George Washington's Ghost

The London Aircraft Company already had a long – although admittedly, in the early days of flight now and then chequered – history of designing lightweight, high-performance aircraft, and for ‘thinking outside the box’, innovating in proudly open defiance of Air Ministry or Royal Air Force requirements or operational specifications, that its legendary design bureau considered to be out of date, or just plain wrong. The R1-Albatross had the potential to be the LAC’s most revolutionary product yet, seemingly so far ahead of its rivals that it had very nearly created a new genus of aircraft.

Although still powered by twin turboprops – supercharged Derby-Royce Wyverns rated at over 2,500 horse power – by constructing eighty percent of the airframe from wood rather than metal to minimise weight, the Albatross was capable of flying at nearly four hundred miles per hour in level flight at altitudes of up to forty-two thousand feet. It was as fast or faster than any other propeller driven aircraft in service in any air force anywhere, and higher-flying than practically any other aircraft other than the first generation ‘turbojet’ powered test beds, the majority of which were still just twinkles in their designers’ eyes.

Several pre-production prototype bomber variants of the Albatross (type B-1), capable of carrying a two-thousand-ton payload to a target over a thousand miles away had been delivered to the RAF late last year for operational testing in Scotland and Nova Scotia.

“Where the Devil did that Mainz class cruiser come from?” Alex inquired, whistling softly.

“It has to be one of von Reuter’s ships,” the CAW, Commander Andrew Buchannan grunted.

“Probably one of the cruisers that took part in the bombardment of Kingston…”

“Well, we’ve got her bloody number now!” Buchannan decided, grim determination in his voice. “This just gets better and better. There must be three or four other warships in the bay, including that ironclad anchored out in the bay opposite the German port.”

“The lazy beggars haven’t even put out anti-torpedo nets!”

There were at least two large vessels, possibly old-fashioned ironclads, in dry docks, and other smaller, more modern frigate-type vessels moored within the main tidal basin of the Santo Domingo Naval Dockyards to the north east, across San Juan Bay from the German Concession.

And if that was not good enough news, the Albatross had made a possible sighting of one of the Dominican coal-burners plaguing the Lesser Antilles which had killed so many people on Antigua, coaling some twenty miles east of St Kitts and Nevis. Task Force 5.11 was already working up to its best speed, about twenty-nine knots in the relatively benign Atlantic swells east of the Leeward Islands, dashing to ‘pin’ the enemy squadron between its gunline and the rising sun at daybreak tomorrow morning.

On board the Perseus, the CAW and his henchmen, were very nearly salivating over the prospect of catching one of the ships of the despised Vera Cruz Squadron tied up alongside a quay, helpless in their sights!

“That bloody ironclad out in the bay is going to make life difficult for our Sea Eagles to mount torpedo runs on the German cruiser. The waters of that part of the inner bay are too shallow for a normal ‘drop’,” Percival, a solid, pragmatic man belying his aristocratic lineage – he was the third son of a Viscount – who had transferred over from the Ulysses only last week, remarked thoughtfully.

Air-launched torpedoes, no matter what fancy fins one fitted them with, or how low or slow a ‘dropping aircraft’ flew, tended to dive several tens of feet deep before ‘finding’ their ‘set’ running depths. In a harbour with a relatively shallow, sandy bottom, they could easily ‘plug’ or hit the bottom and ‘porpoise’ wildly off course.

The carrier’s Captain, Patrick Bentinck stroked his beard.

“Let’s not get over-excited about this, gentlemen,” he guffawed. “We’ve got the Dominicans on a decidedly tricky wicket here. Let’s not get carried away and start bowling too many full tosses, what!”

The other men in the day room listened respectfully.

“We can’t have all our torpedo-carriers concentrating on that damned ship to the exclusion of all the other juicy targets moored alongside or anchored elsewhere in the harbour. And I certainly don’t want our bombers drawn away from their targets in the docks and the government complex in the heart of the city. By all means detail off a couple of Sea Eagles to attempt torpedo runs at that cruiser but otherwise, I plan to recommend that we leave that ship to the tender mercies of Princess Royal and the Indefatigable.”

Two eight-gun 15-inch broadsides dropping one-ton shells in and around the quayside of the German Concession were likely to cause almost total devastation for hundreds of yards, perhaps a mile or so, all around the target. But that was not their problem; it was the Germans’ problem.