“If you ask me,” Sean continued, “Curveball looked more like a wild pitch in the bottom of the ninth, with the game tied and the bases loaded.”
He put his arm around Tommy’s shoulder, pulling him close. “Well, whatever happened, these damn flyboys woulda saved us.” He released his grip to shake his brother’s hand. “Thanks, Captain, for all your help. I really mean that, brother.”
Tommy wouldn’t be spending any more time in Pisek, though. Orders had just arrived for him to return to his squadron immediately. “I’m going to need a lift over to the airstrip,” he told Sean. “I’ve got to catch a courier flight back to Frankfurt at 1500.”
Trying to mask his disappointment with snark, Sean asked, “Leaving so soon? Just when this party’s really getting started?”
It only took Tommy a couple of minutes to gather his gear. As Sean walked him to the jeep that would take him to the airstrip, he said, “One thing’s for damn sure, Half…if we start slugging it out with the Reds for real this time, at least it’ll get Patton out of that stupid book-writing assignment and back with us where he belongs. That fuckup today woulda never happened if he was here. You can bet your life on that.”
They watched as an engineer outfit rolled by: two bulldozers on flatbed trailers; three deuces full of grim-faced GIs; a platoon of Stuart tanks for security.
“You know where they’re going, don’t you?” he asked Tommy.
“I’ve got a pretty good idea. They’re going to dig a mass grave for those Krauts, right?”
“Yeah. What the hell else are we supposed to do with ’em?”
As the jeep began to pull away, Sean called out, “Hey, brother…you watch your ass, now, okay?”
“I will…and you’d better watch yours, too.”
Sean allowed himself a few quiet moments to watch Tommy’s jeep travel down the road until it was out of sight. Then he threw himself back into the administration of a battalion still regrouping in the aftermath of a deadly fight, one that had claimed the lives of Americans, Germans, and Russians alike.
Yet nobody was calling it war.
All across Berlin, there was great confusion as to what time Zhukov's twenty-four-hour ultimatum actually expired. It hadn’t been specified in the original Soviet communiqué, and Eisenhower thought it wise not to seek a clarification.
It would make us look indecisive, he thought. We need to show nothing but ironclad resolve.
USFET decided to treat the expiration time as twenty-four hours from the Russian time stamp on Zhukov’s communiqué; that would put the expiration at 0600 hours, Berlin time. That had passed thirty minutes ago, yet no Soviet tank had so much as revved her engine, let alone moved. The troops manning those tanks seemed just as jittery as the outnumbered and outgunned GIs facing them.
Those GIs were beginning to wonder if this was all a big Russian bluff…or if their commanding generals didn’t know how to tell time.
The Soviet units policing the highway to Berlin stood prepared to reach new heights in obstructing Allied traffic to the city. But to their surprise, traffic into the city had dwindled to almost nothing since the ultimatum was issued. Traffic out of the city had increased, creating the feeling among the Russians that the Allied withdrawal from Berlin might have already begun.
The sun had risen now in the eastern sky on this perfectly clear morning. But there was something else rising from the opposite horizon: aircraft of the US Army Air Force—hundreds of them—were taking to the sky from airfields in Germany, France, and even Britain.
Tommy felt good to be back in the cockpit of Moon’s Menace. She’d been ferried down from Bremen when the rest of 301st Fighter Squadron repositioned back to Frankfurt. Last night, he’d been thrilled to see her sitting on the ramp as soon as he stepped off the plane from Czechoslovakia.
But the other girl he was desperate to see—Sylvie—was still nowhere to be found.
Waiting for takeoff in the long conga line snaking slowly down the Eschborn taxiway, he reviewed the squadron’s instructions once more. He wasn’t leading a flight this time; he was Colonel Pruitt’s wingman. Pruitt would lead the squadron as it took its place in Operation Muster, the grand demonstration of American airpower Washington had concocted to counter Zhukov’s Berlin ultimatum. Once airborne, the 301st, call sign Nascent, would escort a wing of B-24 bombers flying from the south of France. Together, they’d make up the second element in what would be a nearly one thousand aircraft procession across the skies of Central and Eastern Europe.
Planning for this aerial parade had gone on all day yesterday and into the night. The logistics of such an exercise—on such short notice—was more daunting than most of the combat operations Tommy could recall. The allocation of aviation fuel alone kept the G4 staff pulling their hair out. The aircraft already in Germany would consume almost every drop of fuel currently at their bases and depots. The squadrons flying from England would do the same. Those in France only filled their tanks by shortstopping railway tank cars full of gasoline on their way to Germany.
Once this mission was over, the G4 had no idea how long it would take to replenish the fuel reserves. The entire USAAF in Europe would be critically short of fuel indefinitely.
But that shortage would need to be kept secret.
Still twentieth in the line of aircraft queued for takeoff, Tommy had plenty of time to mull over the hurdles mission planners had to clear to make all this happen:
The fighter squadrons like us were the easiest to get ready. We were all fairly close to Berlin, anyway—the first waypoint in this show—and crewing the one-man cockpits wasn’t an issue. All we needed was to be fueled and our guns loaded. There’ll be some thirty fighter squadrons in the air—jugs, P-51s, P-38s, and even P-61s. That would be about six hundred fighters if every squadron was one hundred percent in service, which none are. Sixty-five percent is closer to the norm right now.
So it’ll be more like four hundred fighters in the air.
I got a kick out of the P-61 pilots when they were told they’d not only be flying this daylight mission, but they’d be its pathfinders. They weren’t thrilled. Those guys are creatures of the dark, since the P-61 Black Widow is a night fighter. It’s slow, cumbersome, and definitely no dogfighter, but it’s radar equipped and heavily armed. Showing up in Europe late last year like they did, they haven’t gotten to do very much, even though they were really eager to try. But the Luftwaffe was pretty beaten down by then, and the only real work the P-61s found was chasing Buzz Bombs and doing night ground attack. They did manage to knock down a few Kraut aircraft, though, while their own combat losses were pretty light.
So two squadrons of P-61s will be leading the way, and here’s why: we know that Russian interceptors like to do head-on attacks. With their radar, the P-61s will spot attackers miles out in front before the eye can see them. If those attackers do try to come at the formation head-on, there’s a pretty good chance the P-61s’ heavy firepower—four 20-mm cannons and four .50-caliber machine guns—will make them sorry they did. Plus they get to give the rest of us advanced warning so we can be in position to fight them off.
The heavy bombers were a lot harder to get ready. Most of the bomb wings are so hollowed out now that they’ll be flying with half crews. Some will only have two gunners and none will have a bombardier, because they’re not carrying bombs, anyway. This is all for show, remember?
Pilots for the bombers posed an even bigger problem. They were so short on them that they farmed out pilots from the transport squadrons to ride the co-pilot’s seat in the B-17s, B-24s, and B-26s. They won’t have to land the ships, just spell the aircraft commander every now and then when his arms get tired or he has to take a leak. With all those transport jockeys in the right seats, don’t expect to see too many C-47s in the air today.
Now for the stars of the show: the two B-29 squadrons that just showed up in England a few weeks ago. They’re the only bomber outfits whose manning tables are up to full strength. When we heard
they were coming to England, we thought they really got screwed, getting shipped to Europe after having to bomb Japan and all. But it turned out they were actually Stateside outfits that never even made it to the Pacific.
So welcome to the big time, tourists. You missed all the fun.
Those forty B-29s will be right behind the P-61s at the head of the parade. I hope we get a glimpse of them, at least. I’ve never seen one in the flesh. I hear they’re really something. And the fact that they can drop the A-bomb ought to scare the shit out of the Reds, right?
Then come the rest of us, some sixty squadrons of fighters, attack bombers, and heavy bombers, our unit formations stretched out in a column almost two hundred miles long. It’ll take well over an hour for the whole aluminum procession to pass over any one point on the ground.
Sounds impressive, right?
And Russians are easily impressed by shows of force.
So this should work, right?
Unless, of course, it turns into the biggest aerial battle of all time.
But the brass assure us that won’t happen.
Boy, I’d sure like to believe them.
Chapter Thirty
The Russian lieutenant ran frantically through his battery’s barracks, trying to rouse his anti-aircraft gunners. Almost to a man, though, they were drunk and dead to the world, having spent last night on the streets of Berlin’s Soviet sector, consuming prodigious amounts of vodka while menacing any local women they could find. The drinking continued back at their quarters far into the early morning hours. Most were still snoring in their bunks when the duty day began.
It wasn’t unlike so many other mornings when the bulk of this anti-aircraft battery’s personnel were too intoxicated to walk a straight line, let alone man their weapons. This drunkenness was not unique to the gunners; it was endemic to all Red Army units engaged in the occupation of Berlin. Boredom and alcohol were in too great a supply for it not to be.
This morning, there was a special urgency to the lieutenant’s wakeup call: a large flight of unidentified aircraft had been sighted passing over the boundary between the Allied and Soviet zones of occupation west of Berlin. What was worse, they were headed directly for the city, anticipated to arrive within a half hour. All units had been put on high alert.
Finding the bunk of his most senior sergeant, the lieutenant shook the man awake as he said, “If the men of this battery are not at their weapons within three minutes, you will be the first man I send to the penal battalion.”
That got the sergeant’s attention. There had been a time when service in the penal battalions was a guaranteed death sentence. Suicide missions and mine clearance made up the lion’s share of the battalions’ work. With the war over, though, the punishment the battalions could deliver fluctuated, becoming a matter of how brutal and sadistic their cadre could be.
If you were lucky, you’d serve your sentence doing nothing more dangerous than digging holes and hauling supplies like a pack mule. But if they decided you weren’t behaving as a proper penitent, they might just shoot you. Your death would be officially declared accidental or by natural causes.
Within the allotted three minutes, the sergeant managed to get roughly half of the gunners onto the battery’s eight guns—about thirty men, most half-dressed, all barely able to see straight—as the rest continued to trickle slowly from the barracks. Four minutes after that, the armada of aircraft came into their hazy, addled view, still far off but seeming to fill the entire width of the sky.
Peering through the range-finding scope, the lieutenant was confused. He’d never seen aircraft quite like these. The twin-engined craft in the lead looked vaguely like P-38s—twin-engined, twin-boomed machines with a pod fuselage—but seemed much larger. If they were, in fact, P-38s, then something was wrong with the scope; it was telling him the planes were far higher than his eyes perceived them to be.
He had no idea he was looking at P-61 Black Widows. He’d never heard of such an aircraft, let alone seen one. His mind was still cluttered with the specifications of German planes.
But it was the aircraft immediately trailing that leading rank that flummoxed him completely. These were huge four-engined machines, with long slender wings and a thin cylindrical fuselage, quite unlike the broad-chord wings and bulbous fuselages of the bombers the Americans and British usually flew.
He’d never heard of or seen a B-29 before, either.
Miles behind those strange aircraft came still more, too far away yet to render a guess at their type.
They come from the west, the lieutenant told himself. They must be hostile, like the American planes that frequently probe the sky over Soviet territory.
But never before in these numbers! There are so many of them! Thousands!
Deciding that his range finder must be in error, he called to his gunners, “Set altitude for six thousand feet!”
The aircraft were actually at 8,000 feet. He should’ve believed the range finder.
Their hands clumsy and uncoordinated, the inebriated gunners struggled to set the time fuzes on their rounds according to their lieutenant’s command. But the inscribed scales on those fuzes were too small for impaired eyes to see clearly. When the first rounds were rammed into those eight gun tubes, the settings for their burst height spanned from 200 to 6,000 feet.
The lieutenant let the lead ships—the escorting P-61s—pass through the battery’s target box. Once the next rank—the B-29s—entered the box, he gave the order: FIRE!
A gun chief who had his wits about him would check the fuze setting before a round was loaded. This morning, though, any wits the gun chiefs had were well-soaked in alcohol. The one whose fuze was set to 200 feet certainly hadn’t checked; the round from his gun exploded one-tenth of a second after it left the tube—the time it took for that round to travel 200 feet. Showering scorching, razor-sharp shards of metal at blinding speed down along the battery’s front, it killed four gunners outright and wounded seven more, including him and the lieutenant.
The telephone to air defense headquarters was ringing off the hook. When a battery sergeant finally answered it, he was told, “Do not engage the aircraft over the city unless ordered by this headquarters.”
The mission planners for Operation Muster had decided that 8,000 feet would be the best altitude for the formation’s main body: the bombers and their P-61 pathfinders. It was a tough sell to the pilots and crews, who preferred flying much higher. While aircraft at that altitude were high enough to prove a difficult target for smaller-caliber anti-aircraft weapons, they’d be in easy range of the heavier flak guns.
“It’ll be easy range only if those guns decide to fire, gentlemen,” a colonel doing the pre-mission briefing had explained. “We have strong reasons to believe they will not fire. The sheer expanse of the force across the sky, with the aircraft well spread out from each other, will make it futile for flak units to take on a force displaying no hostile intent.”
Taking the briefer aside, Colonel Pruitt had asked, “Isn’t that kind of wishful thinking, Sam? How the hell do you know whether a bomber has hostile intent or not until she unloads on you?”
“We won’t be unloading on anyone, Galen. It’s a show of force, that’s all. We’re just making a point.”
“And how the hell are the Reds supposed to know that, Sam?”
“Russians may be dimwitted creatures, Galen, but they have eyes like everyone else. They know when not to poke the bear.”
“Seems like those tanks of theirs are poking the bear pretty good on the streets of Berlin right now, Sam.”
“No, that’s different, because they don’t see us as the bear in that situation. When they look up and see the whole damn US Army Air Force passing in review, though, it’s going to be a different story.”
Now—hours after that conversation—as the aircrews of Operation Muster watched the volley of flak burst below the B-29s, it seemed to them that perhaps the Russians had no qualms about poking this bear, either.
But those first gray puffs of flak—well below them and posing no threat—was the extent of the firing by the Russian guns. Passing over Berlin and headed to Warsaw, Tommy offered a silent hope: May that be the only protest the Russians mount to this little parade of ours.
Once at altitude, the pilots of the 301st had begun to nurse their fuel carefully, leaning their mixture controls as far as the operating specs and cylinder head temperatures allowed. They’d need every drop of gas to complete the nearly one-thousand-mile round trip planned for Operation Muster. If it came to a fight with Soviet interceptors in the first two hours of the nearly seven-hour odyssey, their drop tanks would have to be jettisoned before they were empty. Once that precious fuel was lost, they’d have to turn back immediately or they’d run out of gas over Soviet-occupied territory.
The city of Warsaw was coming into view before them. The ships of the 301st had been in the air over three hours already. Their empty drop tanks were punched off.
As those tanks dropped away, fluttering to the ground like spent teardrops, Tommy breathed a sigh of relief: Well, that’s one hurdle we probably just cleared: fuel exhaustion.
But there were still almost four hours to go. Over Warsaw, the procession would perform a sweeping right turn to the southwest and head for Prague. Once at Prague, they’d turn north to overfly Berlin once more…
In case the Soviet headquarters there hadn’t gotten the message the first time.
Once past Berlin, the elements of the flight would disperse and return to their airfields.
Or, as Tommy speculated, land at the nearest Allied airfield in Germany with nothing but fumes in their tanks. You can bet that somebody will run dangerously low on fuel before this is all over.
They’d seen some Soviet aircraft of various types, a few paralleling their course as if shadowing them but most going in the opposite direction toward Berlin. They’d all given the American formation a very wide berth. There was no need for American fighters to chase them away.
This Fog of Peace (Moon Brothers WWII Adventure Series Book 4) Page 31
