ...me too
cthulhu said:Things are going too well for the Si-Fan.
Bah. The Empire of Fu Manchu is a force for good! Witness the peaceful unification of China and Japan!
The Yogi said:
I take it you've never visited San Francisco in April.
I think it was Mark twain who say the coldest winter he'd endured was a summer in San Francisco. Still there is a day or two where is gets warm enough to hit the beach. I'm just glad Buck survived. What are our heros going to do now? I think I'd start with a little question and answer game with Siwan Khan. Joe
Noop, never been in San Fran, sadly. It's always depicted in the movies as being really warm and sunny, so that fooled me. Anyways, here goes another update, probably the last one before I go away. I'll probably write some there, so if I can find an internet connection with reasonable ease, there might be some during July, but don't count on it.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
San Francisco
California, United States of America
April 15th, 1940 – D-Day
INVASION! Wailing alarm sirens had heralded it. The mayor had sent police cars out with loudspeakers to announce it. A savage aerial battle above the city was it’s prelude, in which hundreds of white-painted Zeros tangled with a motley assortment of defending fighters, ranging from P-40s and Wildcats to Bf-109F’s, looking outlandish in USAAC olive and with white stars on their wings. And when the Pan-Asian invasion fleet, hundreds of battleship-grey vessels of all sizes, was drawn up at the mouth of San Francisco bay, it began in earnest. Battleships and cruisers fired salvo after salvo at the chosen invasion beaches, were the extensive trenches and bunker systems were manned only by skeleton troops and police men that had thrown down their badges and joined the troops at the beaches toting Tommy guns and shotguns. The first wave of landing craft loaded up with Pan-Asian Imperial Marines from the great troop transport ships and set course for land leaving trails of white froth behind.
The battle for air supremacy was still hotly contested, and strangely enough, highly uneven in both directions. The Pan-Asians Zeros were mauling the new American P-40Bs, which had only sturdiness and a very slight speed advantage going for them, but the 120 Eagle Legion Bf-109F fighters, capable of a stunning 670 kph at full emergency power were literally flying circles (albeit very large ones) around the hyper-manoeuvrable but much slower Pan-Asian fighters and shooting them down in droves. The USAAC might have been bleeding, but the German Experten were having a field day.
In the swirling chaos of the aerial battle, a Bf-110F twin-engine heavy fighter painted in USAAC olive green and with white star emblems on its wings and fuselage weaved madly, trying to throw off the fire of two Pan-Asian Zeroes.
‘There’s a heap of triple-A on those battleships, Ma’am!’ Buck Rogers shouted.
‘Just keep them off my back and let me worry about flack!’ Hannah Reitsch shouted back to her rear gunner as she pushed her flight stick, making her heavy machine drop like a stone. She had drafted Buck for the job on the spot when she learned that he had lost his plane, and he had grudgingly accepted; he hadn’t trained with the “Friedrich”, and riding shotgun was better than staying grounded. As for the reason why Hannah had decided to fly the slower, less nimble Bf-110 today, it was called firepower, something the Zerstörer had in plentiful amounts. To make a difference today, she felt she needed all she could get of it.
‘Yes Ma’am!’ Buck shouted never stopping his fire. His aim was true, and while his machine-gun was a light rifle-calibre weapon, the Zero carried no armour. His target exploded and tumbled from the sky engulfed in flames. He loosened another salvo from his light MG at the other pursuing Zero. He missed, but the Pan-Asian fighter pilot manoeuvred to avoid his fire and his aim was thrown for long enough. The enemy plane was a fast receding white spot; even in level flight, the Bf-110E, capable of doing 600 kph, was much faster than the Zero, and in a dive it quickly left the Pan-Asian fighter far behind.
Hannah levelled out at about a hundred metres of altitude over the waves and guided her plane so that she came at one of the landing boats from dead ahead. A Pan-Asian sailor desperately fired the craft’s only weapon, a light machine gun at the attacking plane, but to little effect. His fire stopped suddenly when Hannah opened up on the hapless craft with every weapon on the heavily armed plane, twin 20mm cannons and four MGs. The cannons tore through the thin hull like paper, sending metal fragments, men and pieces of men flying in all directions. The massed fire of four MGs raked the packed marines, killing them by the dozens. When she pulled up after a two second pass, the boat stopped, began to list and the water around it began to cloud in crimson.
‘Good pass, Ma’am!’ Buck shouted. ‘Let’s do it again!’
Suddenly, the deck of one of the Pan-Asian carriers further out, behind the screen of battleships and cruiser that were shelling the beaches, was engulfed in a cloud of white smoke. For an instant, Buck thought the ship had taken a mortal hit, but then he saw it: four - and then four more, small delta-shapes emerged from the cloud, riding pillars of orange flame – rocket fighters!
Buck swore and tuned in the USAAC frequency. ‘Warning! Warning! We have spotted eight, repeat eight Fu fighters!’ “Fu fighter” was the unofficial US code name for the Pan-Asian rocket planes, since they were presumed to be the design of Fu Manchu. Hannah repeated the warning in German to her pilots.
Mitsubishi J8M Shusui - the "Fu fighter"
One of the lightning-fast rocket fighters skimmed the surface towards Hannah and Buck, trailing a column of water thrown into the sky by it’s wake.
‘Shit, its coming straight at us!’
‘I see it, Captain!’ the Aviatrix responded, her cool battle nerves kicking in in the uncanny way they always did in extreme do-or-die situations. In a split second, she did her tactical analysis: the Fu fighter had so much propulsion power the usual parameters of aerial combat were almost irrelevant: it could come at them from below, shoot up like… well, like a rocket and even in the climb it would go way faster than the Bf-110 would in a power dive. She had only one thing going for her – manoeuvrability. At the speed the Fu fighter was going, it would turn 180 degrees at slightly under the circumference of San Francisco. The roles were reversed.
Deciding to take maximum advantage of her only edge, she dove to literally skim the surface of the sea and headed straight for the enemy craft. In this way, the Fu fighter couldn’t fire at her except if flying level at the same altitude, or climbing way above and risk loosing sight of his prey – any dipping of the nose at its current altitude and speed would send it straight into the cold waters of the Pacific.
The black dot, inside a halo of orange fire, grew guickly in Hannah’s sights. She opened fire at what she considered extreme range, and wasn’t surprised to see a veritable torrent of large tracers flying back at her – like Buck had extrapolated, the tiny Fu fighter had a whole battery of cannon in its nose and wings; weight was just not a problem for it.
Thankful for not immediately being blown out of the sky, and knowing that the Pan-Asian pilot was just about to adjust his aim, Hannah pulled back on her stick, sending her plane soaring. The pilot of the rocket plane answered in kind, but Hannah immediately reversed her control diving again. Trying to reacquire his target, the Pan-Asian also dipped his nose, too late realising that the range was just too close for recovery – and ploughed into the sea while his plane exploded in a huge cloud of fire, steam and spraying water.
The Bf-110 in American olive drab swooped through the expanding cloud of smoke and steam, tilting its wings back and forth in celebration of victory.
‘Horrido!’ Hannah shouted, invoking in gratitude the patron saint of fighter pilots, while Buck let out a savage rebel yell. Then the crew of two raised their eyes to the battle going on above, and their hearts sank. The other Fu fighters were weaving through the sky-spanning dogfight above, leaving a trail of burning, falling German and American planes. A single burst from their powerful weaponry was enough to obliterate any enemy fighter and when the defending planes turned to aim, the Fu fighters were already long gone, leaving just their white trails of smoke behind.
A fourth of July’s worth of triple-A made Hannah and Buck forget all about anything but evading; they had strayed dangerously close to the battleships and cruisers of the Pan-Asian battle fleet. Hannah immediately veered, chased by lances of red tracers, back against the coast were the first wave of landing ships were approaching the outer coast of San Francisco Bay. A large body of them was however moving straight into the mouth of the bay, under Golden Gate Bridge.
‘They’re going straight for the city!’ Hannah said, pointing. ‘Let’s take those out first!’
‘Nah!’ Buck shouted back. ‘There’s a nasty surprise for the squints at Fort Point! Let’s strafe those hitting the beaches instead!’
As Buck knew, but the Pan-Asians didn’t, a battery of rapid-fire artillery for anti-submarine work had been emplaced on top of the Civil-war era fortification at Fort Point. Their crews now aimed their guns at the small fleet of landing craft sailing past below their noses and opened fire. It was pure slaughter – the landing craft neither had the speed to evade or the armour to withstand the automatic cannons who swatted one after another of the vessels like flies. When hit, the landing ships seemingly jumped out of the water to burst like piñatas, spreading their grisly load of shattered bodies into the waters of the Bay.
Seeing the massacre, the captain of the Pan-Asian battleship Kongo ordered his gunners to concentrate their fire on Fort Point. The armoured turrets of the main batteries turned ponderously, and then the whole great ship rocked and was obscured by smoke and fire as it fired a broadside, virtually at point-blank range for the main artillery of a battle ship, into the old fort. The brick building could offer little resistance to the gigantic shells – it blew apart as if hit by the fist of an angered God. The surviving landing boats continued on their way towards the defenceless city.
Meanwhile Buck and Hannah had taken out another landing boat and now flew over Ocean Beach, strafing groups of Pan-Asian marines as they struggled to advance against the withering machine-gun fire put up by the handful of defenders. The trench-system just in front of the beach promenade was virtually empty, but what few men there were had manned the pre-placed machine guns and so could make things difficult for the invaders – but just for a little while.
As the Bf-110F again sped over the beach, spraying MG fire, Hannah and Buck saw the invading Marines finally reach hand-grenade range from the trench line. One after another of the MG emplacements was blown up. Short burst of small-arms fire marked the demise of the last defenders.
Above, after the short change in fortunes brought about by the Fu fighters, the Allies had rallied at their departure (they only had fuel for a few minutes of flight) and the remnants of Yamamoto’s naval squadrons now limped back towards their mother ships. US bomber squadrons took off to drop their bombs on the enemy armada, but massive AA fire kept them at bay. Meanwhile, the enemy ground forces continued to move inland.
Seeing their progress, Hannah swore.
‘Buck, can you patch me up to the USAAC HQ?’ she asked.
‘Yes Ma’am. Here you go!’
‘This is Colonel Hannah Reitsch of the Eagle Legion. I want to call the evacuation of Chrissy Field, while my boys still have fuel left to land somewhere else. We’re do you want us to go?’
The reply came promptly. ‘Colonel Reitsch, we authorize your withdrawal. The mayor is going to declare San Francisco an open city, to spare the civilians. We’re relocating our own fighters to Sacramento, they can’t go any further. Can your planes reach San Diego? There’s plenty of room for you there.’
‘Affirmative, USAAC HQ. Reitsch out.’
While Hannah instructed her pilots and ground crews to bail out, Buck watched with a sinking heart how the empty landing crafts backed away from Ocean Beach for another load of soldiers. The plane turned south and San Francisco was left behind under a thin pall of smoke from the many fires. Only then did it sink in – America had lost San Francisco, and the Pan-Asian had set foot on the continent!
California, United States of America
April 15th, 1940 – D-Day
INVASION! Wailing alarm sirens had heralded it. The mayor had sent police cars out with loudspeakers to announce it. A savage aerial battle above the city was it’s prelude, in which hundreds of white-painted Zeros tangled with a motley assortment of defending fighters, ranging from P-40s and Wildcats to Bf-109F’s, looking outlandish in USAAC olive and with white stars on their wings. And when the Pan-Asian invasion fleet, hundreds of battleship-grey vessels of all sizes, was drawn up at the mouth of San Francisco bay, it began in earnest. Battleships and cruisers fired salvo after salvo at the chosen invasion beaches, were the extensive trenches and bunker systems were manned only by skeleton troops and police men that had thrown down their badges and joined the troops at the beaches toting Tommy guns and shotguns. The first wave of landing craft loaded up with Pan-Asian Imperial Marines from the great troop transport ships and set course for land leaving trails of white froth behind.
The battle for air supremacy was still hotly contested, and strangely enough, highly uneven in both directions. The Pan-Asians Zeros were mauling the new American P-40Bs, which had only sturdiness and a very slight speed advantage going for them, but the 120 Eagle Legion Bf-109F fighters, capable of a stunning 670 kph at full emergency power were literally flying circles (albeit very large ones) around the hyper-manoeuvrable but much slower Pan-Asian fighters and shooting them down in droves. The USAAC might have been bleeding, but the German Experten were having a field day.
In the swirling chaos of the aerial battle, a Bf-110F twin-engine heavy fighter painted in USAAC olive green and with white star emblems on its wings and fuselage weaved madly, trying to throw off the fire of two Pan-Asian Zeroes.
‘There’s a heap of triple-A on those battleships, Ma’am!’ Buck Rogers shouted.
‘Just keep them off my back and let me worry about flack!’ Hannah Reitsch shouted back to her rear gunner as she pushed her flight stick, making her heavy machine drop like a stone. She had drafted Buck for the job on the spot when she learned that he had lost his plane, and he had grudgingly accepted; he hadn’t trained with the “Friedrich”, and riding shotgun was better than staying grounded. As for the reason why Hannah had decided to fly the slower, less nimble Bf-110 today, it was called firepower, something the Zerstörer had in plentiful amounts. To make a difference today, she felt she needed all she could get of it.
‘Yes Ma’am!’ Buck shouted never stopping his fire. His aim was true, and while his machine-gun was a light rifle-calibre weapon, the Zero carried no armour. His target exploded and tumbled from the sky engulfed in flames. He loosened another salvo from his light MG at the other pursuing Zero. He missed, but the Pan-Asian fighter pilot manoeuvred to avoid his fire and his aim was thrown for long enough. The enemy plane was a fast receding white spot; even in level flight, the Bf-110E, capable of doing 600 kph, was much faster than the Zero, and in a dive it quickly left the Pan-Asian fighter far behind.
Hannah levelled out at about a hundred metres of altitude over the waves and guided her plane so that she came at one of the landing boats from dead ahead. A Pan-Asian sailor desperately fired the craft’s only weapon, a light machine gun at the attacking plane, but to little effect. His fire stopped suddenly when Hannah opened up on the hapless craft with every weapon on the heavily armed plane, twin 20mm cannons and four MGs. The cannons tore through the thin hull like paper, sending metal fragments, men and pieces of men flying in all directions. The massed fire of four MGs raked the packed marines, killing them by the dozens. When she pulled up after a two second pass, the boat stopped, began to list and the water around it began to cloud in crimson.
‘Good pass, Ma’am!’ Buck shouted. ‘Let’s do it again!’
Suddenly, the deck of one of the Pan-Asian carriers further out, behind the screen of battleships and cruiser that were shelling the beaches, was engulfed in a cloud of white smoke. For an instant, Buck thought the ship had taken a mortal hit, but then he saw it: four - and then four more, small delta-shapes emerged from the cloud, riding pillars of orange flame – rocket fighters!
Buck swore and tuned in the USAAC frequency. ‘Warning! Warning! We have spotted eight, repeat eight Fu fighters!’ “Fu fighter” was the unofficial US code name for the Pan-Asian rocket planes, since they were presumed to be the design of Fu Manchu. Hannah repeated the warning in German to her pilots.
Mitsubishi J8M Shusui - the "Fu fighter"
One of the lightning-fast rocket fighters skimmed the surface towards Hannah and Buck, trailing a column of water thrown into the sky by it’s wake.
‘Shit, its coming straight at us!’
‘I see it, Captain!’ the Aviatrix responded, her cool battle nerves kicking in in the uncanny way they always did in extreme do-or-die situations. In a split second, she did her tactical analysis: the Fu fighter had so much propulsion power the usual parameters of aerial combat were almost irrelevant: it could come at them from below, shoot up like… well, like a rocket and even in the climb it would go way faster than the Bf-110 would in a power dive. She had only one thing going for her – manoeuvrability. At the speed the Fu fighter was going, it would turn 180 degrees at slightly under the circumference of San Francisco. The roles were reversed.
Deciding to take maximum advantage of her only edge, she dove to literally skim the surface of the sea and headed straight for the enemy craft. In this way, the Fu fighter couldn’t fire at her except if flying level at the same altitude, or climbing way above and risk loosing sight of his prey – any dipping of the nose at its current altitude and speed would send it straight into the cold waters of the Pacific.
The black dot, inside a halo of orange fire, grew guickly in Hannah’s sights. She opened fire at what she considered extreme range, and wasn’t surprised to see a veritable torrent of large tracers flying back at her – like Buck had extrapolated, the tiny Fu fighter had a whole battery of cannon in its nose and wings; weight was just not a problem for it.
Thankful for not immediately being blown out of the sky, and knowing that the Pan-Asian pilot was just about to adjust his aim, Hannah pulled back on her stick, sending her plane soaring. The pilot of the rocket plane answered in kind, but Hannah immediately reversed her control diving again. Trying to reacquire his target, the Pan-Asian also dipped his nose, too late realising that the range was just too close for recovery – and ploughed into the sea while his plane exploded in a huge cloud of fire, steam and spraying water.
The Bf-110 in American olive drab swooped through the expanding cloud of smoke and steam, tilting its wings back and forth in celebration of victory.
‘Horrido!’ Hannah shouted, invoking in gratitude the patron saint of fighter pilots, while Buck let out a savage rebel yell. Then the crew of two raised their eyes to the battle going on above, and their hearts sank. The other Fu fighters were weaving through the sky-spanning dogfight above, leaving a trail of burning, falling German and American planes. A single burst from their powerful weaponry was enough to obliterate any enemy fighter and when the defending planes turned to aim, the Fu fighters were already long gone, leaving just their white trails of smoke behind.
A fourth of July’s worth of triple-A made Hannah and Buck forget all about anything but evading; they had strayed dangerously close to the battleships and cruisers of the Pan-Asian battle fleet. Hannah immediately veered, chased by lances of red tracers, back against the coast were the first wave of landing ships were approaching the outer coast of San Francisco Bay. A large body of them was however moving straight into the mouth of the bay, under Golden Gate Bridge.
‘They’re going straight for the city!’ Hannah said, pointing. ‘Let’s take those out first!’
‘Nah!’ Buck shouted back. ‘There’s a nasty surprise for the squints at Fort Point! Let’s strafe those hitting the beaches instead!’
As Buck knew, but the Pan-Asians didn’t, a battery of rapid-fire artillery for anti-submarine work had been emplaced on top of the Civil-war era fortification at Fort Point. Their crews now aimed their guns at the small fleet of landing craft sailing past below their noses and opened fire. It was pure slaughter – the landing craft neither had the speed to evade or the armour to withstand the automatic cannons who swatted one after another of the vessels like flies. When hit, the landing ships seemingly jumped out of the water to burst like piñatas, spreading their grisly load of shattered bodies into the waters of the Bay.
Seeing the massacre, the captain of the Pan-Asian battleship Kongo ordered his gunners to concentrate their fire on Fort Point. The armoured turrets of the main batteries turned ponderously, and then the whole great ship rocked and was obscured by smoke and fire as it fired a broadside, virtually at point-blank range for the main artillery of a battle ship, into the old fort. The brick building could offer little resistance to the gigantic shells – it blew apart as if hit by the fist of an angered God. The surviving landing boats continued on their way towards the defenceless city.
Meanwhile Buck and Hannah had taken out another landing boat and now flew over Ocean Beach, strafing groups of Pan-Asian marines as they struggled to advance against the withering machine-gun fire put up by the handful of defenders. The trench-system just in front of the beach promenade was virtually empty, but what few men there were had manned the pre-placed machine guns and so could make things difficult for the invaders – but just for a little while.
As the Bf-110F again sped over the beach, spraying MG fire, Hannah and Buck saw the invading Marines finally reach hand-grenade range from the trench line. One after another of the MG emplacements was blown up. Short burst of small-arms fire marked the demise of the last defenders.
Above, after the short change in fortunes brought about by the Fu fighters, the Allies had rallied at their departure (they only had fuel for a few minutes of flight) and the remnants of Yamamoto’s naval squadrons now limped back towards their mother ships. US bomber squadrons took off to drop their bombs on the enemy armada, but massive AA fire kept them at bay. Meanwhile, the enemy ground forces continued to move inland.
Seeing their progress, Hannah swore.
‘Buck, can you patch me up to the USAAC HQ?’ she asked.
‘Yes Ma’am. Here you go!’
‘This is Colonel Hannah Reitsch of the Eagle Legion. I want to call the evacuation of Chrissy Field, while my boys still have fuel left to land somewhere else. We’re do you want us to go?’
The reply came promptly. ‘Colonel Reitsch, we authorize your withdrawal. The mayor is going to declare San Francisco an open city, to spare the civilians. We’re relocating our own fighters to Sacramento, they can’t go any further. Can your planes reach San Diego? There’s plenty of room for you there.’
‘Affirmative, USAAC HQ. Reitsch out.’
While Hannah instructed her pilots and ground crews to bail out, Buck watched with a sinking heart how the empty landing crafts backed away from Ocean Beach for another load of soldiers. The plane turned south and San Francisco was left behind under a thin pall of smoke from the many fires. Only then did it sink in – America had lost San Francisco, and the Pan-Asian had set foot on the continent!
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I hope the day when Fu's hordes (and that includes those pesky 'Fu Fighters' ) can be thrown back into the sea isn't too far off!
) can be thrown back into the sea isn't too far off!
A sweet, sweet update!
Pan-Asians in San Fran, not looking good! Hopefully the US rallies quick!
Pan-Asians in San Fran, not looking good! Hopefully the US rallies quick!
Oh my, Fu has landed! A black day for the United States.
That aside 'Fu Fighters'- As a Dave Grohl fan I nod in approval
That aside 'Fu Fighters'-
As a Dave Grohl fan I nod in approval
Wow, the Pan-Asian Fu fighters sure kick ass.
That was a great update. I will be looking forward to more on the invasion of Kalifornia.
That was a great update. I will be looking forward to more on the invasion of Kalifornia.
Arilou said:
Pshhh. I fully expect superior German engineering and American production to kick in soon. No way rocket interceptors would be able to stand up to a fleet of German-designed jet fighters manufactured at the rate of a bazillion a day in American automobile factories.
The Yogi said:
uh oh ...hope the germans can lend the US a panzer division or two to help out?!
Uh-oh! The Pan-Asians seem to be unstoppable under Fu's diabolical leadership. The good guys need to kick it up a few gears and start foiling some evil plans!
Arilou said:
Good question... If Pan-Asia moves fast enough, the only 'good guys' left might be Nazis.