Chapter 2
June 16, 1941
"Let's see what you're made of," he says, taunting me with the things he knows I want most. The rank of First Lieutenant, and with it, promotion to permanent lead pilot duty in my own bomber. With the number of new guys arriving every day, it makes sense- but I'm not guaranteed the job. I gotta prove myself and get recommended for it first.
St. Croix wants to see if I have what it takes to bring him down. He's arranged for a Supermarine Seafire to be brought over from the Confederate Naval Air Station Pensacola, and the ground crew have loaded it and the guns on Aluminum Overcast up with paint rounds for a simulated dogfight.
I have only a little flying time on fighters. They qualified us on everything in flight school, but it didn't involve a hell of a lot of flying time. You get your hours once you get a specialty, and mine's bombers. But I should be all right.
As far as I know St. Croix hasn't put this challenge up to anyone else, so I wonder what else he has in store for me. I like getting to fly a Seafire after seeing and hearing so much about it. I like even better the idea of 'shooting down' my own bomber, and getting to wipe that smug grin off St. Croix's face. The gunners are all excited about it. I think they're making bets behind the backs of us officers, betting on which one of us is gonna come out on top.
It's best two out of three, and I plan on taking Aluminum Overcast down in the first two.
XX
June 17, 1941
Hell of a day today. I got my second gold bar, and my own bomber- as you might expect. The plane itself is new, and when I got the crew together we agreed on Dixie Classic. It's one all the guys like, which I can understand. It has a ring to it.
But it hasn't all been good. Bock's Car, 1st Lieutenant Dadigan's plane, hit the runway coming in when its landing gear collapsed. The damn things hadn't fully deployed, and I found out that Dadigan had this new lieutenant, kid straight out of flight school, attempting his first landing with the bomber. They were practicing flying with live bombs, too, so the whole thing went up like a damned Armistice Day firework display. We had guys running over there before the firetrucks evens showed up, and we all did everything they could.
Somehow, my dorsal gunner, Private First Class Jason Drake, got the tail gunner out before Bock's Car exploded. Nobody else made it out. Dadigan and his crew were good guys. It's a hell of a shame.
XX
June 18, 1941
I have to say, you just gotta love the United States. All that bellyaching they made about the President ordering troops into Kentucky and 'Houston'- you'd think they still owned them! Not as if they have a right to, though. Kentucky, Sequoyah, half of Texas, Arkansas and Virginia and a whole damn country- Canada. They took all of it in the Great War. My God, I never heard such flabbling and bitching as when it started getting to them that the CSA wants its land back.
Do these people really think that just because they managed to steal something once, it now belongs to them forever? Our forefathers helped the Yankees break free of the British 165 years ago. Now what kind of world would we have today if they'd been as selfish as the Yanks?
My opinion of Trevor St. Croix has definitely changed. He volunteered today to see 1LT Dadigan's remains home to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and left me in command of A Flight in his place. He didn't even hesitate, just told me I was in charge. Said "I trust you."
You can always tell when someone really means that. You never forget it.
June 19, 1941
First Lieutenant St. Croix sure has been a lot of help to me since I got put in charge of my own bomber. My ship is a fine silver bird- not one of our B-38's has camouflage- but she's a lot to manage. Ten other crewmen to be concerned about. My copilot, 2nd Lieutenant David Chapman, is a good Alabama man and a solid pilot, and the bombardier, 2nd Lieutenant Charlie Grace, and navigator 2nd Lieutenant Richard Kelly are all solid officers. The gunners are all fine boys, but they're a handful. They have more courage than sense, and they keep wanting to go play pranks or brag and pick fights with any non-Air Force guys that come on base.
So I go to St. Croix, and I tell him what's going on. Seems like every time, with everything, he's got some kind of an answer. Always better than nothing, which is what I had before I went to him. He works hard and he's a good pilot, a good officer. I think he and I are becoming friends- though neither one of us can yet admit it.
I'll be taking my time talking with him about this next one.
Turns out my dorsal turret gunner, seventeen-year-old Private First Class Jason Drake, is actually sixteen. He's a farm boy from Three Rivers, Mississippi, and seems like he joined when he was fifteen at most. How in the name of God did he get in the Air Force? It's not that I don't want him. He's a damn good gunner, he works hard. But you still wonder how he even made it through Basic without anyone figuring him out.
If I report this to anyone higher up, he'll be cashiered and kicked right out of the service. "Fraudulent Enlistment", they call it, and the penalty is immediate dishonorable discharge. Lieutenant Colonel Rourke won't even have any choice, either. Doesn't matter how good an airman Private Drake is. He'll be out and never coming back again.
I found out just after I'd spent some time with the gunners today, sitting down and talking with each of them, even learning a few things from them as they worked on their stations. I was going through Drake's service record, looking to learn some more about how he'd scored in gunner training- I'd need to know that to make a full report on him if I recommended him for promotion to Corporal ahead of time. In his records jacket, I found several different forms he'd filled out where he listed his date-of-birth, and the month and year were consistent, but the day was almost never the same. The year and month he got wrong once or twice, too. Combine that with his distinctly youthful looks, and it explains a lot.
He doesn't know that I know yet. Regulations say I've got to report him, and I'm a good officer. I follow my orders and respect regulations.
But how am I supposed to look myself in the eye after I ship one of my best gunners home?
XX
June 20, 1941
Talked it over with St. Croix, and he said, "Put it to the guys". So I did. I sent Drake off to help teach some of the new gunners for the day, then I got Grace, Chapman and Kelly together and told them. Then we got the other Airmen together and told them. By unanimous vote, the crew of Dixie Classic has voted to keep Jason Drake and say nothing of his illiteracy to the Air Force at large.
"He has burn scars on his hands from pulling that tail gunner out of Bock's Car before it blew up," Grace said. "Lieutenant Colonel Rourke's putting him in for the Air Medal. No way is he going anywhere."
That decided it for all of us.
We were all waiting for Drake when he came back, and right away he noticed something was up. He was terrified at first. You could just see it, how sure he was he was getting kicked out. I calmed him down, told him he wasn't getting reported. I drove the point home by saying that as long as Drake rode in my bomber, he'd be in the C.S. Air Force for as long as he wanted to.
Drake stared at all of us like he couldn't believe it. Then he broke down and cried.
The crew is working together beautifully now. Any cracks or seams that were there before are fading away. It's like we've known each other all our lives. I think I did the right thing.
The timing of it couldn't be better. The squadron is busier than ever, new orders, crewmen and gear coming in every day. We're getting ready, and I think it's clear enough why. Before long, we'll be going to war.
I feel the day is coming soon when the Air Force will lead the Confederate States in striking a blow for freedom that will live in history, and in the better days ahead men will speak with pride of our doings. We have a just and righteous cause.
I went to Mass in Orlando with St. Croix yesterday, and I felt myself making a deep, fervent prayer. One I feel cannot be more appropriate given the circumstances.
"May I live to lead all my boys through whatever lies ahead of us, and may all of them- every one- come home to live long and happy lives in peace."
XX
June 21, 1941
The training we've been going through lately has made what I had to do as a null, a freshman, at Georgia Military Institute seem like nothing. PT runs for us and the enlisted men every morning, pilots leading their crews. Gunners spend every hour they can cleaning their machine guns, practicing on clearing a jam or loading a new belt. And every minute we're awake, they have us pilots up in the air. Formation flying in the day, formation flying at night- especially at night. Live bombs on every run now- no more fakes.
Everyone has known what this was all about, deep down, for a long time. But late last night word officially came down to all the bomb squadrons in the 194th, to open up the sealed orders for Blackbeard.
Blackbeard. The invasion of the United States.
It's been a long time coming. Twenty-three years since the United States 'won' the last war, if you can call taking credit for the CSA's own niggers stabbing us in the back winning. Ever since the Freedom Party took charge and got things moving, the military has been getting stronger by the day. Millions of bullets, thousands of men, hundreds of planes, rifles and tanks. Bombs and artillery shells by the truckload, and the biggest Navy we've ever had in 80 years.
Our forces have put together the largest collection of manpower and equipment in Confederate States history. I've seen some of the depots storing it; they must go on for miles. It's just amazing.
St. Croix says we're going to take off just before 11:30PM. While the 262nd Bombardment Wing flies up and hits Philadelphia, the 194th will go further North to New York City. The target is the shipyards and industrial center of the city, so that's where we'll aim. But no one's concerned with collateral damage if any of our bombs miss. We're cleared to knock the whole damn city flat.
The minute we get back, the 194th will have new targets to hit as soon as we're ready to go. The idea is, we're going to hit the Yankees hard and fast and force them to give up. They can't last in a war with us. Not this time. The B-38's will damage their industrial centers, their factories and shipyards, and help drive the point home.
The invasion will succeed, but I fear the price will be high. Once the damn Yankees wake up, I think we'd better expect for it to get rough. They're gonna throw everything they have at us.
But the United States isn't ready for what's coming. Even now I don't think they really believe we are even close to as strong as we've become. The Yankees have attacked us three times. 1861, 1881, 1914. This time they get to find out what it feels like to have bombs and shells falling in their hometown instead of ours. I'm scared, but I'm ready. All of us are.
It's almost time to mount up. I think I'm gonna wish everyone good luck, one last time.
May God be with us all.
A/N: The "Bristleback" is the name I invented for the unnamed Confederate heavy bomber that appears on the UK-edition cover of the first and last of the four "Settling Accounts" series books. It is the B-17, which despite being made just as we know it in our timeline, never acquires the press-given nickname of "Flying Fortress" and is in fact never once mentioned in the books aside from indirect references to Confederate bombing efforts using heavier aircraft than the Razorback.
The "Mule" or "Asskicker" is the Junkers Ju-87 Stuka dive bomber, and I have written the "Hound Dog" as being basically a copy of the Supermarine Spitfire. The "Razorback" is a two-engine bomber of similar size to the B-25.
James Chase is the player character in the original Xbox video game Secret Weapons Over Normandy, released in 2003. In his voiceovers of the journal he keeps throughout the campaign, Chase speaks in a pronounced Southern accent and so very likely would have flown for the CSA in the world of the "Southern Victory" series of books created by Harry Turtledove.
The last two entries in Chase's journal here contain references to the OTL speech made by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery to his men before D-Day, and to the speech made by the German general to his men as they surrender in the TV miniseries Band of Brothers. Several entries are based off those made by Chase in "SWON", including the final one, which has similarities to Chase's entry for June 6, 1944. For Confederate servicemen, airmen especially since they would be among the first into the fight, I expect that Blackbeard was viewed as very much the same thing as D-Day was for Allied soldiers in OTL. The big offensive that would win the war for the good guys.