Chapter Two Hundred Eighty-Nine
12th February 1943
Perth, Australia
Jacob was reading the latest round of situation reports. The capture of Da Nang was a minor victory when they had needed one, the harbor and airfield were of strategic importance. It had also given him the first concrete numbers on the Japanese supply lines and logistics of the IJA/IJN. The Sub Flotilla based in Darwin had been running circles around the IJN but Jacob knew that couldn’t last. The Japanese were going to upgrade their ASW capabilities in a hurry. The other problem that the Flotilla only had thirteen subs active at the moment, two others had needed to be sent to Sydney for repair after a collision while in port, hardly enough to put a serious crimp in Japanese logistics. He’d received word that three more were being sent to the Pacific along with the 1st and 2nd Seebaitallon Divisions, finally. Anything was welcome right now. The Dutch had been pushed out of Borneo. The Australians and Dutch were fighting in New Guinea, the East Indies were a mess.
It had been of a bit of a sour note that several Japanese landing craft had been captured and that had confirmed something that he’d suspected. The Heer had their own version it that they had been using on the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea as well as on the inland canals of Germany and Poland for at least the last two years. Jacob had fired off several tersely worded telegrams to Berlin and Wunsdorf to get them to shift those to the Pacific. The word he’d gotten back was that they would get to it, time and events permitting. The Seebaitallons had landed in Vietnam in small open boats. A few machine guns and mortars covering the beach and they would have been chopped to pieces. He had spread word that the Daihatsu Class landing craft were to be captured intact wherever possible and had placed an order with Australian boat builders to start making them here.
Jacob looked at the next piece of intelligence that had crossed his desk and almost swore aloud. The capture of Da Nang had gotten the attention of the IJA, they were shifting an entire Army Corps from the Malay campaign to Vietnam via Cambodia. Jacob couldn’t warn the Vietnamese, French or the 3rd Seebaitallon because that might tip off the Japanese that their codes had been cracked.
The Luftwaffe JG-23, was to be deployed in Da Nang as soon as they finished sorting out the issues with the tropicalized FW-190s and issues that the pilots were having with having come from mid-winter in Germany in just a few days. Jacob had been informed that the six Jastas would be ready to leave at any time from Western Australia. Those 72 airplanes would be a big help. The Fleet was also scheduled to head for the South China Sea and the Gulf of Siam. Jacob just hoped that the Vietnamese held on until then.
----------------------------------------------------------------
After a few days Lenz no longer felt like he was going to die which was good because he’d found himself with a shitload of work to do. He’d been given barely a day to get to know his sullen, resentful command before Jasta 60 had been rounded up and shoved onto Ju-90 transports and sent to Perth leaving their airplanes behind. He’d been told that the original plan had been to load them and their airplanes onto a ship followed by two months at sea. Instead it was decided that license built FW-190C airplanes that had been built for the RAAF with local conditions in mind would be better suited to the mission.
It had been snowing when the transport Lenz was riding on had taken off from Kiel. Two days later he’d stepped out the door of that transport in Perth and it was forty degrees. Lenz had never liked hot days and this was way too much. He’d been led straight to the bachelor officer’s barracks where they’d been so kind as to have fans going. All Lenz had been able to do was lay there for the next day or so.
Eventually he’d needed to prepare Jasta 60 for deployment. “This is a chance to really shine” Lenz had told them “No cares about this Squadron’s reputation here.” That was almost the exact same thing that he’d been told where he’d been told where he was going. Once they had gotten their airplanes Lenz had tasked the ground crews with painting the tailplane and nose of the planes white, the colors of Jasta 60, with the balance painted brown/grey splinter on top and light grey underside. Then had come the process of turning them into a proper fighter squadron. Lenz had simply run out of time for that as they had been rushed into their forward deployment and a long ferry mission that took them to Vietnam via Batavia. They followed the Ju-90s into the airfield, a long tarmac runway built with a town on one side and rice paddies on the other. The ocean was nearby and lush green hills were off to the west.
In the brief phone call that Lenz had managed to get home from Kiel his mother had told him to keep his eye out for his little brother Tilo. Lenz hadn’t known what to make of Tilo getting conscripted, Tilo was one of those people who wasn’t quite smart enough to realize that he wasn’t particularly smart. Lenz couldn’t imagine him surviving on a battlefield and with Tilo’s tendency to mouth off all the time it had come as no surprise to Lenz that he’d landed in the Seebaitallon Infantry. Lenz hadn’t the heart to tell his mother that the odds of him running into Tilo simply weren’t that great.
That was why Lenz was surprised when he’d parked his FW and Tilo was sitting there in a sand bag machine gun nest watching the airplanes fly in.
“Hey, Lenz!” Tilo yelled “What’re you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing” Lenz said.
“I don’t know” Tilo said, “You piss someone off or something?”
Real funny, that was the same question that Lenz had been asked when word had gotten around that he’d been assigned to Jasta 60.
“I don’t know what the Hell happened” Lenz replied.
“Who’re you talking to, Kid” a voice said from the machine gun nest.
“This is my brother, Lenz” Tilo said “I told you about him.” Lenz saw a head poke up. A man of about thirty, shaggy light brown hair, a crooked nose, a gap-toothed grin and over-aged for his rank. Of course, Tilo himself was looking a bit ragged these days, he was taller and thinner than Lenz remembered.
“Unteroffizer Reier, Sir” The man said a bit defensively as he shook Lenz’s hand.
“Showing Tilo the ropes?” Lenz asked.
“Yes, Sir” Reier said, “Someone had to, when we left Cuxhaven he didn’t know a damned thing beyond what he’d read in those books of his.”
“Good” Lenz said, “Thank you for that.”
“Sure thing, Sir” Reier said.
As Lenz walked away to see to the rest of the Squadron he heard Tilo protesting what Reier had said about him. Reier shot back that Tilo had neglected to say that Lenz was a Hauptmann.
