I’ve been doing a little research in preparation for the huge battle that will be book two of Seeds (I’m thinking more and more of calling the novel ‘Heaven Sent’, which was the original title for just part one). The main battle is going to be, basically, Pearl Harbour, only on a grander scale.

So it’s going to be an air raid on an unprecedented size, but there should be other prongs to the attack. One I thought of today was midget subs. I knew the Japanese sent midget submarines into the harbour as part of the raid. I didn’t know that they tried a raid on Sydney harbour in May 1942. This was the nearest the subs came to a successful mission, their loss rate, in combat and otherwise, must have been one of the highest in the whole war. The British, Italians and Germans were more succesful.

I’ve been spending time at work surfing for this sort of information. Out of the sea and into the air, I recently ordered a model of the Curtiss XP-55 Ascender. This, the Vultee XP-54 Swoose Goose and Northrop XP-56 Black Bullet were responses to a 1939 tender for a new generation of American fighter. The Cicciles in Seeds were originally based upon the XP-54, but now I’m leaning more to the XP-55.