by Stuart Slade
“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.
CHAPTER NINE: SNOW DRIFTS IN THE WIND
Mechanized Column, 71st Infantry Division, Kola Peninsula
“They got the bridge.” There was a triumphant note in the report. It wasn’t often that air-ground cooperation went smoothly but this time it had. A recon aircraft had spotted the trains heading west. That had been a disaster for the mechanized column. The destruction of the bridge had left them stranded on the wrong side of river and the nearest crossing point was about an hour’s drive east. There just weren’t any to the west. That had put them so far behind the escaping trains that there had been no chance of catching them. Only the recon aircraft had got through to its base, the group commander had worked miracles getting a flight of eight bombers armed and off and the pilots had been phenomenal. The bridge had gone down. Now, the only way for the trains to escape was east. Right back into the arms of the mechanized column.
Asbach got his maps out. “We can drive along the rails. They’re pretty much clear and give us a good footing. We should be able to get, what, 25 kph?”
“I think so. And the train cannot go much faster, it will have to back all the way. Can a train back that far?”
“I do not know. Do we have a railway man in the column?”
“No, not this column. I read the personnel files the night before we left.”
Asbach raised his eyebrows slightly. That was taking devotion to paperwork a bit far. “A bit of advice, Lang. Just read two or three files and remember a key fact from each, a commendable one. Then repeat it in front of the men. They’ll think you know everything. The rate this front eats men, we will never keep up with doing things the right way.’ He watched Lang nod slightly, absorbing the message. Then Asbach frowned. “What are these here?”
Lang peered closely at the point Asbach was indicating. “These are old Finnish maps of the area?”
“What else? They are the best we can get. These date from 1936.”
“Well then, those look like markings for mines. Coal probably, might be iron ore.”
“Lang, have you ever seen a coal mine without a railway spur and marshalling yard? And look, see how those mines are between the two lines? Do you want to make a bet there is a railway line there?”
“And if those mines are coal, the engines can stock up on fuel. Perhaps water as well. If there is a railway line there.”
“There must be. If there are mines there are railways. That will be a way out for them. If the lines are still there.”
Asbach stared at the map, chewing distance, speed and time over in his mind. “How about we try this, Lang. We go west, along the railway lines to this point here. If the trains are coming this way we’ll meet them by then. If we have not, we assume there is a line across this gap, through the mines. Then we turn north and head though the gap here up north to this junction. We can wait for the trains there and they will walk right into our arms. See, it’s like a triangle, the trains must go along two sides while we can cut up along the third.”
“But if the trains are coming east, just slowly?”
“They still have no way out. The rest of the Corps is heading north off to our right. There’s no way out there. We will not get the honor of capturing the guns but the guns will be captured. But the more I think on this, the more sure I am that there is a railway spur not shown on this map. The Russian maps are useless. They are never right; that’s why we use Finnish ones. We head west then north Lang, and intercept the guns at the junction of the east-west and northern lines.” Asbach grinned in a friendly manner. “And we can get you your first piece of over-decorated tin, yes?”
Torshavn, the Faroe Islands, North Atlantic
A second destroyer had joined Z-27 in the harbor. Becker read her bow number with some difficulty; the ship was blackened by fire and badly burned. Still, he made it out in the end. Z-20. She had been one of the destroyers with the carrier group. By the sound of it, she was now the only survivor of the Scouting Group. Becker was staring at her when he heard a sound behind him.
“Z-20. She’s got a lot of survivors on her, all of them in a pretty bad way. Admiral Brinkmann as well.” Colonel Ian Stewart was standing behind him.
“Thank God, I’m not senior officer here anymore.” Becker was genuinely relieved. He was tired, sick, he just wanted to rest.
“I’m afraid that’s not so Captain. Admiral Brinkmann is,” Stewart hesitated, “not himself. Not at all himself. He had to be carried from Z-20, and he’s… uhhh… unresponsive. In the previous lot I think the medics called it shell-shock. I must ask you to carry on as Senior German Officer. Otherwise, I’ll have to ask one of the destroyer captains and, well, you’ll do a better job I think.”
Becker nodded. “Very well Colonel. What do you want me to do?”
“Two Free Royal Navy minelayers, Ariadne and Manxman, are on their way down. They’ll be in after midnight. Ariadne was due to go back to the States for a refit but she’s doing this last run extra. She’s empty; she can be loading your men while Manxman unloads supplies. I want you to go through all the survivors collecting here in person and pick out the sickest. They go back to Iceland first. The fitter men can wait for the next runs.”
“Enlisted men take priority of course.” Becker was simply stating a fact. No officer worthy of his rank would take an early ship out and leave enlisted men behind.
Stewart nodded. “Aye, goes without saying. Each minelayer can take about two hundred, so we can get four hundred out tonight. We have nearly two thousand of your men here, from Lutzow and the destroyers. And few are in good health. It’s a fourteen hour run from here to Iceland. You’ll have to get the men ready for a fast boarding. The ships have to be well out by dawn.”
Becker nodded. The last thing these men needed was to be trapped on another sinking ship. As if to reinforce his thoughts, the vicious growl of a radial engine split the afternoon open. Becker almost whimpered as he recognized the sound of a Corsair and dived for the ground. The dark blue fighter skimmed overhead, pulled up at the end of its run then came back. For a moment, Becker thought it was a strafing run or even worse he’d see the ugly, wobbling tanks of jellygas split away from the aircraft. He was wrong. The Corsair charged overhead then vanished off into the afternoon sun.
“Photo-reconnaissance ran. That was an F4U-7P. Probably getting pictures of the ships here.” Stewart saw Becker staring at him from the ground. “We get to be very familiar with American aircraft here.”
Becker climbed to his feet, a little sheepishly. “Colonel, I’ll get the sickest men selected and ready. One other thing.”
“The name’s Ian. We’ll be working closely together for the next few weeks I think.”
“I am Martin. Ian, I disabled the scuttling system on Lutzow and Z-27, but on Z-20? It may need to be attended to.”
“Aye, it will. You need help in seeing to this?”
“No, I think not. I can take some of my men to do it. But if you could have some of your men to aid us if it gets ugly?”
“I’ll see to it, Martin.”
United States Strategic Bombardment Commission, Blair House, Washington D.C. USA
“The General will see you now Sir.” The airman in the outer office put an accent of almost supernat
ural terror on the first two words. Stuyvesant followed him in.
“The Seer’s here.”
“Right, you are dismissed.”
Stuyvesant waited until the door was closed. Like all the USSBC offices, this one didn’t have an intercom system. Too great a chance of it being left on and the wrong words getting broadcast. “I had a word with a few people, Curt. We can’t get any big birds built to stripped down configuration. Consolidated are getting ready to shift to the E series and it would disrupt that. What is happening is that Wichita have six C-ships in house and they’ll strip those down for you. Take out all the guns but the nose and tail mounts, all the armor. Be ready in six weeks. That’ll give us an idea of what we can achieve by stripping them down. I’ve got a couple of my people working out what else we can strip out from them and what the likely gains will be.”
LeMay thought for a moment. “I can find no cause for complaint with that.”
“Another thing, Curt. I was thinking about your crew problems. Would it help if we brought the B-29 groups back from Russia? They’d act as cadres for more units; might accelerate the build-up.”
“Not a good idea, Phillip. Two reasons, one is that crews aren’t the problem; we’re getting as many as we need by using the Air Bridge as a training ground. We just take them off the C-99s as we need them. The other is that those B-29 outfits are hard-luck groups. Take a notional group right, we’ll call it the 49th Bombardment Group. There isn’t a 49th Bombardment in the USAF. It arrives in Russia, its inexperienced, a bit sloppy. Don’t fly the boxes as tight as they should perhaps, a bit careless on making their turns. The Luftwaffe give it a pasting, shoot down a lot of birds. So our 49th gets a load of replacements who are even less experienced, a bit sloppier. So the 49th gets hit again. Soon, its efficiency is shot to hell. It’s a hard luck group, nobody expects anything good of it. They don’t expect any good of themselves. Pretty much all our B-29 groups in Russia are like that now. Once we’re done, I don’t plan to keep any of them. I have neither the time nor the inclination to distinguish the incompetent from the merely unfortunate.”
“Which reminds me, Curt, you said that if we had to, we could put 150 bombers at Germany?”
“Mixture of Bs, Cs and Ds. Be a hell of a mess but we can do it. I’ve put all the best groups, the ones that have the most experience and a reasonable strength on hand in the First Air Division. We’re just starting to form the Third Air Division now. Four groups per Division, 300 birds total.”
“Right, well, if Germany does a special test, we go straight away. With whatever we’ve got. At the moment we have three Model 1561s and 24 Mark 3 s either in the dumps or final assembly. Production is leveling off at around 10 Mark 3 s per month. What I suggest is my people do a short target plan, updated on a monthly basis, using whatever we have. Give that to you. You can work out how to do it with what bombers you have. If it does drop in the pot and Germany does do a test, then we can go with the latest plan.”
“We can do that. We’ll keep that between ourselves though. If people know there is a small-scale emergency plan they’ll want to use it right away. We do not want that issue re-opened.”
Stuyvesant laughed. “That we can be sure of. It was damned hard work convincing General Groves that we shouldn’t be trickling the packages onto their targets as they came off the production lines. I can imagine circumstances where that might work, if the enemy was on the verge of defeat for example, but we don’t face that situation.”
“Trouble with the Army, they never understood the strategy of air power. Always thought of doing things in small packets. Same when I took the ‘17s south on friendly visits. Army never understood what was involved. Stuyvesant, we’ve got a chance here to crush an enemy from the air, totally. We can’t waste it.”
“No, we can’t. And we won’t.”
Disused Mining Complex, Kola Peninsula
“How are the tracks, Tovarish Major?”
Major Boldin pushed his lower lip out and thought the matter over carefully. “The diesel has taken its two carriages over the ridge safely, that is for certain. But the Mikados and the guns? They are a very different matter. It is as we feared. There have been more than five years, five winters, since this mine was closed and the track beds have been damaged. The sleepers are breaking up. There is much risk that the rails will spread apart when the full weight of the guns bears on them. If that happens then it will be all over.”
“What can we do?” Perdue was frustrated. He didn’t like being dependent on other people for the safety of his guns but he had no choice. Anyway, the ASTAC Major and his crew were proving their skills were real enough. The way they had cleared these old tracks and started their inspection proved that.
“Perhaps your men can get the first gun coupled to the two engines. Mine are walking the tracks now. We have some spare ties and other pieces to repair the worst damage. And we can fill in the bedding where the freezing has moved it. Then we can move your first gun to the top of the ridge.”
Perdue nodded and turned to the crew of the lead Mikado. “Jones, Allen, couple both Mikados to Curly and get ready to tow it up to the top of the ridge. There’s a siding up there, so leave Curly up top, come down and get Moe, take it up as well.”
“Sir?” Jones’s voice was curious, wary.
“We’ll have to turn the trains around at the top. Major Boldin says we can do that using the siding at the top of the ridge. We’ll put the gun in front and the engines behind it for the descent the other side. That way the locomotives will act as a brake and stop the guns running out of control.”
“With respect, Sir. No, Sir.” Jones was deferential but firm. Perdue stared at him; he hadn’t expected that. The other side of the rail, Boldin’s eyebrows met his hairline. This was something new to him. He’d never seen an American officer shoot one of his own men before. Well, there was always a first time for everything and this looked like it would be one of them.
“The other side of the ridge is as steep as this one, steeper perhaps. With the weight of the gun, it’s going to pick up momentum very quickly. If we put the locomotives behind the gun, they can act as a brake, they can prevent the gun from picking up speed and running out of control.”
“With respect, Sir, that won’t work.” Jones bit his lip. Before being drafted for the Navy he had handled heavy freight trains all over the United States and twenty years of that experience told him the right way to do this was not the way this officer thought it was. But how to explain it? “Look, Sir, meaning no disrespect Sir, but think on this. If we have the gun in front and the engines behind as you suggest, the weight of the gun will be pulling one way and the pull of the engines in the other. If we have the engines in front pushing back against the gun, the gun will be trying to push down, the trains pushing the other way. The first load is tension, the second is compression. We don’t want a doubled tension load on the drawbar. It’ll distort it at best; at worst it will rip the bar clean off. We could end up with the couplings so damaged we won’t be able to pull the guns at all.”
It made sense. Perdue had to admit it. His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the diesel shunter arriving. It was about to make the next trip over, towing the battalion command car and a battery fire control car over the ridge. Up on the long cut that lead up the side of the ridge, he could see the Russian railway engineers walking the tracks, carefully inspecting the rails to make sure they would be secure for the guns.
“Very well Jones. Do it the way you recommend.” And may the Good Lord help you if you ‘re wrong was the unspoken addition.
“Very good Sir. We’ll take Curly straight over, up one side and down the other. Then we’ll leave the gun there and come back for Moe. Save a bit of time as well that will. Major Boldin, Sir, your men, have they got grit they can throw on the rails if we start to slip?”
Boldin started, slightly shocked that the aging railwayman was still alive to speak with him. He wouldn ‘t have been if this was a Russian A
rmy unit. Speaking to an officer like that, it could get a man shot. Or worse. “Yes, we have that. The men will walk beside you with it ready.”
“Right then. Mr. Perdue, Sir, we’ll get rolling with Curly as soon as the shunter reaches the top.”
“Make it so. And, Jones, I’ll be riding in the cab with you. I want to see how this goes. Lieutenant Tavernor. Are the guns and other cars fully rigged?”
“Yes, Sir. Cars and guns can be blown any time we have to.”
“Good. If the Krauts turn up, don’t hesitate to blow what’s left this side of the ridge.” Perdue paused for a second, a thought occurred to him. “Jones, why don’t we put the diesel behind the guns with the two steam engines in front? The diesel won’t push or pull, it’ll just act as a sort of safety stop, prevent the guns putting too much stress on the couplings.”
“That’ll work, Sir. We’re to wait until it rejoins us this side?”
“Correct. We can use the delay to make sure everything’s secure this end.”
The sun was starting to set by the time the first train started its run up and over the bridge. Jones had started the strange consist moving, taking the slope slowly and steadily. Alongside the two locomotives, Russian ASTAC engineers were walking. Every so often they would sprinkle handfuls of grit under the wheels. Jones could see Perdue watching curiously. “Improves traction Sir. We’ve got wet steel on wet steel here. That’s why we’re taking everything so slowly. If Mike here starts to slip or the gun does, we’re in a world of hurt. Just like driving on ice; take it slow and steady, don’t do anything sharp. Guess our tankers learned that, Sir.”
