THE BIG ONE
Stuart Slade
Dedication
This book is respectfully dedicated to the memory of General Curtis Emerson LeMay
Acknowledgements
The Big One could not have been written without the very generous help of a large number of people who contributed their time, input and efforts into confirming the technical details of the story. Some of these generous souls I know personally and we discussed the conduct and probable results of the attacks described in this novel in depth.
Others I know only via the internet as the collective membership of “The Board” yet their communal wisdom and vast store of knowledge, freely contributed, has been truly irreplaceable.
A particular note of thanks is due to Ryan Crierie who willingly donated his time and great expertise in producing the artwork used for the cover of this book.
I must also express a particular debt of gratitude to my wife Josefa for without her kind forbearance, patient support and unstintingly generous assistance, this novel would have remained nothing more than a vague idea floating in the back of my mind.
Caveat
The Big One is a work of fiction, set in an alternate universe. All the characters appearing in this book are fictional and any resemblance to any person, living or dead is purely coincidental. Although some names of historical characters appear, they do not necessarily represent the same people we know in our reality.
Copyright Notice
Copyright C 2006 Stuart Slade.
Contents
Chapter One: More Than Time
Chapter Two: Journeys Well Begun
Chapter Three: War Is Killing
Chapter Four: Striking Out
Chapter Five: Getting Hurt
Chapter Six: Impending Fate
Chapter Seven: Approaching Doom
Chapter Eight: Judgment Day
Chapter Nine: Redemption
Chapter Ten: Welcome Home
Epilogue
CHAPTER ONE MORE THAN TIME
Kozlowski Air Force Base, Limehouse, Maine
Maine was probably going to sink. Colonel Robert Dedmon was quite confident of that. The number of heavy bombers based in the state was going to make it tip over and quietly disappear below the Atlantic. The massive program of base construction over the last three years had made Maine wealthy again but it was now a state well on the way to becoming a concrete sheet, state line to state line. Coming back from one of the long training and test flights over the Atlantic Colonel Dedmon had counted no less than six bomber fields visible at one time. Most were just single group bases, 75 bombers on each, but a few were much larger.
This base, Kozlowski AFB near Limehouse, was one of the largest with three bomb groups. 225 of the giant bombers lined the runways here. It was typical of the new bases, sturdy and well-built. The commander of SAC, General LeMay wanted the best for his bomber crews and got it. The tunnel Dedmon was walking through was an example. Limehouse was in the north of Maine and became seriously snowed up in winter, So, all the base buildings were connected by underground tunnels. It was just one example of the attention to detail that had made SAC what it was. Nobody had known LeMay before he took over SAC. Now, nobody doubted he was the right man in the right place.
Kozlowski AFB wasn't the largest of all the new SAC bases, that honor was held by Churchill in Canada. The Nova Scotia base had four groups totaling 300 aircraft. Only two were bomber groups though, the other two were the new strategic reconnaissance outfits. Some of the old hands still called Churchill by its previous name, Halifax - but they sneered and ostentatiously spat on the floor when they did so. Halifax was not a name English-speaking people liked to have in their mouths. Dedmon seriously doubted if the name would ever be used again.
Still, in a weird way Lord Halifax might have done the English-speaking world a favor. One thing his June 1940 coup against Churchill had achieved was to wake the United States up from its tween-wars slumber and throw the country onto a war footing. This base was just one example of how the U.S. had mobilized. In 1940, the 8th Air Division of the US Army Air Corps had hardly existed. Just a few antiquated and ineffectual B-17s. Then it had become the Eighth Air Force of the new US Army Air Force and then, three years ago it had become the Strategic Air Command of the newly independent United States Air Force. And it had the B-36.
The giant bombers from Convair were pouring off the production lines. June 1940 had seen to that. The United States had realized that it couldn't depend on having foreign allies and forward bases. If it was going to fight a war, it had to be prepared to do so from American territory. And that had meant bombers with transoceanic range. As a result, B-17 production had been slashed back to a minimum. The Consolidated B-24 and B-32 had both been stillborn, cancelled before they even left the drawing board. Boeing's great hope, the B-29, had become little more than a bluff and a decoy. A few hundred had been built and, after some early catastrophic raids, spent most of their time pretending to be a much larger force. Today, Boeing was mostly building C-99s, the transport version of the B-36 that were basing out of the West Coast and maintaining the air bridge to Russia.. Other factories were building B-36 variants. The RB-36 reconnaissance aircraft basing out of Churchill, the K.B-36 tankers based in Thule, Greenland and Lajes in the Azores. The GB-36, whatever that was.
Dedmon had cut his teeth flying C-99s on the Air Bridge before being transferred to SAC. Two American Army Groups were fighting in Russia now, commanded by George Patton. Another case of the right man in the right place. He and the Russian President, Zhukov, got along well. It was rumored that more than one strategic disagreement had been settled by the two men arm-wrestling. Probably not true but it would have been in character.
President Zhukov was a popular figure here, his military and political reputation established by the way he had pulled Russia together after 1941 and the death of Stalin a year later. Briefly, Dedmon wondered what would have happened if Stalin had survived the siege of Moscow and the eventual fall of the city. Stalin had been a monster, in truth no better than Hitler but at least he'd died with style. Or so the stories went. When the city defenses started collapsing and there was nothing left to command, he'd shaved his head and trademark moustache and joined an infantry unit as a private. And died, fighting as a private. In doing so, he'd made sure he joined the ranks of the never-to-be-forgotten Russian folk-heroes - which was probably what the old fox had planned all along. If the stories were true, of course. There were other versions, much darker ones, of a late escape, murder on a train and a military coup in Russia.
However he had gained power, Zhukov was different. When he took over, the USSR quietly vanished and Russia reappeared. Communism had been abandoned; the military
government that had replaced it didn't have a philosophy other than 'Save The Rodina' and that was enough to work. The Germans had been held short of the Urals and the war in the east settled into a giant ulcer that was bleeding Europe dry. SACs job was to lance that ulcer. That was why the official name of the B-36 was Peacemaker. Few outside SAC appreciated the sick joke that the name really represented. The B-36 was going to bring peace to Nazi Germany all right. The peace of a cemetery. There was a reason why the semi-official cocktail of the SAC bomber crews was the Manhattan.
“Hold it sir”
An Air Force Police Sergeant stopped Dedmon. The Ml Carbine was slung muzzle-down over her shoulder ready for use if needed. In SAC Air Force Police were not a joke; when they said stop, you stopped. Early in the history of SAC an AFP NCO had recognized LeMay and waved him onto the base without stopping him. That NCO had found himself a frontline infantry private in Russia within 24 hours. This wasn't security though, it was safety. The tunnel was barely ten feet down and this was where it ran underneath a runway. Nobody thought a B-36 would break through, but nobody used the tunnel when one was taking off, just in case. Dedmon could hear the rhythmic pulsing of the six piston engines and the howl of the four jets as the bomber ran up to full power. Then the tunnel shook as the bomber went overhead on its take-off run.
“Fifth test flight in the last hour Sir. Guess The Big One must be coming. You can pass now”
“Think so Sergeant. It's time.”
Time indeed, Dedmon thought. The Second World War had been deadlocked now for four years, ever since the German invasion of Russia had ground to a halt east of Moscow. Halifax's coup had taken Britain out of the war and turned the country into a Nazi satellite but all that had meant was that Britain was no longer part of the British Empire. There was good-natured rivalry now between Prime Minister Locock of Australia and Prime Minister Boyd of Canada over just whose Empire it was; the smart money was betting that Australia would end up in charge.
Especially since the Japanese threat had ended. The American production ramp-up after the Halifax Coup had made enough equipment available to seriously reinforce the Philippines. Then, in January 1941, Thailand had gotten itself into a war with the Vichy authorities in Indo-China. By that time, anybody who was suspected of collaborating with Nazi Germany were the bad guys and the US had backed Thailand to the hilt. A French naval victory at Koh Chang hadn't helped them, by the end of the month-long war, the Vichy Indochinese Army had been routed, the Thai frontier ran along the Mekong and the Thai armed forces were receiving generous amounts of American aid. That and the Philippines reinforcements had blocked the Japanese route south.
Their route north had already been blocked by Khalkin Gol in 1939. The strategic problem had stymied the Japanese until mid-1942 by which time, it was obvious that joining the war was not a clever move. The result was an uneasy peace; filled with dislike and suspicion from the Americans and spite-ridden hatred from the Japanese. But the Japanese looked at burgeoning American military power and knew their window of opportunity had passed; they had to live with it.
The Germans were also having to live with it. Not only had the Halifax coup put America onto a war footing, it had brought America into the war. The Germans claimed that the British surrender made them rulers of the Empire. Canada, Australia and the rest of the Empire disagreed. Germany announced it would assert its rights by force. America had asserted the Monroe Doctrine. Germany had demanded the return of the Royal Navy. The US Government's two word reply to the German demand, “Molon Labe”, had delayed things for a few weeks while the Germans tried to translate it. When they did so, they declared war and sent their submarines.
The first few months had been a bad time; even now Dedmon could remember looking out to sea every night and seeing five or six burning ships offshore. But the menace had been beaten back with the assistance of the Canadian-based Royal Navy, then the US Navy had gone onto the offensive.
The German Navy hadn't lasted long and its allies had preceded it into destruction. Those of their ships that weren't on the bottom had been hunted down in port and smashed by the US Navy's fast carriers. The Atlantic was an American lake now. There had been a brief scare when the Germans had brought in a new kind of U-boat but that hadn't lasted. The new U-boats had been sunk and countermeasures to their abilities instituted fleet wide.
That was the problem the Germans faced. Russia was bleeding their armies white. Their advance everywhere else was blocked. They had only themselves to blame of course, the Nazis had a positive talent for creating enemies. Take the Russian provinces in the South. Largely Moslem, they'd welcomed the Germans as liberators.
The Germans had moved in, set up their administration and started of eliminating Moslem influence. Less than six weeks later, a Moslem servant had entered a German officer's mess - and exploded. He'd been wearing a belt of dynamite and rusty nails. News was hard to get but apparently that had been the first of many such suicide bombs. Dedmon shuddered; if that sort of insanity became commonplace, there was no telling it where it would end.
Sure enough, it was time for The Big One. It was time, more than time.
Aboard CVB-41 USS Shiloh, Bay of Biscay.
Admiral Karl Newman tossed the operations orders on his desk and stared at the map. He was seeing only a small part of the operation and knew it. His task group was five aircraft carriers, his flagship and four smaller Essex class, two large Alaska class cruisers, half a dozen other cruisers and 18 destroyers. More than 500 aircraft, at least half of which were jets. The Shiloh had the new McDonnell F2H Banshee on board; it had replaced the veteran F4U7 Corsairs as the fighter-bomber for this cruise. He had his heavy Douglas AD-Is Skyraiders for strike. His Essex class carriers, Oriskany, Crown Point, Reprisal and Princeton had the Adies as well but still kept the Corsairs. Some had the Navy F4U-7s but the lucky ones had Marines with their Goodyear F2G-4s. Those hotrods could match a jet low down. They were vicious to fly though, their overpowered engines could flip them into an irrecoverable spin if the pilot let his attention wander. All five carriers had Lockheed FV-1 Shooting Stars as interceptors. Known irreverently as the Flivvers, the conversion of the Air Force's P-80 had countered the threat of the German jets in 1944. Now, two years later, they were showing their age and a new jet fighter from Grumman, the Panther, was coming down the line.
Five carriers, 500 aircraft and a mass of support and that was just a part of it. Newman knew that to the north of him was another task group and there were two more to the south. Behind them were the support groups, jeep carriers with replacement aircraft, tankers, ammunition ships. And Spruance's command group with its six fast battleships. Then there were the air-sea rescue units to pick up shot-down pilots, ASW groups protecting the flanks of the carrier forces. But the heart of the fleet were the carriers. Wherever they were now, by the time the Shiloh and her consorts were ready to launch, the four task groups would be in a line 50 miles apart. The Navy called the formation “Murderer's Row” and it worked. The carriers could either ripple off strikes for a sustained pounding of targets or they could hurl a single alpha strike, a concentrated surge of aircraft that would swamp the any defense the Germans tried to put up. The Luftwaffe called the massed wave of Navy aircraft coming at them “The Blue Wall of Death”. A tidal wave of 2,000 aircraft that overwhelmed whatever defenses were in place then spent a couple of days rampaging over the defenseless area, strafing and bombing anything that moved. By the time the Germans could move enough aircraft in to contest the airspace, the carriers would have recovered their airgroups and be gone. Out to sea, out of sight of land where they were safe.
The Germans had tried to counter the carriers and couldn't. They couldn't even find them. Their attempts to build long-range bombers had failed dismally and the converted transports they'd used for long range maritime work had been shot from the skies. They'd tried other ideas as well, some quite good. One had been to put long-range radar on an aircraft to extend its horizon. That had spotted the carriers alright but the aircraft had been shot down long before it could coach in strikes. Another was a V-l with equipment that could radio radar data back to land. That really had been imaginative. The Germans had designed the V-l for use in Russia, to hit the factories their aircraft couldn't reach. Then they'd found that the Russians already had an almost identical missile, the Chelomei Kh-10. Each of Newman's cruisers carried four of those now, reverse lend-lease. But the radar-carrying V-1s were a good idea. Newman had an idea that there was the germ of something workable there. Didn't matter though. The Germans would only find the carriers if the carriers wanted them to.
Newman knew that if he looked out of the scuttle he'd see - nothing. If he listened to the comms circuit's he'd hear -nothing. The US ships were blacked out and under total EMCON. No radio no lights nothing. The task groups were ghosts on the sea. The Germans hadn't learned that lesson either. When their fleet had come out in 1945, if anybody could call it a fleet, they'd been chattering on the short-range radios and sending bombastic messages back home. And allowed the US carriers to track them as surely as if they were in visual sight. It had been a massacre. Two obsolete design carriers, five battleships, three heavy cruisers and twelve destroyers against 16 US Navy fleet carriers and eight of the old light fleets.
Spruance had decided to make a point that day. Newman had been in command of the Kearsarge and had watched his aircraft leaving. The Flivvers had streaked in to strafe the decks of the enemy ships, the Corsairs had dive-bombed and napalmed them then the Skyraiders had gone in with torpedoes. When Newman had joined the Navy, the standard torpedo bomber had been the old Devastator with its single 18 inch torpedo. At the Battle of the Orkneys, his Skyraiders and Maulers had lumbered off the decks with a 22.4 inch torpedo under the belly and one more under each wing. Risky that had been, and the overload had left no room for error. But the Adies and Mames had come though and started a legend in the fleet for reliability that grew daily. The strikes had rippled off from Murderer's Row keeping the German squadron (Newman decided fleet was inappropriate) under constant attack. The German capital ships had gone first, then their supports had been hunted down and sunk.
Hitler had thrown a tantrum of epic proportions; what little was left of the German fleet had been laid up and naval construction virtually ended. He'd probably had no choice anyway since the casualties in the U-boat fleet had been grim leaving the surface ships the last resource of trained seamen. At the Orkneys, the German casualties had been dreadful; their survivors could only live for a few minutes in the icy water and the US Fleet had absolutely no interest in mounting a search and rescue effort for them. The PBYs had picked up the few shot-down Navy aircrew they could find and left.
Newman grinned, lost for a moment in his memories of the battle. One of the torpedo bombers had come back with its fuel tanks damaged and the young Lieutenant flying it had elected to ditch beside the carrier rather than risk blocking the deck with a crash. The new-fangled flotation bags had worked and Kearsarge's cutter had rowed over to pick him up. They'd found him sitting in the cockpit, pretending to write his mission report. He now commanded one of the strike squadrons in another group. That kid would go far Newman thought. Bush, that was the kid's name, George Bush.
Newman looked at the mission order again. Although it said nothing about other task groups, the routing instructions gave hints as to who else was involved. This time it indicated that a fifth carrier group had joined up. That meant one group would probably be going home soon. Probably the Gettysburg group. CVB-43 had been out a long time and her consorts were short-hulled Essexes. Some even had the older quadruple 40 millimeter guns in place of the new twin 3 inchers. Could be Chancellorsville or Fredericksburg, both were about ready to join the fleet. Didn't matter, both honored places where the Yankees had got a good thrashing.
Counting those two, there were ten more CVBs under construction and due to join the fleet in the next two years. That would change the fleet to eight task groups, each with two CVBs and three Essexes. Nobody spoke much about the older carriers now. Lexington, Hornet, Yorktown and Saratoga, were in the Pacific Fleet along with six of the nine CVLs. Ranger and Wasp were also in the Pacific, training new pilots for the fleet. Enterprise had been sunk by a U-boat during the East Coast massacre. Independence was doing experimental work. Some new sort of deck layout. But this series of strikes would be all five groups. Something special was in the wind.
Back to the map. Then what had been nagging at Newman jumped into focus. All the listed targets were much deeper inside France than earlier missions. Much deeper. To the point where his jets would be operating at the limits of their range. OK. So the deeper targets went to the Corsairs then - and after the enemy fighters had been wiped out. Newman looked at the orders and grimaced. It was still there. No aircraft were to fly at altitudes over ten thousand feet. That had made sense in the old days when all the birds were radial-engined. Unless they were turbo-charged, they were at a disadvantage high up. But the jets weren't yet the restriction remained in place.
The Germans had taken advantage of the restriction and clipped the wings on their fighters, increasing speed and agility at low altitude. The Ta-152Cs and the F4U-7s were evenly matched although the German aircraft couldn't carry the bombload. The F2Gs could match the He-162 Volksjagers, especially since the Heinkels were flown by kids barely into their teens. The Flivvers still had an edge over the latest model 262s but it was fading fast. Still the new Grumman jets would be coming soon, Newman had heard that the Panther was really something. But the Navy planes were still giving the height advantage to the Germans even though there were few real high-altitude fighters in the Luftwaffe. Height and speed were gold in air combat and the Navy was giving one to the Germans without a fight. And Navy pilots were paying the bill.
The mission duration was a lot longer as well. Normally the carriers lunged in and spent three days pounding the target area then out. This time they were staying close in for five. The exposure didn't worry Newman; he was confident his carriers could handle anything the Germans could throw at him. It was the why that nagged. The Navy had a system that worked, that did devastating damage at acceptable cost. Why change it? Unless there was something new in the pipeline. Newman looked at his charts again. It was almost as if his fighters were blasting a path through the German defenses then staying put to cover a withdrawal. Was this raid his part of The Big One? It was time, more than time.
Dijon, France. Primary base of JG-26 Schlageter
Falling to his knees and kissing the tarmac always seemed like a good idea to Major Lothar Schumann after a flight in the Go-229. He remembered his first mount, the Me-109G as being a Dobermann Pinscher, a lean, fast killer that could twist and turn in a dogfight. His Ta-152 had been a Rottweiler, massive and powerful that would just crash through whatever got in its way. Schumann wasn't sure what sort of dog the Go-229 represented, but whatever it was, it had rabies. The Gotha flying wing fighter was vicious, untrustworthy, unreliable, so directionally unstable it was a lousy gun platform and when it got into trouble, it broke up so fast that the pilot never stood a chance. Sometimes the Fledermaus would do that without even getting into trouble. Once the Gestapo had investigated the factory suspecting sabotage because so many 229s had fallen apart in mid-air for no apparent reason. They'd arrested some people and taken them away as an example to the rest but the truth was, the Fledermaus didn't need sabotage to make it break up, it did that just fine on its own. It was also the fastest and highest-flying fighter the Luftwaffe had.
Not that altitude mattered much any more. The main threat in the west was the Ami carriers and their blue-painted hordes. They'd come in and raise hell, slipping away before they could be taught a lesson. Somebody in their command knew his stuff though. Their aircraft always stayed low right down on the deck, flying down valleys and through towns. That forced the German pilots to come down after them. That was the catch. Schumann had been told that an American carrier pilot had a thousand hours of flight training before arriving in the fleet. His new pilots had ten or twenty. They were young, too young to know how outclassed they were. At 21 Schumann was one of the oldest pilots in the group and a five-year veteran. The kids flying the Ta-152s and He-162s were younger than he'd been when he'd joined JG-26.
Forced into high-speed, low-altitude dogfights, as many of the kids were being killed in crashes as were being shot down. The loss rate in the He-162 units was especially bad. The aircraft had only 30 minutes of fuel and it wasn't the easiest of aircraft to fly. But the big shots in Berlin had decided to give it to the Hitler Youth, training the boys for a few hours on gliders before throwing them into the Salamander to fly or die as luck would have it. A lot of the kids never made it much beyond the airfield perimeter, losing control and spinning in. Not that the Amis didn't shoot down their share. When they came, it was in their hundreds. No matter how well a pilot did in fighting one, there were always four or five more to kill him. Quantity had a quality all of its own, that was for sure. And the Amis weren't short on quality any more either.
It was fuel that was doing them, Schumann knew that. Fuel. Germany was desperately short of it. They didn't have enough fuel to train they didn't have enough fuel to fly. They had to keep piston-engined aircraft in service because the refineries couldn't produce enough kerosene to allow a complete switch to jets. Even so, there were few reserves; the amount of fuel the Army was burning in Russia was seeing to that. They had no choice though. The front was so long, the Army had to use mobility to hold the line. The Russians and the Americans never seemed to run out of tanks and guns or fuel. It was lucky the factories in Germany could keep up with the losses in Russia. Speer had been a genius; he'd taken an industrial shambles full of small inefficient units and turned it into a mass production empire. If it hadn't been for that, the country would have gone down long before. But, as long as the battle lines were kept away, German factories could produce undisturbed.
Mentally Schumann blessed Field Marshall Goering. Old Fatty had foreseen that strategic bombers would be useless and refused to waste resources on them. He'd stuck to his guns even when others screamed for a long range bomber to hit Russian factories behind the Urals. Not one kilogram of aluminum, not one Reichsmark had been wasted on heavies. Instead he'd placed the resources where they belonged, in fighters and attack aircraft. The fighters had guarded the skies over the Reich, the attackers had helped to prevent Russian and American breakthroughs on the Eastern Front. The Americans hadn't learned then; they'd sent the lumbering B-29s to attack Germany - and seen them shot out of the sky. They appeared only rarely now, mostly under heavy escort. Schumann didn't know what the Amis had done with the thousands of B-29s they'd built. Probably, they were waiting on Pacific Islands in case the Japanese got off their rear ends and decided to fight. He'd even heard the Amis had experimented with six-engined and ten-engined bombers. Well, if that's what they wanted to waste money on, let them. It was fighters that counted, only fighters.
But there still weren't enough of them. The casualty rate was so high that production was barely keeping pace with the losses. There were units in Russia still flying the decrepit Me-109K or the even-older short-nosed FW-190A. Most of the older piston-engined heavy fighters had gone at last. The Zerstorer units had the Me-262 and that weird Dornier with engines at each end. But so much capacity was being wasted on experiments. The designers just couldn't be persuaded to stop fooling around with weird concepts and focus their attention on fixing the aircraft in service. The He-162 was still unstable yet there were twin-engined prototypes, swept wing prototypes, delta wing prototypes every type of prototype except for the ones needed to make the service version work. Herr Doktor Heinkel needed a boot to the head that was for certain. And so did almost every other aircraft designer in Germany. Didn't they know there was a war on?
Some had got the message though. The Henschel people had produced a neat little jet-engined dive-bomber. Carried a 500 kilogram bomb and had four cannons for strafing. Looked a bit like the Heinkel fighter but the Henschel team had got a design together, wrung the bugs out then
18
stopped playing and built it in numbers. It had replaced most of the older ground attack aircraft now and would have replaced the rest save for that damned kerosene shortage. It wasn't so shabby as a fighter either. After it had dropped its bombs it could hold its own with the Thunderbolts the American Air Force still used for ground attack. There were reports from Russia now of a new American ground attack aircraft, the Thunderjet. That was something to worry about the next time he found himself on the Eastern Front. Who knew? By the time he got into that hell-hole again, he might have a fighter he could rely on. Perhaps one of the new Messerschmitt fighters with the swept wings. His Fledermaus had taken him through the 900 kph barrier, perhaps the new Messerschmitt would take him above 1,000 kph. Now that would be something. But the Messerschmitt fighters were stuck in the factory with no suitable engines and having endless design changes made while they waited. Willi Messerschmitt, now there was another one who needed a boot to the head.
It was good that this was an old base, one that had been taken over from the French back in the heady days of 1940. The buildings were solid and established. The base had grown a lot since then of course, most recently the runways had been lengthened to take the jets. But their mess was still old and comfortable. As he went though the door, Hilda behind the bar started to draw his beer. Any good barmaid knew what her regulars wanted before they asked.
There was a picture of Hitler over the bar, an old one showing him in good health. The big question that nobody dared ask was who was going to succeed him when he died. It was a scarcely-whispered secret that Hitler was virtually at death's door now. There had been a series of strokes, some unidentified diseases and what was rumored to be the effects of drug addiction. Goering had once been the designated successor but he was supposed to be in equally bad shape. Doenitz had also once been a contender but he and the entire Navy were in political and military disgrace. One of the generals perhaps? That guy Rommel had made a name for himself in Russia. Or, Himmler perhaps. He had the political power and his own private Army.
Schumann checked himself; even thinking such things was dangerous. But, the mess was virtually empty anyway, except for their political officer sitting in one corner. A big and dangerous “except” of course. Political officers, something the Reich had copied from the communists although nobody dared say so. This one was typical of the breed, a marvelously useless thing. Nobody could accuse it of being human. Just sat there listening to conversations and making reports to his party superiors. And making dull speeches to the pilots before they did the fighting and he went off to hide in a shelter somewhere. Another candidate for a boot to the head. It was time, more than time.
Nottingham, Occupied Britain
Ronald Byng's music faded away to be replaced by the clipped English accent of the announcer. “And as we go 'Sailing By' the BBC in exile completes tonight's broadcast from Quebec. But, before we close down, some messages for our friends in the occupied territories.
Summer is a season for colds. Summer is a season for colds.
John has gone for a walk,. John has gone for a walk.
Xavier needs a present. Xavier needs a present.
Alice has a new cat. Alice has a new cat.
The clock strikes seven. The clock strikes seven.
The dog has puppies. The dog has puppies.
David Newton tilted his chair back on its rear legs. His radio operator was taking down any messages that applied to his cell or its sub-cells. The British Resistance was organized on triangular lines; each cell had a leader and three members, each of whom was the leader of a cell of his or her own. Newton had no idea who the members of his people's sub-cells were and his cell members didn't know who was part of Newton's higher-level cell. The whole operation was coordinated by the radio messages they were listening to. Newton took quiet pride in the fact that the British Resistance was the most feared and effective in Europe. It hadn't always been that way; a few years earlier Newton had been a university student fed up with the Germans throwing their weight around. The bungling, amateurish American OSS hadn't helped much. Then when President Zhukov had taken over in Russia, he'd sent some Russian “operators” over to help the Americans get their act together. The combination of Russian political conspiratorial ism, American management expertise and British bloody-mindedness had proved to have synergies undreamed of by the planners.
Things were different now. A year earlier Newton's cell had taken part in an ambush. The radio messages had steered him to a codebook and an instruction drop. That gave him his instructions and the locations of the weapons. That cache had contained some of the new RPG-2s - another example of co-operation. The Germans had designed a good, but over complex and over-expensive, anti-tank weapon called the panzerfaust. Its great virtue was it was small enough to be carried and operated by one man yet could kill a tank. The Russians had captured it and re-engineered the design with the large number of small parts replaced by a small number of large ones. That had been the RPG-1. When the Americans had sent their army to Russia, they'd seen the RPG-1 and liked it. So they'd redesigned it for real mass production as the RPG-2. Now everybody had them. Thousands were in UK and had become the symbol of resistance. Along with the American submachine gun everybody called the greasegun of course.
Anyway, Newton's group had picked up the RPGs and gone to the designated spot and time. Sure enough, a convoy had arrived, two small trucks, a black luxury car, an armored car and another truck. Newton's orders were to hit the car. He still remembered the thrill of seeing “RAB” Butler in the limousine and watching his rocket smash into the car right beside the traitor's head There had been five separate cells in that ambush and to this day Newton had no idea who they were. They'd come by different routes. Left by different routes and the only signs left were the dead escort and one dead British traitor.
If only Halifax had been in that car as well, Newton thought. He still bitterly remembered the coup on the 18th of June 1940. The day before, RAB Butler had visited Bjom Prytz, the Swedish Minister in London with a message to be transmitted to Germany. That message promised that any reasonable terms extended by the Germans to the UK would be accepted and that no diehards would be allowed to stand in the way. By midnight, a reply, offering “reasonable terms” was received.
On the 18th, a cabinet meeting to deal with a mass of routine administration was due. Churchill, ever impatient with administrivia was in Windsor, preparing a speech and wouldn't be back until the meetings end. Halifax and Butler had presented the German terms to the rump Cabinet meeting they'd stacked with their supporters and gained a vote in favor of the armistice. The instruction went out to put Churchill into 'protective custody'. Fortunately for the PM, Alexander Cadogan, Head of the Foreign Office got a warning out in time and Churchill had escaped. First to Portsmouth then out on a small aircraft to Ireland. From there, he'd been picked up by an American submarine and taken to Canada, the first of a long line of escapees to follow that route.
The German terms had been reasonable all right. An armistice and ceasefire, an agreement for peaceful co-existence and non-belligerency, the Royal Navy to be restricted to port, the Army to be returned to a peacetime establishment and the RAF restricted to defensive fighters only. The Empire was to be bound by the same terms.
When the treaty Halifax had signed arrived in Australia a few days later, Prime Minister Locock had read it aloud in the Australian Parliament, then ostentatiously torn the document in half. His unusual approach to international communications had caused mild diplomatic confusion at the time. His lead had been followed by the rest of the Empire but that hadn't helped the UK. Being kicked out of the Empire and with the troops stationed abroad joining the Colonial forces, the British government had lost what few bargaining cards it had left. Non-belligerency had become collaboration, eventually peaceful co-existence had become military occupation. Military occupation had been followed by guerilla warfare. Eventually, the Royal Navy had broken out and found its way to Canada. The British Resistance had got its start, helping scientists escape to the US. Newton's first mission had been to use his group to assist a scientist called Whittle on his way out of the country.
“'Jennifer wants a Turkey. Jennifer wants a Turkey.”
Newton leapt forward to pay attention. Jennifer, that meant the message was for his group. It was the alert, warning his group to be ready to help shot-down allied air-crews escape capture. Chickens were carrier pilots, Ducks were the special force teams who landed sometimes. But turkeys were heavy bombers. Newton had never heard that codeword used before. The Germans had claimed the American B-29 bombers had been driven from the skies by their fighters. It could be so, Newton had never heard of any such bomber raids in Europe. And what he knew of the B-29, it couldn't get anywhere significant in Europe. Just didn't have the range. So what the.. Never mind.
“OK We're on.” Get to your cells give them a heads up and tell them we might have customers. Sally, start listening to everything that's said.” Sally was the one woman member of his cell, a prostitute whose work took her into intimate proximity to many of the German garrison troops. They talked and everything she heard went back to the resistance. It was desperately dangerous work, not least because most of the population saw her as a “jerrybag”, a fit subject for some brutal retaliation. Some had tried, once a couple of men had wanted to end her commercial career with a broken bottle. Fortunately, she'd been meeting another member of the cell and he'd scared them off, pretending to be her pimp.
Sally had reported the attack; she'd had to in order to keep her cover going. The men had been caught and the German had hanged them in the street. From a streetlight, using piano wire and a fixed noose. The Resistance could have warned them or helped them escape but Sally's work was more important than they were. After a due delay, an instruction had come down from high up telling the population that collaborators were not to be attacked or molested; the Resistance would see they would get what was coming to them when the time was right. If Newton had anything to do with it, what Sally had coming was a George Cross. This time, her warnings that sweeps or kettles were about to take place, could make the difference between success and failure.
“We've got big guys coming over; that means we may have several customers at once. Get all the safe houses you can up and running. We'll need transport as well. Think either west to the sea or North to Scotland. No word as to which yet.” Scotland had never been fully pacified by the Germans although some of the large cities had a German garrison. Even there, it was a good question who was who's prisoner. The straight-edged razor wielded by a Glaswegian was already acquiring the same sort of legendary reputation as the Claymore sword had done in earlier centuries when in the hands of the Highland clans. Not that the clansmen were doing so badly either.
“Lets move guys, it looks like something really big is under way at last. It's time, more than time.”
CHAPTER TWO JOURNEYS WELL BEGUN
Flight Deck B-36H “Texan Lady “
Colonel Dedmon edged Texan Lady forward on the taxi-way. In front of him, Raidin' Maiden was doing her Vandenburg Shuffle. Texan Lady was the leader of the three B-36Hs that formed Dedmon's Hometown, the formation of bombers that would, at last, soon be on their way to real targets. Over three hundred Hometowns were flying today, most carrying nuclear weapons in their huge bellies. They were backed up by tankers, the strategic recon birds and some other assets nobody would speak about. Strategic Air Command was going to war.
Four hours earlier, he'd come out of the tunnel between the main briefing area and his crew assembly point. He'd taken a few seconds to compose himself and adopt a hangdog expression before entering the room. It was crowded, the three bombers had a total crew of almost 50 men. The more perceptive had noted his apparent depression and nudged others. Dedmon had mounted the stage and looked at the gloom spreading across the room.
“Training” the murmurs of disappointment picked up force “is NOT the mission.” That changed the atmosphere fast. Now it was tense. “We're doing the real thing at last. It's The Big One. And boys, WE'RE GOING TO BERLIN!” Pandemonium had broken out. Cheering, banging, crew members jumping up and slapping backs. Some of the Jewish members of the crews just stood with satisfied looks on their faces. The long wait had been hard on them, hearing of the horrors that had been taking place in the Reich. Dedmon saw some of their fellow crewmembers speak quietly to them. He couldn't hear what the words were over the cheering and war-whoops (mixed with a few rebel yells; they would be more common in the groups flying out of the Southern states). But he knew what the message was “We'll make them pay”.
“There's nine of us going in our formation, this Hometown, two others. Each bomber will have four Mark Three devices on board. The two escorts will help her in of course.” That was how the Hometown worked, one of the three aircraft was the bomber, the other two were there to make sure she got to her target. If necessary to get between the bomber and anything that threatened her. “That's 12 Mark 3s, all for Berlin. The three Hometowns will fly parallel courses, one to the north, one south and, hey-diddle diddle we're going straight down the middle. Drops will be spaced out evenly north and south but one of ours will be out of alignment -we're doing a ground-burst on the Reich Chancellery. We're going to take Berlin off the map. Bombardiers. The specific target data is in your packs. Read it up and get everything in place. We'll be bombing by radar, it’s more accurate than eyeball.” That was a change, the B-29s bombing radar had been notorious but the B-36s K-5 was superbly accurate.
“Flight plan is a great circle route from here to north of the Azores then another great circle across France to Berlin. We're meeting tankers out of Lajes who'll top us off for the business part of the mission. We'll be doing 35,000 feet to Lajes then doing our approach at 48,500. One hour before Berlin we're going up to 52,500, or as near to that as we can, and stay there as long as we can. Tankers will be available if anybody has fuel problems. If you're hit and hurt too bad for the transatlantic run, get to England. The Resistance there know that something's happening and will see to the extraction. Don't crash and get caught in German or France, the Nazis won't be very happy with us. Navigators, here's your packages.'“
''Gunners and EW crews. The Navy has been working hard for two years now, diverting German attention downwards. The squids have paid a heavy cost to get the Germans thinking low altitude. Now it’s going to pay off. There are very few German fighters that can get up to intercept us, in fact there's a group of Gotha flying wings and some of those long-winged Messerchmitts in France and that's about it. The Navy's hitting their bases soon, we may not have them to worry about. Gunners, if we do, remember, they have to come in from the tail. That makes us a retreating target and them an advancing one so we have the edge. Keep the pilots informed so they know when to turn. The Germans have some Wasserfall rockets as well. They're an EW problem. Pilots. Remember the Hometown settings on position and engine RPM are very precise. Don't improvise. Our EW officer, Captain Mollins, will brief you EW operators on the details.
The next few hours had been frantic. Each crewmember had read his packet and picked up the details of his specific job. Then they'd traded around so that everybody had some idea of what to do if casualties took out key people. Everything had to be checked and arranged. Even the catering was a problem. It was going to be a 48 hour round trip, 45 if things were lucky but 48 was the planning total. Regulations stipulated one meal every six hours for the crew. That meant 8 meals per man, 15 men per bomber (16 on Texan Lady) meant almost 300 meals had to be stored on the three bombers. Sometimes Dedmon felt he was running a hotel, not a military unit.
Back in the present Dedmon thumbed his intercom system
''Guys, get to somewhere you can see outside. You'll never see anything like this again. Mike would have been proud.”
The taxiway was lined with B-36s, as far as the eye could see. A shimmering cloud of magnesium and aluminum distorted by the heat rippling from the engines. Mike would have been proud indeed. The base had named after him when he'd lost his life and become SAC's first hero. It had been an early B-29 mission, before the problems with the medium bomber had become apparent. Boeing had convinced some influential people that the B-29s speed and remote-controlled guns could fight off enemy fighters. The worst raid, on the Ploesti Oil Fields, showed the Luftwaffe had learned how to dispute the conclusion and turned the raid into a deadly learning curve. Their jets were too fast for the piston-engined American fighters to keep away from the bombers.
At first, the Germans had tried head-on attacks - the closing speed was too high so they'd come in from the tail and chopped the bombers down one by one. As the path to Ploesti was marked with the graves of B-29s and the loss rate passed 50 percent, the SAC command had called the raid off. Some bombers had turned back, most of them had made it home, but Colonel Kozlowski had radioed “SAC does not turn back” and kept going with a few hardy spirits beside him. Mike had made it all the way in, the only bomber to get to the target. With two engines out and his B-29 burning he'd made his bomb run, planting a stick of thousand pounders right across the target. Then, he'd held the blazing bomber level long enough for the surviving members of his crew to jump. He hadn't got out himself, his aircraft had augered in. But, the rule he'd given his life to establish was part of the creed now. SAC did not turn back.
In front of Dedmon, Raidin' Maiden was already rolling. Dedmon turned Texan Lady onto the runway. He shifted in his seat and made a chopping sign with his hand. Behind him Chief Flight Engineer Gordon swept the throttles on number one engine up to full power. Dedmon felt Texan Lady shift to the left as the asymmetric power pushed the right wing forward. Behind him Gordon dropped the power back and ran up engine six. Now Dedmon felt Texan Lady shift in the opposite direction. Swiftly Gordon ran through each engine in turn, right then left, making Texan Lady snake on the runway. This was the Vandenburg Shuffle, intended to make sure all six piston engines were giving full forward thrust Taking off with one or more engines in reverse thrust was possible and invariably fatal. Dedmon pointed upwards and Gordon slammed all ten throttles forward
Six turning and four burning. The noise and vibration in the cockpit was beyond anything anybody could image. The big piston engines cycled up, picking up power and creating a moaning wail from the propellers as they went in and out of synchronization. The jets under the wings were screaming as they picked up power. Texan Lady was being held on her brakes yet the nose was tilting down with the pressure from her engines and Dedmon could feel the aircraft begin to slide forward as sheer engine power overrode the locked brakes. There was no hope of speaking on the flightdeck, noise drowned out everything and the intense vibration made hand signals hard. What worked now was training. As Texan Lady began to slide, Dedmon and his co-pilot, Major Pico, released the brakes and Texan Lady was free to hurtle down the runway.
And hurtle down she did. Texan Lady was born to fly and did not intend to allow something as stupid as gravity to stop her. The noise from the racing engines and the flailing tires made the flightdeck sound like hell itself had opened. To the tearing high-pitched vibration from the engines was added a deep base thundering as the concrete runway added its imperfections and harmonies to the satanic opera. Dedmon couldn't see properly and couldn't move. This was one of the SACs better kept secrets - at this point on a full-power takeoff, a 200 ton bomber carrying the equivalent of 140,000 tons of TNT was hurtling down the runway almost completely out of control. Dedmon felt the hammering diminish slightly and the view out the cockpit change to sky. Texan Lady had lifted her nose and the flight deck crew had the strange experience of being 30 feet in the air while the main wheels were still on the ground. From outside, the huge bomber looked like a demented waterskier, charging down the runway, nose in the air with plumes of spray and water vapor forming arced clouds behind her.
Then the hammering stopped and even the engine noise dropped to tolerable levels. The main wheels were off the ground and resonance was no longer amplifying the noise and vibration from the engines. Dedmon felt the thumps as the wheels retracted and the noise dropped still further. Looking back out of the bubble cockpit, Dedmon checked on the other members of his Hometown. Barbie Doll was half way down the runway, nose up and straining to go, Sixth Crew Member had finished her Vandenburg shuffle and was just starting her roll forward. It was SAC-standard, one B-36H leaving the runway every 15 seconds. Slowly Dedmon's hearing returned to normal and his eyes stopped shaking in their sockets. Gordon had cut the jets now and reduced power on the piston engines to cruising levels. At this point, the big bomber would take an hour and a half to get up to 35,000 feet. Behind her. Barbie Doll and Sixth Crew Member slotted into their position to right and left of Texan Lady.
“That was a rare experience” Major Pico said with a degree of awe. He'd never done a maximum performance takeoff before - which wasn't surprising, Metal fatigue meant the number that each B-36 could do was strictly limited, and that limit wasn't very far into double digits. “OK sir, lets head for the Azores.
Cockpit Go-229 Green 8 +, Over Western France
The Fledermaus rolled out at the top of its climb. Schumann once again gave thanks to the Horten Brothers for designing a fighter where the pilot could really see what was going on around him. That was rare with German fighters. The older types had heavily-framed cockpit canopies that blocked out large areas of sky, even later types with bubble cockpits suffered from large blind spots due to their size and design. The Fledermaus was different; the pilot sat well forward almost over the leading edge. View behind was superb as well, almost like an American aircraft. Schumann had sat in a repaired Lockheed once and been amazed by the all-round vision from the big bubble cockpit and the high seat. The Fledermaus wasn't that good but it was better than older types. The one weak spot was to the sides; the big engine intakes blocked vision there. But up and-down, the pilot could see what was happening. That had a tactical impact, Schumann reflected. The Fledermaus pilots tended to fight in the vertical, diving on their targets and zooming away again.
So let's do it he thought. The Ami raids had started at dawn and their carriers were filling the air with fighters. Even more that usual and there were some new twists. The McDonnell fighter-bombers had been around before, not much but they'd been seen. This morning, they'd taken down a radar station near the cost and hit a couple of bridges. Some of the pilots had reported a new bird. A portly-looking single-engined job that was as fast as a thief and could turn on a wingtip. But most of the aircraft up were the familiar Lockheeds. Their very presence was a challenge to the German pilots, come up and fight or get strafed on your bases. The result were these air battles. Schumann's head snapped down. Far below him a Ta-152C was behind an Ami Goodyear, trying to get a hit before the Ami fighter pulled away. The kid flying the 152 hadn't seen the pair of Lockheeds coming in behind him. In a few seconds it would be too late, if he broke right or left one of them would get him. Time to score.
Schumann pushed over into a dive and rammed the throttles to the max. This bit took care, the Fledermaus was aerodynamically excellent and could easily accelerate past 1,000 kph in a dive. Unfortunately, at that speed, the controls locked solid and the aircraft would dive straight into the ground. Just hold the speed below the critical point and line up on the right-hand Lockheed. Get him and the chances were his wing-mate would break right straight into Schumann's line of fire. Down, behind the Lockheed try get close in. The pilot was making the same mistake as the kid in the Ta-152, so fixated on his target that he was forgetting to check his six. Just a few more seconds.
Damn it to hell. He'd been spotted, the Lockheed pilot must have seen him, he was racking his aircraft around to the right and pouring fuel into the engine, Schumann could see the black smoke from inefficient combustion. Bad move Ami, the Lockheed had good speedbrakes, hit those and I'd have overshot giving you a chance with your .50s. But I can out-turn you and you're going through my line of fire. Schumann pressed his finger on the fire button and felt the steady thumping of his Mk-108 cannons. If this was a movie he knew he'd see tracers floating out in front of him but that was movies, no real fighter pilot used tracer. The trajectory was different so if the tracers hit, nothing else would and anyway why tell an enemy he was being shot at? Only idiots did that and they deserved a boot to the head.
Damn it again. The Lockheed had flown straight through the German line of fire without a damned scratch. Once again, Schumann cursed his Mk-108s. Slow-firing low velocity bits of crap what damned idiot had put them on a fighter. He and all the other Fledermaus pilots had been demanding the high-velocity Mk-103, even though it fired more slowly, its trajectory was better and its flight time less.
Made hitting a lot easier. But the engineers had come back saying it couldn't be done. The wooden wing skin on the Fledermaus couldn't take it and the weight distribution was wrong and the achh it went on forever. And they still had the Mk-IO8s at the end of it all. The Ta-152 would have to look after himself now. Schumann heaved back on the stick and wondered quickly if the pilot was the birthday kid. One of the Ta-152 pilots had hit 17 today, he'd got Hilda's birthday special breakfast. Three eggs all to himself, fresh ham and sausage and whatever extras she could find. It was rumored that if a pilot lived long enough to see his 21st birthday, Hilda gave him a very special present. Didn't know if that was true, Schumann hoped to find out in a couple of month's time.
If it was him. at least he'd died with a full stomach, the Ta-152 was curving away with a line of black smoke thickening from its engine while the Lockheed raced past the lead Goodyear and arced off. Schumann was climbing fast now, he didn't think anybody could catch his Fledermaus in a zoom-climb. OK so time to look around and pick another target. Another Lockheed to make up for the one that escaped. There was one over there, trying to get over to a German fighter closing in on another Goodyear. Time for another dive. This one was also target fixated not watching around. Schumann dived down then came up from below and behind. The traditional assassin's spot. The best kill of all was where the enemy never even knew you were there. Nobody who had “done it” believed in the nonsense about dogfights any more. The high scorers picked their man, somebody who was vulnerable for some reason, got in, killed him and got out. Start turning and maneuvering and you were in trouble. Like the Lockheed, Schumann's Mk-108s had done their work already. Ripping out the fighter's belly. Boot to the head! The Ami was burning and coming apart in mid-air.
Oh Damn, Schumann hauled back on the controls to get clear of the wreckage from the destroyed Lockheed. His eye caught the name Shiloh painted on the tail then his stomach flipped. His Fledermaus was porpoising sharply up and down, somehow the airflow had gone wrong. He knew what would happen now, the pitching would get worse and worse until the aircraft fell apart in mid-air. It was time to leave. Bad choice facing him. There were rumors that there were observers on the ground and that a pilot who bailed out too early may find his landing spot was occupied by a mobile field court martial with a guilty-of-desertion verdict and a noose waiting. Wait for a second too long and the plane would break up with him in it. Schumann grabbed his ejector seat handles - and his hands missed. By the time they got back the Fledermaus had given another serious lurch and.....
The pitching damped out! Schumann grabbed the stick and pulled back to zoom clear of the fighting. Could it be that easy? That all a pilot had to do if his aircraft started to break up was to let go of the controls? He thought it through as the Fledermaus climbed. Nose pitches up, pilot moves the stick to counter - but by the time the controls have an effect, the nose is already pitching down, so his input makes it worse. So he tries a violent counter the other way - but by the time that had an effect, the nose was coming up anyway - so his efforts make it much worse. Repeat as necessary, the pitching gets more violent until the airframe overstressed and flies apart. What was that thing the electronics people used to measure signals? A wrigglescope? Perhaps the mysterious losses of the Fledermaus force were due to pilot-induced wriggling (Schumann quickly thought of Hilda again). Think more on that later, still had fuel and ammunition time for another victim. Like that one.
“That'“ was one of the new McDonnells, he hadn't killed one of those yet. OK. He'll be looking down for his target so we can come in from above and behind again. Schumann concentrated on the target just waiting for him to get into range when his Guardian Angel goosed him. Closing in fast, oh so very fast, from behind were four fighters. Dark blue ones and it was time to leave. Bye-bye Amis. Schumann abandoned his McDonnell and zoomed skywards. Where he was safe, Glancing behind to see them arc away for another target only they weren't. They were climbing after him, and closing the range fast. But the Amis didn't have a naval fighter that could outclimb the Fledermaus. He looked hard. Straight wings fat fuselage and single streak of smoke from each therefore one engine. They must be the new fighters some pilots had reported. Damned Amis. Their designers didn't produce the aerodynamic beauties the Germans did. Had all the design art of a flying brick. Yet give a brick enough power and it'll outfly anything. Junkers and Hirsch were so proud of their jets, the Fledermaus had two engines with a total of almost 2,000 kilos of thrust. But the Ami jets were delivering twice that. Damn engine designers were asleep on the job they needed a boot to the head for sure.
And Schumann guessed his head was next. The fighters behind him suddenly erupted in gunfire and he felt the hammer blows as the 20 millimeter shells hit his aircraft. That was it, he was dead. The flying wing couldn't take serious damage, that was the price for performance. Warning lights everywhere, progressive loss of control bits coming off. Cockpit filled with smoke and it was time to leave again. But with a burning aircraft if there was a reception committee on the ground he would have a defense. Then, the hammering stopped. By a miracle his instruments had survived, he was more than 3,500 meters up. The Amis didn't fly up here. They'd let him get away rather than break the rule. OK. Shot up, engines damaged, unidentified fire, fuel spewing out and no ammunition. Fight over, go home.
Flight Deck B-36H “Texan Lady” 35,000feet over the Azores
“Oh My God, how beautiful”. Major Pico's gasp snapped Colonel Dedmon out of his rest. They were flying over a continuous cloud strata that was shielding them from the sea beneath. The sun was at just the right angle to turn the clouds into a simmering pearlescent rippling grey. The sort of color one saw on a brightly-lit street in a heavy fog. Just below them, between Dedmon's Hometown and the clouds was another group of three bombers. Peace on Earth, Happy Hooker and Shady Lady. Their contrails formed a thick white ribbon behind them; most aircraft left single contrails for each engine but the B-36s six pushers mixed them up and blended them into a single wide stream. The sun was catching that as well and turning it into a glowing white path behind each aircraft. At the head was the glittering shape of the silver B-36s. As Dedmon watched, the Hometown beneath made a slight turn, curving the silky ribbon across the shining grey back-cloth. It was, indeed, incredibly beautiful.
And wasn't unique. All around them were B-36s at varying altitudes. Most in loose formation, there was no need for wasting strength, fuel and nervous energy keeping the meticulous position demanded by the need to deceive enemy radars. The aircraft were in lazy trios, flying comfortably for the long haul over the Atlantic. They'd been airborne for nine hours and the ones scheduled to penetrate furthest, to the eastern parts of Germany, were due to meet the Lajes-based tankers for their top-off. Then, real business would start.
Texan Lady was behaving herself, Dedmon thought. Normally B-36 flights were a constant battle against system failures. Convair had designed the aircraft with multiple paths for every critical system so if one went down, the flight crew could switch to an alternate while they fixed it. It was a new approach to reliability, he supposed and it did seem to work but it meant a hard time for the engineers on board. Top Sergeants Gordon and King had spent most of the flight juggling the engines to minimize any future problems. The two outboard engines were throttled right back; those were the ones that couldn't be reached in flight. The R-4360 spewed oil and if the supply ran low, the engine had to be shut down. The inner engines could be accessed via a maintenance tunnel in the wings so their oil supply could be topped up from the 55 gallon drums stowed aft., So Texan Lady was flying on her inner engines with the outer ones idling just enough to keep them warm. Aye, that was the trick, keeping systems warm. Dedmon couldn't see it but he knew the tail guns in each bomber were constantly moving, slowly sweeping the horizon, training on other aircraft, keeping the mechanism from freezing and the radar gunlaying system warmed up.
There had been a time when the B-36 had bristled with guns like the proverbial porcupine. 16 of them, all 20 millimeter in retracting turrets. Then, the B-29s had been massacred in their few raids from Russian bases. It became obvious that bombers couldn't fight their way through an enemy fighter defense, they had to fly over it or around it. The B-36 had the fuel to fly around and was designed to fly high. So every ounce of weight had been stripped from the aircraft to add more altitude. The guns had gone, the bunks had gone, the galley had gone. The crews now slept in sleeping bags on the deck aft and ate cold sandwiches. Even the paint had gone; the first B-36s had been olive drab but the weight of paint on an aircraft this big took a thousand feet off the operating ceiling. Now, they were silver.
The result was a bomber that could cruise to its target at over 50,000 feet. The crew were supposed to wear pressure suites that high up but nobody did. One crew were reported to have taken their bomber to over 60,000 feet. If that was true, Dedmon reckoned it must have been a Wichita-built bird. The brass denied it but all the crews knew that the Wichita aircraft flew slightly higher and faster than the Fort Worth and El Segundo aircraft but were less reliable. The El Segundo birds on the other hand were believed to be less stable and needed more meticulous flying.
Texan Lady was a Fort Worth Bird, the aristocrat of the B-36 family of course. The others didn't believe that. The Wichita crews looked down on the rest as being sluggards while the Segundo crews saw everybody else as amateurs flying the easy birds. But even for an aristocrat, Texan Lady was being very well-behaved this time out. Not an alert, not a red light, not a buzzer. Just the smooth drone of the engines and the smell of coffee? Coffee? Airman John Smith had brought some up. He was the youngest of the 16 crewmen on Texan Lady and also the youngest married man at Kozlowski AFB. Dedmon thought that life could be very hard for an 18 year old couple whose names really were Mr and Mrs John Smith. Especially since they couldn't use SAC ID cards. General LeMay had fixed that by issuing fake IDs that attributed the crews to other sections of the USAF. He was a hard-assed commander who looked after his men. That was how Sixth Crew Member had gotten her name. The B-36 flight deck had five positions, aircraft commander, two pilots and two engineers and a jump seat for the sixth crew member. That was only used when General LeMay decided to do a check flight on the crew. When the Sixth Crew Member was around, there was a lot of trouble brewing for somebody.
Dedmon put his coffee cup in its holder, waited until Smith was in the communications tunnel then tilted the nose up slightly. He heard a descending “wheeeeeee” as the little cart shot the length of the 80 foot tube. Beat hauling himself along hand-over-hand. Then the B-36 rocked as four fighters streaked over them, turning around to take station on either side. They were Thunderjets, the new fighter that would replace the antiquated P-47s and P-72s in the ground attack wings. SAC would have had them as well, as long-range escort fighters but the switch to high altitude had changed all that. Now the B-36s went in alone. The F-84s also meant that the tankers were on their way up. Dedmon sported theirs, she was below them, climbing hard on all ten engines.
Dedmon pressed the intercom button. “Signal our friends that fuel is on the way”. Messages by morse code signal lamp. No radio transmissions. The K.B-36F was closing fast now swinging in front of Dedmon's hometown. The long refueling boom was already down, the air-to-air refueling operator controlling it from a modified tail position. Above him now, the boom dropping down, edge forward a bit, line the boom up with the fuelling receptacle in the nose, that had been a 20 millimeter gun position once, gentle slide up and.....the fuel boom clicked into place.
“Ohhh darling that was wonderful......'“
It was a warm contralto female voice with a strong Texan accent that seemed to come though the intercom. Major Pico's eyebrows raised “Somebody's a good female impersonator. Second career perhaps?”
Dedmon grinned “We've had that a couple of times. Always same voice, always appropriate. Never managed to find out who it is. Flow rate 400. Nobody's admitting it. We all think it’s King don't we boys?” That caused a laugh. Master Technical Sergeant King was a big man from Alaska, a less likely candidate for that seductive voice was hard to imagine.
Fuelling finished, Texan Lady dropped back and Barbie Doll moved up to refuel. By the time they'd finished with their tanker, 2200 miles from their target, all three bombers were fully fuelled and could fly more than 11,000 miles if the situation demanded. Dedmon reflected that air-to-air refueling had made SAC what it was; now they really could strike anywhere in the world. They didn't need bases, they didn't need allies, they didn't need anybody. The B-36s could go anywhere, do anything to anybody. And nobody could stop them.
Dedmon looked outside again at the white shining streams being drawn by silver arrows across the rippling grey sky. It was indeed beautiful. The bombers were spreading now, some falling back as they completed refueling, others diverging now as their courses took them to different targets. The leading bombers were the ones going deep into Germany, the idea was to get the drops into the shortest possible time. The briefing from the targeteers had told them that. He'd never met any of that group before. Previously raids had been planned to destroy this or that or do something or somebody. But nuclear weapons were new and different. There were few of them and they were immensely destructive. The Targeteers worked out where to put each one for maximum effect. It seemed that the room just got a touch colder when they walked in and the plants there wilted slightly. Pure imagination of course.
And this was just half of it. There was another wave of bombers following behind them. These would hit targets in the occupied countries. A political decision had been made that nuclear weapons would only be used on Germany. So the B-36s going to targets in occupied countries were carrying conventional bombs. 40 tons of them per aircraft.
Right, it was time to climb again. Another hour and a half to 48,500 feet. That should take them over most things. Then higher still for the run through the defenses. And end this damned stupid war and take something very evil out of the world.
Office of Sir Martyn Sharpe, British Viceroy to India, New Delhi
His Most Gracious Majesty, the King of Thailand's Ambassador to the court of the Viceroy of India listened politely to the arrogant squalid little man sitting in his white rag and lecturing them on things he knew nothing about. She smiled her most engaging, affectionate smile and mentally imagined herself slicing an 8-inch saw-backed bowie knife across his windpipe. Just why were they listening to this hypocritical fool? He was a great demagogue that was for sure and his brand of propagandizing had been effective enough but he was a minor problem in the great scheme of things. He could be dealt with so simply. The problems she and Sir Martyn faced were much more important than the complications caused by this ignorant little man were worth.
The Japanese were going to move, that was for certain. Their economy was collapsing and the war in China was bleeding both countries to death. Japan had tried to move North, at a place called Khalkhin Gol in 1939 and the Soviet Union had slapped them stupid. Then in 1941, they'd been preparing to strike south, hitting the US possessions in the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies. That plan hadn't worked either. A few months earlier, there had been an upsurge in tension between the Thais and the Vichy French authorities in Indo-China. Usual story, there were disputes over the border and the French refused to discuss them. Perhaps as a result of the humiliating defeat by Germany a few weeks earlier, perhaps because the collapse of the UK, who knew, but the French had a new policy, They called it dissuasion. If there were any approaches from the Thai authorities over any border issue, Thai territory and citizens would be attacked by French forces. The situation had been escalating towards war anyway and that's when Sir Martyn had stepped in.
India had been left in an uncomfortable position by the British collapse. Her legal status was questioned, at least by the Japanese who asserted that since India had been part of the British Empire and Britain had surrendered to Germany and Germany and Japan were allies, Japan now owned India. Not to mention Burma and Malaya that were part of the Indian realm of authority. Sir Martyn had seen Thailand as part of the forward defense of India but to be a secure defense, the country needed defensible borders. The existing ones were not; French policy on the 1890s had seen to that, Sir Martyn had done two things. He'd made friendly noises towards the Thai government, reminding them of their long and (mostly) friendly relations with India. Then, he'd acted as an “honest broker” to establish relations with the Americans.
At his urging the American Secretary Cordell Hull had visited Thailand and negotiated with the Government. The Ambassador grinned to herself (disguising it as an expression of intense interest in an especially banal and pointless remark made by the pompous idiot opposite) Field Marshall Pibul had been on his best behavior, earnestly expressing his regret at the development of events and stressing how the American embargo on arms and equipment was forcing them to do business with the Japanese and Germans. The French had helped by staging another series of incidents on the border; the scene of one bombing raid had been inspected by Secretary Hull.
The Americans hadn't been that convinced but at least they'd gone away understanding that nationalist didn't mean enemy sympathizer. When the war had broken out, the Thai army had smashed the French on land (at sea it hadn't been that way but the Ambassador was a soldier and didn't really care about what had happened to the navy). By the time the Thai Army had finished pursuing the routed French forces, they had reached the original, pre-1860, border. A border that happened to be highly defensible and that gave Singapore a defensible land border at last.
The combination of a much-needed victory by a country apparently well-regarded by at least one Commonwealth ally, the restraint shown in the advance and the obvious need to pry a possible ally away from the Japanese and Germans had brought the Americans around. A lot of UK-ordered equipment was still waiting for a user in the United States. It had been shipped to India and the pick of it had gone to Thailand. Sir Martyn had gambled that it was probably better to have Thailand as an ally than an enemy, but even if the gamble didn't work, one additional enemy couldn't possibly make his position any worse. What Sir Martyn didn't know was that the Japanese had tried to force an early end to the Indo China war and, after that effort was rejected had staged several quite bloody border engagements. The Japanese had lost those and the route south was blocked. The Thai ambassador was quite certain it was her country's efforts that had saved India.
“If the Japanese have taken India, I will use the same tactics against them that I have used against the British!”
The Ambassador gave a smile of great admiration and support. She could just see it happening. The Japanese invaders finally conquer India. They hear of this great Resistance Leader, Mahatma Ghandi. A Japanese officer is asking about this Ghandi when a dirty little man walks up and starts babbling about how he will starve himself if the Japanese don't leave. The officer chops off the dirty little man's head. He then continues looking for this Mahatma Ghandi who is leading the Resistance to Japan.
Any honest person had to admit that the results of passive resistance would be vastly different if India had been dominated by the Nazis or the Japanese. Under those circumstances, the people of India would see tanks rolling in to literally grind them down underfoot, gas chambers running day and night, thugs with machine guns mowing people down in the streets, forced starvation, and/or chemical weapons attacks upon the populace. With any such-style government, Ghandi would have been imprisoned and killed long before he even had a chance to build a following, much less organize his first non-violent protest. The Ambassador had a soldier's appreciation of the effects of precisely-applied violence that a twittering old woman like Ghandi couldn't possibly understand. Mentally she changed her preferred image from slicing Ghandi's throat to removing his male member. She also noted that Sir Martyn crossed his legs at that precise moment. Perhaps he was telepathic after all.
Stupid, impolite, dirty and smelly Ghandi may be but he was also a menace. His civil disobedience campaign was weakening India at a moment when it didn't need to be weakened. India was one of the three bulwarks of the Commonwealth (no longer the British Commonwealth, that had ceased to exist on June 19th 1940). Much of the British fleet had made it out to India after the Great Escape. As a soldier, the Ambassador admired that operation, it had taken planning, skill and a lot of luck. When the Eastern front had stagnated more or less along the Don River, east of Moscow, the Germans had found themselves without the manpower needed to hold the line. The Russians hadn't either so both had done the obvious - called for help.
The Americans had responded with what eventually became two Army Groups holding the center of the line on the Okadon Plain. The Germans hadn't been so lucky so they'd demanded troops from the Vichy French and English. Both had refused, both had been occupied. The naval responses had typified both countries,. The French had scuttled their fleet in Toulon, the Royal Navy had tried to fight its way out. The five brand-new battleships had got out to Canada and become the nucleus of that country's fleet. The three battlecruisers were also out and were now based in Singapore. Most of the old slow ships hadn't been so lucky. The old British R class and two of the QEs hadn't made it more than a hundred miles from the coast before bombers and U-boats had taken them down.
The cruisers and destroyers had been the key. With the, India and Australia had established the basics of a strong military force. They'd been helped by the residual of British Naval power of course; the British Empire was founded on the basis of seapower and there were bases that could support the fleet all over. Australia and Canada were military powers of note now. But India? That was the rub. Ghandi's movement was demanding the British authorities and military forces leave. Immediately. He wanted the armies gone, he wanted the developing military industries abandoned. If that happened, the Japanese would have the country occupied in a month. That would be a disaster for the Ambassador's country as well; her army (and, again although Sir Martyn didn't know it, troops under her personal command) had humiliated the Japanese. If the tides went the other way, she and her country would pay dearly for that. Ghandi really was the problem. And, wonder of wonders, he'd finally stopped talking.
“Thank you so much for your most interesting comments. Our two countries share so much philosophy and religious tradition in common I am sure that much of what you say will be of great influence upon us,'“ Out of the corner of her eye, the Ambassador saw Sir Martyn apparently start to choke. Fortunately Ghandi left before Sir Martyn turned blue. Ghandi's pretentiousness extended to transport. He'd been offered an official car and escort but refused them. After all, he’d argued, how could his people harm him? He leave the building now, walk across the road to greet his supporters who'd been waiting for him then walk down the street through the crowds. In fact, he'd be reaching the street just about .......now.
There was a tearing squeal of tires and brakes then a dull thump that seemed to echo even through the heavy windows of the regency. Sir Martyn ran across and looked down. “Oh my God, Ghandi's been hit by a car.”
“From the Japanese Embassy no less.” said the Ambassador from the other side of the room. She walked across the room to the window and looked down. The Viceroy and most of the crowd were looking at the crumpled dirty little figure on the ground. The rest were dragging an obviously seriously drunken Japanese from the driving seat of an official Japanese Embassy limousine. Only the Ambassador saw a figure slip out of the passenger seat and lose himself in the crowd. There was a dreadful wailing and moaning from the crowd, picking up volume as grief at the news spread.
“I think he's dead.” Said Sir Martyn with an air of the deepest regret.
“Indeed so.” replied the Ambassador.
“A tragic loss.”
“Indeed so.”
“A great figure had been taken from us.”
“indeed so.”
“Much missed.” reflected Sir Martyn
“Not today.” said the Ambassador
“Madam Ambassador, the sun is over the Yardarm, would you like to join me in a drink? To mourn the loss of a great spirit?
CHAPTER THREE WAR IS KILLING
Cockpit, Goodyear F2G-4 “The Terminator” on USS Gettysburg, CVB-43. Bay of Biscay
Lieutenant Evans would be glad to see the back of the Super-Corsair. This was the last carrier raid before Gettysburg went home for a badly-needed refit. Her replacement, the Chancellorville, was already on Murderer's Row but Gettysburg had been held back so her air group would add some more veteran pilots to the wave of strikes. Chancellorsville was the latest CVB off the line and had the latest aircraft but her pilots were green and showed it. They weren't racking up the results the way the veterans did. They would, given time. By then, Evans would have converted to jets and would be flying the F2H-2 Banshee. Mentally, Evans shook his head. The Banshee was no great shakes to look at and a mediocre performer. It compared badly with the German jets, there was no doubt about it. The Germans built them pretty and there was an old engineering saying, if it looks right, it'll fly right. The German jets looked sleek and elegant but even their piston-engined birds seemed to have a grace the American aircraft lacked. And the German designers weren't afraid of new ideas.
The Banshee was a great example, the Navy was very proud of it but it was nothing special. It was tough certainly and could carry a good weapons load, but its design was pedestrian to say the least. Years behind the Germans. Even the older Me-262 looked more modern than the McDonnell jet and the Gotha flying wing looked like something out of one of the pulp science fiction magazines. Evans liked science fiction, he kept a look-out for stories by a guy called Robert Heinlein. Evans much preferred his work to that of another author Astounding used, Anson Macdonald. Perhaps Grumman and Lockheed ought to buy the pulps, it was time US aircraft companies woke up and smelt the coffee.
The F2G-4 was a great example of what was going wrong. When Vought had designed the original Corsair, they'd taken the biggest available engine, and packaged it with the specified firepower and fuel into the smallest possible fuselage. The Corsair had appeared to be a superb fighting machine, but Vought had over-engineered it and made it hard to maintain. At the start of a typical day's ops, only about half of Gettysburg's full complement was safe to fly. By dusk, half of those could be expected to be down. One way or another. The engine also tended to throw oil and rapidly coated the windshield . For an aircraft that already had seriously limited forward visibility, this was not good. Corsair pilots quickly became expert at locating rain showers to wash away the oil.
Then, Goodyear had stuffed an even bigger engine in. A four-row monstrosity called the R-4360 that put out more than 3,500 horsepower. The torque was so bad the aircraft had to have an extra rudder that angled to the right only. And if the older Corsair was hard to maintain, the new one was worse. That was made worse by the spares situation. Spare parts were in short supply and spare engines virtually unobtainable. The situation was so bad that the older F4U-7 had been kept in production. Early on, that hadn't made much difference; for all its extra power, the F2G had hardly performed any better than the older version with the R-2800. Then, Pratt and Whitney engineers had arrived with a series of engine and airframe modifications. Now, with a sea-level speed of almost 450 mph, the F2G could easily outrun its half-sister. The same power made take-offs with a full warload much easier. And fully loaded The Terminator was. Three five-inch rockets and a five hundred pound bomb under each wing, two napalm tanks under the belly.
Yet, for all the F2Gs power and low-altitude speed, the new jets just walked past it. Four Flivvers from Gettysburg flashed past while Evans waited for his wingman to form up with him. He and Lieutenant Brim had been flying together for all of this cruise. Now, they'd be splitting, Evans to convert to the Banshee, Brim to the new F9F Panther.
The coast was coming up, this was the tricky part. The US Navy owned the sea; over the horizon the carriers and their aircraft were safe. Once over land, the F2Gs would keep right down on the deck, making use of every terrain fold . But crossing the coast, the German flak gunners could see them coming. Unlike gunners defending fixed targets, they had the option of moving their guns around. The Navy pilots couldn't see them until they opened fire. So it was a game of chicken. The aircraft raced in, the gunners waited. If they waited long enough, the aircraft would be too close to see where the shots came from or return fire. If the gunners panicked and opened up too early, they gave their positions away and got their faces filled with rockets and napalm. Evans favorite anti-flak weapon was napalm, the jellied gasoline was superb for taking out flak. As the other members of his squadron were tired of hearing, he loved the smell of napalm in the morning.
The gunners didn't panic. The crews of the quad-twenties and twin-thirties held their fire until the fighters were almost on top of them. Evans saw the brilliant white balls floating towards him and flashing past, There was a dull thumm noise from the airframe, something had hit him but The Terminator didn't show it. Somebody else wasn't so lucky though. Evans saw an F2G, he didn't know whose, rearing up in a half barrel roll with flames streaming from its belly before it crashed into the beach in a black, oily explosion. Another F2G was heading back out to sea, trailing black smoke and losing height fast. Get out to sea, that was the rule. As far and as fast as you can. Air-Sea Rescue will do the rest. Brim and his Dominatrix were still in position and looked unharmed, they were both over the shoreline now. Feet Dry.
Target for today was Autun. One of the complex of airfields around Dijon. The map on Evans' knee showed that he and Brim had crossed the French coast just south of La Rochelle. Now, they had a 250 mile cross-country run to their target. This was pushing the F2G to the limits of its range and left little margin for problems. It would have been easier if they could drop the speed down to max cruise but every reduction in speed added to the risk from the anti-aircraft guns. They could be anywhere, in woods, behind hedges, on or in buildings. The Germans had them mounted on armored vehicles. If they saw you, they'd chew you up. So you had to keep low and keep fast.. That way they'd see you late and you'd be gone before they could open up. If it went right.
The jets were better, they were almost a hundred miles an hour faster down here than even the F2G. That's why they would be going in first. The attack was carefully planned. The pilots had been briefed exactly on where their targets were and what to hit. Priority were the 18 Gotha 229s based at Autun. The Flying Pancakes were a menace, faster than most of the US aircraft and as agile as the devil. Whyinhell didn't the US just copy the damn thing? So they had to go. Their revetments were marked on the map along with a building. The attack plan was simple, one pass straight over the airfield and out. The Marine pilots had a simple phrase for it. Just one pass and you hang onto your ass. Turn around, make a second pass and you died. As inevitable as taxes
Whoa.....An old Opel truck had suddenly loomed on
the road in front of them. Evans thumbed the firing button and felt the brief hammering from his 20 millimeter guns. No idea if he'd hit it or not and he wasn't going back to look. Over on his left, the other two F2Gs, Chainsaw and Bitter Fruit had also fired quick bursts. Must have been more trucks down there. Once the F2Gs had used rivers for cover, flying down them had offered a free path through the defenses. Over on their left the Sevre River offered just that tempting path - one that would be fatal. When they realized what the pilots were doing, the Germans had started stringing heavy nets across the rivers. The Navy and Marine pilots had approved and played games, leapfrogging the nets and diving under the bridges. Then the Germans had replaced the nets with single cables, painted to blend into the background and positioned in shadows. That made river running just too dangerous.
Prissac was dead ahead. Small village, nothing unusual. Evans took his F2G down the main street, past the police station and out the other side. He knew behind him would be utter chaos, four massively overpowered fighters flying below rooftop level tended to do that. The F2Gs had probably broken more medieval stained glass windows in the last two years than anybody else had managed in a couple of century. Evan's right arm was aching now, fighting the torque of his engine. Farmhouse, little to the left, between the barns and out. No ducks. Ducks were not funny, hitting one would bring an F2G down as surely as flak.
Little to the south now, steer clear of Argenton, there was too much flak around there. It was a rail junction anyway, some birds from one of the other task groups would be hitting it soon. Probably Adies. Evans guessed that all the road and rail traffic that could have stopped would have done so. Moving in daylight while the US Navy and Marines were flying was suicide. So why had those trucks been out? Worth reporting when he got back. But most stuff now would be moving by night. That was a problem that needed addressing. Some of the carriers had night interdiction F7F Tigercats on board. The twin-engined Grummans had radar and an arsenal of rockets, cannon and bombs to do the job. Finding targets, that was a problem nobody had solved.
Montrond passing on the left. Some flak bursts, nothing much to worry about, might not even be aimed at them. Could even be random. Strange how the shock wave from their passing flattened the crops. There was a railway junction coming up soon. If luck was in - it was. Train sitting in the sidings. Another hammering burst from the 20 millimeters. Evans took a quick glance backwards. Smoke and steam and burning, they'd hit something. Four minutes from target time to get lined up, this was the hard bit.
Already the Flivvers would be going in to take the flak guns down. They knew exactly where they were - or so the intell guys said - and would fire their six five-inch rockets. Even if they weren't spot on, they'd make the gunners put their head down long enough for the second-wave flak suppression aircraft, the first wave of F2Gs to hit the positions. Then the second wave of F2Gs would hit the primary targets. Following them, the Adies would go in with their bombloads. Ten thousand pounds of assorted bad manners on a single-engined bird. Whoodathunkit,. This was an anti-airfield strike so the Adies would be carrying runway destroyers. Two thousand pound bombs with six five inch rockets strapped around them and a parachute on the tail. The Adie would drop, the parachute would pull the bomb to a nose down position then the rockets would drive it deep underneath the runway. A delayed action fuse would see that the crater was big enough.
Smoke ahead, lots of it the Flivvers and F2Gs had done their job. OK burst through the treetops. Commander George Foreman, their squadron commander had made it clear - any aircraft that came back without braches stuck in it and impact damage to the leading edge was flying too high. Newbie pilots took one flight to find he wasn't joking. And the intell people were right their target building was dead in front of them Evans lined up and squeezed the rocket switch, firing his five inchers into the old-looking structure. He couldn't see but he knew Brim's Dominatrix had dropped her napalm tanks a split second later to engulf the wrecked structure in fire.
There were people running across the airfield, some seeking shelter, others looking for a way to fight back. Evans snapped quick bursts from his 20 millimeter guns. Sometimes he missed the older versions of the F2G, they had .50 machine guns, better for picking off runners than the slower-firing twenties. The Go-229 revetments were right ahead, Evans flipped armament selection to napalm and dropped his tanks. With luck they'd bounce across the line taking the aircraft out. Rockets streaked past his wingtip, it was Brim unloading on a parked Go-229. There were lots of other flashing lights now above, to both sides not below, nothing could get below him. Flak lots of it. 20 millimeter, 30 millimeter, machine guns, rifles, even pistol fire. No joke, at least one F2G had returned to carrier with a 9 millimeter pistol bullet stuck in its airframe. There was another dull thrummm from the aircraft and Evans felt The Terminator stagger. That one had hurt. But they were though the wood line and out now. He didn't see the Gotha hidden in the trees at the end of the base.
Brim was still behind him and they still had their 500 pounders and what was left of his cannon ammunition for targets of opportunity on the way home. If he had any cannon ammunition. He couldn't remember firing his guns on the wild ride over the airfield but he knew he probably had. Just to the south was the Arrou. Could be a couple of barges worth hitting there. But there were only three of them now. Chainsaw had gone from the left and Bitter Fruit was trailing smoke. Behind them black smoke boiled into the sky from Autun.
Dijon, France. Primary base ofJG-26 Schlageter
“And what are you two fine gentlemen discussing?” Hilda leant forward across the bar, her chin resting on her right hand. As she did so, her dress fell away a little and a quiet collective sigh went around the officer's mess.
“That this house prefers a blonde-haired woman on black sheets to a black-haired woman on white sheets” replied the newbie. Schumann didn't know his name. He'd already learned that it wasn't worth bothering until the kid had at least a couple of missions under his belt. Mostly, they never got that far. Hilda was eyeing the newbie thoughtfully. “Well, if you haven't decided by now, you probably never will” and turned away with a hip-twitch. The other officers in the mess howled with laughter. The newbie was looking crestfallen, Schumann felt sorry for the kid. He was , what, 15? 16? Holding one's own with a barmaid was a question of experience.
“Take a little good advice son. Never try to trade ribaldries with a barmaid behind her own bar. You're giving up speed and altitude before you even start.” Hilda was watching out of the corner of her eye. She'd pulled the newbie another beer and now slipped it to him with a friendly wink. She was one of the Reich auxiliary service girls, volunteers who came out to help with running the services on Luftwaffe and Army bases. Schumann had seen them come in three types. First there were the diehard Nazi ideologues, out there to pour propaganda into the soldiers, filling them with the pure uncorrupted dogma of, whatever. Hard faced and ever ready to report any disloyal or questioning sentiments for those were defeatism. Then there were the socialites, eager to come on out and show their friends what they were prepared to endure for the new Germany. Who took every chance they could to remind the troops how lucky they were that such an exalted person had taken time out from such a busy social schedule to tend to their trivial needs. And then there were the third sort, the cynical harpies who'd come out to make a fortune selling themselves to the lonely youngsters who'd never been so far from home before. Schumann preferred them to the others, at least they were honest.
But Hilda and those like her were the fourth kind. The rare ones. Girls who were there because they wanted to help the troops, who wanted to bring some humanity into the mass insanity that was devouring Europe. They'd listen to young boys blurting their horror when they'd had just learned that people wanted to kill them. They'd hold the hand of one who'd just understood what it was to lose friends. They'd help a commander find the right words for one of “those” letters to the next-of-kin. They knew when to keep quiet and just be there. Mostly, they were off farms or out of small towns where kindness wasn't regarded with condescension by the “sophisticated”. Schumann believed that Hilda probably did more to keep JG-26 sane and operational than any other person on the base. She was joking with the newbie now, letting him win some of the sallies. Schumann peeled off the money for his drink; casualties were too high to allow credit, and got up to leave. Hilda turned her head slightly so the newbie couldn't see and gave a knowing wink. She'd started helping a boy turn into a young man; a good sergeant would help some more.
Schumann needed to cross the base, to where Green Eight was hidden under the trees. Her left wing and rear fuselage was shot to hell. He'd got a bicycle to get there; nobody drove around these days, the fuel was needed for the aircraft. He'd gotten most of the way when his crew sergeant, Sergeant Bruno Alexander Dick, stopped him. Dick was another character. He'd been in the Navy during the first War and then joined the Army during the Weimar Republic. Then, he'd transferred to the Luftwaffe. It was a standing JG-26 joke that the Reich had sent him to each service in turn to make sure they got off to a good start. Another person who spent his life turning scared boys into young men.
It was nothing important, some routine matters of getting the damaged Fledermaus fixed. But in bringing them up Sergeant Dick had saved Schumann's life. For just as he had finished there was a scream of jets and sirens. If Schumann had walked across the base, he would now be in the open and mowed down when the line of Lockheeds swept across, spraying .50 machingun fire and rockets at everything that moved. If Dick hadn't stopped him, he'd have been trapped in the open the other side. But, where he was, he was just close enough to a slit trench to take cover. He dived in and had the breath driven from him as people landed on top.
Lying in a slit trench with four large German soldiers on top of him, Schumann couldn't help but think that several members of the Party hierarchy would probably quite enjoy this position. He didn't need to see what was going on to follow the events, sound and experience meant his mind's eye could see it all as if he'd been standing out there in the field. First the Lockheeds had swept over, too fast for the defenses to respond. They were what he was hearing now, the howl of their jets, the clatter of the .50s and the sky-ripping noise ending in a dull thump that told of the rockets. Even at the bottom of the trench with four human sandbags, he could feel the warm breath of the jet exhausts.
The Lockheeds were good at guessing where the flak guns were but they rarely got them all. It would be the Goodyears, they were coming in now, they would finish off the defenses. They sounded quite different. The vicious snarl of the radial engine - or the rougher growl, there were two kinds of Goodyear. The snarling one were the ones to be feared. Heavier slower thumping from guns. Snarling Goodyears had mostly the 20 millimeter cannon not the .50s on the Lockheeds and Growling Goodyears. They used the same rockets though. Same sounds. And bombs, Schumann could feel the shake of the explosions. But they carried something else too, something the Lockheeds rarely did. Jellied gasoline, jellygas. Schumann could hear its evil roar, could feel the heat of it burning. Could hear the screams of the people it killed. The Amis were the very devils themselves to create a thing like that. To put something into gasoline that made it burn hotter and slower, to make it stick to everything it touched. To suck all the oxygen out of the air so that even those who didn't fry died when their lungs ruptured.
A second wave of Goodyears? That was a new twist. The Amis didn't go in for new twists, they experimented, found something that worked then did it bigger. And more often. The Luftwaffe had countered the first American raids by dispersal, keeping the aircraft well away from the base itself. The Amis had replied with the subtlety, finesse and tactical ingenuity for which they were famous. They'd smashed and burned everything over a bigger area. Once Schumann had been at the interrogation of a US Navy pilot. Obviously a senior man for he was old, in his mid-twenties. Schumann didn't understand American navy ranks but “Ensign” sounded senior. Admirals had Ensigns didn't they? The interrogator had asked him why he was fighting. A German soldier was expected to give an answer along the lines of defending the Fatherland or protecting Europe from communism. The American pilot had replied “to kill you and break your things.”
Even their aircraft names were ugly and filled with hate. The Snarling Goodyears in particular. Executioner, Bloodletter, Demonslayer, Deathbringer, Flamethrower. Just some of those Schumann had shot down. Lying in his trench shaking with noise and fear, swamped by the sounds of the engines and explosions, surrounded by the screaming rockets and the roaring heat of the jellygas, Schumann had a sudden profound insight into the Ami mind. They were taking this war personally. It wasn't an extension of politics by other means. It wasn't a game or a competition. The Ami hated them. They had decided that Germany was too evil to be allowed to live and they had decided to kill it.
Suddenly the bits fell into place, The careful planning, the ruthless use of power, the remorseless artistry with which the Amis destroyed everything that got in their way. They weren't fighting in anger or even in the heat of a war-rage.
They had made a cold-blooded decision to destroy an enemy and were doing it as efficiently as they could. For them, it wasn't a crusade or a battle or a duel. It was a job, an unpleasant job that had to be done as well as they could, as quickly as they could and as completely as they could. Then they could go home. They didn't care what they had to do to make it happen, they would do what they had to, then they would go home. In the bottom of his trench, Schumann wept.
Even then, he could follow the air raid. The Goodyears had been replaced by Douglasses. Big slow bombers that circled the airfield and destroyed anything that moved. They took their time, the defenses had gone now. They'd pick off any building still standing, any surviving aircraft in revetments. They'd be watching for slit trenches and the entrances to air-raid shelters so they could drop their infernal jellygas on them. Then, the last stage was the earthquake moves as the Douglas bombers dropped their runway-piercing bombs on the concrete. That was the end of the base for days. Some of the thousand kilo bombs had delayed action fuzes that could work for a week or more. After a few minutes quiet, the all-clear sounded. Slowly figures emerged from the ground, surrounded by what had been an airbase and was now a fair simulation of hell.
The air was a stench of burning gasoline, roasted flesh, plastic, metal, pulverized concrete. Smoke was so thick it filled the nostrils with oil and tar, forcing people to breath through their mouths. The lucky had cloths to cover their faces, Schumann used his precious white silk scarf, watching it turn black with soot and grime even had he done so. Even the sun overhead was red with smoke and burned, burned everything. It was strangely quiet even with the burning and the explosions as ammunition cooked off. Intellectually, Schumann knew than the airbase was almost as dangerous now as it had been when under attack. In front of him were the cranked wings of a Goodyear; the aircraft had smacked belly-down into the runway then skidded into a revetment. The wreckage was mixed with that of the Gotha, the tail of the Goodyear making a cross over the joint grave. The engine cowling had detached and the artwork was still visible. A picture of a caricature German with spiked helmet and monocle being cut apart with a chainsaw. Schumann understood the thought behind it now. He walked through the wreckage of the base dazed with shock and exhaustion. Unconsciously he was heading for the mess, anywhere where he could get peace. Then a chainhound stopped him. The mess was a burned out, shattered ruin with a long line of covered bodies outside.
“Sorry sir, building isn't safe. Two Goodyears did it. First hit the place with rockets, the other dropped jellygas. SIR stop it DON'T DO THAT.”
It was too late. Schumann had seen a pair of bare legs under a cover and pulled back the groundsheet. He assumed what he could see was Hilda, it was burned, charred and blackened beyond recognition. The arms were raised almost in a position of prayer, the hands twisted and curled. The mouth was open, frozen in the screams that had come from the victim as the jellygas had seared her life away. Schumann turned and started to vomit, the effort carrying on long after his stomach was empty.
“We should bury her with the pilots Major, she would have wanted that” It was Sergeant Dick.
“God in heaven man, she was 17 years old.. Why on this earth do you think she wanted to be buried anywhere?” Schumann's scream was almost hysterical.
“Sir, you are right sir. My apologies.”
Schumann forced himself to stop and get his mind under control. “No Sergeant, it is I who am wrong and you who are right. Your suggestion was a good and kind one. Please forgive my rudeness.”
Sergeant Dick nodded and watched the pilot walk away. The young officer was going to die soon, Dick could see the shadow on his face. Perhaps killed or perhaps so wound up and exhausted he would do it himself. But the young officer was going to die.
CHAPTER FOUR STRIKING OUT
Savenay, France. Primary base o II/KG-40
Kampfgruppe, that was a joke if ever there had been one. Four Arados and less that twenty of the little Henschel 132s. The unit had been shot to pieces in Russia and sent to France to regroup. That was a joke as well. Lieutenant Wijnand had never seen so many enemy aircraft at one time. He'd heard the Ami carrier strikes were hell but this was worse than he'd ever imagined. Their unit clerk had been riding a bicycle back from the field post office when four Ami fighters had chased him. They'd hunted him like a dog until they killed him. Four fighters, one man.
Fighter pilots. Overblown egos all of them. Spent their lives flashing around leaving the real work to the bomber crews. And who got all the resources? Damned fighter pilots. Wijnand bitterly remembered the days back in 1944 when the fighter groups had had an absolute priority on the new jets. What had he been flying then? A biplane! An old stacked-wing biplane out of World War One. Strange to think it was made by the same company that built the neat little 132s. But the bomber crews were trying to survive in ancient old Heinkels and Junkers while their new Arado 234s stacked up in factories waiting for engines. It was Gal lands fault. He'd played the political game well and got the fighter groups their priority so they could rule the sky over the Eastern Front. And would fighters stop the Amis and Ivans cooling their tank tracks in the Channel? Of course not. That was down to the bomber crews. The ground forces helped of course, it was still difficult to blow tanks from the air, but it was the ground attack units that stopped the Allied assaults. And got chewed up doing it.
In truth the bomber groups were only a pale shadow of what they had once been. Back in the glory days of 1940 and 1941 they had been the cream of the Luftwaffe with direct access to Goering's ear. Then it had all gone sour. First there had been the strategic bomber problem. None of the four-engined aircraft had been satisfactory, they'd all suffered development problems. Then, there had been the disasters of the American B-29 strikes. They'd based out of Russia and tried to hit targets in East Europe. The casualties had been dreadful, several raids had been wiped out completely. At one of the bomber meetings Old Fatty had been on his best form. Jovial and confident. Asked Heinkel and Junkers if they could build anything as good as the B-29. They'd hedged and blustered but eventually they'd admitted that even if their best efforts performed as advertised, which they'd never done, they still wouldn't match the B-29. Then he'd turned to Messerschmitt and Tank and asked them how good the Americans fighters were compared with ours. Nothing to choose, they'd said. So how could our big bombers survive? Fatty had asked with a flourish. They can't. So why build them? Not a Reichsmark for the big bombers, he'd said, not a kilo of aluminum.
And then there was the power problem. Wijnand knew his little Arado had four engines because that was the only way to get the necessary power. The German engine industry couldn't get above the 1000 kg of thrust level. Heinkel had offered a 1300 kg thrust engine, the HeS-011 but it had failed disastrously. Despite experimental test runs and hard engineering work, the engine just couldn't be made to work. Eventually, it had been abandoned, given up as a bad job with its fundamental design defects too deep-seated to cure. The same fate had befallen the next-generation Jumo-012 and the BMW-018. Even if the design had worked, the engines couldn't be built. Germany's critical shortage of metals for high-temperature alloys had seen to that. The same problems meant that even his BMWs had barely five or six hours between overhauls when the Amis were up in the hundreds.
So there were no engines even for medium bombers and the old piston engined aircraft had to do. There was one bomber group in Russia still flying Heinkel IIIs. More flew Ju-88s. The lucky ones had the 388. The Arado 234 light bombers were the only jets and that was because they mostly did recon. As a result, the German bomber crews in Russia were taking a real beating from the allied fighters.
But never in the East did he see aircraft used like this. There were literally thousands of them swamping the area, shooting up anything that moved. Wijnand blessed their group commander. Colonel Kast had been a great leader in Russia, now he was saving them here. He'd ignored the big tempting French-built airfields with their solid buildings and comfortable quarters. Instead, he'd put his men into wooden shacks and dug-outs buried in the trees. The aircraft had been tucked away as well. The Henschels were easy, they'd been designed to give the smallest possible target and could be hidden almost anywhere. Hiding the larger Arado 234Cs had been a challenge but they'd managed it as well. Colonel Kast had also moved the entire group as close to the coast as he could. He'd noticed that the Amis suffered most losses crossing the coastline. So they came over it as fast as they could and got inland as quickly as they could. So when Kast had moved his unit up to the coast, the Amis had overflown them before they started to look. He was a sly one that Kast. So why did he want to see Wijnand now?
It was essential to walk carefully. Kast hammered the lessons home to all of his people. Never walk the same way twice, never keep to the same paths. He'd shown his people photographs of other bases where people weren't so careful. No matter how well hidden the base had been, the tracks where people walked the same way every day, the lines of crushed grass pointed out the dumps and buildings as clearly as if they had been lighted arrows. The climax, of course, were the pictures of the same bases with the targets smashed by bombs. The fighter pilots hadn't listened of course and they were paying for it. Their big beautiful bases were being methodically smashed by the Ami air attacks while Kast's little collection of sordid huts and derelict barns went unnoticed. Or at least unregarded. The Amis seemed to have the same problem as the Luftwaffe. Damned fighter pilots. Wijnand had noticed that they were concentrating on taking down the German fighters while bombers and transports were secondary targets. Perhaps they believed that bombers weren't worth bothering about as well. They might be right at that. Two years of carrier strikes, each bigger and more devastating than the last and the Luftwaffe bombers hadn't even found the carriers, let alone hurt one.
“Ah it’s my little Dutchman. Come on in Wijnand. Get a drink, I have some work for you.” Wijnand's family came from the Dutch-German border, their family was split almost 50:50. German men married to Dutch girls, Dutch husbands with German wives. The family joke was that whether they were Dutch or German depended on which flag the approaching army marched behind. In KG40, Wijnand was always the “little Dutchman”.
“Wijnand, I have been looking at the map. And I think I see something interesting. You heard the news today? The Amis hit a base complex around Dijon. It's a hellish mess over there, half a dozen bases gone. JG-26 just isn't there any more. Gone. The Hochjaeger flight at Pontailler survived, I don't think the Amis worry about the old Vossies, but that's it. But what's the most important thing about Dijon Wijnand?”
“They make good mustard sir?”
“That is the second most important. The most important thing is that they are more than 450 kilometers from the coast. That is far inland for their Goodyears and right on the edge for the Lockheeds. So they must have brought their carriers in close. Must have. Now when I look at the map I see the Amis crossing the coast here and here. We know they're flying right over us. And I'm sure they are in close. Much closer than they have ever been before. My guess is that there is a carrier group somewhere out here.” Colonel Kast drew a circle on the chart. “Somewhere there. Right on the edge for our little Henschels. But you, Wijnand, my little Dutchman, you can take your Arado out there and look. We're loading you up with drop tanks so you can stay out there until you find something. Get up high so you can see a wide area. Use your speed to evade fighters. It’s more important you survive to look than anything else.”
“And what do I call when I find something? I see the Ami fleet, goodbye cruel world?”
“That will do. Or perhaps try Oh Dear Lord please don't shoot. But you make damned sure you include that position because the Henschel's will have no room for error. You do this right, my little Dutchman, and I will personally get you a week's pass and the biggest pot of mustard in Europe.”
That was probably a safe offer Wijnand thought as he walked a devious route back. He'd flown a lot of recon missions and his luck had to run out sooner or later. Two years ago, his Arado had been untouchable, cruising too fast for interception. Now, his edge was marginal at best. His crew had his aircraft ready and he scrambled up and in through the top hatch. The all-glazed nose gave good visibility that was one thing. They were just waiting for a break in the fighter cover now. The observers would tell them when. And had by the feel of it. Wijnand felt his engines kick into life then the wall of the barn dropped away in front of him. Get moving, straight off. The “runway” was a mud path directly in front of him. As soon as he was clear of the barn he fired his two rocket take-off packs and felt his 234 being lifted bodily into the air by the sheer rocket power. Big cloud of black smoke, with luck the Amis would think it was somebody exploding and ignore it. Drop the packs and don't get too high now, he had to keep low and off the radar until he was away from the base area. Then climb, get out over the sea and hope that he could find the enemy carrier. An old saying kept running through his mind “be careful what you hope for, you may get it”.
Combat Information Center, USS Shiloh, CVB-41. Bay of Biscay
There was much to be said for the concept of a CIC mused Captain Kevin Madrick. Old fashioned officers still preferred to con their ships from the bridge but most experienced COs preferred the facilities offered by the CIC. It allowed him to put the Admiral on the bridge where he couldn't do any harm while the Captain and his officers could run the ship from down here. Shiloh had the latest pattern CIC dominated by a transparent vertical plot and supported by combat functional areas. The air warfare picture team was full strength but anti-submarine and anti-surface were skeletonized. There hadn't been a surface warfare threat for years and any time a German submarine was encountered, the news made fleet headlines for days. No, the air threat was the only serious one and the Germans still hadn't found a solution to finding the fast-stepping carriers far out to sea. “Whoaaaa, will you look at this.” Madrick couldn't identify the voice from the air warfare section but the astonishment indicated something really unusual was happening.
“Report?” Madrick snapped. “If it's that unusual make a proper report.”
“Sir, massive air movement to the west. Bearing 205 through 270 degrees. IFF is displaying US forces sir. Massive, massive movement biggest I've ever seen. Speed and altitude
are...... hold one........ that's strange. Sir, we can't get a
proper speed and altitude on the contacts. None of the radars are giving consistent data.”
“Jamming?”
“No sir, at least I don't think so. It's more like sound in a hangar or cathedral it's as if the radar pulses are echoing and being blurred. None of the radars are helping sir, not even the new heightfinders.”
The SM radar was a new addition, only fitted in the dockyard maintenance before this cruise. Radars were two dimensional, giving range and bearing only. SM gave altitude and range. There was talk of a new generation of three-dimensional radars that would give all three figures in one readout. Madrick would believe that when he saw it. Until then, the heightfinders had helped air control greatly. He stepped over to the air warfare alley and looked at the raw feed from the search radars. The contacts were massive all right, the whole western arc of the radar screen was glowing with them. Whatever was moving, there were a lot of them and they were big.
So big, they had a strange hypnotic fascination about them. The radar information was already being transferred onto the vertical plot; normally there would be tracks of inbound and outbound with times sightings and locations but these contacts didn't allow that. Instead there was a growing shadow, covering the western approaches and moving steadily towards them. The radar data was still imprecise, it was weird and rather frightening, as if the pulses couldn't quite get a grip on their targets. The apparent speed of the huge formation and its progress were inconsistent. It just didn't quite make sense. But it was obvious now that the big formation was slow, probably no more than 250 miles an hour, and was very, very high up. Certainly more than 40,000 feet and probably closer to 50,000. The visual lookouts on the bridge couldn't see anything, wouldn't for some time yet, the shadow was at least 200 miles away and was in no great hurry. Yet, the spreading stain on plot had a compelling attraction to it. As each new extent was crayoned in, it seemed to possess more and more of a life of its own.
“Good God where did HE come from?” It was Air Warfare Alley again. “Sir, single contact to the east, well defined Climbing fast sir., estimated position somewhere near Vannes. From the rate of climb and the fact he's on his own I'd make a tentative ID as an Arado recon bird. Sir, He's turning straight towards us.”
“Picked up our radars?”
“Certainly Sir, if we've seen him, he's heard us.”
“Get fighters up to intercept him. NOW.”
“No Sir. Can't do that.” It was Pearson, the CAG. Not one of the most tactful characters in the CIC but an airgroup commander who knew his job.
“Explain yourself.”
“We haven't any fighters available. Damn it Sir, I've been complaining about this for a year now. Every time we come out we've been carrying fewer fighters, more strike aircraft. This time we had 36 Flivvers. We've lost seven, eighteen are over France doing flak suppression or escort, six are unserviceable and the remaining three landed five minutes ago and it'll be at least 30 minutes before they are on line. If they don't need fixing. The F2Hs are either over France, in France, or on the hangar deck shot full of holes. We've half our Adie group over France and the other half sitting fully loaded in our hangar deck waiting for an escort for the strike on the railway yards at Nantes. The Essexes are even worse off. I've been telling the brass we are short on fighters and can't protect ourselves and they just didn't listen.”
Madrick started to say something then thought better of it. If the air group wasn't available, the Shiloh was going to have to defend herself. How could it be? He had over a hundred aircraft, more like a hundred and twenty. He couldn't be out? Yet, orders had said maximum effort to strike land targets. The target list had been a long one and time short. He'd given the General Quarters and Battle Stations orders without thinking and knew his ship was coming to an air defense readiness state. Still, it couldn't be too bad; he was surrounded by escorts whose decks were wallpapered with anti-aircraft guns. What could one single aircraft do. A lot, his unconscious kept telling him. It might be wise to alert the other groups as well.
Arado 234C Red Two Over The Bay of Biscay
Lieutenant Wijnand was playing a hunch. He'd come out of Savenay low and fast as per orders and headed for Vannes. After there, the mission profile had been up to him. The great thing about Colonel Kast was that he gave his people a mission then left them to use their judgment. It was hard work earning his trust, but once earned, that trust went all the way. It also went both ways. Colonel Kast never left his people hanging out to dry. He'd even faced the Gestapo and SS down on that score. Now Wijnand had an idea. His guess was that the Amis used their radars but were far enough offshore so they were below the radar horizon. German fighters didn't carry radar detectors and, when carriers were around, bombers didn't live long enough to get up to the altitude where the radars could be detected. But his Arado could. So after reaching Vannes, Wijnand had climbed fast and hard. Something the Arado did well. Red Two had always been a good machine.
Sure enough, his hunch was paying off. His radar warner started wheeping as he picked up altitude. It wasn't directional as such but did give an octantal reading. Now, if he bisected the octant, he should start getting closer. Colonel Kast had given him an idea where to look and now he had confirmation. Struggling with a map was hard in the cramped cockpit but it was the name of the game now. He had to get that position right. He marked his course in on the map, right through the oval Kast had drawn a few minutes earlier. Working well so far. It looked like the Amis had screwed this one up. Victory disease, that was the name for it. You won so often, you forgot you could lose, The Ami carriers had been having their way so long, they'd become careless and over confident. Wijnand had firewalled his throttles and Red Two was going flat out. Going to make fuel very critical but it was their only real chance of doing the job. He was less that 15 minutes out from the center of Kast's estimated position.
Still no fighters. His luck was holding. What was that? Down below, far below, a streak on the surface. A wake? A wake. With a ship at the end of it. Couldn't tell what it was so it must be a battleship at least. It was pointy so it couldn't be a carrier. But that one was blunt. Obviously a flat front. A carrier.
“'Position 46.8 North, 4.6 West, Goodbye Cruel World. Position 46.8 North, 4.6 West, Goodbye Cruel World”.
Black smoke erupting around him. To close, so very close. The Ami gunners were good. And their shells always exploded at just the right time.
“Position 46.8 North, 4.6 West, Goodbye Cruel World. Position 46.8 North, 4.6 West, Goodbye Cruel World”.
Red Two lurched and started to twist. Wijnand could see damage to his wings and engine pods, the two starboard engines were already streaming black smoke.
“Position 46.8 North, 4.6 West, Goodbye Cruel World. Position 46.8 North, 4.6 West, Goodbye Cruel World”.
Red Two was heading down now, Wijnand fighting the controls all the way. They were stiff, unyielding, the power boost was out.
“Position 46.8 North, 4.6 West, Goodbye Cruel World. Position 46.8 North, 4.6 West, Goodbye Cruel World”.
Lieutenant Wijnand yanked the ejector seat handles. Nothing happened. That had gone too. OK, so his luck was really out, he would have to ride Red Two in. He managed to get the steep dive straightened out a bit and was heading north now. He wouldn't make the coast now. that was for sure. It was into the sea.
“Position 46.8 North, 4.6 West, Goodbye Cruel World. Position 46.8 North, 4.6 West, Goodbye Cruel World”.
Combat Information Center, USS Shiloh, CVB-41. Bay of Biscay
“We got him sir.”
“He got our position out sir. Over and over again even when he was going down”
Captain Madrick cursed quietly to himself. For the first time in two years, a carrier group had been spotted and its position fixed. And he didn't have fighters. “Aircraft status. Now.”
“Be thirty minutes before we have aircraft of our own. Then four Flivvers. Gettysburg is sending some Flivvers as soon as they can get them up. Ten, 15 minutes. Chancellorsville is sending a dozen Panthers be with us in thirty minutes. Admiral Spruance is raking around now for more but almost everything we've got is over France or unserviceable.”
“The Panthers will cover us when they get here”. Something was nagging at Madrick, something important. Suddenly it snapped into place. If they were sending a recon aircraft, they must have a strike ready to go. And he had two dozen fully loaded Adies on his hangar deck. “Get the Adies unloaded and seal everything down.”
Savenay, France. Primary base of II/KG-40
Colonel Kast was already on his belly in his Hs-132 when the radio operator came running in. “Position 46.8 North, 4.6 West, Sir”.
“Sure it was our little Dutchman?”
“He kept repeating sir Goodbye Cruel World. That was the phrase wasn't it.”
Kast nodded. The radio operator knew what he was thinking and shook his head, the way the message had cut off, their Little Dutchman wasn't coming back.
“Get the position out to everybody who can fly. Get off as quickly as you can get there as quickly as you can. Don't bother to formate we'll just go as we get there. Tell everybody to stay low, don't bother to dive, Use the reflector bombsight.”
“Sir, it’s, well fuel you won't....”
“Matthew. There are 19 of us against the whole American Navy. Do you seriously think any of us will come back? Just remember Matthew, today a few of us took on the entire American Navy. That's what's worth remembering. And if the Gods don't help us, just what use are they?”
The doors in front of his aircraft swung open and Colonel Kast made the fastest take-off he'd ever managed. All around Savenay, the little Henschels 132 came out of garages and barns, from under hayricks, from inside houses. Each made the same hurried take-off, each made its own way to the same destination. Position 46.8 North, 4.6 West.
FV-1 “Made Marian”, USS Gettysburg, CVB-43 Bay of Biscay
“Mission Aborted. Stand by”. Foreman cursed loudly and fluently. His section of four Flivvers was waiting, ready to go. Fuel tanks full. Lengthened tip-tanks full. Machine guns loaded. Rockets under wing. Earlier today, he'd lead the flak suppression strike in on an air base near Autun. He'd been down while his Flivver was reloaded and now he was supposed to be hitting another airfield at Pontailler. That was a priority target, a base for long-winged Messerschmitts. But now he was on hold.
“Emergency redirect. Take your aircraft to position Hatchett” Foreman mentally translated, position TG57.2 “and provide air cover. Scimitar” the large cruiser Puerto Rico “Is reporting scattered formation of inbounds. Intercept and break up formation. Control will be provided by Hatchett Prime” Shiloh “Go.”
Foreman let up the brakes and his Flivver streaked down the flight deck. He was airborne after only about half of the big deck and was turning hard to port before his wheels were up. He was seven to eight minutes out from the Hatchett then had to allow time to get out to intercept the inbounds. He didn't know what had happened but for everything to be going like this, things must have gone really sour really fast. The three members of his flight were forming up in a line abreast beside him now. They were on their way to Position 46.8 North, 4.6 West.
H.S-132D Blue One, Position 46.8 North, 4.6 West
Colonel Kast was trying very hard not to look at his fuel gauge, the Hs-132 didn't carry much to start with and the low-altitude, high speed flight was burning the small supply at a frightening rate. He had 18 other Hs-132s with him with a single Arado 234C pounding along behind. He guessed the Arado was in an even worse state than he was, with four engines, its fuel consumption low down was terrifying. But it had got off and carried three of the SC-1000 bombs, the 132s only carried one of the smaller SC-500s. The Arado had a lousy low-level bombsight though. Another Arado and a 132 hadn't been so lucky, they'd been last off and a pair of Goodyears had shot them down almost as soon as their wheels had lifted. But they were on their way now closing fast on the position of the Ami carriers. The Little Dutchman hadn't given them much more than a raw position, but he'd done damned well to do that. Kast hoped he'd got out somehow but knew the chances were small. As they were for the whole unit now.
Kast shifted his position on his couch. He couldn't call it a seat. He was prone, his chin resting on a specially designed support. The Hs-132 had a very small nose-on target area and the sheet of armor glass in front of him was thickened reassuringly. His was one of the four new Hs-132Ds with an MG-213 cannon installed. He hadn't fired it yet but the revolver-cannon was supposed to have a phenomenal rate of fire. Squirting 20 millimeter rounds like a hose. The fighter groups had been complaining about a slow rate of fire for years, well, now they had their wishes fulfilled. Of course the magazine capacity wasn't any greater so he had one short burst. The other 132s had the older MG-151 20 millimeter.
Not that it was going to make much difference. Better to have had no cannon and a bigger bomb. For this run anyway. It was about time to get set up
Kast reached out and flipped the switch on his gunsight from cannon to bomb. Then he dialed in settings using the controls on either side. Speed 800 kph. Altitude 50 meters. Now, if he held the speed at exactly 800 kph and if he held the altitude at exactly 50 meters and if the bomb was an SC-500 and if he didn't make a turn at the last minute and if everything worked well, the bomb would hit at the spot the red dot in the center of the gunsight touched at the moment of release. There were a lot of big “ifs” there. Not least of which was surviving long enough. Still no fighters. Kast had half-expected that. A carrier could only carry so many aircraft and the way the Amis were swamping France, they couldn't have much left. If his boys could just buy enough time to get in, just enough.
Damn it Lockheeds. Four of them. Coming in fast. Kast started watching. He wanted to stay straight and level as long as he could, eat as much distance to the target as possible. He could see one of the 132s starting to drop back as the pilot started jinking to avoid the fighter closing in behind him. That's right boy, keep evading, make him spend as much time on you as he can. Then he has less left to find another target. Kast winced as the Arado behind him exploded, well the pilot wouldn't have to worry about fuel or his bombing now. Another 132 was going into the sea. This low. this fast, there was no way out for the pilot. The 132 was so beautifully streamlined that when it ditched it slid straight under with hardly a splash. The Ami ships were ahead now, he could see them on the horizon. Approaching fast. They were terrifying, sleek gray monsters, their sides rippling with orange fire and their anti-aircraft guns opened up.
Damn, a Lockheed was latching onto him. Kast started an irregular weave, trying to keep the Lockheed from getting a good shot. The black bursts of Ami flak were all around him now, he saw the four Lockheeds were following the 132s into the storm of anti-aircraft fire. Kast had expected them to sheer off rather than enter that hell. Hey, the bursts weren't all around him, they were just a little bit behind. Too damned accurate though and their shells always exploded at the right time. Their fuze-setters must be damned good. Hey, the devil looks after his own, Kast saw the Lockheed behind him getting hit by flak, it veered up streaming flames and the pilot ejected. Good for you Ami, flying in here took big brass ones.
OK, his aiming point was tracking across the sea now. Kast had picked the biggest carrier as a target and guessed the surviving aircraft would follow him. Even more flak, the light auto guns were cutting in. Huge numbers, more than anybody could count, of red balls coming for him. Whipping past either side. Gunnery was bad they weren't even close. But too many, far, far too many. His red dot aiming point was approaching the carrier running up the side....release., now the dot was crossing the island. Kast pressed the cannon switch and heard his new MG-213 fire. A vicious noise, a roar not the studied jackhammer of the older guns. Then silence. He had been right, it was a very short burst. Then he was over the carrier heading out the other side. And a direct hit from a five inch shell blew his little 132 apart.
FV-1 “Made Marian “, Position 46.8 North, 4.6 West.
“Bolero One, estimated 20 inbounds bearing 90 degrees speed 450 mph. Intercept”. It was “Scimitar” better known as the large cruiser USS Puerto Rico also known as CB-5. Controversial ships, too big for cruisers, too small and poorly protected for battleships but they made great fighter control points. But this intercept was desperately late. The enemy formation was closing fast and the speed advantage of the Flivver wasn't that great. Now was the time, Foreman though, for all good men to come to the aid of the party. The enemy formation wasn't neat or carefully grouped, just a stream of aircraft spread over the sky. That was going to make things harder, it would take time for the Flivvers to get to each target in turn. The German aircraft were tiny as well, their dappled gray paint making them hard to see. But one was a lot larger and more obvious.
And it was the nearest one to him. One of the Arado reconbirds. They had a secondary bombing capability and could lift loads. Foreman curved in aft, staying away from the tail, the Arado was reputed to have two fixed rear 20 millimeter guns. Lead off from the nose, the Arado was turning but it wasn't agile enough and had left its turn late. A long burst now, Foreman saw the bright sparkle of his machinegun hits over the nose section and along the fuselage. Saw the plexiglass nose cave in, then flames start from the wingroots and engines. One of the twin engine pods peeled away and then the whole aircraft just vanished in a fireball.
There was another target just beyond him, one of the little bombers. They had no tail guns. Foreman closed in behind and squeezed a short burst. That was cheating, the pilot of the German aircraft had twitched at the last second and the burst must have gone just past his wingtip. The second time it happened, Foreman realized it wasn't a fluke, the guy knew what he was doing. He was eating up precious time as well. And ammunition, it was spooky the way the little Hs-132 seemed to slide away from the bursts. OK lets do this by the book. Foreman slowed slightly, dropping back and firing a quick burst while watching the tail controls. OK, the 132 was breaking right, he kicked his flivver right and fired a long sawing burst. Bright sparkles again as the 132 took hits all across its right wing and fuselage. He went in with hardly a splash.
And they were now dangerously near the carriers. The bird farms and their escorts would be putting out sheets of fire. Instructions were strict. Stay away from enraged warships. But the attack wasn't broken. Foreman didn't even think about it he just closed on the lead 132. OK so we start again. Short burst and - not that short. With something close to despair Foreman realized his guns had just run out. Some pilots loaded the last few rounds on the belts with tracer to warn of this but he'd never seen the point of advertising the fact he was defenseless. Still one thing left, get right on the guys tail, make him jink to avoid the .50s he thought would be coming and fly into the sea. This low, this fast, it just needed a mistake.
With interest, Foreman watched a outer section of wing with a tip tank attached spin away. A section of his wing and his tip tank spin away. He felt the Flivver lurch and start to roll to the left. Even as he watched, he saw his aircraft start to burn, flames shooting out from the smashed wing and belly. Time to leave. The ejector seat worked as advertised and he went up while his crippled Flivver went down. Major-league jerk as the parachute opened and a sickening smack as he hit the sea. Vest inflated as advertised, that was two things that worked, three if one included the American AA fire that had brought him down. The Government must be slipping. God, his back hurt.
Combat Information Center, USS Shiloh, CVB-41. Position 46.8 North, 4.6 West.
“They're coming in sir, raid count twenty. Bearing 90 degrees. We have four Flivvers intercepting”
Captain Madrick tried not to shake. This was bad, TF57.2 had been caught flat-footed. He watched the air battle on the plot with the enemy contacts vanishing off the screen. The Flivvers were doing well, going through the enemy formation like a well-disciplined buzz-saw. Seven, eight, nine down. Then came the sound of the triple A opening up. The rapid thumping of the three-inch fifties, thank God they had those with their proximity fuzes, not the older 40 millimeters. The slow crunches of the five inch 54s. That wasn't so good, when the CVBs were being designed somebody in the Navy had gotten scared about surface ship attack and replaced the old reliable 38s with the new 54s. The new guns were a lot better at anti-ship but fired and slewed slower than the handy little 38s. The Essex class were probably better off than he was now, but they weren't going for them. They were coming for him. The AA gunners were filling the sky, the bursts so dense that they were giving search radar echoes, messing up the air picture.
Then came the staccato rattles of the close-in guns. 20 millimeters. Last warning. Even deep in the bowels of the Shiloh, the howl as the German jets swept over caused cups to rattle. Or was it them? There was a deeper shaking as well, an ominous one. The lights in CIC went down then flicked back up again as the emergency generator kicked in.
“Clean sweep sir, we got them all.” Air Warfare's shout was triumphant.
Madrick wasn't so sure there was cause to celebrate yet. He'd seen the damage control board light up in one corner of the CIC. Something was wrong, how bad was it. He made it to Damage Control in record time.
“Initial reports coming in sir, We took five hits, all estimated to be thousand pounders. Two forward, three aft. One just under the foremost 5 inch L54, another landed short and hit us under the waterline.. Wait one sir. I have the team on that reporting in.
“Put it on speaker”
“DCT here sir, we have an unexploded thousand pounder here. Came through the side. Its flooding, we can't get to the munition until we stop it. We've got a flood boundary established but we need to get in.”
“Have you anything useless you can stuff in the hole?”
“Only Ensign Zipster sir.”
The CIC chuckled. Every ship had an Ensign who was a walking disaster. Madrick suspected there was a regulation somewhere about it. “Make it so.”
“I have a disposal team sir, on its way down there. Three hits aft, we're still getting reports on those.”
“What about those loaded Adies?”
“Some were unloaded, the hangar team pushed the others over the side when the alarms went off. CAG says if you don't approve, you can take it out of his pay. Hangars been hit hard lot of dead and wounded there. But the gas lines were inerted and everything closed down. Apart from that, we have strafing damage to the bridge and a fire amidships. We think it’s under control already. We're hurt sir, no hiding that but I wouldn't say the ship is in danger”
“Thank you DCO. Transmit the damage report to Admiral Spruance. AWO get a full account there also. I'm going to the bridge to see Admiral Newman. Oh, DCO, one question.
“Sir?”
“If we were hit fore and aft, why are we burning amidships?”
Flag Bridge, BB-57 South Dakota, North Atlantic
Admiral Spruance could read signals as well as anybody and he knew that these ones meant the end of his career. Oh, he might get a shore job, Public Relations perhaps or running a supply depot but that German strike had finished his career. It wasn't a hurt carrier that was doing for him. The Navy expected its ships to go in harm’s way and the cost was having them lost or damaged. But he'd screwed up badly. Royally. Disastrously. Idiot, Idiot, IDIOT He could see it clearly now. So clearly he knew he should have seen it earlier. It seemed so reasonable. Have the carrier groups out front, lined up to hurl their strikes. Keep his battleships as a support group behind. That way, if a threat developed, he could move the BBs with their immense AA firepower to support the threatened group. And it had worked. Up to now.
Adding the fifth group had set the scene. It had lengthened the Murderer's Row line just that little bit too much. Positioned centrally, his battleships couldn't get to the ends fast enough. Worse, there was too much space along the line so the groups weren't mutually supporting. So caught short, 57.2 had been on its own. And that was the other problem. Spruance knew he'd still been thinking in terms of piston engined aircraft, where threats took time to develop. But with jets, the threats developed much faster. It had been less than 30 minutes between Shiloh spotting the recon bird and the bombs hitting her. He'd completely underestimated that. And Shiloh had paid the price for his mistake.
There was no need for a support group at all. The ships should have been divided out between the task groups to add more weight to the triple A. There was no surface threat to face no need to keep the battleships together. Spruance knew he'd been thinking like a battleship admiral still. Keep the BBs as a battle line, even when they were no more than floating AA batteries.
In a brief spasm of gallows humor, Spruance considered defecting to Germany, it couldn't do his career any more damage than his blunders had inflicted. Who would take 5th Fleet now? Halsey had Third. Mitscher, Lee, Fletcher, Newman and Kinkaid were all good men but too junior. Kimmel was the most likely bet. Husband Kimmel. He'd done a fantastic job in the Pacific, shaking up the PacFleet, getting the Pearl base into the modern era. He deserved a fleet combat command now. And he'd have Spruances mistakes to learn from. Now, it was time to rectify what he could. Shift two groups to screen the hurt 57.2 while it sorted itself out, keep pounding France with the other two. And prepare to be fired.
CHAPTER FIVE GETTING HURT
Admiral's Bridge, USS Shiloh, CVB-41. Position 46.8 North, 4.6 West.
The bridge looked like a bombed slaughterhouse. It was smashed open, the equipment wrecked and blood splattered liberally around the bulkheads and pooling on the deck. Surgeon-Commander Stennis was working on one casualty, a young Ensign with a massive chest wound while the Ship's Chaplain was administering last rites to a signalman who was beyond saving. Captain Madrick saw some bits that could, he assumed, be assembled into the missing members of the Admiral's Party.
“Good God what happened here?”
Both Admiral Newman and the Chaplain looked sharply at him. “It was some sort of rapid-fire cannon. One of those Henschels put a hundred rounds into the bridge in less than a second. They went through us like a buzz-saw. What's the status of the ship?”
“We've been hit sir, but we have the situation under control. The flight deck is intact except for a 14 inch diameter hole 15 foot from the centerline, just forward of the aft elevator. That was one of the bomb hits sir, I think it exploded on the hangar deck. The deck was almost empty sir. The aircraft there were unarmed and the deck systems sealed down. CAG pushed some loaded Adies over the side, we didn't have time to secure them. It was a good idea sir. Probably saved us from a hangar deck fire. That was the only deck hit we had. The others came through the side. One underwater hit forward, one more above the armor belt. Two more aft. Machinery spaces are intact, our speed is unaffected and we can operate aircraft from the deck. We can hold position in the group sir. All in all sir, we're hurt but working. Our strikes are on the way back, I'd like to bring them on board.
“Belay that. We'll divert them to other carriers. Four can go to Gettysburg. It’s only fair, we shot down their Flivvers. One of them anyway. The other carriers can use the orphans to replace their losses, they've been high enough today. Do you need to slow the group down?”
“No sir, Shiloh can keep running. If we're not going to operate aircraft, I'll establish a casualty treatment center at the forward end of the hangar deck. Stennis, Westover, when you've finished here, please report to the forward hangar deck, you're both needed down there.” Madrick frowned, there was smoke coming from the amidships scuttles underneath the island. Amidships, not aft and on the opposite side of the ship from the bomb hits. Thick, black oily smoke. What was going on down there?
'“I'd like to return to the CIC sir, there are some aspects of our situation I'm not happy about.”'
Captain Madrick descended once more into the bowels of the carrier. It was a long way from the bridge to the CIC, perhaps future carriers should have an elevator or something. There was something wrong with the air too, there was a haze in the air, nothing that anybody could see directly, it was more an uneasy sensation that it wasn't quite right. And his eyes itched. He dropped into a head quickly and flipped the taps to wash his face. Just a trickle came out, water pressure in the system was way down. That was odd. It made a trip to damage control central all the more urgent. The rest of the way to CIC was a record-time trip. He didn't even bother with his command station, instead he went straight to damage control. He could see that something had gone wrong. And the CIC seemed warmer than it should.
“What's the situation DCO? What's happening?”
“Sir, we're getting a better handle on what's happening now. We have a problem sir. Taking it from the top. The bomb that hit us centerline aft? It must have been an armor piercing one because it went all the way through and hit the ship's service turbo-generator room. We're not quite sure what happened yet but it caused a surge in the power supply. You remember we were on emergency lighting for a few minutes -well, that was the power surge. It tripped our circuit breakers and put us onto emergency. Well, the same surge plus the effects of the bomb took out the aft evaporators. They're in the compartment directly aft of the SSTG. We're trying to restore them now. The problem is that, remember that bomb that hit us underwater forward, the one that didn't go off? Well, it’s opened our forward evaporator room to the sea and the bomb is in there. We can't get in to the compartment to defuse it until we have the area contained and can pump the space clear. We can't restart the forward evaporators until we defuse the bomb. That means that we've lost both sets of evaporators. Temporarily at least. Combined with the loss of more than half our electrical power, we've got critically low water pressure throughout the ship.
The DCO leaned back in his seat. Howarth held his present position due to a record of coolness under pressure and a “realistically optimistic”' attitude. But he was worried, much more seriously than he could explain. “Now we have the real problem. That power surge. Mostly it didn't do anything because the circuit breakers tripped but they didn't always. The galleys, scullery and bakery were working; there was a strike due back and the pilots needed hot food when they landed. The power surge didn't trip any of the breakers in that area, the working assumption is that they were jammed with grease or something, we really don't know. But they didn't trip, the electrical equipment in those compartments shorted out and we had a series of electrical fires. The cooks and stewards tried to fight them but they had no breathing gear and there was thick black smoke filling the compartments and toxic fumes. They had to evacuate, sir they left it very late, some didn't make it out. Sir, when you came down from the island you must have passed quite close to the fire area.
“'You see the problem sir? We have an uncontained electrical, oil and structural fire amidships and we've lost the water pressure we need to fight it. We've lost the sprinkler system, we've lost the fog nozzles and we've lost the hoses. And, sir, that fire couldn't be in a worse place. Look at this. Howarth flipped his charts to the general ship's plan. He'd already shaded the burning compartments in red, with pink showing those that were threatened by the fire. “If the fire goes down sir, it takes out our aft three starboard side boiler rooms and the aft engine room. If it goes aft, it threatens a five inch rocket magazine. If it goes forward it threatens the magazine for the forward five inch guns. If it goes inboard, there's a bomb preparation room. If it goes up, it breaks into the hangar deck. If it goes down and inboard there is an avgas store. Thank God we're more than half jet now; if we were all prop we'd have a lot more avgas to worry about. The truth is, whichever way that fire goes, it'll find something we have to worry about.
“You know sir, it’s ironic. We've practiced fighting fires on the hangar deck, on the flight deck, everywhere we can have an airgroup related fire. But nobody ever asked us about a major fire below the hangar deck. The three bombs that hit the hangar deck? They didn't do squat. But those other two, they've hurt us. Hurt us bad.”
Howarth paused to collect his thoughts. “We need to get water pressure and electrical power back up. That means diverting all the electrical power from the forward ships service turbogenerator room into the circuit again. So we have to shut down all non-essential systems. We have to get the aft evaporators up, the water system purged and running. We must have water pressure. In the meantime we need help. We need Samoa or Puerto Rico to come alongside and start pouring water into the burning area. Has to be one of those two, we're too big for the smaller ships to reach. But most of all we must contain that fire amidships. We need to establish a fire perimeter and start to drive it back. One other thing sir. Conflagration Station? We've lost it. It was right in the middle of the fire area.”
Madrick returned to his command station and relayed the news to the Admiral. Samoa would be closing with maximum urgency and her fire-fighting crews were being readied. Shiloh's machinery spaces were still unaffected so she could hold her course. That had the advantage that it would keep the smoke and heat away from the casualty station forward. Other than that it was up to the Damage Control teams.
Third Deck Amidships, USS Shiloh, CVB-41. Position 46.8 North, 4.6 West.
“GET OUT OF THE WAY GODDAMMIT. WHATS THE MATTER ARE YOU A BUNCH OF GODDAM DEMOCRATS OR SOMETHING?”
The voice boomed down through the compartment, reverberating off the bulkheads and overheads. The recipients flattened themselves or otherwise got out of the way. Very quickly. It wasn't as if they had been doing any good. Without water pressure to operate hoses or fog nozzles and with the sprinkler system disabled, they'd tried to establish a fire perimeter by sealing and dogging hatches. But the fire beyond was burning hot and hard now. It was heating the bulkheads to the point where they ignited the contents of the next compartment by thermal radiation. Sealing the hatches was slowing the spread of the fire but not that much. Without pumps and water, there was no way the fire could be stopped.
The Senior Chief and four enlisted burst into the threatened compartment. They'd manhandled one of the portable Handy-Billy pumps down from the hangar, down two decks and back along a quarter of the ship's length. Through hatches and anything else (and anybody else) that had got in their way. Accompanied by some fairly choice language and a number of ringing condemnations of the Democrat Party, the Damage Control team now had a pump. And that meant they had hoses and water and fog. And they had a Senior Chief. Even while the team scattered out of the way then reformed, the pump was being set up and started. The first step was to cool the bulkhead before they lost this compartment as well. The area was already filling with steam as the water drenched the heated metal. One portable pump, so many things to cool. But it was a start.
Ensign Pickering was in nominal charge of the Damage Control Team. With the bulkhead cooled and the threat to this compartment abated, it was time to enter the burning area beyond and put it out. So, he reached for the wheel releasing the dogs on the hatch. And was seized around the waist and physically hurled to one side. Looking up he saw a pair of heavy Navy fire-resistant pants surrounding the Senior Chief.
“Sir, are you trying to kill us all? Are you some sort of DEMOCRAT or something? That hatch dogging system is white hot. You'll touch it and you burn your hands to the bone. Then you let air into the compartment and we get a flash fire that'll incinerate us, everything else in this compartment and several beyond it. This is what we'll do. The men with fire-resistant coveralls will go first. They've got asbestos gloves. They'll spin the wheel, open the hatch. There'll be a fireball coming out. It'll burn every damned thing it touches BUT it'll also burn the oxygen out of the air. For a few seconds the fire will fall back. Then fresh air will rush in and this whole area will burn. But, if we do this right and if there are no DEMOCRATS here to screw things up. we can get in when the fire falls back and start to cool everything down before we get the second fireball. So the guys with protected suites go first then them as has breathing gear but no special suites. Then, when we've got the compartment under control, we start on the next and the rest of you follow us up to make sure the fire doesn't close in around us.
“Senior, you're talking as if that fire is alive.”
“It is son. You think of it that way. It's a monster that's waiting for us to make a mistake so it can eat us. It's a lying dishonest bastard of a monster almost as bad as a DEMOCRAT. But President Dewey beat the DEMOCRATS so we can beat this one. Now, go around the men, make sure they have their sleeves down and no flesh exposed. The Brits with those short pants and short sleeved shirts suffer mightily from burns. Even a layer of cloth will stop a flash burn. So you get that done and we're ready to go.”
The Handy Billy was chugging away, the hoses playing on the hatchway. Two men grabbed the dogs, spun the wheel and flung the hatch open. Sure enough a fireball burst out but those it could reach it were protected against it and those it could hurt were out of reach, then it shrank back and the Damage Control Teams swarmed forward to damp down the inferno before it could reflare as fresh oxygen reached it.
The Battle for the fire perimeter had started.
Dijon, France. Primary base of JG-26 Schlageter
Major Schumann stopped by the last of the long line of fresh graves and saluted. As Sergeant Dick had suggested, Hilda had been buried with the pilots. That gave her a lot of company. JG-26 was finished as a fighting group until it could absorb replacements and get fresh aircraft. I/JG-26 and II/JG-26 could scratch up perhaps six Heinkel 162s between them. Given time, they could add a Go-229 to that. Sergeant Dick had said they could salvage enough parts from the wrecked aircraft to repair Green Eight. III/JG-26 had exactly one Ta-152C left. Only IV/JG-26 at its dispersal field at Pontailler had a reasonable force left. Nine BV-155Cs. Only thirty of the long-winged high altitude interceptors had ever been built and the force had been whittled away by accidents and losses. And, speak of the Vossies....
Colonel Harmann, commander of IV/JG-26 was standing in front of him. “Major Schumann, I understand that your Fledermaus will be flyable again soon. I have orders for you to join us. The rest of the group is being split up and it will reform in Germany. As a new unit. We have heard of you Major and we will be proud to have you fly with us.”
Harmann looked around the shattered airfield, still clouded with smoke. Stinking of jellygas and explosive and roasted. Better not to think of that. “If it is any consolation Major, there are rumors already that K.G-40 raped an American carrier this morning. Join us with as many ground crew as your aircraft requires. As soon as it can be flown.”
Admiral's Ready Room, USS Kittyhawk CVL-48, Bay of Biscay
Admiral Theodore stared at the three young officers in front of him with, what he fondly hoped, was a terrifying glare of incandescent rage. In truth, it was indeed a terrifying countenance he presented. Although he didn't know it, Admiral Theodore bore a strange physical resemblance to the notorious Captain Robert “Flogger” Corbett, the terror of the West Indies Station in the 18th Century. Had he been suddenly translated into 1947, the dreaded Captain Corbett would have been entirely at home in this situation.
“Gentlemen, explain yourselves.” The three officers in front of him shuffled their feet and looked at each other until one of them took the initiative. That raised him slightly in Theodore's estimation.
“Sir, a formation of F2Gs from, VMF-214 were returning from a strike. One of them, Cutthroat had been hit and was in trouble. Her oil cooler was damaged and she was spewing oil. The Corsairs, both F4U and F2G have a weak spot there, you know that Sir. Anyway, her pilot knew he wasn't going to make it back to Intrepid so we were sent out to make the pickup. He didn't make it sir, his engine seized and he bellied in about two miles short of the coast. We had a quick discussion sir and we went in to get him. The two Bearcats cleared the way, then our helo picked the pilot up and brought him out. There was nothing to it really sir.”
“Lieutenant Urchin. I would remind you that the helicopters we have on board are slow and vulnerable. The Germans have quadruple twenty millimeter guns that will saw them out of the sky almost instantly. Their new twin thirties will do so even faster. By crossing the coast in this way you risked your own lives, the lives of the helicopter crew and the life of the pilot you were trying to rescue. We have a SEAL team on board who do nothing else but infiltrate coasts and extract people we want extracted. That is why it is strictly forbidden for helicopters to approach the coast, let alone cross it.”
“'Respectfully Sir, No.”
“WHAT!.” At that point those who denied the existence of reincarnation would have been deeply shaken. From out of Admiral Theodore's subconscious boiled a montage of images of floggings, keelhaulings, hanging in irons, garrottings and maroonings on desert islands, all the victims bearing Lieutenant Urchin's face. “You are stating that those orders do not exist Lieutenant?” he said with the soft slippery slithering sound of stillettos sliding from sheaths.
“Not quite sir. The orders, very wise ones if I may say so sir, are that helicopters shall not approach or cross a defended coast. But this coast wasn't defended sir, it was wide open. So the orders didn't apply.”
“It was undefended Lieutenant because you two destroyed the anti-aircraft guns. And, may I add, got your Bearcats shot up fairly thoroughly in the process.”
“Yes sir, but we had to return fire, the anti-aircraft opened up on us. Regulations do specifically allow us, indeed require us, to return fire sir and eliminate the threat to ourselves and other aircraft in the vicinity. That's what we did. We simply defended ourselves so effectively there were no anti-aircraft guns left.”
“But, if you hadn't been in breach of orders by approaching the coast, they wouldn't have fired on you!”
“But, sir, then they would have fired on the helicopter, and, as you wisely pointed out, the HO3 can't take damage”.
Admiral Theodore got the distinct feeling he was drowning in quicksand. To his intense relief there was a hammering on the door and a runner from the Signals Room burst in. He had a piece of paper, a signal. Admiral Theodore read it and a column of ice ran from his stomach into his throat. His face must have shown something for Lieutenant Urchin had moved towards him. Theodore saw his face in a reflection, he'd gone grey-white.
“Sir, are you unwell? Is something wrong?”
“It’s from TG57.2, they group was attacked by German bombers about an hour ago. Shiloh was hit and she's burning. We've been ordered to make flank speed to join her so our helicopters can help in the firefighting and rescue operations.” The compartment was silent now, ever since the inferno aboard the Enterprise early in the war, fire was the great fear of the US carrier community. Enterprise had gone down with few survivors after a U-boat had put four torpedoes into her.
“Gentlemen, we have more important things in hand now. Consider yourselves fortunate. Also consider yourself fortunate that the commander of VMF-214, some Marine called Boyington, has requested that you be decorated. And Lieutenant Urchin?”
“Sir?”
“Lieutenants who make a habit of nit-picking and legalistic quibbling have a long career ahead of them.”
“Yes Sir!”
“As Lieutenants. Get to your aircraft and make sure it’s ready. What for, we'll find out later. Dismissed”
Admiral Theodore went out onto his bridge wing. He could see his entire task group here. His CVL, two of the Atlanta class cruisers and six Fletcher class destroyers. A small group but a loved command. Theodore knew that his group were laying the groundwork now for something very important, something far more than just picking up pilots. To his knowledge, no Navy in history had ever formed such groups of warships before, ones tasked specifically for the purpose of rescuing survivors and aiding those in distress.
As he watched, he saw the bone in Atlanta's teeth enlarging and felt the vibration under his feet pick up as his light carrier went to flank speed. Kittyhawk had topped out at 32 knots on trials. Now, she would need all of that if the fire on Shiloh was as bad as the one that had consumed Enterprise. He looked up, almost expecting to see the pyre of black smoke on the horizon. Instead, he saw something that he'd never seen before, not in almost twenty years at sea. A strange white cloud formation reaching towards him, very high up, a cloud made up on hundreds of wide ribbons stretching across the sky, horizon to horizon. Reaching towards and over him. For some strange reason, Admiral Theodore felt a terrible sense of unease at that cloud, as if somebody was opening the doors of hell and this was the first blast of the Inferno. Then the Klaxons went off.
“Air contact sir, single aircraft heading in. A splasher.” On the deck below him four Bearcats were already taking off while two of the HO3 helicopters were spooling up. They'd be at the scene of the splash before the crippled aircraft ditched. He had a good crew, that was for sure. Perhaps that cocksure smart-ass Lieutenant had been right after all, perhaps establishing a tradition of going in to make a rescue regardless of odds was the right way to go. The Coast Guard did it that way, their slogan was you have to go out, you don't have to come back. Theodore looked up at the ominous cloud again, still spreading slowly towards him, and shuddered slightly. Something was about to change in the world.
CHAPTER SIX IMPENDING FATE
Arado 234C Red Two, Rapidly descending towards the Bay of Biscay
Lieutenant Wijnand knew his luck had finally run out. Three years of flying with bomber and close support units and it was ending now. His engines had gone, two shot into ruins, the other two had given up an unequal struggle. His Arado was a good glider even without them but gliders go downwards. There was no chance of making the coast. His ejector seat was gone, he'd tried to bail out manually but the exit hatch in the top of the fuselage was jammed. The controls were frozen, he had a little authority but not much. Just enough to get the nose up for ditching. What that would achieve, he just didn't know, he was about to find out though, the sea was approaching fast. Both feet on the control panel, heave back on the stick, get the nose up. Sickening, gut-wrenching smash as he hit the first wave then more and more as the Arado skipped across the sea. It was like being beaten with giant clubs. Then silence as the Arado stopped and started slowly sinking. The glazed nose was intact so she hadn't flooded straight away but water was coming through the holes in the bottom and air was leaving through holes in the top.
Then, his aircraft shook as a roar swelled and burst overhead. Four dark blue Grummans in line formation. Damned fighter pilots they'd probably claim him as a kill. Wijnand kept fighting the jammed emergency release but it was frozen tight. Then his aircraft started shaking. Overhead, two Ami helicopters were hovering. He'd never seen a helicopter before although he'd heard of them. Now two loud splashes, they were bombing him? That would be ironic. There was a splatting bang on the cockpit canopy, the Arado's nose was more than half submerged now. Two swimmers in black rubber suits. Wijnand realized the splashes had been swimmers jumping from the helicopters, not bombs. One of the men waved impatiently, the message clear. Get away from the hatch. Then he put a tool of some sort against the transparent section of the nose, and it shattered, completely. Now, with the nose opened, the Arado was sinking fast but the men reached in, grabbed Wijnand under the arms and, rather unceremoniously, hauled him out.
Then, a wild ride through the sea. Through the spray and noise, Wijnand saw one of the helicopters backing up, dragging all three of them through the waves, away from the suction of the sinking wreck. Whoever these guys were, they knew what they were doing. Then it clicked. He'd heard the Amis had set up an organization to pick up pilots who'd put their aircraft into the sea. they must think he was one of theirs. He started to turn to see the swimmer holding him and froze as a pistol muzzle pressed against his right ear. No, they didn't think he was one of theirs. Floating in the North Atlantic with a US Navy swimmer holding him with one arm and pressing an Ml911 Al into his ear with the other, Wijnand decided it was a very good time to go with the flow.
He wasn't doing that for long. The first helicopter had dropped its line and moved clear. The other came in now, trailing a line with a collar on the end. The second swimmer caught it and swam over. Wijnand could see an emblem on the black suit now, a cartoon seal balancing a ball on its nose. And a name tag, Jeff Thomas. Thomas slipped the collar over Wijnand's head, settled it under his arms and backed off. He made some sort of gesture and Wijnand was suddenly plucked out of the sea. A winch on the helicopter, these guys really did know what they were doing. He was up by the hatch on the helicopter now and strong arms reached out to pull him in. Two more black clad figures with seal insignia. One was getting him out of his collar, the other, Hedges according to his name tag, was pointing one of the ugly Ami machine pistols straight at him. On reflection, Wijnand decided that he'd never realized .45 of an inch was so big.
He could see the other helicopter using its winch to pick up the swimmers then the sea suddenly spun around him and they were moving. There was another roar as the Bearcats passed, the operation fitted together now. the Bearcats had found him and called the helicopters in. The Luftwaffe had never seen many Bearcats, the type had been in very limited production. Jets were better interceptors and the Goodyear could carry larger loads further. They were approaching a four-funneled Ami carrier, swinging over the deck and landing. On a deck that gave way under them almost immediately. Wijnand realized it was a lift and his helicopter was on its way down.
The hangar deck was crowded with Bearcats and helicopters. And people who'd come out to see the German prisoner. And four more of the seal-men. With machine pistols. Wijnand was grabbed and hurried along the hangar deck. “Take him to sickbay then throw him in the brig” a voice said. Sickbay that made sense but what was a brig? Through the confused chaos of a hangar deck, Wijnand compared it with the calm studied efficiency of a Luftwaffe repair shop. There everybody worked methodically and quietly, doing their work exactly to specs. Here people were yelling and shouting at each other. Wijnand saw one man was having trouble getting the cowling panel on a Grumman fixed. A German mechanic would have patiently adjusted it until he fit, did this man? No,
he just took a hammer from his belt and hit it until it popped into place. And the way the treated tools? In the Luftwaffe, precious tools were treated with respect, carried from one man to another with great care for if one was damaged, nobody knew how long finding a replacement would take. But here, the crews just tossed tools backwards and forwards. Almost as if it was a game.
Then through a hatch and down a twisty maze of little passages all alike. Through a hatch. White compartment, beds, and a man wearing a white coat. Nametag read Ganning. Must be sickbay. One of the four seal men saying 'Hi Doc, got a live one for you to experiment on'. That did not sound good. He saw Ganning speak quietly to a seal-man who went away. The other three remained, lazing up against the compartment sides, their machine pistols never wavering. Ganning waved at Wijnand, the obvious meaning. Sit. Then light shone into the eyes, feeling around his head. Wijnand had crash-landed often enough to know this drill. Checking for concussion.
It was then that the seal-man, the one called Hedges returned. With a tray. A tray with a mug of real coffee. And a sandwich. A bacon sandwich. Hot, freshly made. Dared he try? Wijnand considered his options and decided it was worth the risk. He had little to lose anyway. Putting on his best English, he looked at Hedges and “Excuse me, do you have mustard?” The seal-man grinned and pointed at small paper cups containing red yellow and white spreads. “Catsup, mayo and mustard. Those cream and sugar for your coffee.” There was a small wooden spoon. Wijnand decided that he would not attack four seal-men carrying machine-pistols while he was armed only with a wooden spoon. At least, not until after he'd eaten his sandwich. A fresh bacon sandwich with mustard and a mug of fresh-brewed real coffee. Wijnand suddenly understood that his luck hadn't run out after all.
Flight Deck, B-36H “Texan Lady” over the Bay of Biscay
“Have a good sleep?”
Colonel Dedmon slid back into the pilot's seat and nodded. In the old days, the B-36 had bunks and the crew could sleep in what amounted to proper beds. The featherweight program had put an end to that. Now, off-duty crewmen had to sack out in sleeping bags on the deck. Major Pico would be heading aft soon for his rest period. Then, all three pilots would be awake for the run on Berlin. Which reminded him. He had something to do.
“Sitrep?”
“We're on course sir, on schedule. Over the Bay of Biscay, approaching the coast of France. Altitude 48,500 feet, ground speed 236 miles per hour, fuel consumption a little below normal, we have a slight tailwind helping us. We're running on all six piston engines and the jets are shut down. All systems working. You know sir, we haven't had a single failure since we took off, it’s uncanny. Barbie Doll and Sixth Crew Member are holding station. We went to full Hometown about 30 minutes ago sir.”
Full Hometown meant they were in radar-avoidance mode. The three aircraft were flying in a carefully-calculated formation with the spacing held religiously. The six engines had been set to run at rigidly-defined RPM settings, all slightly different. The effect of the combined positions and blade rates of the engines was to create resonances and side-bands in radar pulses that struck the formation. Nobody could hide an aircraft the size of a B-36 but the Hometown formation made it hard to get a precise reading. And when there were a lot of Hometowns, that translated into a blur on the radar plot, rather than a precise track. And there were a lot of Hometowns out today.
Back in the aft compartment, their electronic warfare officer, Captain Mollins, was warming up his equipment. A full-time EW crew was a new addition for the B-36 force; they had arrived only after the deletion of the guns had freed up crew space. Now, the RB-36s up ahead of them would be intercepting enemy radar transmissions and relaying the data back to the bombers. Captain Mollins could jam up to three spot frequencies at once, the other two members of the Hometown could do the same. That meant they could take down up to nine radars at once and one of Captain Mollins's jobs was to make sure they took down nine radars, not the same radar nine times. In addition, they carried chaff to further confuse the enemy radars. The EW suite also contained a radio jamming system. This was primarily a defense against the German Wasserfall anti-aircraft missile, one of the few weapons that could reach the operating altitudes of the B-36s. Wasserfall was a threat but its radio guidance system was ludicrously easy to jam. Still, nobody was taking any chances.
“'We're passing the Navy now, we saw them a few minutes ago. They've got a problem down there. We could see the smoke from up here. Bombardier had a look through the optical gear, says one ship has been hit. No news which.”
“Right, we'll take her up to 49,000 feet. Flash warnings to Barbie Doll and Sixth Crew Member. I have something to tell the crew.” Colonel Dedmon flipped the switch on the address system. Before take off each aircraft commander had been given an Order-of-the-Day to read at a specific time. It was now that time. Dedmon cleared his throat and started.
''Men of the Strategic Air Command, today we and our B-36s are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many years. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
Our task has not been an easy one. We face an enemy who is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He has fought savagely. But this is the year 1947! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United States air offensive and the heroic efforts of our Russian allies has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and. placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. We will accept nothing less than full Victory !
But the defeat of Nazi Germany is a result of our Great Crusade, not the Crusade itself. In ancient times, nations went to war in fear and trembling for to lose in war meant the destruction of their people and their culture. War was a terror to be avoided and undertaken only in dread. But more cultured and civilized nations took that away. They made war a game for Princes in which defeat was a temporary setback and victory a temporary advantage. A Prince who lost a war would claim that the issue was undecided and the verdict of the battlefield would be ignored. The result was an endless cycle of wars where those who suffered were the common people, while those responsible for the conflicts lived in luxury and comfort. Our task today is to end that vicious cycle. Our task today is to put the horror and fear and dread back into those who think of making War. Today we will teach them that if they make War upon the United States of America, they and their countries will be destroyed. Totally. After today, those who make war against the United States of America will surely know that the bombers of the Strategic Air Command will be coming for them and that SAC does not turn back.
Good Luck! Fly High! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.
Curtis E LeMay.”
Dedmon released the switch on the intercom and kept silent for a few minutes. Then he pressed the switch again.
“OK Guys. Let’s Do It.”
NAIADS Command Headquarters. Potsdam, Germany
National Integrated Air Defense System. The title rolled of Field Marshal Herrick's tongue with a sonorous grace. More to the point, Germany's National Integrated Air Defense System. An original creation, the inspiration of visionary German scientists, designed by good German engineers and executed with the workmanship only good German workers could achieve. And, Field Marshal Herrick reflected, if you believed that, he had a beer bottle thrown by the Fuhrer himself during the 1923 Beerhall Putsch he would sell you.
In reality, the inspiration for NAIADS had come from the British. After the armistice in 1940, he had visited the UK and seen the system the Royal Air Force Fighter Command has set up. While most of his colleagues had spent their time arguing over the relative merits of the Spitfire and Me-109E, a few had looked at the British radar system. To their surprise, they had discovered that the British radar sets were no better than the German and, in many cases, were worse. Only Herrick and a handful of others had made the leap to a great truth.
The British radars hadn't performed better than the German ones because they were better sets but because the British used the information they produced better. One day he had been looking at the vandalized ruin of a Fighter Command Operations Center when he had realized two things. One was that the British could be extraordinarily bad and vindictive losers. The other was that it was the system that mattered, not the equipment that made up parts of the system. It didn't matter whether German radars were better than British or not or whether the Spitfire was a better fighter than the Me-109 or not. What mattered was the overall efficiency of the system; the sum of the system was greater than any of its parts. If the system was good, then it would compensate for any deficiencies in the equipment.
On his return to Germany, Herrick had started preaching his doctrine to anybody who would listen. Back then, nobody had believed that Germany could be at risk from bombing so he'd been politely ignored. Then had come the American entry to the war, the movement of their forces into Russia and, most ominously, their development of the B-29. That bomber had been promoted as the ultimate heavy, the bomber that could fight its way through enemy defenses. Suddenly, people had listened to Herrick. His proposals had been dusted off, he'd been summoned to brief the great leaders on his proposed system. As news arrived that the first B-29s had arrived at bases in Russia, Herricks NAIADS proposal had been approved and funded. And what a system it was.
The basis of NAIADS was the Local Command Center. One for each major city or group of smaller towns. These controlled the point defenses for that area. Autocannon for use against low-flying aircraft, heavy anti-aircraft guns for higher-altitude threats. Wasserfall anti-aircraft missiles when they came into service. And the point defense interceptors, the Me-163 and Me-263. Herrick modestly reckoned that the rocket fighters had been a stroke of genius on his part. Not the aircraft themselves, but the system they fitted in. At the time, Goebbels had been agitating for the formation of a Home Guard Army, the Volksturm. What exactly it was supposed to achieve was anybody's guess but Herrick had backed him with the suggestion of an equivalent Air Home Guard. Take the older pilots, the ones too old or too injured for the front line, send them home to work in their towns and give them the rocket fighters to fly. It had worked, the older pilots had learned to fly on unstable and structurally unsound biplanes and treated the treacherous rocket-fighters with due respect. The Me-163 had never been anything more than a death-trap but the developed Me-263 had worked much better.
The Local Command Centers or LCCs funneled all their information to the next step up the chain, the Regional Command Centers. These commanded the fighter groups, originally FW-190s and Me-109s but now Ta-152C and Hs, that were the backbone of the defense system. As the activity in the Local Command Centers identified the enemy thrusts and the positions of the forces, the Regionals or RCCs could send their fighters in to support them. That way, both the fighters and the point defenses were properly integrated and could work together. Then, at the top of the system was the National Command Center where Herrick had the heavy fighters under his own command. These were the reserve; as the battle developed, he could commit them wherever the need seemed greatest.
In the early days, it had gone well. The Command Centers had been installed in heavy concrete bunkers. The radars and observers who were the eyes of the system had been linked by protected land-lines and the whole system connected by even more heavily protected trunk lines. A Local Command Center could flash a message up to the RCC or even NCC and have the necessary information passed down the system again to the neighboring LCC in minutes. Communications, that had made the system work. It had turned out that women were much better at handling the communications system than men and the Luftwaffe had gone on a recruiting spree, pulling in young women from all over the country to run the communications switchboards. Quickly Herrick had found himself with a unique command, one that was almost entirely female. It turned out that specific skill sets were required at each level and if the skills needed by the NCC seemed to require the most attractive and amiable of the recruits, well, Rank Had Its Privileges.
NAIADS had been working so well, that the obvious happened. Himmler had tried a power grab. Herrick had been his most enthusiastic supporter, pointing out to everybody how much power this would give the faithful Himmler, how everybody would benefit by having him as part of their organizations, how he was sure that this new authority wouldn't be used by Himmler for his own ends. How Himmler's advice and support would be invaluable for everybody. He'd been so eloquent in Himmler's support that even today, he was still one of the SS leader's favorites. For some strange reason, everybody else in the Party hierarchy had been persuaded that adding NAIADS to Himmler's empire was not a good idea and the campaign had been defeated. Even today, Herrick treasured Goering's quiet “Well done my boy. With friends like you, little Heinrich doesn't need enemies.”
Then it had all gone wrong. First, the Russian Campaign had bogged down with a casualty toll that showed no signs of ending. The original NAIADS proposal had called for 20,000 88 millimeter anti-aircraft guns to defend Germany. All 20,000 had ended up on the Eastern Front, as anti-tank guns. Herrick couldn't argue the logic. The battle line in Russia was four times longer now than it had been when Barbarossa had started. It was taking the whole strength of the Russian and American Armies to man that front. The Germans couldn't. They had to rely on defending key points and rushing mobile forces to stop break-throughs elsewhere.
Herrick thanked God there had been no strategic bombing of Germany in 1942 or 1943. If those 88s hadn't been in the East, the Russians would be in Berlin by now. Anyway, the destruction of the German Navy had made up for part of the loss. The surviving ships and submarines had been stripped of their guns and production diverted to AA weapons. The 13 cm guns from the ships were too big for anti-tank so there was no need for them in the East. They, at least, had found their way to NAIADS.
The real blow had been the disastrous B-29 raids. Disastrous for the Americans that is. Herrick grinned, his new system had worked perfectly. The B-29s had been shot from the skies, that he had expected. What he hadn't anticipated was that their bombing would be so wildly inaccurate. They had scattered their bombs more or less at random. Goebbels propaganda had stated that the Americans were taking raid casualties of 50 percent and over in order to blow up the odd farmer's plough and for once the odious little creep wasn't lying. The Americans had persevered for a short while, then given up. They couldn't get through at low or medium altitude and they couldn't hit anything from high. With that, the strategic bombing threat had evaporated, and NAIADS priority had dropped to near-bottom.
The American carriers were pounding France and the UK - so the autocannon went there. Germany's production capacity was much greater than anybody could have dreamed possible in the 1930s but now so were her casualties. The best and most modern fighters went to the front, NAIADS got the old, the obsolete, the worn out and the experimental. Fuel consumption in the war effort was such that Germany could barely keep pace with that - and nearly all the precious kerosene for jets went to the Russian Front. Most of his fighters were piston engined, he had just one squadron of jets. Herrick mentally shook his head, his collection of freaks contained more four-engined fighters than jets. Four engined fighters. He supposed the idea had made sense to somebody.
In mid-1944, there had been a surge of interest in building long-range aircraft twin-engined aircraft by joining two single-engined ones together with a central wing. Dornier had taken that idea a stage further by suggesting a similar pairing of their push-pull fighter, the Do-335. Now, that wasn't a bad fighter, in some ways Herrick believed it was the best heavy he had. But twinned as the Dornier 335Z long-range reconnaissance aircraft? Dornier couldn't do it, they were fully committed building the Do-335 and the 317 bomber so Junkers had taken it over as the Ju-635. The first one had flown in late 1945. Four Daimler Benz 603s. In a fighter. Madness. The original plan was a crew of three, pilot and radio operator in the port fuselage and a second pilot in the starboard fuselage. Unarmed of course, this was a long-range reconnaissance aircraft and thus all weight was reserved for fuel and speed.
The aircraft had been canceled, but the design had been offered to Herrick for NAIADS. The Ju-635 didn't use components in critical supply so it could be built when nobody had anything better to build. It had been redesigned, slightly, with a battery of four 30 millimeter cannon in the central wing. What made the Ju-635 worth having was something very special. Back in 1944, a group of engineers had produced a wire-guided air-to-air missile, the Ruhrstahl/Kramer X-4. It was the size and weight of a 100 kilo bomb and was quite unsuitable for the sort of fighting that was taking place now. However, political influence had played it’s part and it had been put into limited production. Herrick had got them. Now, each of his Ju-635s carried three of them. One pilot flew the aircraft, the other steered the missile. He had sixty of his big fighters now and more coming. 20 kilos of explosive steered to an aircraft flying up to almost four kilometers away. There was the start of something here that could change the way air fighting was carried out.
But the biggest disappointment had been Wasserfall. The original intent was to set up Wasserfall antiaircraft batteries in each LCC, which would come to approximately 200 Wasserfall batteries. The first Wasserfall site was to have been set up in November 1945, with production to reach 900 missiles per month by March 1946. Russia had done for those plans. The production capability was needed for the A-4 bombardment rockets that the Eastern Front was also eating in huge quantities. The same fate had fallen all the other antiaircraft missiles. In the East, the fighting demanded close support aircraft and fighters to protect them. Fighting rarely went above a thousand meters or so. In the West the American carrier strikes flew low as well. Missiles that could reach up to almost 20,000 meters just weren't needed. There were a few Wasserfall batteries, mostly in the Ruhr, but the system was a shadow of what had been intended.
Field Marshal Herrick looked at his NCC with pride. So he didn't have all that he wanted or the best that there was. But what he had was the best air defense system in the world, the only integrated air defense system in the world. If the Americans came in, his fighters and anti-aircraft guns could hack them down. NAIADS was waiting for them to try.
Combat Information Center, USS Shiloh, CVB-41 Position 46.8 North, 4.6 West
“We're getting there sir.”
Captain Madrick thought that was welcome news. The fires had been burning for almost an hour now but they had been contained and it looked like Shiloh was coming around. Water pressure was on its way back up, it turned out that one of the German bombs had damaged the automatic systems. A damage control team had found the fault and turned the water system back on manually. Now, the firefighting teams had water. Some, anyway. But there were more fires being found. One team had found a small but spreading blaze in an avgas trunk; they'd put it out with carbon dioxide bottles and fog nozzles. One damage team in particular was making splendid progress, somehow they'd got a gasoline handy-billy pump from the hangar to the fire perimeter and used it to push forward. They'd retaken several compartments from the fire now and were working on the next.
But strange things were still happening. The power failures throughout the ship were continuing; they'd had to shift steering to make use of an alternate power supply. The automated fire detection system was continually giving false alarms, alerting the crew to fires in compartments where there were none. Damage control had to check each false alarm out and that was taking men away from the main fire perimeter. It was the power system again of course; fluctuations were setting the equipment off. The diesel auxiliary generators had hit problems as well, one of the rooms had been flooded forward and another had been abandoned when thick black smoke had threatened to choke the crew.
But, a good deal was on the plus sign of the ledger. The avgas system forward had been drained and inerted. That was good because the electrical faults with the fire detection system were hitting that area as well; in Central Station, the area that monitored the gasoline system, the incessant clanging of the alarm was driving the damage team there mad. Another good thing, the smoke-filled areas of the ship had been evacuated and the men put to work on the firefighting teams. Nobody was going to be suffocated down below if Captain Madrick could help it.
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