Chapter 12

We had eliminated all of the Bustol camps that were close enough to us for our Eagles to hit them without at least one refueling. Unless they sneaked in on us, we thought that we were reasonably safe from attack unless they were willing to spend the money necessary to make a move by transporter. I doubted that the criminal lords would be willing to spend that kind of money, so I didn't worry about it.

Much to my surprise, it seemed that the old military axiom that "You can't win a war without troops occupying the ground" did not fit with the Inglet war against the Bustol invaders. The reasons were probably that the instigators of the war had no grasp of military matters, and that it was just too damned expensive to conquer Inglet. The criminals on Bustol appeared to be content to steal sex slaves on a catch-as-catch-can basis, rather than try to build a real hold on the population. Anyway, assuming that this was true, my job was a hell of a lot easier than any of us had initially expected, and the war could be won essentially by air power alone. The only thing we needed ground troops for was to protect our forward air bases.

I composed a long memo to Gen. Isrult explaining my reasoning and asking him to support my new strategy. Almost by return mail, I received orders to leave Verla in charge and for Hasup and me to report to Gen. Isrult's office in one week with a plan to implement my new strategy.

Ansa, Hasup, and I tore into the planning for our air war with fanatical zeal. I worked out how and where I wanted forward air bases created. Ansa came up with a list of Eagles and Hawks for each base, and Hasup took that list and did an estimate of the logistics involved. Three people could not do the whole plan justice, but we did work out enough for a preliminary presentation. There were some questions we couldn't answer until we had some experience on the ground and in the air, but we had enough to get us started.

The three of us made our presentation and were listened to fairly and impartially. I was surprised at how little negative comment we heard when we finished our presentations. We returned to Inglet and waited for the other shoe to fall.

A week later, we received a visit from a number of people from Gen. Isrult's staff wanting to look over specific items of our equipment and to be taken for flights in the Eagles. They also wanted to fly in the Hawks, but there was no place for them to fit. Ansa took two of the officers over a couple of places where we wanted to establish forward bases, and she even took one colonel on a trip in the spotter plane over a Bustol camp we had not yet attacked so that he could see for himself why we wanted certain things. The staff officers spent six days with us and returned to Arklet. Nobody had much to say, but they were very friendly as they left for home. We were encouraged by that, but we still weren't sure that we had fully made our points.

Oh Boy! Gen. Isrult bought our plan, lock, stock, and barrel. Arklet started shipping us the things we needed from airplanes to tooth brushes. Ansa shifted into a heavy recruiting program for pilots and observers, which she quickly followed up with an intense training program.

Meanwhile, Hasup was getting the ground support and logistics organized. She was going to depend heavily on using the transporter from Arklet to do a lot of the work of moving materials such as food, ammunition, and fuel around as necessary.

I, on the other hand, was pushing hard on the diplomatic front to make sure that the towns that we wanted to locate next to would welcome us as friends and not as just another set of invaders. Some towns were easy to convince and some were hard to convince, but the example we had set in Karak went a long way toward convincing even the hard-headed ones that we had their best interests in mind. The final convincer was the realization that we would do a lot of good for a town we located near, above and beyond the few physical changes we made.

It took six months of intense work, but we were finally ready to hit the Bustols hard and at several places at the same time. The Bustols seemed to be fixated on how they laid out a camp and what size it was. That made it a lot easier for Ansa to allocate her resources and for Hasup to support her. Ansa settled on a standard attack force consisting of 10 Hawks to cover the Eagles, 30 Eagles to attack the base, and two FACs to coordinate the attack.

The attack always followed the same general scheme, since the Bustols just could not find an effective counter. The planes took off and climbed in formation to three clicks altitude. The climb often took as long as it took to get to within a few klicks of the Bustol camp. There was no hurry, and nobody wanted to waste fuel.

Once over the enemy camp, the Inglet planes went into a wide orbit flying over the camp and carefully looking for any defending fighters. By now, they were not paying much attention to the AAA, since it was so ineffectual. If protective bogeys were found, then the Hawks would attack; otherwise, they would fly top air cover for the Eagles.

The Eagles went in as three squadrons flying in echelon with the lead Eagle on the extreme left and the next one in line behind and to the right so that the observer would have a clear field of fire without having to be concerned about making mistakes with friendly fire. The first echelon attacked the AAA installations and started as many fires as possible. The second echelon tried to destroy as many buildings and other facilities as possible. The third echelon finished up with targets of opportunity and tried to kill as many troops on the ground as they could find.

The Hawks made a strafing pass if there was enough left of the base to warrant the effort. There was very seldom any need for the Hawks to make that final run.

The Bustols were getting chewed up pretty bad. We were hitting a multitude of camps each week, often more than one on the same day. One day, just to see if we could do it, we hit five camps on the same day. However, that was our maximum effort and was never repeated. There did not seem to be any reason to strain ourselves to do that.

The third week of the intense air campaign, we started to run into meaningful resistance. The Bustols had tried to match us with ultra lights, but our people in our planes with our weapons just plain out flew and out fought them. The Bustols did not need long to realize that we could not be beaten if they tried to match us with ultra lights. They had to do something different or admit defeat.

Well, they tried to do something different. The Bustols brought in eight planes similar to the spotter planes, but these were armed with machine guns and rockets. One morning, the radar early warning system squawked an alert that most people had figured they would never hear.

We scrambled two squadrons of Hawks to fly cover over the base at Imjon. These 20 Hawks were ordered to orbit the base at three and a half klicks altitude, which was pushing things with their full load of weapons, ammunition, and fuel. The radar had no trouble following the incoming bogeys, so the Hawks and FAC had plenty of warning as to altitude and direction.

The bogeys were approaching from the northwest at three klicks and 135 KPH. Shit! There was no doubt from the radar report that these bogeys had greater capabilities than the Hawks, but the battle might well turn on the flying abilities of the locals. The Hawks were certain to be more maneuverable than the faster and heavier bogeys, so that might be enough of an advantage for our side. The FAC, who was now functioning as a warning voice rather than as a controlling figure wished everybody good hunting and backed away to give the Hawks plenty of room to fight.