Chapter Twelve, Orderly Chaos

"This is Charlie Six, the straw man is in sight."

"You are clear to drop the package when you reach the straw man."

"Acknowledged."

The heavily modified Avro Lancaster carrying the Grand Slam, a 22,000 lb big brother of the Tallboy, was riddled with 30mm shells by the diving ME 262. It was relatively unharmed, except the release mechanism was damaged, and thus the Grand Slam fell out of the bomber's belly.

Franz Köster pulled up hard, then back down, peppering a lower flying Avro Lancaster's cockpit with more 30mm rounds from above. The gunners stationed on the bomber unsuccessfully attempted to track his jet plane and shoot it down. When the more unlucky Avro begin to dive nose-first with its dead pilot, he leveled out the jet plane until he fired a R4M rocket at a B-17, which snapped off its right wing and sent it into an uncontrollable spiraling dive into the water. After that, he turned his attention to another B-17, only to observe it being split in half by an 88mm shell that punched through the underside and exploded in the crew compartment.

Nearby, a traumatized Bf 109 pilot ejected from his plane after it was chewed up and set on fire by four B-17s' gunners, only to get rammed mid-air by a P-51.


The Bismarck battleship found itself in a very lop-sided battle, against the entire US and Royal Navy fleet, and some of the US/British dive bombers after it was spotted through the fog. The command room in the superstructure was blown to pieces, leaving the ship leaderless and severing communications with the base. But after only less than a few minutes of heavy broadsides, the Bismarck's career would be unexpectedly cut short.

The modified Avro Lancaster unknowingly dropped the Grand Slam directly over the Bismarck, and such bomb was designed to punch through meters of reinforced concrete and shake an entire underground fortification to beyond repairs. Instead, it was being dropped on top of a ship, which was roughly equivalent to receiving an entire broadside at one small area.

The 22,000 pounds object crashed through the Bismarck's armored deck, and just happened to smash into one of the primary ammunition holds. Ships that survived such failure were unheard of, especially when hit by a large bunker buster.


Leon von Braun was promoted to Oberstleutnaut just days ago, and was confronted with a challenging task in his command bunker. The British and the Americans were throwing everything but the kitchen sink at his pitiful island base, for some odd reason. Actually, it seemed more like they also tore out the kitchen sink to throw at him. His naval guns barely outnumbered the amount of hostile ships anchored in his harbor, and had no hopes of ever matching the ships' broadsides. The Bismarck was being beaten senseless, and the Tirpitz was in the drydock still undergoing repairs. His defending aircraft were hopelessly outnumbered and stood little chance even with the flak teams' assistance.

"Sir, we just lost all of our flak guns at Tirpitz's drydock!" one of the radio operators yelled, as the bunker shook again from the explosions above ground and light bulbs flashed.

"Naval battery one, four, and five are also down." another radio operator added in.

"I'm going outside." Leon von Braun replied.

"What?!"

"I said I'm going outside."

Leon opened the blast door and stepped outside, observing the carnage in person. Just before he stepped back in, there was a dark mushroom smoke cloud emerging from the Bismarck, shortly followed by a massive shock wave that caused him to stumble backward. Anything and anyone that were in the harbor area, such as the flak teams assigned to protect the Bismarck, were vaporized in the blast or tossed away like ragdolls. Had it not been for the smoke, it would've been apparent that the front part of the ship had disintegrated into burning metal scraps. The rear portion, now rendered unrecognizable, also suffered from its own ammunition explosions since the shock waves were powerful enough to detonate the rest of the ammunition.

When he stepped back into the bunker, he was handed a message from a command bunker's staff member.


From: Adolf Hitler

To: Oberstleutnaut Braun

The Bismarck and Tirpitz must not sink. Defend it at all cost!


Leon slumped into his seat.

"I didn't sign up for this…"

Then the lights went out for good.

"Back up generator?" one of the staff members asked.

"Looks like the air intake was collapsed from the explosions."

"Batteries?"

"The last fresh battery shipment is sleeping with the fishes since about last year."


Franz Köster directed his jet fighter towards the runway; he had ran out of R4M rockets and 30mm rounds. Eight P-51 Mustang pilots recognized an opportunity to shoot down the ME 262, and they all dove after the landing jet fighter.

Three of them were intercepted by a Bf 109 fighter aircraft, before the Bf 109 pilot was accidentally put to permanent sleep by his own comrades' anti-aircraft flak teams. Three other P-51s were shredded by dozens of quadruple 20mm cannons, and the last two ones fled in panic.

"That's what you get for not letting me finish my meal!" Ludwig Göring yelled, retraining his sights onto other aircraft, before noticing something odd.

The burning P-51 he shot down still had a breathing pilot, operational .50 caliber machine guns, and was diving straight for him. He then turned the quad cannon back at the falling aircraft and attempted to fire again. But nothing happened.

"Hey! What's going on?!" he yelled at Josef.

"Ammo jam!" Josef yelled back, only to lose his arm when the P-51 started firing.

The P-51 crashed into the flak nest before an unfortunate Josef could scream in pain, and metal shards from the explosion tumbled onto a runway, narrowly missing the ME 262.

After Franz Köster taxied the plane onto a tarmac, he got out.

"Franz Köster, we only have two R4M rockets left. The rest are buried under rubble. Make them count." A mechanic solemnly said.

"I can make do. I need to use the restroom real quick. I'll be back!"

When Franz Köster returned, he saw his ME 262 taking off without him. However, it took off on an asphalt runway instead of the concrete one, thus the jet engines' ultra-hot exhaust set the asphalt on fire. Before the fire brigade could even shift their attention from the burning buildings, a shower of cluster bombs from a dive bomber blew the runway into pieces.

"What the…"

"He pointed a gun at us. Obergefreiter Struve just stole your plane, and took off with the two right cannons empty and a half empty fuel tank."


The ME 262's radio crackled to life shortly after Paul flew past the showers of airplane parts and away from the carnage.

"Paul! I want my damn plane back!"

"Then why don't you hop into another 262… Oh wait, there isn't one, so good luck catching me!"

"You just committed a traitorous act against the Fatherland."

"Like I care."

"Go to hell."

"Those Tommies and Yankees will do it to you first before me. Enjoy their carpet bombing. Oh, and I was the guy who stole your peach schnaps a while ago. You had beaten up the wrong guy."

Paul then turned off the radio before Franz could reply back.


A long stream of shells zipped past below Daniel as he was speaking to Zahnlos. He pushed the dragon into a climb and looked behind him, the ME 262 was diving towards him with only its left auto-cannons firing. However, it was too far away to make any accurate hits with its low-range cannons.

There were only two pilots who were allowed to fly the only 262 at the island base, him, and Franz. But Franz wasn't stupid enough to fire on a target nearly two kilometers away, since the ME 262's quadruple 30mm auto-cannons' rounds usually dropped 41 meters after traveling a kilometer, making it very inaccurate when targeting over long range. Essentially all of the fired rounds were landing about 100 meters below him.

Something clicked inside his mind. Paul had not completed basic training for the ME 262, but he knew Paul had a tendency of being trigger-happy and being too aggressive with acceleration and maneuvering when he was angry. Most likely he had "borrowed" the jet plane when the Luftwaffe needed it the most.

Daniel nudged Zahnlos to bank hard to the left, then barrel-roll in an upward arc to the right. He mentally counted how many seconds did the stream of shells last. Paul attempted to also bank left and then to the right upon recognizing the mind play, but overshot and screamed past them, gently rocking the dragon and Daniel. The fighter jet then pulled up and banked right again to meet Zahnlos, and Daniel nudged the dragon to continue to bank in the same direction.

It did not take long for both of them to fly in a circle. There was no way the ME 262 could line up its cannons for a kill, especially at over 400 mph, but its cannons occasionally fired short bursts. Although Paul was making a major mistake of attempting to match the dragon's maneuverability instead of using the anti-bomber's tactic against slow moving targets, Daniel feared Zahnlos would stall before the ME 262 would, and a stalled aircraft was a dead aircraft.

As a risky gamble, he nudged the dragon to fly in a straight line. If his timing was right, Zahnlos could spit a fireball at the jet plane. If the timing was off, they could either end up directly in the ME 262's cross-hair or get burned by its exhaust.

As he flew closer, he noticed Paul had taken the bait and was not going to stop flying in a circle, but Zahnlos was flying too fast for him to nail the ME 262's right engine. The dragon dived gently while Daniel took the burnt molar breaker biscuit out of his pocket. Paul also dived as the dragon neared, but he overcompensated and quickly found himself flying below it.

While taking note of how many R4M rockets the ME 262 was equipped with and that the right cannons appeared to be improperly loaded, Daniel threw the biscuit at the rapidly approaching jet plane and watched it get inhaled by the right engine. As Zahnlos spiraled out of control from being destabilized by the ME 262's wake and screeched the pain of being hit by the jet engines' exhaust, he grinned as the ME 262's right engine vomited a shot of flames and a thick plume of black smoke. They eventually regained control and flew towards a field of rocky pillars next to an island; a second longer in the dive and they would've crashed into the water.

Another long hail of shells alerted Daniel of the ME 262 diving towards him as he entered the field. He nudged the dragon to decelerate close to its stall speed and narrowly dodge pillars after pillars, with shells ricocheting around them, while counting how many seconds of fire was wasted. Two rockets also screamed from the jet plane, one struck a pillar somewhat behind the dragon and Daniel, and the other rocket overshot and slammed into the water some distance away. Paul pulled up hard to avoid crashing into the pillars.

After exiting the field, he turned around hard to meet Paul head on. It would be the only time he would ever pull such risky maneuver, only because he knew his opponent had expended all of his ammunition. Though the ME 262 did not change its course.

"You're going to be an an aerial version of a road-kill, reptile boy!" Paul yelled as he jerked the throttle control to the maximum setting, ignoring the excessively high pressure indicated by the fuel injection pressure gauge.

Suddenly, its intact left engine coughed a plume of smoke and died. He had been too aggressive with the throttle and accidentally starved the engine of air with an over-dosage of fuel.

As the now-slightly diving ME 262 closed the distance gap while Paul was attempting to restart the engine, Daniel pulled up hard and then pushed back down, allowing Zahnlos to line up his shot onto the ME 262's upper side. The dragon spat another fireball as the jet plane glided past them. The ME 262's wake destabilized Zahnlos and caused him and Daniel to dive sharply, before the dragon was able to recover and avoid hitting the water at high velocity.

"Hah! He missed!" Paul victoriously shouted as the left engine roared back to life, ignoring the ominous shuddering of the ME-262. He then pulled on the stick to flip the aircraft upside down to do a 180 degree turn, so he could have another attempt at ramming Daniel and Zahnlos.

There was a loud snap, and a piece of metal flew off as the aircraft begin to pitch downward in a spiral.

Cursing loudly, he looked behind him.

The tail fin was missing; it had been melted off.