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Shooting Stars
Seven silver and red fighter planes zoomed across the coastline of Nazi occupied Norway. Blackhawk keyed his mike. "Okay, men, keep your eyes peeled. If this Ratzi installation is as important as the OSS thinks, we can expect a hot reception."
Blackhawk moved the control stick gently and savored the feel of the P-80 as it smoothly banked into a turn. The cockpit of the jet-powered fighter was unbelievably quiet to someone accustomed to the roar of a Grumman Skyrocket's twin radial engines. And he caught himself looking at the air speed indicator repeatedly to remind himself that he was cruising at a hundred miles an hour faster than their old planes could manage. They'd had the Lockheed Shooting Stars for only two months and there had been a lot to learn about this new way of flying, but now it was time to see how they performed in combat.
His team followed him in a tight formation. He checked his fuel gauges. The teardrop shaped tanks hanging from the wingtips were nearly empty so he switched to internal tanks. The wingtip tanks were designed to be jettisoned when they were empty but the Blackhawks had quickly discovered that the tanks actually decreased the P-80s' drag and improved the aileron control, so they kept the tanks.
"Boogies, ten o'clock low" Chuck's voice squawked in his ears. Blackhawk looked in that direction and saw a swarm of black spots climbing toward them. At least twenty Focke-Wolfe 190s, he estimated. That confirmed the report from Allied Intelligence. There was more to this apparently quiet stretch of North Sea coastline than met the eye, or the Germans would not be defending it so fiercely.
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