Winter Warriors

CHAPTER EIGHT: THE ENDLESS SNOW

“Well, now we have a problem.”

The sight before them would, under other circumstances, have been rather beautiful. A landscape covered with a pristine snowfall, unmarred by tracks or stains. Out of it poked small collections of pine trees, spotting the landscape as it dipped down into a shallow valley As the ground rose the other side, the patches of trees grew larger once more. Under these circumstances, the same vista was a depressing sight.

Captain John Marosy and Sergeant William Bressler had been moving through the trees for hours after Hammer Blow had been shot down. That made good sense. The snowfall had been too heavy to allow easy going anywhere except where the pine forests provided protection from the worst of the blizzard. Not that staying under the trees was actually easy; it was just less back-breakingly exhausting. Their current problem was a simple one; there were no more trees. It wasn’t even a question of backtracking and finding a new way around. The forest in this area was in the shape of a giant hand. They’d been moving down a steadily-narrowing finger of forest for some hours. Going back would virtually take them all the way to the wreck of Hammer Blow. Even then, they’d only be able to select a new finger and hope that it ended in a more favorable position.

“We could try and make our way down and across.” Bressler didn’t sound too happy about that. Marosy didn’t blame him.

“No way Bill. We’ll be floundering for hours down there. Stuck out in the open like a pair of plaster geese. The snow will have drifted in the valley. It’s not too bad up here, but it’ll be feet deep down there. And even if we do manage to make any distance, we’ll be leaving tracks a blind man could follow.”

“So what do we do, Boss? Wait here until somebody finds us, and hope it’s the partisans, not the Krauts?”

Marosy thought carefully. “In the short term, yes. We made good time under the trees. We’re well clear of the wreck. We’ll hole up here until dusk. Try and keep warm and rest. We’ve got two things running for us. One is that the boys know we’re down and they’ll be looking. If they find us, they’ll send a ski-equipped Dragon Rapide out to get us. The other is that we’re in the snap-back after the storm. Temperature is higher than normal for a few hours but it’ll drop like a stone tonight. By midnight, the snow will be freezing and crusting and we should be able to make better time if we do have to cross that valley.”

“Wouldn’t put too much faith in the boys looking for us Boss. We’ve lost what, twenty, thirty aircraft in the A-4 bombardment? And there’s a big Kraut push on. The rest of our boys will be working round the clock. They won’t have time to look for us. At best, they’ll keep their eyes open going out and coming back.”

He was right, of course and Marosy knew it. It was obvious that the German offensive had obviously been carefully planned. They had to have had this stashed away for months, waiting for the conditions to be right.

“There’s always the partisans. They’ll know a bird went down and they’ll be looking for us as well. When they find us, they’ll get a message out.”

“Provided the Krauts don’t get us first. What do we do then?”

Marosy was beginning to find Bressler’s pessimism a touch irritating. “We pick a nice strong tree to get hanged from; what do you think?”

Bressler nodded and started looking at the pine trees around them. “That one looks about right. Got a nice view across the valley as well. Especially of the German troops gathering to watch down there.”

“Not a funny joke, Sergeant.”

“Not a joke at all, Boss. Take a look.”

Marosy scanned the tracks at the foot of the valley. Sure enough, in the last few minutes, a group of trucks had pulled up and were disgorging white-clad infantry. He took out his binoculars and had a closer look. They were Germans all right; the banana-shaped magazines on their rifles were all too apparent. Even as he watched them milling round by their trucks, he saw some pointing up at the hills around them.

“Sorry Bill, you’re right. Krauts. We’d better get out of here. Back the way we came, we don’t have very much choice.”

They started edging back through the trees. Marosy paused for one last look. It seemed like most of the Germans were coming his way. Had they seen a flash of light from his binoculars? Perhaps they were making a shrewd guess based on the crash site and time elapsed. One good thing, the men were floundering in the snow, it would take them some time to get up to the easier going under the trees. That gave him and Bressler a chance to get clear.

“What’s happening out there?” General John M Rockingham wanted information and wanted it now. He was in de-facto command of the 3rd Infantry since General George Rodgers had caught a blast of grenade fragments and gone down. Which raised another point. “And what’s happened to the RCAMC post? Have we got it back yet? What are we doing about our wounded?”

The Lieutenant spoke very carefully, his voice clipped to avoid it shaking. “We’ve recaptured the field hospital Sir. They’re all dead in there. They shot the patients in their beds, made the doctors and the nurses lie on the floor and then one of them walked down the line, putting a bullet in each of their heads. Boys are hopping mad about it, Sir. They’re in a killing mood now; there’s no disguising it. We won’t be seeing prisoners any time soon. We’ve set up an emergency facility using some first aid post people who happened to be here and some of the not-so-badly wounded who learned first aid in the Boy Scouts.”

There was a quick pause while the Lieutenant composed himself. He’d seen the scene inside the RCAMC post himself and wouldn’t forget it in a hurry. “As for the rest, we’re just mopping up now. We’ve cleared out the snipers. The EYs did a grand job as usual. We’ve restored the Southern perimeter as well and driven the Finns out. We guess they’re retreating. Should we pursue them?”

Rockingham thought for a second. “No. Secure the perimeter, then we’ll get set up and get the headquarters back into operation. Lord knows what’s happening out there while we’ve been pinned down. Any prisoners?”

There was a bitter laugh from the Lieutenant. He hadn’t exaggerated. After the RCAMC post, there hadn’t been any interest in taking prisoners. A couple of the Finns had tried to surrender but they’d been shot or bayoneted, or both. “No, Sir. The Finns are fighting to the last man and the last bullet. No prisoners.”

“And nobody prepared to take any I’d guess. Very well. Lieutenant. Pass word around that if we can get some, it would help us find out what the hell is going on here.”

“I’ll pass the word, Sir.” ‘And a fat lot of good it will do’ was the Lieutenant’s unspoken addition.

Rockingham slipped out the Division Office and made his way to the communications office. The Royal Canadian Corps of Signals had their radio sites set up but it was a gamble whether they had any operational capability back yet. He made his way from building to building, keeping well under cover all the time. There were wise words he’d heard from a fellow officer once. ‘All situations are tactical until you have proved otherwise for yourself. Never take somebody else’s word for it, if you do you could earn the unfortunate distinction of being the last casualty of the battle.’

The firing had stopped and the battle here at the headquarters unit did seem to be over. He reached the RCCS bunker and announced himself. Entering a defended building unannounced was another good way of becoming the last casualty of the battle.

“Have we contact with our forces yet?”

“No, Sir. Re-establishing now. We are receiving but we’re not able to transmit yet. We’re re-rigging the aerials; we should have that solved soon. We’re picking up a lot of transmission from our units, Sir. It seems like the Finns infiltrated between them during the storm and set up road blocks and so on. All our front line units are cut off. They’re in a series of hedgehogs, spiny side out, where our front line used to be. They’re holding firm but calling out for air and artillery support. It’s a mess, Sir. The whole divisional front is a gaping hole, if those hedgehogs collapse, there’ll be nothing to stop the Finns going through and rolling up the whole of Second Corps. Or heading north and hitting First Corps in the rear.”

“Well, they’d damned well better not collapse then, hadn’t they?” Rockingham looked at the map, envisaging what his front like had to look like. “And there’s no damned reason why they should. This infiltration and hedgehog trick is all very well. The Finns made good use of it during the Winter War and the early stage of the Continuation War, but those days are gone. We’ve got more tactical air than we know what to do with and our units are a lot more self-contained. When we get through to the units that have been cut off, tell them they are to hold their ground and not try to break out. We’ll come to get them. Tell them that if they run short of supplies, we’ll drop them by air. Get that out as soon as we have transmission.”

“Sir, we heard about the RCAMC post. Is it true?’

“So I’m told, I haven’t seen it for myself.” The Signals sergeant swore under his breath, quietly vowing to get word of what had happened out to the front line units. They would take a due and dispassionate revenge for the crime.

Rockingham left the bunker as carefully as he’d entered it. Next thing was to get to the aid post that the survivors of the medical unit had set up and exchange a few rude jokes with the wounded. All part of keeping unit morale up. While he was doing it, he could find out how long General Rodgers was going to be out of action for. Then back to the radio bunker to start coordinating with the units that were cut off. Telling them to hang on, stand fast and wait to be relieved in place was one thing. He had to make sure they could see they were getting the support they needed to do it.

“Major Gillespie? A word please.” Lieutenant Colonel Haversham had got the orders a minute or so earlier.

“Sir?”

“Divisional headquarters are back on the net. Their general orders to all units are to hold in place; we’re not to try and break out. Instead, we will fight our ground where we are. The rest of the division will come and fight their way through to relieve us.”

“Makes sense Sir. I’ve been reading up on what happened to Russian units that got cut off like this. It wasn’t being cut off that chewed them up, it was their own efforts to break out. They weakened themselves so much that when the Finns finally moved to liquidate the pockets, there wasn’t much the Russians could do to stop them. So we’re to stay put?”

“That’s right. Rocky’s arranging for air and artillery support and says we’ll get supply drops if we need them.”

“Rockingham’s arranging it? I thought he was 6th Division when it finally arrives?”

“He is. I guess General Rodgers is out of it and Rocky has taken over in his place. There’s bad rumors coming out of Division. Apparently the headquarters units got chewed up. Including the RCAMC detachment.”

“Damn.”

“Anyway go spread the word, everybody to dig in deep. Make sure the front line is continuous. The Finns are masters at slipping through any holes that we leave and we don’t want them in our back areas. Above all, nobody and I mean nobody leaves the perimeter until we get relieved. And if we’ve got artillery and air coming in, we’ll be calling it in almost on our own heads. The deeper we dig in the better. Last thing we want is casualties from our own supporting fire.”

“Especially if the Yanks are delivering it. You know what their pilots are like. Over-enthusiastic.”

That, Haversham thought, was putting it politely. The Canadian troops had a saying about the Yank fighter-bomber pilots, they were unerringly accurate. Every bomb they dropped hit the ground. Somewhere. Then, he had a strange sensation, as if his own thoughts had been turned into reality. A whistling noise.

“INBOUND!” The shouting was all over the perimeter, Haversham glanced around to see figures diving for cover. That was probably a good idea and he copied it. The explosions followed a split second after he made it to the ground. They were mortars, 82s? Perhaps 50s? They were light cracks, not the heavy thuds of the medium mortars. The ripple of explosions lasted for barely minute and then the scene was silent again.

“Fire back, Sir?” Gillespie picked himself out of the snow. All over the hedgehog, the troops were doing the same. Miraculously despite the number of explosions, nobody seemed to have been hurt. The tiny charge on the German 50mm mortar had combined with the thick snow to produce a lot of barks and no bites. Haversham knew they wouldn’t be that lucky again.

“No. Waste of ammunition. Those were 50mm mortars, the crews will have moved long before we can put fire down on them. That’s what they’re trying to goad us into doing. Plus get a measure of what we’ve got in here. See if we can get support from the outside. We need to hoard what we have in here with us. Goes for food as well as ammunition. Gillespie, get an inventory made of what supplies we have here and what we need urgently.” Haversham sprinted over to the radio section. It was time to fight a war the Yank way. Hole up, form a defensive perimeter around their radio operator and let him fight them with the divisional artillery. It wasn’t soldiering the way his father or grandfather would have understood, making sure a kid could eat his can of beans undisturbed while he blasted the enemy with somebody else’s artillery but it was the low-cost way of fighting a war. Low cost in terms of Canadian lives anyway. That was what was important.

“Get in touch with headquarters. Tell them we’re coming under fire. If there’s support available, we could use it on the perimeter.” It was time, Haversham thought, to start educating the Finnish Army on the facts of life. One of the earliest lessons would be that there were consequences for actions. That lesson could be applied on a lot of levels.

Lieutenant Martti Ihrasaari wasn’t particularly happy at this point. Having been detached and sent on this infiltration mission had allowed him to get out from under the crushing dead weight of the divisional and regimental commands for a while. When the Canadian division had collapsed, the rest of the division had moved up as well. Now he was back under their command. He’d got a cursory ‘well done’ for his roadblock that had this battalion bottled up along the road but now he was just back to being a small cog in a big machine. One that didn’t necessarily have his interests at heart.

What had just happened was a good example. That quick flurry of mortar fire had been supposed to wake the Canadians up and make them fire off their counter-battery salvoes, wasting their ammunition and revealing their position. The crews of the little Model 36 mortars had gone as soon as they’d finished their fire mission of course. That was the one good thing about those mortars. It was a good tactic in theory, but it had no regard for the people who were left and who couldn’t move away. The really annoying point was that it hadn’t worked. The Canadian position was still silent.

Then Ihrasaari heard a threatening roar, one that came from overhead and grew closer all the time. He knew instantly what it was. Artillery and not the pipsqueak little 50mm mortars either. This was the big stuff, Canadian 5.5 inch guns or Ami 155s. He felt his stomach clench and his body try to drive itself deeper into the snow. There was one good thing about this. Artillery came down at an angle and the shells would bury themselves in the snow before exploding so much of their force was directed down into the ground. The little mortar shells came straight down and their explosions were much more effective -for their size. That didn’t change the fact that their size was tiny compared with the big inbounds.

Ihrasaari was wrong. The shells didn’t explode deep in the ground. They burst in the air above the Finnish positions around the Canadian hedgehog. Their fragments lashed down at the troops in their dug-outs and foxholes. The first two patterns of shells were bad enough, but the third was sheer hell. Those shells didn’t explode in the air; they hit the ground and went off with a curious muffled explosion. The burst pattern was strange as well. The cloud of smoke was greater than he’d expected and had curious white tendrils that leapt out of it.

Perhaps tentacles was a better word, Ihrasaari thought, they reminded him of the octopus he had seen once at an aquarium.

Ihrasaari saw the white smoke cloud rolling towards him. A smoke-screen? Were the Canadians trying to break out of their fortifications already? He knew that’s what the divisional commanders wanted; the besieged troops to exhaust themselves in break-out attempts but this was very early for that. When the smoke engulfed him, Ihrasaari felt the heat creasing his skin. It caught him in the throat and caused him to erupt in an explosive fit of coughing. He saw his men were surrounded by a snowstorm of small, white particles that floated down upon them. Then, he realized what the rounds were and the idea filled him with instant terror. These were white phosphorus rounds, incendiaries, anti-personnel. The men who had been hit by the little snowstorm were screaming in pain and terror. Their clothes sizzled and burned as the flakes landed. They tried brushing them off but the effort only made things worse. When their hands touched the stuff the little flakes caused a horrible burn, increasing in intensity as it burrowed into their flesh.

He tried to run over to his men. Some were rolling in the snow, trying to put out the fires that were eating into them. He knew it was no good, that the white phosphorus was dissolving into the fatty tissues of their bodies where it would prevent the wounds healing. As he thought that, he heard another roar overhead. Another series of the airbursts flailed the ground with fragments. His suspicions had been right. This wasn’t going to be like fighting the Russians.

“That’s all we’re getting Sir. Battery shoot. Two rounds per gun of proximity-fused airbursts, one of Willie Pete and a last proximity salvo as an envoi. I hope that for what the Finns received they were truly grateful.” The forward artillery observer switched his radio link off and went back to eating his lunch. A can of beans, Haversham noted.

“More problems?”

Captain Becker rubbed his eyes. He was deathly tired and the bitter cold had long seeped into his bones. There was no shelter from it, Lutzow was too torn up for that. Just a shattered pile of steel slowly, painfully, heading her way towards an inevitable end on the rocks outside Thorshaven. “Diesels are overheating. It’s not surprising, we were never built to go backwards this long. The intakes are designed to scoop up water while we are going forward, not backwards. The flow isn’t enough and the engines aren’t being cooled properly. Can we turn around and go forward for a while?

The Damage Control Officer thought, or tried to. His mind wasn’t working properly; hunger, cold, exhaustion and fear had shrouded him in a blanket that seemed to strangle every thought before he could even get it out. He breathed deeply, trying to compose himself. “How far are we out, Sir?”

“Thirty kilometers, perhaps fifty? No more than that. If we can just keep running for four more hours, we can make it to the rocks.”

“We’ve got more timbers up on the false bow, we’ve stiffened it a bit. Provided we don’t go too fast, it should hold. For an hour or two, to cool the diesels at worst, get us in at best.”

“Captain.” The Navigator’s voice was slurred also. “Why don’t we send Z-27 ahead? If we go down, there’s nothing they can do for us. If we don’t, they can spread the word, get us some help. Get the men ashore across the rocks or get fishing boats out to take off the wounded. Anything.”

“Good idea. Do it. By signal lamp.” Becker rubbed his eyes again and saw Z-27 pulling away from the sinking cruiser. “Turn us around, we’ll go forward.”

The orders were carried aft by word of mouth since the ship’s internal communications had long since failed. Under his feet, Becker felt Lutzow shudder and start to swing. Behind him, the long line of men passing buckets of oil-stained water from below stopped work and looked around. Was the ship going down at last? Then they saw her make her slow, anguished turn and realized what was happening. Wearily, they started the bucket chain again, painfully passing the flood water from one hand to the other.

One of the men looked down suddenly at the contents of his bucket. “Hey, I recognize this lot. We threw it over the side three hours ago.”

There was a tired surge of laughter from around him; then back to throwing the buckets of water over the side. Becker found himself looking over the brutally-amputated bows of his ship. She was going forward again.

“Engineers? How are our engines?”

“Cooling slightly Sir.” He nodded. That had solved one problem but had it created another?

“Damage Control, what is the situation up forward?”

The reply came quickly. “Leakage is down a bit, Sir. Water still coming through but it hasn’t increased the way I thought it would.”

“Suction.” Another officer spoke quietly. “When we were heading backwards, the cut-off area acted like a transom stern. There was suction there, pulling the timbers outwards. Now there is pressure pushing them back together. It will mean that when the leaks start again, they will be worse, but until then, not so much.”

Becker nodded and suddenly looked through his binoculars. “There, in front of us. You see it? On the horizon? Land. Just another couple of hours, that’s all.”

Another officer looked. “Might just be cloud, Sir?”

“Perhaps, but for the men’s ears it is land ahead.”

It was. For the next hour, Becker saw the shadow on the horizon solidify and enlarge. It was land. It had to be the Faeroes. He saw something else as well; a small boat coming out to meet him. It took time to pull alongside, He saw it was a fishing boat, a sailing craft. He didn’t find that surprising since the Faeroes probably hadn’t seen diesel fuel for years.

“German battleship. Are you heading for Thorshaven?”

“We are, God willing.”

“Your destroyer told us where to find you but you cannot bring your ship into our harbor. You will block it when she sinks.”

“We do not wish to. We would beach her outside.”

“That is good. There will be other boats and men on shore to help your crew. Can you steer a course?”

“Not with accuracy. We are setting the rudder by hand. But we can try.”

“Set ten degrees to port. This will put you on to a sand beach. Your men will stand more chance there than on the rocks.”

“Very well.” Becker gave the helm order and felt Lutzow shift again. The island grew in front of him, quickly swelling in size. He had to make several more small changes of course to try and hold the line the Faeroese fishermen wanted but they managed it. Soon, he could see the beach, a small cove, sheltered, welcoming. Much better than he expected.

“Get everybody out from down below. Minimum crew for running the ship only. Everybody else on deck.”

“German battleship?” The voice came from the fishing boat again, still distorted by the loud-hailer. “We can take your most wounded if you wish. There are other trawlers coming out. If you lower your wounded down to us we will take them to Thorshaven.”

“Thank you.” Becker wanted to say more but he couldn’t think of the words. He was just too tired.

Slowly, Lutzow was surrounded by fishing craft. Her crew lowered the worst of the wounded down to the larger trawlers. More small craft were joining them by the minute, ready to take the survivors off when the sinking cruiser hit the beach. That wouldn’t be very long now. Becker could feel her getting more sluggish as the water filled her hull.

“Time to go. Engineers, full power from the diesels, the harder we hit that beach the better. Means we’ll be closer to dry land. What’s the tide?”

“High tide, Sir.”

“Good.”

There was a blast on Lutzow’s sirens and the ship started to pick up speed. The wooden false bow started to disintegrate as the water lapped at it but it really didn’t matter anymore. Becker felt the vibrations as the hull started to touch the bottom followed by the vicious slam as his ship grounded fully. The engines pushed her ashore, through the bottom sand and onto the rocks beneath. Eventually, she stopped, hard aground, barely fifty meters from the high tide mark. When the tide went out, she would be almost wholly exposed. Becker felt something else. As his ship had grounded, she’d changed. Something had gone from her. In his heart Becker knew the truth, Lutzow was dead. She’d got her crew to safety and she’d died doing it.

Alongside, the small craft were pulling men aboard, catching them as they climbed down from the decks and pulling them to safety. The little boats ran them ashore before coming back for more. Then Becker saw something he couldn’t credit. Groups of Faeroese Islanders were running into the sea, long chains of them secured by lifelines. They grabbed at the German sailors and manhandled them back to the beach, just as the same sailors had manhandled the buckets all through the night. Others waited on shore with blankets. They wrapped the survivors in them as they reached safety and rushed them off to be warmed and sheltered. Quietly Becker marveled. After the ruthless bombing the day before, it was almost too great a contrast to bear.

As custom demanded, he was the last man off. He even made a tour of the ship to make sure she was deserted down below. Then he came to the demolition switches. There he hesitated. The standing orders were to blow the ship up but he held his hand. It wasn’t the ship, the cold, empty stillness told him more clearly than anything else that Lutzow was dead. Whatever it was that made her a ship rather than a steel coffin, was gone. But her tanks were half full of oil. If he blew her up, that oil would wreck the fishing ground on which these people depended. They’d risked their lives in the freezing water to save his men; he couldn’t repay them by coating their island with a scum of fuel oil. He reached carefully down, disconnected the detonator and disarmed the scuttling system.

Back on deck, he dropped down into a fishing vessel, the one who had come out to meet them. Its Captain was staring at him.

“It is all right, Captain.” Becker spoke slowly. “The ship will not explode. Her tanks are half full of fuel oil; if your people can get it out, it is yours.”

The fisherman nodded and took his boat in, Becker marvelled at the skill with which the sailing ship was handled so close in. When its bow touched sand, he jumped off, involuntarily yelping at the coldness of the water that came up to his knees. Then, another fisherman grabbed him and pulled him out of the water on to the beach.

“There is somebody you must meet.”

The fishermen lead him to another figure. He wore a khaki uniform with an odd, boat-shaped cap without a peak, made of wool with a button on top and ribbons hanging down behind. The man turned around and Becker saw the Union Jack flash on his shoulder. “Colonel Ian Stewart 2nd Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, Free British Army.”

“Captain Martin Becker, German Navy Ship Lutzow.”

“Captain Becker, I must advise you that you and your men are prisoners of war. However, due to the peculiar circumstances that prevail here, I will offer your men parole. There are no facilities to keep prisoners on this island and I would not wish to keep you all locked up in your destroyer.”

“You have our parole. I will order my men to cooperate. Colonel, my ship’s fuel tanks contain oil these Islanders will find valuable, I promised to them. You will honor my promise? They deserve much more than a few gallons of oil but we have little else to give.”

“Of course.” Stewart waved and men on the hills stood up. They had Bren guns and Becker realized just how easily this beach could have been turned into a bloodbath. “We will send you out when our supply ships arrive. There are too many of you to go out in one trip but we will get you all to Canada in time.”

“Supply ship?”

“Of course. We’ve been occupying these Islands for more than two years now. We have a supply run set up. Fast minelayer out of Churchill.

Becker nodded. He had no idea the Faeroe Islands had any garrison, let alone a British one. The he started to laugh; more a result of released stress than anything else. Stewart looked puzzled. “Colonel, when we were trying to get here, we thought that a wrecked cruiser and a shot-up destroyer would at least be a start for a Faeroe Islands Navy. Now we find they have an Army as well. And at the rate the world is killing itself, soon they will be a world power of great importance.

Stewart joined the laughter. “Aye, that they could. And they’re good people here. The world could do worse than them.” Then he looked at Becker. “It was bad out there?”

Becker shuddered at the memory. “The Amis, they never stopped coming. One wave of jabos after another. They just battered our ships to death. Even when they were dead in the water, they kept on until they sank. How we survived I shall never know.”

The guards outside the door could hear the screaming even through the thick wooden paneling. Screams of rage and fury that went on and on without break or interruption. Eventually, the doors opened. A white-faced figure in an Admiral’s uniform left, shaking with rage. His aide rushed up to him, only to be pushed away.

“Don’t touch me I have leprosy. So has the whole Navy. You would be well advised to find another uniform to wear.”

“Sir?”

Admiral Karl Doenitz looked across at the young officer. “The Navy is a waste of time and resources. We have never done what the Fuhrer wants. We have never fulfilled even his lowest expectations. Every promise we have made has been broken. Our U-boats failed in 1942 and even our Type XXIs have failed to cut the Atlantic convoys. The S-boats failed to command the Baltic. We cannot even destroy a single convoy when using the entire battlefleet. How many tanks could we have built with the steel squandered on those ships? How many aircraft could fly with their engines? Where could we have gone with the fuel they burned. So asks our Fuhrer.

“If the Navy had failed him once or twice, those might be the fortunes of war. But the Navy has failed him every time and that means it is staffed by traitors. So says our Fuhrer. It is not worth keeping, it is a failure. So concludes our Fuhrer. The remaining ships are to be scrapped, all of them. So orders our Fuhrer.”

“All of the ships Admiral, even the sub….”

“All of our ships, so commands our Fuhrer. We are to scrap them all.” Doenitz looked quickly around. “The Fuhrer certainly means to include the submarines in that list but we know that submarines are not ships. In a few days, a week of two, somebody will ask that question and the Fuhrer will have calmed down enough to give an answer that will save the submarines. A few of them anyway. The missile launchers certainly, perhaps some of the rest. But the Navy is gone. Not that there are many ships left to scrap.”

The aide ran through the list of ships left after the disastrous sortie. A single old cruiser, three or four destroyers, a dozen or more torpedo boats, a lot of smaller ships. What about the minesweepers? The way the Amis were laying mines off France and around the UK, decommissioning the minesweepers would bring coastal shipping to a complete halt.

“What about the minesweepers, Admiral? If they are laid up?”

“Then we will soon be unable to move supplies by sea. I know. But the Fuhrer has given his orders and they are not to be questioned. Young man, if you can find another place for yourself, I would do so. The Navy is not a place for a young man with ambition anymore.”

“Admiral, you must come with us.” Two men, SS officers had appeared. Doenitz squared his shoulders and turned to go with them. His death wasn’t inevitable not yet. He still had a few cards to play. The missile attack submarines, the only weapon Germany had that could strike at the mainland USA, was one. The minesweepers that the Army needed desperately was another. He could play those to save his life. Others too. But he was too much of a realist to believe that his hand was strong. As a desperation play, he had a chance. No more than that. But his precious Navy had none. What the Amis hadn’t sunk with their carriers was doomed by the orders of the man who ran the country. A man who was completely insane. If Doenitz had ever doubted that matter, the display in the conference room a few minutes ago had shattered those doubts.

“Wait outside.” The voice was not one Doenitz had expected. Hermann Goering was sitting in the office. He’d been weaned off morphine over the last year and looked a world better as a result. After crashing to the bottom and losing most of his influence in the middle of the war, he was now, slowly and painfully, rebuilding his position. The two SS men left.

“Well Karl, your Navy really screwed up, didn’t it?”

Doenitz looked at him “If we’d had more planes, proper carriers….”

“You’d still have lost. My people think the Amis had almost three thousand aircraft on those carriers. They’d have swamped anything we could have put up. Anyway, that’s what we’re going to be discussing you and I. All about carrier warfare and how our aircraft performed at sea. We’ll keep on discussing it until the Fuhrer has calmed down and your neck is not due to be stretched by a piano-wire noose any more. Then we’ll edge you back into, well, not favor but tolerance..”

Goering settled back in his seat. He had acquired another ally. That meant one additional piece in his plan to re-establish his authority was back in play.

The main wheels touched the runway with the usual heavy thud. The C-99 wasn’t like a normal aircraft. It was much more like a ship in the way it wallowed through the air. It was also unresponsive. The aircraft made little attempt to follow its pilot’s instructions and fine adjustments were hard to achieve. That was why the landing run started a long way out; the aircraft had to be lined up perfectly before it got too close to the ground. More than one C-99 had been lost because the pilot had made an abrupt change in angle too late and a wingtip had dug into the ground. Flying a C-99 was an art form, one that took practice to perfect. That was why a growing trend in the C-99 groups puzzled Captain Dedmon. It seemed as if just as a crew got experienced enough to handle their big birds in the Arctic conditions of the Air Bridge, they would vanish, posted away to some other group. The official explanation was that they were assigned to crew training; giving new pilots some insight into the handling characteristics of the C-99 before they came up here to fly the Bridge.

It seemed as if more than enough experienced crews were being reassigned to train the number of C-99 crews needed up here though. There were rumors that more C-99 units were being formed and sent to the Pacific; used to move supplies and troops around. Dedmon knew for a fact that every so often a C-99 would turn up with a load of supplies made in Australia. Equipment that had been produced in Australian factories but paid for by the U.S. and charged against Russia’s Lend-Lease account. So perhaps that was where the crews were going. It would make sense, another Air Bridge lifting supplies up from Australia. With the C-99’s range and payload, almost anything could make sense.

Alongside the transport, a flock of ambulances were already following Arctic Express ready to pick up part of its cargo. That was another reason why Dedmon had brought his aircraft in carefully. The lower deck was full of casualties, almost 150 of them with doctors and nurses moving as best they could between the litters. Normally the faster C-54s were used for casualty flights but there had been a rush of evacuation cases. Arctic Express had been available so she’d been loaded up with the wounded soldiers. Another 150 passengers were on the upper deck. They were men coming home on leave. In a week’s time, they’d be on their way back to the Russian Front.

Dedmon swung off the runway, onto the taxiway, following the orange and black jeep that was showing him the way. As he cleared the long tarmac strip, he could see a C-99A at the other end starting to move, the first step in its long flight to Russia. He guessed that the troops on the upper deck would be watching, knowing that all too soon, they’d be on a flight just like it. The U.S. had been supporting its armies in Russia for three years and had got it down to a fine art. The heavy equipment went by sea; the men were flown in.

The jeep broke right, onto the hardstand and Dedmon followed it. Arctic Express’s tires squealed as he made the turn. Then, the rumble of the nose doors opening started as soon as the engines behind the wings spooled down. The casualties on the lower deck would already be the centers of a rush to get them off the aircraft and on their way to hospital. The very fact they were on this flight meant that their wounds were serious enough to be flown back to the Zone of the Interior, not treated in Russia. Dedmon’s thoughts were interrupted by the curious throbbing snarl that was the C-99’s trademark. The C-99A he’d spotted a moment earlier was already lifting off; its flaps pulling up and its undercarriage retracting as it set off to Russia. Behind it, a C-54 was already taking its place at the end of the runway. Its crew did their final checks before they left, probably for Anchorage, then Anadyr and down to Khabarovsk or one of the dozens of smaller strips that were spreading across Siberia.

The flight deck crew finished their shut-down checks and Dedmon signed the chit that handed his aircraft over to its ground crew. They’d take responsibility for her; get her prepped and ready for the next flight out.

“Anything special, Sir?” The crew chief tapped the clipboard reflectively. There had been a time when each crew had its own chief and own ground crew but that had all been changed. Now, maintaining the aircraft flying the Air Bridge was done on a production line basis. If a specialist’s services weren’t needed on one aircraft, then he’d be shifted to one where he was. That simple change had quadrupled the availability of the transports.

“No, Chief. She’s behaving real well. Like a true Lady.” Dedmon signed the remaining dockets and stretched himself out of his seat. His back and legs were stiff; it took a long time to get from Khabarovsk to Seattle at under 250 miles per hour. The navigators did a fantastic job on these flights. Before the Air Bridge had been set up, nobody had even guessed at the problems involved in making flights this long.

Inside the terminal, Dedmon’s crew started to disperse. That was another slightly odd thing about the Air Bridge. A lot of the pilots were the older, more experienced types, about half were already married with families. His co-pilot, Jimmy York, broke away to where his wife was waiting. Dedmon did a slight double-take at that. When they’d left, Susan York had been a blonde; now her hair was jet black. He’d heard there’d been some problems on the East Coast but that didn’t reach out here did it?

“Bob? Can I have a word with you for a minute?” Colonel Sutherland was almost running across the base building. Another slightly older man, a holdover from the pre-war Army Air Corps. “You’re going out in two days?”

“Guess so, Sir. Haven’t seen the orders yet.” It was a fair bet though. It took two days to turn the big, complex C-99 around and get her ready for another long haul to Russia.

“Take my word for it, you will be. A cargo of aircraft tires, I think. Look, I’m appointing you my new Operations Officer for the group.”

Dedmon mentally paused. “Tommy Kincaid’s all right?” Enough aircraft were lost on the Air Bridge; that was why the wings and tail were painted bright orange-red. Made it easier to spot a wreck in the snow.

“Oh, he’s all right, sure enough. Got his orders out yesterday, going to another group so they say. Why can’t they just let us settle down? I can’t be expected to run a transport group when my best crews keep getting transferred out. You’ll be gone soon; mark my words. Anyway, I want you to take over as Operations.”

Dedmon smiled his thanks and watched Sutherland scurry off. Why hadn’t Sutherland had his transfer orders yet? The slightly insubordinate thought made Dedmon smile as it crossed his mind.

“They’re catching up fast.” Bressler was right. Marosy knew it although he would rather not admit the fact. The Germans had started closing in once they’d got out of the deep snow in the valley. Now here, in the trees, they were moving a lot more quickly than the two American airmen.

“Might be time to pick our ground, Bill.” Marosy looked at the trees. There wasn’t much cover; the pine trees tended to kill off undergrowth. “There’s some rougher ground over there. It’ll give us some cover.”

Bressler winced. The day had been quite a come-down, from a semi-automatic 75mm cannon to a pair of .38 revolvers. There was a grim joke about those .38s. According to the aircrew, their only use was to make sure the Germans came in shooting. Getting shot was a lot less painful than slowly strangling on the end of a rope. “Won’t it be better to get a little further south, John? We can try and give these buggers the slip at least. Once we make a stand, it’s all over.”

Marosy tried to make his mind up but the cold was seeping into him. In the end, it wasn’t the possibility of getting away that decided him but a flat crack and an eruption of snow around them. The lead Germans had caught up, almost.

“Too late, can’t even get to the rocks. Down there, now.” The two airmen dived into a slight dip, one that offered only a bare margin of shelter. Even as they hit the bottom, bruising limbs on the rocks that were under the snow, more shots echoed around them. It was indeed a very bare margin of shelter.

There were more than a dozen Germans, moving quickly through the trees towards them. Marosy drew his pistol and cursed the Air Force that bought these weak and useless .38 revolvers when they could have had the Colt Ml911s. It was as if the Air Force had to consciously reject everything that its once-parent Army had selected. There was a short lull in the German fire as their troops moved forward. Marosy knew what was in their mind. They had a chance to get their hands on two of the hated fighter-bomber pilots that had first made their lives a misery and then tried to end it by dousing them in napalm. They were concentrating on that objective and he intended to make sure they didn’t achieve it by capturing this A-38 crew alive.

His .38 shot sounded feeble in the pine forest but Marosy was astonished by the result. At least three Germans had gone down. Even less explicable was that two quickly joined them, great blotches of red erupting over their white coveralls. At that point, Marosy was suddenly aware that the gunfire had changed, there was a staccato clatter of rifle fire but with it, a ripping noise that was far faster than any machine gun Marosy had ever heard. The Germans were cut down by the ambush. A few trying to retreat backwards through the trees but the gunfire followed them. They never made more than a few feet.

After the deafening sound of the gunfire, the woods seemed silent. Marosy and Bressler felt they couldn’t move as they watched figures get to their feet from a ragged L-shape that surrounded the obliterated German unit. Marosy raised his hands and called out “American pilots.”

One of the ski troops emerging from their positions called back. “We know.”

The man walked across while the rest of the troops started to check the dead bodies of the Germans. Out of the corner of his eye, Marosy saw one man dip his fingers in the blood of a German and smear it on the face of a young soldier. Then he called out, “Comrades, we have a new Brat today.”

“I am Lieutenant Stanislav Knyaginichev.” The Russian spoke slowly; obviously thinking in Russian, then translating slowly and carefully. “We have been tracking you for more than an hour.”

“Captain John Marosy, Sergeant William Bressler. Thank you for the rescue, Lieutenant.”

“Call me Knyaz. We were told of your crash by a partisan group. They also told us where to look. You were leading the Germans very well, so we left you to get on with it. Then it was easy to set up a good ambush for them.” The lieutenant’s voice was slightly strained. He was trying to conceal his amusement at the way the two Americans had been stumbling around in the snow. “Did your survival people never teach you how to make snow shoes from branches?”

Marosy shook his head. He watched with awe at the way the Russians were moving with casual ease in the snow. He’d thought the Germans had been skilled. Now he saw them as inept blunderers compared with the ski troops around them. And if they ‘d been inept blunderers, what did that made me and Bressler?

“Another thing you Americans must learn about the Russian winter.” Knyaz was trying to stop himself laughing as he reached out and tapped the American’s flight suits. “Snow is not green. Come, we must move away from here. Can you ski?”

“A little, not as well as your men.”

“No matter. Our vehicles are only a few kilometers away. My men are finding you some skis and some camouflage suits that are not too badly bloodstained. We are heading home now to rejoin our division and we will take you with us. Also you can carry a banana rifle, we have captured quite a few this time out.”

That was, Marosy thought, an improvement over a .38. As he and Bressler struggled into the German snow camouflage suits, they saw the young soldier with the bloodstained face getting slapped on the back by the others. Knyaz saw the look and explained. “When a recruit joins us, he is a drug, a worker. He is fit only to do the dirty jobs in the unit. But when he has killed his first Hitlerite, he becomes a comrade, a brat. A brother. Then, he can make other drugs do the dirty jobs for him.”

“Ah, I see. You speak English very well Knyaz.”

“Thank you. I learned some in an American hospital. My division always tries to have one who can speak English with each ski patrol, for just such times as this. Now hurry; we must move on before the fascists can follow up.”

It was a good thing to be in the reconnaissance units; they had been first to receive the new jets. The Arado Lieutenant Wijnand was flying was a good example, a neat, twin-engined recon aircraft that could outfly pretty nearly all the fighters up in this benighted part of the world. Well, not the Ami Shooting Stars, but there weren’t that many of those around, not yet, not here on Kola. Mostly they were on the central part of the Eastern Front, where the Amis fought. Wijnand and ll/KG-40 had been stationed there for a while and it had been a nightmare. The Amis never seemed to run short of fighters; their Thunderbolts and Kingcobras were everywhere. The bomber squadrons were still flying Ju-188s and they’d been caught badly. That was why the group had been moved here, so they could recover on a quieter front.

Wijnand looked down. The snow-covered landscape really was quite beautiful. Then he looked more closely. Way off to the left, heading off in a quite different direction from that the experts had predicted, were two long clouds of smoke. Wijnand banked around and set off to have a closer look. Sure enough, it was what he was looking for. Two trains pulled by steam locomotives.

A closer inspection with his binoculars showed that they weren’t just what he was looking for. They were the ones he was looking for. The front two trains had each had one huge gun with a line of carriages. Following them, in a desperate effort to keep up, was a diesel locomotive pulling two more carriages.

“Base, this is the Flying Dutchman here. I have found the prey, heading west.” Wijnand looked at his maps and carefully calculated the position, then read it out over the radio.

“Well done my little Dutchman. The map shows a bridge up ahead. We already have bombers ready to go, we will take that out. Headquarters wants those guns captured and already the Amis have blown one of them up. So we will make sure the muddy-feet get a chance at the two remaining. Stay with them; we will tell you when the bridge has gone.

This was the sort of raid the Ju-188 was good at. A quick take-off, a sneak over the lines at a specific target and back before the Amis or Ivans could react. The 188 was fast low down. It could make almost 450 kilometers per hour and it could slide under the radar surveillance that the damned Amis had set up almost everywhere. Mind you, low down was all that mattered on the Russian Front. The Ivans flew low and the Amis not much higher. A fight 5,000 meters up was a rare thing.

Captain Schellberg spread his map out on his knees. He was getting routing instructions from his navigator but he wanted to see the terrain for himself. The raid was a very specific one; a railway bridge that should be other the next ridgeline. His eight bombers would be making their runs along the length of the bridge. The bombing errors were likely to be in range, not deflection; so a run along a bridge gave a higher chance of a hit than one across.

There it was. Schellberg grabbed his radio. “Second section, make your runs now.” Second Section were the novices; the newbies with only one or two missions under their belts. There were all too many of those these days. Give them the biggest targets. If they brought the center spans down, Schellberg’s veterans could drop the end spans. But if the newbies missed, then Schellberg’s section could still rectify matters.

The first of the Ju-188s crested the hill and started it’s ran. The two thousand-kilo bombs wobbled free and lurched downwards sending up fountains of water beside the middle spans. Shaken it up a bit, Schellberg thought, but still standing. The second pair of bombs were way short. Good for line, they chewed up the railway tracks short of the bridge, but the bridge itself was still standing. The third pair were very close. The water spouts actually soaked the bridge girders but still no collapse. The fourth pair hit home. It was as if the crew had watched what the others had done and averaged out their errors. The explosions blackened the sky around the bridge. When it cleared, the center span was down, one end in the river and the pier it had rested on broken.

“Well done Number Four! First section follow me.”

Schellberg put his Ju-188A into a dive, aiming the nose at the abutment where the bridge met the bank. He held his breath slightly, squeezed the release just so, and saw the boiling black cloud erupt as his thousand kilo bombs slammed into the target. The bankside span crumpled and collapsed.

As Schellberg pulled away, he saw the damaged center span collapse into the river as two more bombs took down the remaining pier holding up its other end. Three of the four spans were down now. It was down to the two remaining aircraft to deal with the last. Schellberg saw the cloud of smoke rising from the bank and cursed. Thick as it was, he could see the last remaining span of the bridge was still standing. Still, the bridge was down, decisively down. That meant the mission was achieved.

The eight Ju-188As headed back for home. Just for once, it had been an easy mission. The Ami and Ivan fighters had been tied up hitting the German units advancing in the southern section of the Kola Front. The Canadian aircraft were supporting their troops fighting the Finns. There had been no flak around the bridge. It would be a long, long time before there was another mission like this one.

It was still called the TBS even though it wasn’t used to talk between ships. In fact, this particular set wasn’t even installed on a ship. It was used to communicate between the carriages that made up the gun train of Battery B. Yet, this was a United States Navy train, traditions still held good and it was called the TBS. The signals Lieutenant answered it. The message wasn’t good news.

“Sir, we’ve just received word. The bridge we were intending to use has just been blown. German bombers took it down about an hour and twenty minutes ago.”

“Damn.” Commander Perdue wanted to put it rather more strongly than that. “Ask Major Boldin to join us. And order all the trains to halt.”

Perdue stared at the map. Unless there were spur lines that weren’t shown, they were trapped. The spur they had intended to use was on the other side of the now-destroyed bridge. The only alternative was to go back east and hope that the German advance hadn’t blocked that particular route out. A faint hope and one that exposed his guns to risk of capture, the one thing he was under strict orders not to allow. It was a situation that deserved something better than a single damn.

The ASTAC Major entered the command car and Perdue explained the situation briefly. “So, Tovarish Major, is there any chance of repairing that bridge? If not, can we get out by retracing our steps and heading out east then North? Failing those two options, what can we do?”

“The bridge? It is destroyed. We cannot repair it. According to the partisans, the central pillars and the far side piers have gone. We would need to build an entirely new bridge; it will take weeks. As for going back, that also is impossible. There is nowhere to turn the trains around and to go backwards so far, with such a load as we have, we cannot do this.” Boldin stared at the map. “But there is one alternative, very risky, very dangerous; but open to us.”

“Better than giving up and blowing up our guns here.”

“Indeed so, Tovarish Commander. But when I said very dangerous, I am not joking. You see this ridge that runs along here, parallel to us, you can see it to our right. That ridge has deposits of low-grade coal in it. Not good coal, but useful. So, before the War it was decided to dig new mines in that ridge to recover the coal. Two such mines were dug here and here. “ Boldin’s finger tapped the map at two points a few miles in front of the trains. Points on almost opposite sides of the ridge.

“And to get the coal out, they needed a railway siding. One for each mine. Don’t tell me there’s a tunnel through the ridge at that point. Where the mines join?”

“Sidings yes, both sides of the ridge. There is no tunnel through the ridge. If there are points where the two mines join, there almost certainly are, a simple safety precaution, they would be man-sized only. Not big enough for great trains like these. But, the two sidings are joined by a line that goes over the ridge. We can take the trains along one set of sidings, over the connector and out by way of the other set. That will take us out onto this line here. We can head east along it, then north along here to rejoin our original route at this point here.” Boldin’s finger tapped out the route.

“That seems to be ideal.” Perdue paused. “There’s a problem isn’t there? We can’t be this lucky.”

“There is indeed a problem. The mines never produced good quality coal and when the war started, all the available equipment was concentrated on the mines that could. These particular mines were closed, their equipment taken away for use elsewhere. We would have taken up the railway lines as well but there was not time. The Hitlerites advanced so fast we never got the chance. So the lines are still there, but they have not been maintained since 1941. Four years of winters and summers, of snow and ice forming then melting. They will not be in good condition, those tracks.

“There is another problem. The tracks were built in the years of the great purges. The engineer was told to get the cross-ridge line completed by a specific date. A party congress perhaps or somebody’s birthday, who knows? Now the original design was to run the rails up the side of the ridge, keeping the slope to a minimum, about three percent, then turn the tracks through 180 degrees on the level ground at the top of the ridge them bring it down the other side. Only there was not enough time and not enough track. So rather than complete the job late and run risk of liquidation, he took some short cuts. The slopes up and down are much steeper than they should be. So much so that the coal trains had difficulty managing them and there were some accidents. To take these great guns along those tracks…” Boldin shrugged. “It may be possible. It is our only way out.”

Perdue thought the problem over. “There are sidings both sides of the ridge?”

“Yes Tovarish Commander.”

“So we can try this. We will take the guns to the foot of the ridge and the mines there. We will park the guns in the siding and use both locomotives to pull the carriages over to the other side. The diesel shunter should be able to manage without help. Then we use both locomotives to bring each gun over in turn. The problem will be coming down the other side. Will it be possible to turn the train around so that we can have the gun in front of the engines, that way they can act as a brake? Then we can assemble all the trains in the sidings the other side of the ridge, sort ourselves out and be on our way.”

Bolding thought carefully. “I think this may work yes. Your Mikados are powerful engines, this I know.” Then he smiled brightly. “Tovarish Commander, you are very determined to save your guns, yes?”

“Very much, Tovarish Major. If I lose another one, the Navy will take the cost out of my salary.”

“General LeMay to see you, Sir.” Naamah made the introduction without giggling over the ‘sir.’ In the anarchistic environment preferred by those who worked on Project Dropshot, the word was rare indeed.

“Curt, it’s good to see you. How goes SAC?”

“My B-29 bomber crews are getting shot to hell in Russia. The new groups are short of planes, pilots, equipment, everything we need. Apart from that its going well.”

“That bad? I thought the D-models were rolling off the lines now.”

“They are. And most of them go straight into modification centers to have faults fixed or be modified. I’ve got groups out there with three serviceable aircraft. The 100th has been operational since October, on paper. In reality, it’s got twelve bombers out of the 75 it’s supposed to have. We’re flying the birds around the clock; one crew brings them in, another takes them out. I have to tell you, that’s putting a lot of hours on the airframes that aren’t too strong to start with. Don’t sweat it though. We’ll get the crews ready, it’s the planes that worry me.”

“We can treat the D-models as a training cadre. The first really operational ones will be the E-ships. When they start arriving we’ll be converting the Ds to tankers.”

“Glad to hear it.” LeMay paused for a moment. “Look, Phillip, it isn’t really that bad. The B-17 program was worse and the 29 production problems were even more chaotic. You remember what happened with my first B-17 group?”

Stuyvesant shook his head. “Not from the inside, no.”

“December 1941, we were supposed to be based in Iceland. We’d packed up to go, our ground echelon, all our spares, baggage, tools, everything was on its way to Iceland. Then they start to talk about sending us to Hawaii as an emergency deployment instead. Can you imagine, 35 B-17s suddenly arriving at Hickam without any of the thing needed to keep them flying? Disaster. Only thing worse would be arriving in the middle of an air raid. What the hell caused that flap anyway?”

“Never got to the bottom of it Curt. The Japanese were up to something. For a while, it looked like they were going to hit all ways at once. Phillippines, Dutch East Indies, Malaya and Singapore, you name it. Some of the radio intercept guys even suggested the Japs might pound on Pearl. Then suddenly, it all went away. The Japs stood down and poured their military power into China instead. They’re still there, making headway, and we’re turning a blind eye because the supply line to Russia runs right under their nose.

“Well, nobody told us that; just that orders for the Pacific were coming down. I had to get the whole group out of the zee-oh-eye before the orders to they arrived. At least we haven’t had that with our big birds. If Consolidated can get the production sorted out, we’ll be ready. We’re ready now if we really have to be. We can put about a 150 birds up for a strike. Some of them are older and slower than the rest but they’ll still give the krauts hell. You give us the packages, Phillip, and Consolidated the birds, we’ll take their whole damn country off the map.” LeMay shifted his pipe from one side of his mouth to the other. “So, how’s your side of the planning going?”

“Pretty good; we’re refining the target list now. Looks like around 200 targets for optimum. Fewer than that, we leave bits of the war machine working. More and we just start rearranging the rubble. I want to hit some targets, Berlin, Munich, Nuremberg, with more than one device. They’re political targets. We wipe them off the map to make a point. Other targets are going to need at least two devices. They’re hardened targets like shipyards and certain factories. So, I’d say somewhere between 220 and 260 devices. You’re still planning three-plane sections?”

“Right. We’ve been trying all sorts but that seems to be the best for the big bird. We can position them so all the approaches are covered by gunfire from the turrets.” LeMay shifted his pipe again. “Spent a couple of trips up there myself, talking the birds into position. It works, if we need it to. Might not. You hear about Paul Tibbets’ experiment?”

Stuyvesant shook his head.

“Boeing stripped a B-29B right down; took out all the guns except the tail mounts, all the armor, everything not strictly needed for flight. Even took the arms off the seats. Tibbets took the lightweight bird up to 30,000 feet and some P-47s tried to intercept him. He outmaneuvered them all, chased them all over the sky. Nobody could believe it but he did it, right in front of them. Nobody expected the result to be so dramatic. Even the people who designed the birds are saying there’s something about these big birds high up we’re not allowing for. But, you’re right, three plane sections. Those sections are called Hometowns by the way.”

“Right, so with 75 planes per group, we should be able to use between eight and ten groups to drop the devices. That gives us a heck of a margin for safety. We’ll be OK for the big birds Curt.”

LeMay laughed. “Stuyvesant, you’re a great planner and a great industrialist but you don’t know squat about running a bomb group. Look, each group has three wings right? 24 birds per wing. That’s eight three-plane sections. Each Bomb Wing will be doing well if it gets five of those sections up; three if we’re unlucky. The rest of the big birds will be down for repair or in the shop for modification. Then, there’s the crew. We have to keep some of them back in reserve for additional strikes, the first crews in won’t be flying again for days after a two-day mission. So call it four sections per Bomb Wing. That’s 12 sections per group, not 25. You do your maths again.”

Stuyvesant did it in his head. “21 groups, possibly 22. Remember what I said about a safety margin? Forget it. AWPD-1 back in ‘41 planned for 44 Bomb Groups of big birds by 1947. You’re saying we’ll need half of them for the package deliveries and the rest for the conventional strikes.”

“Looks like it.”

“We can manage the package delivery but you’ve just shot the follow-up full of holes. And we’re going to have to make sure Fort Worth, Wichita and Segundo hit their production standards. The E-ships will be entering the production cycle in April. They’ve got the uprated engines. You know, if Tibbets is right about the guns being counterproductive, that’s going to ease the production situation a bit. That remote controlled gun system is complex and takes a lot of time to build. Getting rid of it would be a good thing.”

“Agreed. That’s why I’m here, Phillip. I need to have some big birds built without guns and armor, just to see what they can do. Can you authorize it?”

“I can’t but I can make sure the people who can do. But are you sure that’s the way you want to go on this? Flying those bombers virtually unarmed is going to be a hell of a risk.”

“The kids in the B-29Bs and RB-29Cs are taking that risk right now. Few nights ago, one of the RBs outflew a kraut night-fighter. Pilot did a damned fine job, evaded the fighter, got his radar pictures and brought them back. Then flayed the debriefer alive for telling him the Krauts didn’t send night-fighters out after single bombers. But the point is, his RB-29C did outfly the fighter and they aren’t stripped down the way Tibbets stripped his. They’re taking losses but not prohibitive ones. Of course they’re flying in at night, not in broad daylight. Any reason why we can’t go in at night?”

“Accuracy. The packages are destructive but they still need to be placed right. We’ve got radar pictures for some of the targets but not all of them. Some, we’re going to have to hit the hard way. That’s why we need the recon birds to go in first. The recon big bird is going to be as important as the package carriers. They have to do weather recon, plot the defenses and draw their fire and do the target navigation on the way in. And, just to make it fun, the recon groups are still flying a mix of RB-29s and RB-23s. Not a recon big bird in sight yet.”

“And that’s even more big birds we need. Hell of a problem isn’t it.” There was not a trace of sympathy in LeMay’s voice. He had enough problems developing the tactics to use the big birds. Getting them to him was somebody else’s heartache.