1275psi
Posts: 7979
Joined: 4/17/2005
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toryus unfortunately very busy in the south pacific
14/7/43
Enemy pressure on the Burma front continues. Once again the bombers strike at Moulmien – and resistance is almost negligible.
At Rangoon the day is quiet, the heavy weather continues –mostly low grey clouds today. Few complain –the ant like behaviour of Japans construction gangs continues.
Evening
Cards. The inevitable card games have continued. Fortunes are being won and lost – some players have lost up to 3 packets of cigarettes’ –princely sums here at Rangoon field.
Inoue and Juni play hard, and bet heavily –today they are up a bottle of scotch –a bottle they intend to spend tonight.
The game is played in almost silence –intense concentration around the little shaded lamp on the shattered door that serves as a table. The men sit cross legged, backs to the darkness –as if the game, the process of playing, can keep the demons at bay that lurk in the dark, in the shadows behind them, in their minds.
The enemy have been active, very, very active, over the Irrawady bridges to the North.
Tomorrow, tomorrow they will fight them.
The enemy must know they are coming
So they play cards against the dark
They try to not think about home, about living, or dying, or duty.
The moths and bugs dance around them –their own bizarre dancing flights of death
15/7/43
The dawn breaks silently, and a stillness covers the field.
A gentle mist along the edge that borders the jungle.
A dew on the ground.
Still air
Coolness
Few men speak, you can hear clearly the pant of many lungs at hard work, the rattles, the bangs, as the beasts are rolled from their cages.
The work proceeds swiftly, the fuelling, the loading of the great brass and bronze strings of death.
The sun spreads its warmth, and now the pilots emerge, some laughing and smiling (the same ones who will always be laughing and smiling, even when hell opens its gates), others silent, sombre.
It is another day, another job to be done.
Long range Combat Patrol – this is the official designation for today –“ Time to Truking fight” is how Nakamura has described it.
An hour there, 30 mins combat, an hour back. Plan – keep a constant presence over the bridges –patrol widely –find the enemy, kill him.
Nakamura, Inoue , Juni, Miyazaki, Ginowa will lead the first pack.
Inoue strides to his plane, climbs straight in. His mind is empty – soon it will be filled with technical stuff –the art of keeping his beast in the air –but this is all it is at the moment –merely a cog in the machine. It is another day.
His eyes catch the photo
She has been there a long time now – and for a moment the machine falters. How is she?. Will he see her again?
As Juni’s machine bursts into life beside him –the great beast driving the silence from the field, challenging the sun, Inoue takes the photo from its place, examines it with –with love?. Or longing?. No. There is nothing –after so long, the feelings, like her photo –have faded .
And for a moment, he feels guilty.
Juni’s machine taxis ahead, and the blast of the propeller plucks the photo from Inoue’s hand. It flutters away, free for a moment –flashing white, grey, her face fading away………….
Miyazakis machine sweeps past – obliterating the photo –his face fixed into that determined heroic look that fools no one –the fear is too deep to hide.
Inoue contemplates the ground, the field, the string of planes rolling past.
He slumps into his seat, slams the canopy shut
The machine takes over.
Juni leads the way at 10000 feet, 40 odd 44’s , 30 odd zeros above them.
The forests and jungles, the rice fields slide steadily below – the sky now a brilliant blue. Suspended they crawl across the sky.
The bridges.
Where is Inoue? Ahh good –right here. Ginowa? –going right –OK, that is good. Miyazaki? – going left –good –Truk off you idiot –we want men up here today
Little dots. Same height. Curved wings . Spitfires!
Throttle forward, gentle turn right –and the fighters clash
20 odd spitfires –looking for a fight
They will have it
Inoue follows Juni, the machine again in high gear. The fighters slash past each other –guns hammering, swift jousting runs, flashes of enemy racing across your canopy –where a deflection shot is all –and no targets present.
He banks hard left, hard, hard, chasing the dots –but the Spits bank harder –and, and the machine swiftly decides, calculates –far faster too.
This will be tough
A Spit is getting behind him -200-300 metres behind –and now the world is just him, and the spit.
Breathing hard, he’s behind, keep turning, keep turning, turning the flat turn into a vertical loop –the world now above, now sliding down the canopy
He’s still there –gaining position, neck craning.
Other fighters flash past –inconsequential –unimportant.
The Spit has unique colouring –and a bright red tail –details, details –gaining , gaining.
Inoue strains the 44 to the limit - -strains himself –the spit gains.
Tracer flashes past underneath –testing the range
Truk.
He slams the throttle shut, bangs out with a grunt maximum flap, stands her on its nose –the spit slides past –flinging her back over, stick rudder, machine perfect, the dust rising from the cockpit floor – and the spit is there, and, and –it twists away, turning hard left, faster, better than the 44 can dream of.
Inoue Curses, the machine turns of for just a moment – and ceases to exist as the P38 plunging down from the heavens above shatters his machine into a million little components.
They flutter down to earth –free at last from the demons that have forged them.
The p38’s dive into the first combat – a great flashing run that breaks up the swirling madness of the Britisher fight. 11 Spitfires have gone down, few very few kills, the P 38’s change everything.
The fight peters out, in twos and threes the first wave of Japanese fighters turn for home –the second wave met coming the other way.
Juni nurses a damaged machine. A single cannon shell has struck his plane –a 6 inch hole up through the right wheel well –shattering its mechanism. It dangles now, limp, broken. Juni looks around at those with him. He still breathes hard, the sweat soaking his suit.
Heavens, what a fight. What a God awful fight. There are too many missing.
Dread fills him –where is Inoue?
Midday
Bedlam at Rangoon field
The planes return –many winged, many crippled. Nearly all empty of ammunition.
The ground crews rush to each one –like physios to a modern football game, they struggle to keep the players on the field, as the coaches plan falls apart
The second wave begins to return –and something is terribly wrong. Again and again the words are repeated by white faced men -“Bounced!’ -“Too fast!” “To high!”
And horribly –again and again -“No –he’s gone, he’s gone – not a chance –I’m sorry”
Nakamura tries to rally them – he leads 40 Tojo’s North again.
For two months now 47th have been avoiding their fate – oblivious to the new realities of the world –of the march of technology and strength against them.
Today they pay the butchers bill.
Again they meet the twin tailed devils – a seemingly endless supply of them – and how things have changed.
The 38’s boom them –sweeping dives spitting cannon fire left and right –and it takes moments to realise –moments that are for many their last –that the hunters are now truly the hunted
Nakamura survives – how –he will never know. Miyazuki will too –how - he will never tell
Juni can only remain behind –and count the few who return………………
15/7/43
Black Friday.
41 Ki 44’s shot down –fully one third of the total lost in air to air combat for the war.
26 more destroyed on the ground
87th sentai lose 14 pilots
22nd -3pilots
246th -2 pilots
And the 47th – 10 pilots –including Inoue –killed on his 100th mission.
Nakamura counts the dead –and retreats to his crude hut –and refuses to come out.
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RE: herbiesan vs Cantona!!! - 
and it hurts. 
Your writing is getting better and better 
). sorry if this is too obvious question but we could use a "little bleeding" of his bombers in burma
I use Toryu daitai as a "fire brigade" whereever heavies struck some of my bases- toryus and their escorts move in 
)
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