Plague Ship Read Free

front of Ebelhardt’s flight jacket covered in blood.
    Lichtermann mashed the rudder and pressed hard on the yoke to dive away from the Allied aircraft that had come out of nowhere.
    It was the wrong maneuver.
    Launched just weeks earlier, the MV Empire MacAlpine was a late addition to the convoy. Originally built as a grain carrier, the eight-thousand-ton vessel had spent five months in the Burntisland Shipyard having her superstructure replaced by a small control island, four hundred and sixty feet of run-way, and a hangar for four Fairley Swordfish torpedo bombers. She could still haul nearly as much grain as she could before her conversion. The Admiralty had always considered the CAMs a stopgap measure until a safer alternative could be found. As it was, the Merchant Aircraft Carriers, or MACs, like the MacAlpine , were to be used only until England secured a number of Essex Class escort carriers from the United States.
    While the Kondor loitered over the convoy, two of the Swordfish had been launched from the MacAlpine and flown far enough out from the fleet that, when they climbed into the inky sky to ambush the much larger and faster German aircraft, Lichtermann and his men never knew they were coming. The Fairleys were biplanes, with top speeds barely half that of the Kondor. They each carried a Vickers machine gun, mounted above the radial engine’s cowling, and a gimballed Lewis gun in a rear-facing cockpit.
    The second Swordfish lay in wait three thousand feet below the Focke-Wulf and was nearly invisible in the darkness. As the Kondor dove away from the first attacker, the second torpedo bomber, stripped of anything that could slow it, was in position.
    A stream of fire poured into the front of the Kondor from the Vickers, while the second gunner leaned far over the rear cockpit coaming to train his Lewis gun on the pair of BMW engines attached to the port wing.
    Coin-sized holes appeared all around Ernst Kessler, the aluminum glowing cherry red for an instant before fading. There had been only a few seconds between Dietz’s scream and the barrage that swept the underside of the Kondor , not nearly long enough for fear to cripple the teen. He knew his duty. Swallowing hard because his stomach had yet to catch up with the plummeting aircraft, he squeezed his MG-15’s trigger, as the Fw continued to dive past the slower Swordfish. Tracers began to fill the sky, and he aimed the 7.92mm weapon like a fireman directing a stream of water. He could see a circle of little jets of fire glowing in the darkness. It was the exhaust popping around the Fairley’s radial engine, and it was there that he targeted the withering fire, even as his own plane was continuously hammered by the British craft.
    The arcing line of tracers converged on the glowing circle, and, suddenly, it appeared as if the Allied plane’s nose was engulfed in fireworks. Sparks and tongues of fire enveloped the Swordfish, metal and fabric shredded by the assault. The propeller was torn apart, and the radial engine exploded as if it was a fragmentary grenade. Burning fuel and hot oil rolled over the exposed pilot and gunner. The Swordfish’s controlled dive, which matched the Kondor ’s, became an out-of-control plummet.
    The Fairley winged over, spiraling ever faster, as it burned like a meteor. Lichtermann began to level the Kondor. Kessler could see the flaming wreckage continue to drop away. It suddenly changed shape. The wings had torn loose from the Swordfish’s fuselage. Any aerodynamics the mortally wounded aircraft had possessed were gone. The Swordfish dropped like a stone, the flames winking out when the wreckage plowed into the uncaring sea.
    When Ernst looked up and across the fifty-foot trailing edge of the port wing, the fear he had been too distracted to acknowledge hit him full force. Smoke trailed from both nine-cylinder engines, and he could plainly hear the power plants were misfiring badly.
    “Captain,” he shouted into the