A follow up chapter to the "Necessary Claiming" one

www.furaffinity.net/view/23655046/

Nick and Judy go out to do a bombing mission that has an unusual target in mind.

Author's note: This story is based on an actual event.

"Zootopia" and Nick Wilde, Finnik, and Judy Hopps are property of Disney.


For those who are interested, the seaplane that Nick and Judy fly in this story is this one

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marti.....ght_c1939.jpeg

with some changes/modifications done to it by engineering genus, Finnik.

Additional info: The use of depth charges for ground attacks (they took out the pressure activated triggers and stuck in regular bomb fuses) was brought up in the book "Challenge for the Pacific, Guadalcanal" by Robert Leckie.
They used, mainly, the P-39 Aircobra (and its export version the P-400) for ground attack since they didn't do well in dogfights against the Zero. Between the 37 mm cannon in the nose, the wing machine guns, and the modified depth charges, the Japanese troops REALLY got to hating them.

As to the workings of bomb fuses the 70's BBC (I think) series "Danger UXB" "explains' the basic German bombs, why a number of them were set up not to explode right away, and the basics of the detonator in this episode:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK9MNVnllXo

from 17:25 through 20:30

The mission that Nick and Judy are on in this story is out of the same book. In that one, they detail a regular bomber to go do in the hounds. The "Killed the lot!" statement was the after action message that the coast watcher sent.



Fox, Rabbit, and the Hounds

In the darkened cockpit, Judy dialed the radio to another frequency band. She was trying to distract herself from the fact that barely eleven feet from her were four 450-pound (not including modifications) aerial drop depth charges inside the engine nacelle bomb bay. The thought of 290 pounds of Torpex (half again the explosive power of TNT) each contained made her nervous.

"And their twins are nesting in the same position in the left nacelle!" she thought.

The doe fervently hoped that Finnik was right about the safety features that would keep those explosive objects from going off except when they were supposed to.

"If he's wrong, it'll be one heck of a fireworks display for a second or two!" she thought as she returned her attention to the radio. "Only...comfort, if you want to call it that, is that if that happens neither of us will feel a thing!"

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Half awake, Judy snuggled herself closer, if that was possible, into the wall of fur the front of her body was up against. She really didn’t want to wake up, everything felt oh so warm, soft, and very comfortable.

“Mmmmmm, haven’t felt anything close to this since my last sleep pile with my sibs,” Judy thought.

Still, the waking world called. White colored fur greeted her opening eyes and as they moved about the bunny caught red fur on the upper and lower borders of that field of white.

“Oh,” Judy said as she remembered the previous evening.

Their little celebration that turned into Nick’s vulpine claiming of her in front of 80+ mammals. Their going to his rooms and the talk they had about that claiming. And her insistence that they sleep together.

“Morning, Carrots,” said Nick. “I thought about waking you up a bit earlier but you looked so comfortable and…”

Judy pulled back and locked in on the fox’s eyes with a sharp gaze of her own. The tod, his head propped up on one hand, chuckled at the dagger stare.

“…adorable,” he finished.

“Well, he stayed away from ‘cute’,” Judy thought as she got up.

Bailing out over the side of the bed, the bunny doe donned the shirt Nick had loaned her, went to the door that led out to the hallway, and eased it open a crack. She listened, and, hearing no one close by, opened it further to peer out. Seeing an empty corridor, she dashed across the hallway to her room and entered. A couple moments later, the bunny repeated the listen then look procedure and, still an empty hall, returned to Nick’s room. The fox was seated on the bed with his grooming kit next to him and already working a comb through his chest fur. After setting down the spare clothing she carried, Judy came to the bed and tossed her own kit on it, and then got on herself. Nick looked at her with a curious eye as she opened her kit and picked out a brush and a couple of combs.

“I’ll work on your back fur,” she said.

“I can do that…” he began.

“We can groom faster if we help each other,” Judy pointed out. “And it helps get a bit more of our scent on each other.”

After a second’s thought, Nick nodded and returned to working on himself as Judy began to brush the disarrayed fur on his back. When done there, she turned her attention to his tail.

“Fascinated with my bottle brush appendage?” he asked after Judy spent more time running her hands over and through the fur than brushing it.

“Bottle brushes aren’t this soft…or fascinating,” she replied.

Nick chuckled at that. Having dealt with taking care of his tail all of his remembered life he saw it as just another part of himself to deal with. That someone saw it as an object of interest was a new thing. When Judy was done grooming him, he turned to her so he could work on her back. When it came to her tail Nick insisted that she instruct him on how to brush and comb her powder puff so it was at its best. He could almost feel the heat of blush radiating from her ears as he followed her instructions. Unlike his tail, where he brushed and combed from tail root towards tip, one brushed from the bottom upwards on a bunny’s tail. As he did that, the 'heat' resulting from that blush went up several degrees in temperature and grinned. When finished, the two dressed in their fresh clothing and headed for the door to the hallway. Their exit from Nick’s rooms could not have been better timed as three other mammals were there to see them coming out. After a polite exchange of “Good morning.” s, the fox and rabbit headed for the stairs. Arriving at the big front room, they saw that about half of the seating there was filled. Selecting an empty table, Nick held the chair for Judy then slid it to the table after she seated herself and then set a chair close next to her and sat down. A cursory scan of the room revealed that many mammals were looking their way. Most had curious to neutral expressions on their faces while a small number of them, mostly males, ranged from disgusted to disappointed.

“Hello!” said a familiar voice off to their right.

Elizabeth, a red deer fem, handed each of them a menu.

“Hi, ‘Liz. Chicken, cheese, and tuna omelet for me with a side of blueberry scones and big glass of milk,” said Nick as he handed his menu back.

“Hmmmm, buttered green beans, a tossed salad, a slice of cornbread.”

Judy gave ‘Liz a hopeful look.

“Any purple clover available?” she asked.

“Sigh, I’m afraid not, dear,” came the reply. “However, we do happen to have a few bundles of golden barley stalks that were ‘accidently’ included in a shipment we got two days ago.”

Judy’s ears went straight up! Barley stalks were high on almost any herbivore’s list of dietary delights and golden barley was the best of that plant variety. Since the start of the war they, along with the desired clover, were considered a luxury food and, therefore, darned near impossible to get beyond the local areas where they were grown.

“Please, yes!” Judy said.

“Two bundles?” the proprietress asked.

The bunny nodded enthusiastically. After taking Judy’s menu, Liz looked at the pair and said:

“I’m glad you two made things pretty much official between you. George and I have known for months that you belong together. So have a lot of others.”

After she left, Judy gave Nick a speculative look. He gave her an easy smile and a shrug of his shoulders.

“I did say that many think we are already a pair,” he pointed out.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

“Mr. Wilde.”

Nick, seated on a low scaffold set by his larger plane, looked down to see a cheetah standing close by. He recognized him, he worked for the local governor.

“Yes?”

“Governor’s compliments, sir. Mr. MacFarland requests you and your crew come to his office in an hour to discuss a matter of small importance,” the feline said.

“Okay, I’ll be there after I clean up.”

* * * * * * * * * * *

“The coast watcher team on Gavvavodu Island has radioed for help. The enemy has brought in some bloodhounds and they are very concerned about being tracked down by them,” MacFarland explained.

Gavvavodu Island was close to 1,100 miles north and east of their position and some 800 miles of that distance was within enemy held waters and territory. The place was a sea and air crossroads and, thusly, a very important area that needed watching over. Apparently the enemy had figured out that that was what was going on. After their regular foot patrols didn’t net anything (due to warnings to the “watchers” from the locals) they brought in the bloodhounds. At present, they were getting dogs and their handlers acclimatized to the island’s tropical environment.

“In about another week they will begin the serious hunt for our watchers. After that it is only a matter of time before they locate our people,” the cape buffalo said.

“And you want us to go in and pull them out,” Judy said.

Their prototype Martin heavy seaplane had more than enough range for them to get there and back and as she and Nick had already made a couple of deliveries to that team they had experience with the area. Making an extraction run shouldn’t be difficult.

“As a last resort, yes.”

“Last resort?” questioned Nick. “That means you’ve got something else that you want to try first. And we are part of it.”

“Yes. What we wish is to try is to eliminate the dogs and handlers.”

“And how do you propose to do that?” queried Finnick.

“The engine bomb bays on your Martin can hold as much as 3000 pounds each, correct?”

“A bit more than 4000 each,” replied Finnick.

“What we…I propose is that we put aerial drop bombs in those bays and make a bombing on the base where those dogs are housed.”

The resulting several seconds of silence was deafening.

"You want us to do WHAT?!" exclaimed an utterly incredulous Judy.

"Make a bombing run on the enemy airfield at Gavvavodu island," Reginald repeated, patiently.

“That is the military’s bailiwick,” Nick pointed out.

“Due to the limited number of long range bombing aircraft, and the need to use them for long range patrolling, we have not convinced the military of the urgency to send a plane for a strike against a base that has a number of fighter aircraft that would intercept them during any daytime bombing run.”

“As would happen to us!” Judy stated.

“Thus the need to do this as a night run so the fighters have very little chance of interfering,” Finnick chimed in.

“Yes,” replied Reg. “The moon is waning, so if done some time over the next several nights there will be enough light to make out the base’s runway and set up for the drop. We want to use at least four bombs to get the best possible chance of having at least one land close enough to the dog pens to seriously injure or kill them. The drop altitude would have to be between 1000 to 1200 feet. We would prefer lower but that would increase the chance of you being damaged by the resulting explosions.”

Several seconds of silence later….

“With the parameters you have just laid out, this mission is a no go,” Finnick flatly stated.

Judy felt relief at the diminutive fox’s statement…until she saw the questioning expression on Nick’s face as he looked to his partner.

“And what would have to change to get a green light?” the cape buffalo asked.

Finnick gave Nick a thoughtful look.

“I want to hear what you have to say before making up my mind,” Wilde said.

“Alright, here it is….”

* * * * * * * * * * *

That was six days ago. For two days the fox and rabbit practiced flying runs over an island that had an almost finished runway of similar length as the one on Gavvavodu. Drop after drop of modified 55 gallon drums, filled with sand, were done from a height of 1100 feet on the chosen area. After trying the runs at different speeds they found a speed of 120 miles per hour gave them the best spread of the weapons.

“Any slower and it’s likely to give the AA gun crews a good chance of hitting us,” Nick said.

Next, they made runs for three nights until they were pretty consistent at getting about half of the weapons within the target circle. Meanwhile, Finnick was busy making modifications to eight depth charges he had chosen to use in place of regular bombs.

“The casings on these things are made of thinner metal so the fragments have less mass. As such, should any hit the plane they will do so with less energy than bomb splinters, which have decidedly more mass,” Finnick explained.

“What’s this for?” Nick asked as he indicated the four-foot length of six-inch diameter pipe welded on the front of the charge.

“It’s called a ‘standoff detonator’. We want the most out of the explosive power of these charges. If they hit the ground like normal bombs at least 40% of the explosion goes into the ground. This…”

Finnick run a paw hand the length of the pipe to stop at the end cap on the front of it.

“…jars the charge and closes the detonator circuit while it…they are a couple of feet from hitting the dirt.”

“And that allows more of the explosion to do more of the real ‘work’ we want it to,” Judy concluded.

“Correct.”

“And this?” she asked, pointing to the rear of the container.

“Drag chute. Opens up a couple of seconds after release. Gets the nose pointed down and slows the fall a few seconds to give you more time to get clear.”


The drums that were used for their practice drops had included the chutes.


None of the three had any idea what strings Reginald ‘pulled’ but on the second day of practice they had air recon photos of their target to examine. The area where the hounds were housed, as learned by the coast watchers, was marked on them. Judy felt uncomfortably concerned about the nearly two dozen antiaircraft guns salted around the base.

“You should arrive about 1:00 AM local time, that’s a time when most mammals are at their least alert,” Reginald said.

“That’s day time mammals, not nocturnals,” Nick pointed out.

“Yes, that’s true. Still, they are a long way from the frontline and, hopefully, feeling somewhat complacent as a result. They aren’t expecting a night attack and by the time they know you are there you’ll be outbound.”

* * * * * * * * * * *

Out of the corner of his eye, Nick saw Judy working on getting another navigation position fix. She’d been doing those about every 20 minutes. It was a bit of overkill but…

“Keeps her busy so she doesn’t dwell that much on what’s coming up,” he thought.

Hidden behind his ‘cool steel nerved pilot’ front, he was as nervous as she was.


After a full day’s sleep and a meal, they did their preflight checks and then cranked up the two Wright R-2600 engines, and, after a warming up time, took off into the evening sky. At a cruising speed of 172 miles per hour it would take them about six and a half hours to reach the target area.


“About 80 miles from the island,” Judy announced.

“Check,” replied Nick.

He began a slow decent from their cruising altitude of 9,000 feet, taking nearly 20 minutes to get to 1100 feet. Once there, Nick eased back on the throttles until they were flying at 120 miles per hour. The light of the quarter moon was not much for Judy to see by but more than enough for Nick’s night eyes to pick out the shimmer of breakers at the shoreline of the island.

“There it is,” he called out.

Putting a set of binoculars to her eyes, the bunny could just make out the outline of the coast.

“Looks like the south coast,” she said after consulting her map.

Nick headed for the east side of the shore, then turned northwest. A moment later, he picked out the airstrip.

“Cinch up your safety harness, fluff. This might get rough really quick!” he said as he did the same.

The hounds and their handlers were situated about a hundred yards off to the right side and about a third of the way up along the strip. Toggling a pair of levers forward, Nick opened the nacelle bays doors. Nearly two miles away from target, the first lines of AAA lit up the darkness.

“Well, they sure are ‘complacent’,” Nick commented, cynically.

He was lined up and had to maintain his course and speed or the whole mission would end up being a ‘wash’.

“End of runway!” Judy called out.

Nick thumbed the drop button on his control wheel. A timing mechanism activated and it dropped the charges at half second intervals. As the last of them dropped clear, a line of tracers shot up in front of the nose barely a hundred feet away. Ramming the throttles forward and jinking right and left, Nick climbed away to put as much distance between them and all that flying steel as he could. Glancing to her right, Judy saw several bright explosions of light going off on the right side of the runway.

“Please work!” she thought fervently. “I don’t want us doing this again!”

Once out of range, Nick closed up the bay doors and turned for home. Seven hours later, they landed at the island they had practiced at, moored at the dock, and just about literally crawled off the plane. They were driven to their quarters where they shucked their clothing and dropped into the tiger sized bed, snugged up to one another, in an exhausted sleep.

* * * * * * * * * * *

“The run took about 100 seconds but it sure felt a lot longer!” Nick told Reg
.
“A near eternity!” Judy put in.

The buffalo nodded in response. He’d already seen a report from the maintenance mammals that, in spite of all the ground fire, the Martin had nary a scratch on it. After resting for two days and nights, the fox and bunny had returned to Espiritu Santo. They had gone to George and ‘Liz’s hostel for a noon meal then off to the government building to turn in their travel expenses. From there, they ended up in Reginald MacFarland’s office to give him their report.

“Any idea on how we did?” Nick asked.

Reginald picked up a paper.

“According to the watchers, you managed to destroy six planes, three fighters, two bombers, and one long range patrol aircraft. Seven others sustained heavy damage and one hanger was nearly destroyed along with another being badly damaged. Several other structures were damaged, as well.”

“And the dogs…their handlers?” asked an anxious Judy.

Reg picked up another paper and handed it to her. She read the three words on it and then handed it over to Nick.

“Killed the lot!” it read.