Not-Exactly-Chopped-Liver Fiction™
a could-be-worse division of None-Too-Shabby Enterpises, Ink
PRESENTS :
The History of Gin
or
A Fox's Tail©
Is Life Existential? You Decide.
by ' Colorado ' Gumi
...I n s p i r e d By T r u e E v e n t s...
Chapter 27
A Hello to Arms
or
A Fox's Tail©
Is Life Existential? You Decide.
by ' Colorado ' Gumi
...I n s p i r e d By T r u e E v e n t s...
Chapter 27
A Hello to Arms
Ginny was tickled pink (a fav. color) on discovering she was flying one of those cute P-38 fighters. Although she'd never done it before, Ginger had no problem piloting the plane. . .She'd learned how to fly ages ago from the Microsoft Flight Simulator, Combat Edition, computer program (which her father co-invented) and was an Ace of Aces with 1,300 hours combat flight time and oodles of kills. So the real thing came to her naturally.
She glanced over at her wingman (also a woman) and saw her particular close friend. . .you know, the blond one. . .grinning like a 'possum in another P-38. I guess flying a fast and deadly war bird. . .like driving a BMW M3 or Mazda Protege. . .can really be a kick.
Anyways, Ginger was delighted to be popping her pilot cherry with this super cool plane, the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, variant G -- You know the one. . .that two-engine, long-range fighter-bomber with the distinctive "twin boom" fuselage bridged in the rear by the tail and having a bobsled-like cockpit slung forward on the wing between the engines. Aside from jets and a couple other things those damned scheming Nazis cobbled together for special missions, it was the most distinctive airplane of World War II. It was neato alright -- tricycle undercarriage, 1,400 hp turbo-supercharged 12-cylinder Allison engines, counter-rotating propellers. . .and a darn good radio. But the best part for Gin was the armament packed into her plane's nose; two Browning .50 caliber machine guns with 200 rounds each and two .30 caliber Brownings with 500 rounds each. The 37 mm "Oldsmobile" cannon with 15 rounds Ginny could take or leave. . .Oldsmobile could barely make a car, much less a cannon.
Actually, clustering all the armament in the nose rather than the wings (where the projectile trajectories had to be set to criss-cross at several points ahead of the plane in a "convergence zone") meant P-38 Lightning pilots must aim more precisely. But then the useful ranges of these nose-mounted guns weren't limited by pattern convergence, meaning good pilots like Gin could shoot much farther. A P-38 could hit targets reliably at any range up to 1,000 yards, whereas other fighters had a convergence range between 100 and 250 yards. The Lightening's clustered weapons had a "buzz-saw" effect on the receiving end. . .which means that any dirty totalitarian henchmen crossing Ginny's path would end their days in a flaming smear of metal, plexiglas and petrol arcing across the clouds. The very idea gave her goose-pimples. . .a surprisingly pleasant sensation she enjoys, as do I.
Only thing was the cockpit was very hot and Ginny realized she was wearing the typical P-38 pilot's summer flight suit. . .just tennis shoes, skivvy shorts and a parachute -- she seriously considered shucking the sweaty shorts but didn't (her wingman, who was a woman, already was flying barefoot and bare-assed).
While Ginger was quite at home in her aircraft, she wasn't quite as at home with where it was because where it was was a complete mystery. Noting the extreme heat and several seemingly jungle-encased islands on an expansive ocean below, Ginny was a smidge disappointed to realize she wasn't in the European Theater of Operations. Given her druthers, she'd prefer to deliver Goring's fly-boys, flambé, to their own private corner of Hell. In fact, she'd resolved to personally ensure the Krauts were taught their lesson good this time and returned permanently to making cuckoo clocks and Hummels. She believed if they were smart, the Hun (to use the catchy British nickname) would scrap these dopey wars and instead establish a European Hegemony peacefully under cover of a confederation, or union, laced together by shared economic policy and regulation. . .kind of like a big bazaar, or market, on a village green, or common. But that could never happen, especially given the Germans' pathological inability to pick good allies, say the UK and US, over goofy ones, like the Austro-Hungarians and Italians.
Regardless, given the topography and the fact the P-38 was used most extensively and successfully in the Pacific, Ginger quickly figured she'd be facing a different enemy of democracy entirely. And speaking of the Japanese Empire, what was this thing they had always starting wars with sneak attacks. Gin thought they should do it the shrewd way, like America, by either stumbling into an ever expanding quagmire or being pulled into it to save the goofy Limey's chestnuts. But out here, high in the sky where the rubber meets the road, such geopolitical concerns were not her hunt. . .All Ginger needed to do was help the enemy dudes die gloriously for their country.
Returning to the tableau before her, Ginny concentrated on getting her bearings and, thanks to many happy hours pouring over Google Earth, quickly recognized the Solomon Islands, with Bougainville peeking from the horizon. And when she saw the flight of Japanese airplanes, including two Mitsubishi G4M "Betty" bombers, a ways below in the distance she knew exactly what to do.
Scrupulously maintaining radio silence, Ginger caught her wingman's attention and told her, via hand signals, that for some seemingly unfathomable reason (though totally explainable by Chaos Theory) they found themselves not chatting in a Manhattan Absinthe bar, but in one of the cleverer missions of World War II. . .the ambush of Admiral Yamamoto, architect of Pearl Harbor, during his morale building front-line inspection tour of Japanese bases in the Solomons after Japan's Guadalcanal big-time butt-kicking. Some savvy American code-breakers learned his itinerary and sixteen P-38's sortied from that newly-won toehold in the Pacific on a 435-and-a-half mile race to catch and dispatch him. Continuing to sign her message, Gin told her friend she didn't know why nor how they were there, nor where the other P-38's -- which had flown at wave-top to avoid detection -- were; but it was April 18, 1943, the admiral was in one of the two Mitsubishi G4M's now arriving at Bougainville Island and they needed to get him. . .on the personal side, Gin added that her wingman's hair looked awesome fixed that way (kind of a wind-blown, wet look) and asked to borrow her Manolo alligator mid-heel halter-backs later. Her friend, smiling wide, flashed an enthusiastic "thumbs-up".
With that -- and seeing something had distracted the screening Zero's -- Ginny dropped wing tanks and barrel-rolled the plane in a screaming dive to the ocean. Pulling up level with a yard of air to spare, her P-38 skimmed the waves like a sharp stone thrown at Yamamoto. ...Her wingman flowed with every move, like a shadow.
At precisely the perfect moment Ginny angled up at the soft belly of a "Betty", unleashed her trigger finger and, from wingtip to wingtip, raked the fat prey to tatters with long streams of hot leaden slugs. Her wingman did exactly the same to the other plane.
Both Japanese planes already were coughing smoke and dropping from the sky when Ginger noticed more P-38's beginning their attack. . .one "Betty" crashed in the jungle; the other hit the water. Rocking her wings in victory, Ginny arced back up to altitude where she and her wingman disappeared into a cloud with none the wiser that they'd even been there. An immediate controversy brewed, and simmered for decades, among some of the P-38 pilots as to who had shot Yamamoto from the sky.
Ginny hoped the next time she turned up in World War II, it was in a P-51D Mustang.
She glanced over at her wingman (also a woman) and saw her particular close friend. . .you know, the blond one. . .grinning like a 'possum in another P-38. I guess flying a fast and deadly war bird. . .like driving a BMW M3 or Mazda Protege. . .can really be a kick.
Anyways, Ginger was delighted to be popping her pilot cherry with this super cool plane, the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, variant G -- You know the one. . .that two-engine, long-range fighter-bomber with the distinctive "twin boom" fuselage bridged in the rear by the tail and having a bobsled-like cockpit slung forward on the wing between the engines. Aside from jets and a couple other things those damned scheming Nazis cobbled together for special missions, it was the most distinctive airplane of World War II. It was neato alright -- tricycle undercarriage, 1,400 hp turbo-supercharged 12-cylinder Allison engines, counter-rotating propellers. . .and a darn good radio. But the best part for Gin was the armament packed into her plane's nose; two Browning .50 caliber machine guns with 200 rounds each and two .30 caliber Brownings with 500 rounds each. The 37 mm "Oldsmobile" cannon with 15 rounds Ginny could take or leave. . .Oldsmobile could barely make a car, much less a cannon.
Actually, clustering all the armament in the nose rather than the wings (where the projectile trajectories had to be set to criss-cross at several points ahead of the plane in a "convergence zone") meant P-38 Lightning pilots must aim more precisely. But then the useful ranges of these nose-mounted guns weren't limited by pattern convergence, meaning good pilots like Gin could shoot much farther. A P-38 could hit targets reliably at any range up to 1,000 yards, whereas other fighters had a convergence range between 100 and 250 yards. The Lightening's clustered weapons had a "buzz-saw" effect on the receiving end. . .which means that any dirty totalitarian henchmen crossing Ginny's path would end their days in a flaming smear of metal, plexiglas and petrol arcing across the clouds. The very idea gave her goose-pimples. . .a surprisingly pleasant sensation she enjoys, as do I.
Only thing was the cockpit was very hot and Ginny realized she was wearing the typical P-38 pilot's summer flight suit. . .just tennis shoes, skivvy shorts and a parachute -- she seriously considered shucking the sweaty shorts but didn't (her wingman, who was a woman, already was flying barefoot and bare-assed).
While Ginger was quite at home in her aircraft, she wasn't quite as at home with where it was because where it was was a complete mystery. Noting the extreme heat and several seemingly jungle-encased islands on an expansive ocean below, Ginny was a smidge disappointed to realize she wasn't in the European Theater of Operations. Given her druthers, she'd prefer to deliver Goring's fly-boys, flambé, to their own private corner of Hell. In fact, she'd resolved to personally ensure the Krauts were taught their lesson good this time and returned permanently to making cuckoo clocks and Hummels. She believed if they were smart, the Hun (to use the catchy British nickname) would scrap these dopey wars and instead establish a European Hegemony peacefully under cover of a confederation, or union, laced together by shared economic policy and regulation. . .kind of like a big bazaar, or market, on a village green, or common. But that could never happen, especially given the Germans' pathological inability to pick good allies, say the UK and US, over goofy ones, like the Austro-Hungarians and Italians.
Regardless, given the topography and the fact the P-38 was used most extensively and successfully in the Pacific, Ginger quickly figured she'd be facing a different enemy of democracy entirely. And speaking of the Japanese Empire, what was this thing they had always starting wars with sneak attacks. Gin thought they should do it the shrewd way, like America, by either stumbling into an ever expanding quagmire or being pulled into it to save the goofy Limey's chestnuts. But out here, high in the sky where the rubber meets the road, such geopolitical concerns were not her hunt. . .All Ginger needed to do was help the enemy dudes die gloriously for their country.
Returning to the tableau before her, Ginny concentrated on getting her bearings and, thanks to many happy hours pouring over Google Earth, quickly recognized the Solomon Islands, with Bougainville peeking from the horizon. And when she saw the flight of Japanese airplanes, including two Mitsubishi G4M "Betty" bombers, a ways below in the distance she knew exactly what to do.
Scrupulously maintaining radio silence, Ginger caught her wingman's attention and told her, via hand signals, that for some seemingly unfathomable reason (though totally explainable by Chaos Theory) they found themselves not chatting in a Manhattan Absinthe bar, but in one of the cleverer missions of World War II. . .the ambush of Admiral Yamamoto, architect of Pearl Harbor, during his morale building front-line inspection tour of Japanese bases in the Solomons after Japan's Guadalcanal big-time butt-kicking. Some savvy American code-breakers learned his itinerary and sixteen P-38's sortied from that newly-won toehold in the Pacific on a 435-and-a-half mile race to catch and dispatch him. Continuing to sign her message, Gin told her friend she didn't know why nor how they were there, nor where the other P-38's -- which had flown at wave-top to avoid detection -- were; but it was April 18, 1943, the admiral was in one of the two Mitsubishi G4M's now arriving at Bougainville Island and they needed to get him. . .on the personal side, Gin added that her wingman's hair looked awesome fixed that way (kind of a wind-blown, wet look) and asked to borrow her Manolo alligator mid-heel halter-backs later. Her friend, smiling wide, flashed an enthusiastic "thumbs-up".
With that -- and seeing something had distracted the screening Zero's -- Ginny dropped wing tanks and barrel-rolled the plane in a screaming dive to the ocean. Pulling up level with a yard of air to spare, her P-38 skimmed the waves like a sharp stone thrown at Yamamoto. ...Her wingman flowed with every move, like a shadow.
At precisely the perfect moment Ginny angled up at the soft belly of a "Betty", unleashed her trigger finger and, from wingtip to wingtip, raked the fat prey to tatters with long streams of hot leaden slugs. Her wingman did exactly the same to the other plane.
Both Japanese planes already were coughing smoke and dropping from the sky when Ginger noticed more P-38's beginning their attack. . .one "Betty" crashed in the jungle; the other hit the water. Rocking her wings in victory, Ginny arced back up to altitude where she and her wingman disappeared into a cloud with none the wiser that they'd even been there. An immediate controversy brewed, and simmered for decades, among some of the P-38 pilots as to who had shot Yamamoto from the sky.
Ginny hoped the next time she turned up in World War II, it was in a P-51D Mustang.
To Be Continued
