As SKHammer sat in the briefing room listening to Commander Sled go over the rules of engagement and reiterate the most basic rules to the green and rogue pilots in the room, his mind wandered to the upcoming sortie. He, and his squadron, The Sky Knights, were tasked with flying TBM's loaded with two 1K gifts for the Emperor of the Rising Sun. They were to climb to 20K while waiting for the scouts to spot the Junyo and it's escorts. He looked over at his men, realizing that some may not make it back. The Zeros that they would encounter were faster, more nimble, and their cannons would tear the TBM's apart in seconds. He could only hope that the fighter escort and scouts would cut the numbers of Zeros down a bunch before they reached target. When Commander Sled finished his briefing and dismissed the pilots, they all stood and saluted him as he left the room. A few moments later, Hammer was walking around his TBM checking that all was in order. He listened to his men as they watermelon chatted about everything from smoking chicken too how good the Detroit Red Wings are. It was good that his men were keeping loose. As Alpo, the XO, walked by, Hammer shook his hand and said "Good Luck". They had agreed before hand that Alpo would lead this sortie as he had a bit more experience in leading these kind of flights. They all climbed into their perspective cockpits and the deck filled with the sound of roaring engines of F4f's taking off into the morning air. The Army of Muppets were up and on their way to find the target. Hammer's adrenalin began to pump as he pushed the throttle forward and lifted his TBM off the deck. As the Sky Knights turned and climbed, he listened as the escort (JG2 Richtofen) and 2 SBD flights (the 55th and Blind Bats) also took off. It seemed like only moments later, he heard a call of enemy sighted. The scouts had come across a large attack force of Zeros and Kates and were engaging them. All of a sudden, the mission changed from waiting for a scout to locate the task force to finding it themselves. They continued climbing to 20K at which time they were heading north. Soon there was a call that there was a large zero group spotted north of them so Alpo called for the mission to turn West. As soon as the group turned west, the report was also changed to the west. On the horizon, they could see the dots of cons and they grew slowly until they could clearly be seen as the Zeros they were. The call was to blow through them so Hammer engaged his emergency power to give his engine all it could handle. The zeroes were turning to get good angles on the flight and as they got to within 1.2K, Hammer pushed the nose of his plane down and dove. His plane started to groan as he reached a maximum speed the plane would endure. He looked back as the Zeros became specks again. Whew!, he thought. He turned back around and began to level at 10K when before him the Junyo task force materialized. He called out the location of the cv, positioned him self over it and dove. With ack and shells hitting him from all directions, he released both of his bombs with deadly accuracy disabling most of it's guns and radar. He pulled up about 20 feet above the ocean surface and used his dive speed to escape the enemy fire and turned towards the closest friendly cv. He listened to his radio as his squaddies DHawk and Zbotch took out the CV and Cruiser. At that moment in time he was pumped up and excited about the apparent victory but it was short lived. He listened as, one by one, his squadron became smaller. As Zbotch had dove in on his target, he couldn't pull out and crashed. Then Seadog, Fatdad, and Alpo were shot down within seconds of each other. Colt bailed moments later. Dhawk lasted a few minutes more and SKRadd endured 6 more minutes of being chased down and killed. Only Wing and Hammer made it safely back to the cv to tell the story of how the Sky Knights scored a victory for the Allies on this day. The two main ships of the task force were visiting Davy Jones Locker, meanwhile, the other 2 SBD flights also put another escort ship down and put the hurt on several others. WTG Red Flight / CV22!
First try at this....have seen a few others do this and thought I would try it.
