The Kronstadt Fleet Air Arm

There was frantic activity at the naval airstrip on Hessle foreshore.   Within the suite of offices that occupied the upper floor of a concrete blockhouse, beneath the concrete control tower, an operator rushed from the radio shack to the desk of his Comrade-Commander.   Seconds later an adjutant ran along the corridor, down the stairs and out into a surprisingly sunny Indian Summer to ring urgently on a large brass bell whilst shouting, “Scramble!”

            Boiler suited engineers were already removing the protective quilted jackets from the engine cowlings of three Polikarpov I-16 fighters parked expectantly on the tarmac as the Comrade-Pilots pulled sheepskin flying-jackets over their telnyashkas and clasped their parachute harnesses into place.   Each clambered over the wing of his aircraft and into the cockpit.   There was an irregular chuck, chuck, chuck as the Shvetsov M-63 9-cylinder (900hp) supercharged air-cooled radial engines fired up and soon settled into an even drone.   Props twirled faster and faster.   The three planes sang in unison, Comrade-Pilots waved, “Chocks away, tovarisch.”   Gathering speed in single file down the runway, they lifted, banked and, forming up wing-tip-to-wing-tip, headed out to sea.

            The radioed call for assistance had also reached Consuella Starcluster at the Cirque des Absurdités in The Land of Green Ginger and she immediately headed for the docks, riding pillion behind Snowdrop on her unicycle and with two of the Kittens of Chaos crammed into the sidecar.   Now they were standing on the quayside looking at ninety metres of what could be taken for a gigantic flying boat were it not for the wholly inadequate stubby wings.   It was painted British Racing Green with a red star on the tail and had two formidable rows of missile launchers along its back.   A Kronstadt Starshina stood beside them holding a large cardboard box.

            “The finest ekranoplan ever to take to the air.   We bought her on e-bay from a scrap metal dealer in Kaspiysk.   He had her deconstructed and shipped flat-pack on an IKEA container vessel bound for Immingham Docks.   We’ve followed the instructions to the letter putting her back together, but we’ve got this box of bits left over and some of them look as if they might be important.”

            “¿No iba a estar listos para el combate de cualquier momento pronto, entonces?” (It will not to be combat-ready any time soon, then?) sighed Consuella.

            “Nyet.”

            “Oh, but…” from two very disappointed Kittens, “…we wanna go in the big planey thing!”

            “With the rockets!”

            The Petty Officer smiled down on the pair as if they were cherubs, in their battered straw boaters, micro skirts and laddered black stockings, “Not today, little ones.   For now, she goes nowhere.”

            Snowdrop had wandered over to another large cardboard box sitting on the quay close to a stocky cast-iron bollard.   From it she had selected three suitable yet random items of an aeronautical nature and was honing her juggling skills.

Consuella looked concerned, “Joost how many ‘beets’ do hyou haav left oveer, Comrade-Starsheenarrr?”

            “Er… quite a lot.”

            “Hand what exactly does work on thees wonderfool vessel of yoors?”

            “It floats.”

The Princess Aethelfleda was struggling to gain height.   The crew of the Belgian trawler observed the hot-airship preparing for action and disappeared off the deck.   Pouring smoke from its funnel the fishing vessel quickly made its best speed away from the area.   As the dirigible banked, a young rating, who must have lied about his age, manned the port waist gun and opened fire towards the Chats Souterrains’ Ducks.   They were not yet within range, but were closing fast.

            Ferdy turned to his comrades; his wide, pale eyes flashed cold resignation and a small muscle on his right temple twitched.   “She’s sluggish.   That flack must have done more damage than we thought.   It’s ruptured a gas cell.”

            “Dump the ballast, Phoebles.”   Boz spoke quietly but with dark determination, “Ferdy… just get us above those fighters.”

            The Gruman J2Fs came in, broke away left and right, and circled the wallowing dirigible like wolves around an abandoned biryani takeaway.  

With the aggressors closing in, Ginsbergbear puffed and wheezed his way up the spiral staircase that climbed through the belly of the airship, eventually reaching the open machine gun turret just aft of the funnel.   He clung to the sides for a while, gulping air, back bent and shoulders drooping while his breathing steadied and heartbeat returned to normal.   He cocked the four 0.303 Browning machine guns, tested the swivel mount and pressed the throat mic to his larynx.  

            “Dorsal gunner ready.   Nothing to see up here.   Wait…”   Something was diving out of the sun.

            He took aim at the lead aircraft, saw there were three of them, and then recognized the silhouettes.   He quickly panned the guns off the target.  

            “The Ratas have arrived.   We might be alright after all.”

            As the Polikarpovs roared overhead they opened fire towards the corsair fighters with 20mm ShKAS wing mounted cannons.   The silver fuselage of the lead aircraft flashed in the sunlight and as it banked Ginsbergbear could make out red, white and blue concentric rings encircling a blue star painted on the tail and a scarlet winged anchor below the cockpit.   All much more flamboyant than was usual for the chromatically conservative Kronstadt sailors who regarded a red star against a complementary green ground amply adventurous.   Through his gun-sights the Comrade-Pilot of the Rata could make out a rear gunner in one of the Ducks speaking urgently to his pilot and then standing up, gilded pickelhaube glinting, waving to the other seaplane and pointing into the sun.   Shells exploded around him.   The ensuing dogfight was short - the Polikarpov Ratas were faster and more manoeuvrable.   But once the J2Fs of Les Chats Souterrains broke off, their rear facing machine guns kept the pursuers at bay.

            Job done, the silver Polikarpov I-16 pealed away to fly over the Princess Aethelfleda, dipping its wings in salute, the pilot, cockpit hood pushed back, giving an OK sign with one raised hand.   The remaining Ratas, sea green with a red star on the tail, followed the Ducks at a respectful distance.   They only turned back when they reached the limit of their range, certain by then that the Ducks were heading for their base on the Tyne.

            The dirigible turned to limp for home, leaving the abandoned gunboat and corsairs in the orange life rafts to sort out their own problems.   A CPO, his sleeveless summer telnyashka exposing an impressive array of tattoos, appeared on the bridge.

            “We have stemmed the leak, tovarisch, but we’ve lost a lot of helium…”   The Aethelfleda was a composite airship, with gas bags fore and aft and a hot air chamber amidships.   “…We should make it back OK - just.”

            Phoebles slumped on the deck, his face blank and no hint of his customary inane smile.   Ginsbergbear arrived at the bottom of the spiral staircase.   Boz removed his eye patch and gripped the chart table with his one free paw.   “This is not an adventure any more, we just keep going ‘cos there is no alternative.   Where will it end?   When will it end?”   He nodded towards the pilot, still rigid at his post.   “Ferdy is strung so tight something has to snap.   He’s running on catnip and Red Bull.   We’re making such little headway in this war, it’s just endless attrition.”

            “I’m fine,” snapped the pilot.

            “No you’re not.”   Phoebles, wrinkling his brow, spoke almost in a whisper, “It was all so gentlemanly at the start.   There were rules, unwritten rules, but everyone understood them.   Somewhere it all changed and we barely noticed.   We do what we have to, because we have to win.

“I wonder if we have lost sight of something.   We try to prevent these pirate raids without considering what makes the Corsairs tick.   We outwit them when we can.   But have we stopped trying to understand them?   Has anyone thought of making sandwiches?   It’s been a long time since second breakfast.”

            “Chins up,” Said Ginsbergbear, “It’s not two months since we escaped the caverns in Castleton.   I’ve written a poem…”

I

Kt – Q3 ch

It is a petty triumph, black plays

The long game.

Black Death tossing pawns into

The fray, pinning, forking.

Mein fahrer hat vom blitz getroffen.

Blitz und Donner, fork

Lightning.

Black Death and Quixote, silent, still

On the pebble strand.

Sea creatures, Kraken chicks

Whisper, “QxKt.”

A high price to pay

For fish.

II

“Is that you, darling?”

“No, it’s someone else.”

Dog Days’ vindictive caresses, sweating

Over dead Odysseus, drowning

In Leviathan’s aquatic grotto, rotting

Pelagic cargoes.

Beleaguered White King scorns ransom.

III

The bowler hats and brollies, departed after…

High heeled, high hemmed, thrawen thighs (with thwongs attached) typing

Endlessly.   “The copier’s out of ink.”

Had to get a proper job,

Down the Co-Op.

While the brazen Geordie,

Embracing Superman,

“Careful Ducky!” holds:

He who fights monsters should beware

That in the process he does not

Become a monster too.

IV

Gaze long enough into an abyss and

 The abyss will gaze back into you.

Give me another mooncake and I’ll do this till the cows come home.

Boz wondered if he had ever been this depressed before.   However, everyone’s mood lightened considerably when the poem ended and the flags and wind socks of the Kronstadt Fleet Air Arm aerodrome at last came into view.   And the gang were bordering on cheerful once the Princess Aethelfleda was on her pylon and repair crews were swarming all over her.   Larry’s personal runabout was tethered to a neighbouring pylon. 

            On the tarmac they bumped into Barrymore.   She had been tinkering with one of the Porsche engines on Larry’s dirigible and was removing a tiny speck of oil from her bottle-green, crotch length chauffeur’s jacket.   “Hi boys,” she straightened the fur on the longest tortoise-shell legs this side of Paradise, “Larry’s waiting up stairs.   He wants to discuss developments.   I’ll just hang around down here, see if I can catch one of these delicious sailors.”

            Larry had made himself comfortable at the Comrade-Commander’s desk in the Comrade-Commander’s chair, the Comrade-Commander was trying not to look awkward perched on the edge of the adjutant’s desk, and the adjutant was fetching teas and coffees.   Larry started talking before tedious formalities could delay him.  He addressed Boz and waved a general indication towards any Kronstadt personnel within range.            

            “I’m putting these boys in charge of trawler protection for a bit.   We have another piccolo problema.   No-one has heard from the Lord Ancaster since they radioed that they had arrived at the Antarctic ice shelf.”

The Little Matter of the Coleyfish Pirates

            “Put a star-shell across her bows”  

            As the flare hissed into the North Sea the erstwhile whale catcher, rust dribbling over battleship-grey, death’s heads on the funnel, shark’s jaws painted on the prow, opened up from a 37mm twin barrelled Soviet V-11 AK-AK gun that was mounted on the foredeck.   With a staccato of thunderclaps the sky around the hot-airship peppered with shell bursts, shrapnel rattled on the hull of the gondola and tore into the skin of the canopy.   Ferdy spun the elevator wheel as he banked the dirigible hard to port.   Pumps screamed as ballast was forced to the stern, the great hot-air burners roared and the sixteen triple-bladed large diameter propulsion screws whined.   The Princess Aethelfleda, almost standing on her tail, powered towards the stratosphere, out of range of the corsair’s gun.   The flack would not last long.   Most corsairs used reloads for ammunition and a miss-fire or jam was inevitable.  

There was crashing and banging from beyond the bridge door as everything not secured took off towards the stern, and a hideous screeching when Ginsbergbear tumbled from his armchair in the rear saloon and landed on Phoebles’ tail.

            “Make black smoke.”   A veil of black oily smoke poured from the funnel to hide their ascent, it poured from seams and joints in the engine-room, it poured from the galley stove.

            “We may have detected a bit of the refurbished system that’s not been thoroughly tested till now, eh?”   Boz blew hard down the gunnery deck voice tube and the whistle was answered with an, “Ey ey captain?”

            “Run out the stern chasers and fire when ready.”              

            During the refit the Princess Aethelfleda had acquired two massive F-Off howitzers in the stern to deter pursuers.   The violent recoil, partially absorbed by giant springs, shuddered the gondola’s framework; the gun ports spouted cordite-smoke and flame.   The large-bore shells purred towards the pirate vessel and, just as Ginsbergbear struggled onto the command deck, the first one exploded in mid air showering the craft from stem to stern in vivid Day-Glo pink paint.

            “Paint bombs?” enquired Boz.

            “Well?   Suddenly being spray-painted pink can be very demoralising in a macho situation,” explained the bear.   The second shell had clanged, unexploded, onto the deck of the corsair and was ticking.   As the crew cautiously approached there came a clockwork whirr and a ‘tink’.   Something brown and treacly oozed out across the pink deck and began to evaporate.   The pirates fled.   From the dirigible they could be seen scrambling in a panic across the stern, holding their noses, clawing at their eyes and desperately trying to launch the life rafts.   The foc’sle gunner threw himself into the sea.

            “Second round will have been a stink bomb then,” laughed Phoebles triumphantly, as he too arrived on the bridge, still cradling a throbbing tail.

            “Drop down to sea level and prepare to take on survivors,” instructed Boz.

Much had changed since the early days of the Coleycorsair Wars.   The Princess Aethelfleda had recently had a major upgrade.   She bristled with assorted weaponry and her eight newly modified, light weight, yet ultra-powerful Stanley Steamer engines each drove twin, contra-rotating propellers.   She was fast and agile.   The top half of her canopy had been painted a North Sea slate-grey and below she was a light sky-blue.   Ginsbergbear and Phoebles felt they had greatly enhanced the effectiveness of the camouflage by painting waves and an albatross into the dark grey and adding fluffy clouds to the blue underside.   In the pilot’s seat the once affable dodo appeared drawn, thin beaked, his cold eyes fixed on the distant horizon.   Boz sported an eye patch and the empty right arm of his reefer jacket was safety-pinned to his breast.

            Phoebles was unimpressed, “You might find the controls easier to manage if u stopped mucking about and used both hands – put your jacket on properly,” he muttered, somewhat scornfully, “And if you don’t take that silly eye-patch off you’ll go blind.   You don’t look rugged, just daft.”

            “Boz sighed, “This war’s not much fun any more…   And that bruised tail is making you insubordinate.”

The Princess Aethelfleda descended and Ferdinand straightened her up to hover a few feet above the swell, midway between the abandoned pirate vessel and its intended victim, a Belgian sidewinder coleyfishtrawler that wallowed and rolled as only a Belgian built trawler can.   The entire crew lined the rail in enveloping oilskins and sou’westers and a cheer went up.

            “Hoera! U hebt ons opgesiagen.”

            “Hourra! Vous nous aves sauvés.”

            Ginsbergbear and Phoebles waved to the fisherman whilst Boz turned his field glasses onto the corsair pursuit craft.   A bilious green mist rolled along the deck to tumble through the scuppers and drift down wind along the surface of the sea.   A little further away orange life rafts bobbed at the mercy of the waves.   Gradually the gang became aware of a distant, gnat like whine and Boz spotted two indistinct dots in the sky to the northwest.   Ferdy took up the 20x60 binoculars that were housed in a box by the bridge windows.   Through them he could make out two gaudily painted Grumman J2F Ducks sporting CSAAF insignia on the wings and tail.   Each had twin ring-mounted 50 calibre machine guns to the rear of the cockpit and they had additional machine guns Gaffer taped to the wings.   The Corsairs and Reivers utilised prodigious amounts of gaffer tape and controlled by far the largest Gaffer tape factory in the northern counties.

            “It’s Les Chats Souterrains,” shouted Ferdy.

            “Bugger,” groaned Boz, “Is there no let up?

            “Take her up again, Ferdy.   Those crates can’t out climb us.   And, Phoebles, get the Kronstadt Fleet Air Arm on the radio.   We need back up.”