The Mongolian Cavalry? I suppose this will be the Mongols that were talked about? 
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Well, this all fine and dandy, but when? WHEN?! Will we see the Americans wipe the floor with the pan-asian horde?!
...sorry, Yog, just a bit frustrated with all the reversals...splendid update old sport. Keep it up.
...sorry, Yog, just a bit frustrated with all the reversals...splendid update old sport. Keep it up.
The Mongolians are coming!
Nice to see Skorzeny on the ground though, hopefully he can help turn the tide.
Nice to see Skorzeny on the ground though, hopefully he can help turn the tide.
I'm pretty sure that we have never been nor ever will be disappointed, save at the tragic reversals that the US keeps running into. But with SKORZENY over there now, things should get really interesting. Those Pan-Asians won't know what hit them.
cthulhu said:Well, this all fine and dandy, but when? WHEN?! Will we see the Americans wipe the floor with the pan-asian horde?!
...sorry, Yog, just a bit frustrated with all the reversals...splendid update old sport. Keep it up.
Well, my esteemed readers, this has to do a bit with the format of the story. A common point of view expressed about AARs is that they are more fun when the player (which usually equals the good guys) has difficulties or is beaten outright. In EOFM, the perspectives are shifted, so to speak, so that the playerLyon_Man said:I'm pretty sure that we have never been nor ever will be disappointed, save at the tragic reversals that the US keeps running into. But with SKORZENY over there now, things should get really interesting. Those Pan-Asians won't know what hit them.
mainly directs the efforts of the villains of the story. And then, no matter how improved the AI is, the good guys are in for a lot of grief. But on the other hand, this IS a pulp tribute, and in pulp, the good guys ALWAYS pull through in the end. Don't they? At least, that's the hope you can cling to as the iron fist of Fu Manchu closes around his prey, THE WOOORLD! MWHAHAHAHA! Anyway, there is the possibility that things will get worse, even a lot worse for the Free World before they get better!
Yeah, it becomes a challenge sometimes having your protagonists be your country, as as the player you tend to go from success to success. And that is just boring, because stories need conflict and challenge!
The Yogi said:Well, my esteemed readers, this has to do a bit with the format of the story. A common point of view expressed about AARs is that they are more fun when the player (which usually equals the good guys) has difficulties or is beaten outright. In EOFM, the perspectives are shifted, so to speak, so that the player
Anyway, there is the possibility that things will get worse, even a lot worse for the Free World before they get better!
Come on. No way Fu Manchu can win at this point. Even if Pan-Asia advanced to the gates of Washington, those "top men" will stop "examining" the Ark of the Covenant and use it to fry every Mongol, Chinese, and Japanese soldier on American soil. Better yet, Superman's been around since 1938 if I remember correctly. He could take on all of Pan-Asia if nothing else worked. My point is this: if Fu Manchu wins, I'm boycotting all your AARs.
Except TEATL, which you really should update...
I don't doubt that things will continue to get worse as the story goes on, but I'm still clinging to that tiny shred of hope that, somehow, by some crazy miracle, the good guys will win the day. Please?
Yogi will switch to the amis when he wants to I'm sure. That's why I asked who is he playing thanks for answering btw
The Ark is there, sure, since it was in the Indy continuity... but Superman isn't. Neither DC Comics nor Marvel's continuities are integrated into this, nor any other Superhero other than the Shadow, if he can be considered as such.dublish said:Come on. No way Fu Manchu can win at this point. Even if Pan-Asia advanced to the gates of Washington, those "top men" will stop "examining" the Ark of the Covenant and use it to fry every Mongol, Chinese, and Japanese soldier on American soil. Better yet, Superman's been around since 1938 if I remember correctly. He could take on all of Pan-Asia if nothing else worked. My point is this: if Fu Manchu wins, I'm boycotting all your AARs.
And I know I should... but right now I have a bad inspirational down on TEATL. It will pass, eventually, but there's also the question of a few other games currently fighting for my time - there's still Mount & Blade Last Days of the Third Age mod, there's Call of Cthulhu - Dark corners of the earth, and I just went and bought Oblivion, which I haven't even installed yet. So little time, so much to play...
East of San Francisco
California, United States of America
April 30th, 1940
With the setting sun painting the sky orange behind, the latest incarnation of Buck’s Merlin-powered P-40B stuck closely behind the Messerschmitt Bf-109F of Colonel Hannah Reitsch, which despite it’s USAAC markings still carried her trademark Queen of Spades playing card painted under the canopy. A full mixed Gruppe of thirty Bf-109Fs fighters and ten Bf-110E Zerstörers, all in Schwarm-formation made up the attack force for this mission, which in essence, and despite the strenght assigned to it, was a diversion.
The plan was simple – there was abundant evidence from aeiral recon that the Pan-Asians were planning to use the newly arrived 14th Mongolian Cavalry Army in an assault on Sacramento. Because the American forces had dug in deep around the city, there was every reason to expect that, if he possessed any, the enemy would use thermobaric bombs in the assault, and that they would now be stockpiling in the airstrips were the Pan-Asian tactical bomber squadrons were based.
Hannah’s air group would pound one of these strips in a sunset raid, shooting and bombing up as much as possible. Buck would be in charge of the ground attack element since his P-40 with six machineguns was vastly more suited for a ground attack role than the lightly armed Bf-109Fs and still maneouvrable enough to be taking on enemy fighters. Taking advantage of the confusion, Skorzeny’s group would make a low-altitude jump in the vicinity, in the hope that all enemy attention would be focused on the aerial assault. The commandos would then hit the airstrip, wipe out the defenders, procure a thermobaric bomb and call in a transport plane to fly it, and them, to safety.
This sounded very simple, but it called for pretty constricting rules of engagement for Hannah’s group: no building which could be suspected to house the thermobaric weapons could be hit, the runway could not be cratered, and the assault had to be kept up for long enough to allow the defence forces time to come out and fight, so that they could be decimated. Buck hoped that he and his force of Bf-110s would have the cool to sort targets correctly in the heat of battle. While he was fully committed to the success of the mission, he didn’t particularily like the beefy Austrian Nazi, and for some reason he had especially not liked the way Hannah had thrown herself around his neck when greeting him, or the way he had then patted her behind in a most unbrotherly fashion, and never mind that she had later made clear that she and “Otto” were just old friends – but why should he care one way or the other, he thought with a forced mental shrug.
‘This is Queen, target in sight!’
The attack group had carefully chosen it’s route of approach so that they would come at the air strip from the direction of the setting sun. Unfortunately, that was not enough to achieve surprise; the Pan-Asians were not that lax in their vigilance.
‘There’s Indians taking off from the runway!’ someone shouted. ‘They’ve seen us!’
‘Fighters; follow me and take them out!’ Hannah ordered, pushing her throttle to full war emergency power. ‘Good hunting, Buck!’
‘Good hunting, Queen!’ Buck replied. ‘All right – attack group, follow me! Take out the flak positions first!’
The Eagle Legion group split into two layers, the heavy fighters led by Buck Rogers skimmed the ground and spread out, each plane aiming for a sandbag parapet with a Type 98 20mm AA gun, a Japanese-made clone of a similar weapon manufactured by Oerlikon. These opened up on the approaching American planes with a full-scale barrage. Red tracers flew past Buck’s canopy but the sun in his back made aiming difficult for the enemy gunners and he wasn’t hit. One of the Bf-110s took a hit in the starboard engine and veered off, trailing thick black smoke. The others returned fire with their powerful armament of four MGs and two 20mm cannons each. Buck, who had no cannons but two .50 cal and four .30 cal MGs waited a few seconds longer before riddling the enemy emplacement with bullets. It disappeared momentarily behind a cloud of flying dust as sandbags ripped apart and their contents sprayed in all directions. Within a few seconds, the enemy guns stopped firing. There was no way to know if it was because the gunners had taken cover or had been killed, or a combo of these two answers.
The ground attack group roared in at lowest altitude over the airfield where already several wrecks were flaming on the ground, swatted like flies by the German fighter aces as they belatedly tried to take off. Buck now aimed for a group of three Nakajima fighters, which were just having their engines started up by ground crews. Buck turned slightly to line up all three planes and then pressed his trigger. His six machineguns savaged one after another of the lightly built enemy planes, literally shooting them to pieces before swooping past their flaming ruins. The Bf-110s did likewise, quickly and brutally quenching all attempts at putting more fighters in the air with MG- and cannon-fire. Then, as they thundered by over the base, they released their bomb loads. Each twin-engine fighter-bomber carried four 250 kg bombs in racks under the fuselage, and so a total of 9.000 kg of high explosive suddenly went off all over the base with catastrophic results. Fuel dumps blew sky-high, sending pillars of flame twenty or thirty metres into the night sky. Barracks and offices were smashed to fragments, hangars split open and collapsed, gun emplacements were obliterated in flashes of white, red and black. Then they were past the target, speeding over empty desert-like ground. Not surprisingly, many of the enemy AA-guns had survived and now resumed their fire; red tracers chased Buck’s P-40 across the dark eastern sky, but now the light from the many fires played hell with the night vision of the gunners and no more planes were hit.
‘How’re you doing, Queen?’ Buck enquired as he ponderously swung around his unit in a wide arc, to come back at the base for another pass from another direction.
‘Not… too bad!’ came Hannah’s strained voice over the radio. ‘These Nakajima fighters turn tight, but they’re slow, outgunned and outnumbered, we’ll have them cleaned out shortly. We’re down one plane, one of the crazy bastards rammed him.’
‘Scratch one of the attack group too, he had to turn back with one engine burning. Look out now, we’re coming in low from the west! Team, let's take out the parked bombers now!’
‘Understood!’
The Ju-52 seemingly crawled at close to stalling speed low over the darkening desert. Not far away, AA, bomb-blasts and secondary fires created an impressive pyrotechnic show as the Eagle Legion pounded the target. Inside the red-lighted passenger compartment, Otto Skorzeny stood at the open door of the aircraft, the cord of his parachute already connected to the hook by the door by the jumpmaster.
‘Allright, go!’ came the command and the Austrian threw himself into the dusk. The parachute opened immediately, for which he was grateful; with a jump at this low altitude, there was not even any use for a backup chute – even the main one would only just have time to deploy before he hit the ground. Barely had he recovered from the savage braking of his fall when he saw the uneven ground, covered in underbrush and bathed in gold by the last dying rays of the sun rush up to meet him. Just as he had been taught, he rolled with the fall and made safe, if painful and bruising landfall, knocking the wind out of him. As he pulled together his parachute, he wondered how many men he’d have lost in the jump – it seemed inconceivable that all his men, of which only a few were experienced paratroopers, should have made it.
After checking his MP-38 was loaded and ready and loosening the Runesword in it’s scabbard on his back, Otto Skorzeny set out to try to re-assemble his unit.
California, United States of America
April 30th, 1940
With the setting sun painting the sky orange behind, the latest incarnation of Buck’s Merlin-powered P-40B stuck closely behind the Messerschmitt Bf-109F of Colonel Hannah Reitsch, which despite it’s USAAC markings still carried her trademark Queen of Spades playing card painted under the canopy. A full mixed Gruppe of thirty Bf-109Fs fighters and ten Bf-110E Zerstörers, all in Schwarm-formation made up the attack force for this mission, which in essence, and despite the strenght assigned to it, was a diversion.
The plan was simple – there was abundant evidence from aeiral recon that the Pan-Asians were planning to use the newly arrived 14th Mongolian Cavalry Army in an assault on Sacramento. Because the American forces had dug in deep around the city, there was every reason to expect that, if he possessed any, the enemy would use thermobaric bombs in the assault, and that they would now be stockpiling in the airstrips were the Pan-Asian tactical bomber squadrons were based.
Hannah’s air group would pound one of these strips in a sunset raid, shooting and bombing up as much as possible. Buck would be in charge of the ground attack element since his P-40 with six machineguns was vastly more suited for a ground attack role than the lightly armed Bf-109Fs and still maneouvrable enough to be taking on enemy fighters. Taking advantage of the confusion, Skorzeny’s group would make a low-altitude jump in the vicinity, in the hope that all enemy attention would be focused on the aerial assault. The commandos would then hit the airstrip, wipe out the defenders, procure a thermobaric bomb and call in a transport plane to fly it, and them, to safety.
This sounded very simple, but it called for pretty constricting rules of engagement for Hannah’s group: no building which could be suspected to house the thermobaric weapons could be hit, the runway could not be cratered, and the assault had to be kept up for long enough to allow the defence forces time to come out and fight, so that they could be decimated. Buck hoped that he and his force of Bf-110s would have the cool to sort targets correctly in the heat of battle. While he was fully committed to the success of the mission, he didn’t particularily like the beefy Austrian Nazi, and for some reason he had especially not liked the way Hannah had thrown herself around his neck when greeting him, or the way he had then patted her behind in a most unbrotherly fashion, and never mind that she had later made clear that she and “Otto” were just old friends – but why should he care one way or the other, he thought with a forced mental shrug.
‘This is Queen, target in sight!’
The attack group had carefully chosen it’s route of approach so that they would come at the air strip from the direction of the setting sun. Unfortunately, that was not enough to achieve surprise; the Pan-Asians were not that lax in their vigilance.
‘There’s Indians taking off from the runway!’ someone shouted. ‘They’ve seen us!’
‘Fighters; follow me and take them out!’ Hannah ordered, pushing her throttle to full war emergency power. ‘Good hunting, Buck!’
‘Good hunting, Queen!’ Buck replied. ‘All right – attack group, follow me! Take out the flak positions first!’
The Eagle Legion group split into two layers, the heavy fighters led by Buck Rogers skimmed the ground and spread out, each plane aiming for a sandbag parapet with a Type 98 20mm AA gun, a Japanese-made clone of a similar weapon manufactured by Oerlikon. These opened up on the approaching American planes with a full-scale barrage. Red tracers flew past Buck’s canopy but the sun in his back made aiming difficult for the enemy gunners and he wasn’t hit. One of the Bf-110s took a hit in the starboard engine and veered off, trailing thick black smoke. The others returned fire with their powerful armament of four MGs and two 20mm cannons each. Buck, who had no cannons but two .50 cal and four .30 cal MGs waited a few seconds longer before riddling the enemy emplacement with bullets. It disappeared momentarily behind a cloud of flying dust as sandbags ripped apart and their contents sprayed in all directions. Within a few seconds, the enemy guns stopped firing. There was no way to know if it was because the gunners had taken cover or had been killed, or a combo of these two answers.
The ground attack group roared in at lowest altitude over the airfield where already several wrecks were flaming on the ground, swatted like flies by the German fighter aces as they belatedly tried to take off. Buck now aimed for a group of three Nakajima fighters, which were just having their engines started up by ground crews. Buck turned slightly to line up all three planes and then pressed his trigger. His six machineguns savaged one after another of the lightly built enemy planes, literally shooting them to pieces before swooping past their flaming ruins. The Bf-110s did likewise, quickly and brutally quenching all attempts at putting more fighters in the air with MG- and cannon-fire. Then, as they thundered by over the base, they released their bomb loads. Each twin-engine fighter-bomber carried four 250 kg bombs in racks under the fuselage, and so a total of 9.000 kg of high explosive suddenly went off all over the base with catastrophic results. Fuel dumps blew sky-high, sending pillars of flame twenty or thirty metres into the night sky. Barracks and offices were smashed to fragments, hangars split open and collapsed, gun emplacements were obliterated in flashes of white, red and black. Then they were past the target, speeding over empty desert-like ground. Not surprisingly, many of the enemy AA-guns had survived and now resumed their fire; red tracers chased Buck’s P-40 across the dark eastern sky, but now the light from the many fires played hell with the night vision of the gunners and no more planes were hit.
‘How’re you doing, Queen?’ Buck enquired as he ponderously swung around his unit in a wide arc, to come back at the base for another pass from another direction.
‘Not… too bad!’ came Hannah’s strained voice over the radio. ‘These Nakajima fighters turn tight, but they’re slow, outgunned and outnumbered, we’ll have them cleaned out shortly. We’re down one plane, one of the crazy bastards rammed him.’
‘Scratch one of the attack group too, he had to turn back with one engine burning. Look out now, we’re coming in low from the west! Team, let's take out the parked bombers now!’
‘Understood!’
****
The Ju-52 seemingly crawled at close to stalling speed low over the darkening desert. Not far away, AA, bomb-blasts and secondary fires created an impressive pyrotechnic show as the Eagle Legion pounded the target. Inside the red-lighted passenger compartment, Otto Skorzeny stood at the open door of the aircraft, the cord of his parachute already connected to the hook by the door by the jumpmaster.
‘Allright, go!’ came the command and the Austrian threw himself into the dusk. The parachute opened immediately, for which he was grateful; with a jump at this low altitude, there was not even any use for a backup chute – even the main one would only just have time to deploy before he hit the ground. Barely had he recovered from the savage braking of his fall when he saw the uneven ground, covered in underbrush and bathed in gold by the last dying rays of the sun rush up to meet him. Just as he had been taught, he rolled with the fall and made safe, if painful and bruising landfall, knocking the wind out of him. As he pulled together his parachute, he wondered how many men he’d have lost in the jump – it seemed inconceivable that all his men, of which only a few were experienced paratroopers, should have made it.
After checking his MP-38 was loaded and ready and loosening the Runesword in it’s scabbard on his back, Otto Skorzeny set out to try to re-assemble his unit.
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i'm of the opinion that Fu Manchu is the good guy.
Insofar as his goal is the same as most - acquire the most Victory Points.
And at least one power he is opposing is worse (Skorzeny's) and the rest are the proverbial speedbumps.
Belated YAY! for the update, btw.
Insofar as his goal is the same as most - acquire the most Victory Points.
And at least one power he is opposing is worse (Skorzeny's) and the rest are the proverbial speedbumps.
Belated YAY! for the update, btw.
Tskb18 said:
They are indeed very very very bad people. But they still got the coolest hardware and uniforms, and thus have my support
Thanks for all your comments guys!
Here goes the next update. With some luck, since I began writing the next one before this (but decided to go back thanks to some good advice by our friend Mettermrck), it might well be up today too - two updates in a day, you cannot complain about the pace now, eh?
Here goes the next update. With some luck, since I began writing the next one before this (but decided to go back thanks to some good advice by our friend Mettermrck), it might well be up today too - two updates in a day, you cannot complain about the pace now, eh?
East of San Francisco
California, United States of America
April 30th, 1940
A few hours after sundown, death was stalking the surviving crew at the Pan-Asian airstrip in the form of crawling grey shapes. There was little cover of terrain, excepting sparse low bushes and some rocks, but darkness did cover Skorzeny’s commandos as they drew ever closer to the buildings still standing at one end of the field. The many fires still burning in bombed out buildings, wrecked aircraft and most especially, the gutted fuel depot helped too, since they blinded the Pan-Asians who were mostly working at putting them out. And there’s a quality with large fires in the night which draws the eye too them, especially when the ones looking were feeling relatively safe, being far behind the front and relieved that the air strike was over.
Thus the soldiers manning the four machine-gun posts could not see how far out in the night, four German snipers aimed scoped Mauser rifles at their heads. At the agreed upon time, when all the assault teams were supposed to be in place, they fired almost as one. The gunners dropped with their steel helmets and skulls cleanly pierced by 7,92mm bullets and instants later, the loaders joined their forefathers too, the snipers having shifted their aims.
The MG-34 emplaced at the far end of the field began pouring fire at any visible targets, it’s tracers drawing all eyes too them as they flew with apparent and deceptive slowness through the night. Meanwhile silent shapes had risen from the ground and sprinted towards the built up area, never stopping until they could rest their backs against the nearest standing barracks.
Most of Skorzeny’s men carried MP-38s but some had exchanged them for American semi-automatic Garand rifles. The fast-firing yet accurate weapon was universally loved by the Eagle Legion soldiers, to the point that General Rommel had asked that his Panzergrenadier riflemen be equipped with them. Capitalising on the current dependency of the Americans on German aid, an agreement had already been reached between the Governments of the United States and the Reich to allow Mauser to license-build Garand rifles in Germany. In all probability Garands would end up replacing the venerable Mauser as the standard personal weapon of the Wehrmacht within a year or so.
Skorzeny checked his MP38 a last time, pulled a hand-grenade from his harness, inhaled deeply and shouted out the attack order:
‘Vortreten, feuer frei!
He led by example by rushing along the outer wall of the barracks building and at the first window, he smashed it with the barrel of his weapon, threw in the grenade and dove to the ground. A sharp explosion shook the light structure and he jumped to his feet. A Pan-Asian officer, bleeding from several small wounds stumbled out of the door holding an automatic pistol. Skorzeny shot him without pausing and jumped through the door over the twitching body, rolling on the floor and coming to his feet. There were no more survivors in the large dormitory, but several bodies, partially or completely shredded by the grenade. More gunfire and grenade detonations were heard from other parts of the base, as Skorzeny left the charnel scene behind.
Once outside, he noticed the fighting already seemed to be winding down, and within minutes his sergeants came to report that all resistance had ceased and the base was secure, with no casualties suffered. About thirty Pan-Asians had been killed or found dead. No quarter had been given, nor indeed asked for – the Pan-Asian troops here had been former Japanese Army Aviation and surrender was not a part of their military ethos.
‘Herr Sturmbannführer, we have found the aerial ordnance depot!’ one of the sergeants reported.
‘Lead the way, Feldwebel. Let’s see if we have what we came for.’
A small cube-like building of reinforced concrete was stuffed floor to roof with stacks of 250 kg bombs of Japanese manufacture, but three much larger, fat-looking bombs were laid out on small carts near the entrance and marked with Japanese letters.
‘Dieter! What do you make of this?’ Skorzeny shouted, calling for the one soldier that he had been able to find that had some knowledge of Asian languages. The former academic turned Brandenburger self-consciously polished his glasses before leaning over the large weapons.
‘It reads… fuel bomb, 1000 kilograms… I think this is our price, Herr Sturmbannführer!’
‘Thank you so very much HERR Professor!’ the Austrian answered dryly, not bothering any more to countermand the Herr-calling that he as a Waffen-SS man found so offensive but which was second nature to Wehrmacht troops.
‘It’s much smaller than the San Francisco weapons, by all estimates they were two to three times as large’ Grothe, the Luftwaffe ordnance expert, objected. ‘But they were locally made weapons for a special mission, and would in any case be too big for the standard Pan-Asian tactical bomber, the Mitsubishi Ki-21 which has a 1000 kg combat payload.’
Skorzeny sighed. ‘Just tell me if this is what we came for, Grothe. There’ll be plenty time for wanking back at Reno.’
‘Enschuldigung, Herr Sturmbannführer!’ Grothe replied, looking embarrassed. ‘Yes, I believe it is!’
‘That’s all I need to know. Radio, call for extraction!’
Captain Koji Kabuto was a brave and competent officer. He had fought the Chinese in Manchuria as a part of the late General Hata’s staff but, unlike many of his colleagues he had been well pleased with the Peace of the Two Emperor’s and the genesis of the Pan-Asian Empire. His enthusiasm for the new Imperial cause had insured him being given a command as garrison commander of an air base during the war with America. But now, in his very first action, his command had been ignominiously wiped out and, wounded in a leg by machine-gun fire, he had been reduced to playing dead to avoid being finished off. If given the chance, Koji decided, he would atone later for his shameful failure with seppuku, but first he needed to strike back. The enemy raiders had made sure early on that the radio crew was dead, and they had shot up the main radio controls, but being in a hurry they hadn’t bothered to examine the radio equipment carefully enough to discover that there was a small backup unit, a man-portable short-range device. This would prove their undoing. While the enemy soldiers, apparently German elite troops were searching the ammunition dumps, Kabuto had crawled painfully into the radio shack, stopping now and then to resume his role as corps while patrolling enemy soldiers walked by. Finally he had reached his destination, tuned in the nearest artillery director and called for a fire mission. His revenge accomplished, he leaned back against the wooden wall of the shack to happily await the end. It was not long in coming.
The USAAC C-47 descended steadily towards the runway, which was lined by Skorzeny’s troops holding torches. The two thermobaric bombs waited in their carts by the end of it – just to make sure the Reich got it’s due, the scarred Austrian had decided to bring home both weapons, in case the Americans insisted on keeping one for themselves, which was likely. Suddenly a far too familiar noise, pierced through the droning of the transport’s radial engines. Instantly, flashbacks from the campaign in Belgium and France returned to Skorzeny’s mind.
‘Incoooming! Take cover!’ he shouted.
As 30 kg 149mm shells began raining down on the base, every German soldier was hugging the heaving ground, trying to force himself by sheer willpower down through the hard, dry soil. The barrage lasted for thirty interminable seconds, and when it was over, one third of the troops did not rise to see the transport veering off again, soon disappearing into the night. Screams of pain and anguish echoed through the night as Skorzeny surveyed the disaster. The runway had been cratered beyond any hope of being used without prior repairs. And the artillery strike meant the enemy knew they were there.
‘Hedgehog formation!’ he ordered, and as the troops began arranging themselves for all around dense, he added ‘Sergeants to me!’
The four NCOs crouched next to their commander, looking worried. ‘We need to move out,’ he explained somewhat redundantly, ‘but we can’t very well carry a one tonne bomb, or the wounded for that matter. Did anyone see a truck?’
‘Yes, Sturmbannführer’, an Oberscharführer of the Leibstandarte answered. ‘There are some captured American vehicles parked behind the bombed out hangar. Some of them might still work, or maybe we can fix up one by cannibalising the others.’
‘Right. Let’s get cracking then. I don’t fancy still sitting here when the frigging hordes of Genghis Khan come thundering to rape our asses.’
Twenty minutes later, a small caravan of three Dodge trucks moved out over small dirt roads towards the distant American lines, leaving the smouldering base behind. When a Mongolian cavalry patrol examined the base an half an hour after that, they first found the corpse of Captain Koji Kabuto in the radio shack. He had committed seppuku with his Type 98 officer’s sword. Their next find was the demolition charge wired to the door of the ammunitions depot.
Twenty-five kilometres away, Sturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny and his men had no trouble hearing the blast as it obliterated most of the airbase and all of the enemy patrol. Despite the grim circumstances, Skorzeny allowed himself an evil little smile and a chuckle.
California, United States of America
April 30th, 1940
A few hours after sundown, death was stalking the surviving crew at the Pan-Asian airstrip in the form of crawling grey shapes. There was little cover of terrain, excepting sparse low bushes and some rocks, but darkness did cover Skorzeny’s commandos as they drew ever closer to the buildings still standing at one end of the field. The many fires still burning in bombed out buildings, wrecked aircraft and most especially, the gutted fuel depot helped too, since they blinded the Pan-Asians who were mostly working at putting them out. And there’s a quality with large fires in the night which draws the eye too them, especially when the ones looking were feeling relatively safe, being far behind the front and relieved that the air strike was over.
Thus the soldiers manning the four machine-gun posts could not see how far out in the night, four German snipers aimed scoped Mauser rifles at their heads. At the agreed upon time, when all the assault teams were supposed to be in place, they fired almost as one. The gunners dropped with their steel helmets and skulls cleanly pierced by 7,92mm bullets and instants later, the loaders joined their forefathers too, the snipers having shifted their aims.
The MG-34 emplaced at the far end of the field began pouring fire at any visible targets, it’s tracers drawing all eyes too them as they flew with apparent and deceptive slowness through the night. Meanwhile silent shapes had risen from the ground and sprinted towards the built up area, never stopping until they could rest their backs against the nearest standing barracks.
Most of Skorzeny’s men carried MP-38s but some had exchanged them for American semi-automatic Garand rifles. The fast-firing yet accurate weapon was universally loved by the Eagle Legion soldiers, to the point that General Rommel had asked that his Panzergrenadier riflemen be equipped with them. Capitalising on the current dependency of the Americans on German aid, an agreement had already been reached between the Governments of the United States and the Reich to allow Mauser to license-build Garand rifles in Germany. In all probability Garands would end up replacing the venerable Mauser as the standard personal weapon of the Wehrmacht within a year or so.
Skorzeny checked his MP38 a last time, pulled a hand-grenade from his harness, inhaled deeply and shouted out the attack order:
‘Vortreten, feuer frei!
He led by example by rushing along the outer wall of the barracks building and at the first window, he smashed it with the barrel of his weapon, threw in the grenade and dove to the ground. A sharp explosion shook the light structure and he jumped to his feet. A Pan-Asian officer, bleeding from several small wounds stumbled out of the door holding an automatic pistol. Skorzeny shot him without pausing and jumped through the door over the twitching body, rolling on the floor and coming to his feet. There were no more survivors in the large dormitory, but several bodies, partially or completely shredded by the grenade. More gunfire and grenade detonations were heard from other parts of the base, as Skorzeny left the charnel scene behind.
Once outside, he noticed the fighting already seemed to be winding down, and within minutes his sergeants came to report that all resistance had ceased and the base was secure, with no casualties suffered. About thirty Pan-Asians had been killed or found dead. No quarter had been given, nor indeed asked for – the Pan-Asian troops here had been former Japanese Army Aviation and surrender was not a part of their military ethos.
‘Herr Sturmbannführer, we have found the aerial ordnance depot!’ one of the sergeants reported.
‘Lead the way, Feldwebel. Let’s see if we have what we came for.’
A small cube-like building of reinforced concrete was stuffed floor to roof with stacks of 250 kg bombs of Japanese manufacture, but three much larger, fat-looking bombs were laid out on small carts near the entrance and marked with Japanese letters.
‘Dieter! What do you make of this?’ Skorzeny shouted, calling for the one soldier that he had been able to find that had some knowledge of Asian languages. The former academic turned Brandenburger self-consciously polished his glasses before leaning over the large weapons.
‘It reads… fuel bomb, 1000 kilograms… I think this is our price, Herr Sturmbannführer!’
‘Thank you so very much HERR Professor!’ the Austrian answered dryly, not bothering any more to countermand the Herr-calling that he as a Waffen-SS man found so offensive but which was second nature to Wehrmacht troops.
‘It’s much smaller than the San Francisco weapons, by all estimates they were two to three times as large’ Grothe, the Luftwaffe ordnance expert, objected. ‘But they were locally made weapons for a special mission, and would in any case be too big for the standard Pan-Asian tactical bomber, the Mitsubishi Ki-21 which has a 1000 kg combat payload.’
Skorzeny sighed. ‘Just tell me if this is what we came for, Grothe. There’ll be plenty time for wanking back at Reno.’
‘Enschuldigung, Herr Sturmbannführer!’ Grothe replied, looking embarrassed. ‘Yes, I believe it is!’
‘That’s all I need to know. Radio, call for extraction!’
****
Captain Koji Kabuto was a brave and competent officer. He had fought the Chinese in Manchuria as a part of the late General Hata’s staff but, unlike many of his colleagues he had been well pleased with the Peace of the Two Emperor’s and the genesis of the Pan-Asian Empire. His enthusiasm for the new Imperial cause had insured him being given a command as garrison commander of an air base during the war with America. But now, in his very first action, his command had been ignominiously wiped out and, wounded in a leg by machine-gun fire, he had been reduced to playing dead to avoid being finished off. If given the chance, Koji decided, he would atone later for his shameful failure with seppuku, but first he needed to strike back. The enemy raiders had made sure early on that the radio crew was dead, and they had shot up the main radio controls, but being in a hurry they hadn’t bothered to examine the radio equipment carefully enough to discover that there was a small backup unit, a man-portable short-range device. This would prove their undoing. While the enemy soldiers, apparently German elite troops were searching the ammunition dumps, Kabuto had crawled painfully into the radio shack, stopping now and then to resume his role as corps while patrolling enemy soldiers walked by. Finally he had reached his destination, tuned in the nearest artillery director and called for a fire mission. His revenge accomplished, he leaned back against the wooden wall of the shack to happily await the end. It was not long in coming.
****
The USAAC C-47 descended steadily towards the runway, which was lined by Skorzeny’s troops holding torches. The two thermobaric bombs waited in their carts by the end of it – just to make sure the Reich got it’s due, the scarred Austrian had decided to bring home both weapons, in case the Americans insisted on keeping one for themselves, which was likely. Suddenly a far too familiar noise, pierced through the droning of the transport’s radial engines. Instantly, flashbacks from the campaign in Belgium and France returned to Skorzeny’s mind.
‘Incoooming! Take cover!’ he shouted.
As 30 kg 149mm shells began raining down on the base, every German soldier was hugging the heaving ground, trying to force himself by sheer willpower down through the hard, dry soil. The barrage lasted for thirty interminable seconds, and when it was over, one third of the troops did not rise to see the transport veering off again, soon disappearing into the night. Screams of pain and anguish echoed through the night as Skorzeny surveyed the disaster. The runway had been cratered beyond any hope of being used without prior repairs. And the artillery strike meant the enemy knew they were there.
‘Hedgehog formation!’ he ordered, and as the troops began arranging themselves for all around dense, he added ‘Sergeants to me!’
The four NCOs crouched next to their commander, looking worried. ‘We need to move out,’ he explained somewhat redundantly, ‘but we can’t very well carry a one tonne bomb, or the wounded for that matter. Did anyone see a truck?’
‘Yes, Sturmbannführer’, an Oberscharführer of the Leibstandarte answered. ‘There are some captured American vehicles parked behind the bombed out hangar. Some of them might still work, or maybe we can fix up one by cannibalising the others.’
‘Right. Let’s get cracking then. I don’t fancy still sitting here when the frigging hordes of Genghis Khan come thundering to rape our asses.’
Twenty minutes later, a small caravan of three Dodge trucks moved out over small dirt roads towards the distant American lines, leaving the smouldering base behind. When a Mongolian cavalry patrol examined the base an half an hour after that, they first found the corpse of Captain Koji Kabuto in the radio shack. He had committed seppuku with his Type 98 officer’s sword. Their next find was the demolition charge wired to the door of the ammunitions depot.
Twenty-five kilometres away, Sturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny and his men had no trouble hearing the blast as it obliterated most of the airbase and all of the enemy patrol. Despite the grim circumstances, Skorzeny allowed himself an evil little smile and a chuckle.
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