What did it matter that agents like Silvermaster, Perlo, Glazer and Fitzgerald were uncovered. By that time the war would be lost for the capitalists, and they would be expendable. Even the agents throughout the OSS like Neuann, Wheeler, Graze, Halperin and agent “Koch” could be replaced at will it seemed. Although Koch would be hard to replace. It would be hard to replace a man like Duncan Lee who is the Confidential Assistant to the so called “Wild Bill” Donovan head of the OSS.
The list went on and on. Many parts of the Capitalist scientific and weapons production programs were especially full of his agents. Everything from one of his agents smuggling out a machine gun prototype to the plans for the atomic bomb fell into his hands. Most of the major weapons of the Americans and British had been compromised. He had even engineered the defection of one of the leading designers of the newest Amerikosi jet engine. He knew as much or more about each than did Truman. Of particular note was the fact that he knew about the atomic bomb a full year before Truman did. It was pretty shocking yet true. Sometimes history is stranger than fiction.
And then of course, there was George Koval or agent Delmar, the man who stopped the production of the capitalist atomic bomb. The last message they had was that he was about to cross over the border to Canada, then nothing. Maybe the Mounted Police ran him over with their horses, somehow this was quite an amusing thought. The world’s greatest assassin, run over by a bunch of red coated cowboys. The man who used the world’s only supply of polonium to kill and cripple over a thousand of the West’s leading scientists.
The fact that thousands of their family members suffered also was of no concern. Delmar had undoubtedly saved hundreds of thousands of his countrymen’s lives. Imagine letting loose the world’s most deadly substance in a crowded room of atomic scientists and engineers not once, but twice by using small explosive devices in the air circulation system. George Koval was indeed a hero of the Soviet Union and would someday receive the recognition he deserved. George Koval the killer of the atomic bomb, at least for now.
Thanks to his spies and agents the Soviet Union was dictating the direction of the war. They were keeping the capitalists wondering where the next blow would fall. Keeping them back on their heels and reacting. They had to keep innovating. They had to keep pressing the advantages they had at the moment. They had to keep the NATO forces on the defensive. His life and the survival of the Soviet Union depended upon it. As long as that strange little Sergo person kept creating his wonders and that Georgie kept producing them, they would prevail.
He wondered how those Amerikosi movie starlets will react when they are alone in a room with Lavrentiy Beria. Alone with a man who had killed and raped hundreds. Alone with a man who lived to rape and terrorize young women. Dragged from their pampered lives and alone with a man who did not see them as human, just an object to be used and thrown away. Yes it would be most amusing.[lxvii]
Barr and Sarant
The rather unassuming looking freighter had docked in Vladivostok barely a week before the war started. Joel Barr was midway through a very long journey. Someone else would see to the cargo from here. His job was over for now. The busy harbor took no notice of the ship as it was pushed into the slip. They would take no notice when it started to unload its cargo and no one would care when it was put on a train and left the city going West.
No one would care until a few months later when its cargo started to show up in Soviet factories, design bureaus and laboratories. The Western nations would not become aware of what happened until months into World War Three. But let’s start from the beginning.
Joel Barr was born in New York City to immigrant parents of Ukrainian-Jewish origin. He attended college in New York and was recruited by Julius Rosenberg to spy for the Soviet Union and International Communist movement. He worked along with Rosenberg at the United States Army Signal Corps laboratories at Ft. Monmouth, NJ during the war against the Nazis.
Barr was fired from his job at the Signal Corps for political activity in 1942, but had no trouble immediately getting a job at Western Electric. The Soviets would collect about 500 secret technical documents a month from Barr and his new friend Alfred Sarant between 1943 and 1945, and more from Rosenberg, including one of the more famous deliveries of a working proximity fuse.
You read that correctly he, along with his partner Alfred Sarant, they delivered a full working production version of the top secret proximity or VT fuse to the Soviet Union and Sergo Peskova in 1944. In addition Barr worked on the computerized gun sight, the SCR-520 and SCR-720 radar used in the P-61 Black Widow USAAF night fighter, a state of the art weapons system used briefly at the end of World War Two. In additions the two delivered a 12,000 page blue print of the YP-80 jet fighter, M-9 predictor along with several other radar systems over the period of a few years.
Near the end of the last war Barr and Sarant founded Sarant Laboratories in Seattle, WA and quietly started to buy quantities of the products that the booming electronics industry of the newly domesticated US economy was producing at a tremendous rate. The war was over and everyone wanted to make money selling America’s products. It was gold rush times once again with the crystal diodes, resistors, capacitors, vacuum tubes and relays pouring out of the US factories and shipped to whom ever paid the most for them. They would sell to anybody, because that is what Americans do. Even to a former Japanese enemy named Sony.
In this case it was to two former employees from some of the most secretive laboratories our nation had ever seen. After all what would be the harm of selling to two American scientists who just may invent some great new money making device. Two Americans who spent World War Two producing some of our greatest weapons we used against the Nazi monsters. Two Americans who between them made significant contributions to many of our latest sonar and radar systems NATO now possessed. These guys could be the new Boeing or even modern Edisons. Besides they weren’t buying great quantities of anything from one supplier and who was keeping track anyway. The war was over and it was time to make money, lots and lots of money.
The aforementioned freighter was actually the last of 10 with this one being filled with the latest and best. Millions of pieces of the US electronics industries newest creations were quietly packed up into little boxes that eventually were combined into bigger boxes that were used to fill these eleven unassuming ships bound for different ports that were easily accessible to the Soviet train and transportation system. Little by little all these parts made their way to the factories spread out in the Urals and little by little they were copied and many of the originals used in the Soviets newest generation of jets, tanks. shells, radar, radio and sonar sets.
Barr and Sarant were also on that last ship to leave American shores. Disguised as common seamen they would be greeted in secret as heroes of the Soviet Union and be placed in a design bureau of their own. First they would use the American made electronics to improve on existing Soviet weapons and then they actually would start producing new and improved versions of those same electronics.[lxviii]
By the spring of 1947 the combination of Sergo, George, Barr, Sarant, Perl, Ilyushin, Mikoyan, Gurevich and Lavochkin would rival any other weapons design structure the world has ever seen. Complete with military hardware on the drawing boards and in development that would be able to go toe to toe with any equally destructive inventions that the West could produce. Time was running out and the technology gap enjoyed by the West was closing at an enormous rate. Combined with the fact that Perl, Barr, Sarant and Sergo knew exactly what weapons the West was working on itself and how to defeat each project, this was to be a world altering 6 months if left to its own devices. After all America’s newest jet the P-80 Shooting Star was designed and produced in 143 days and that is less than 6 months by my calculations.
No one but Beria and Sergo knew how devastating the defections of Perl, Barr and Sarant were. Between them they had not only worked on but were instrumental in most of the West’s most secret initiatives. The secret mili
tary hardware of unimaginable capabilities not only were passed on to Beria and Sergo but were also developed by these three traitors, or patriots which ever you prefer. Combined with the Cambridge Five, The Rosenbergs, The Ware Group, The Perlo Group, The Redhead Group just to name a few there was nothing the Soviets did not know about America’s and Britain’s greatest secrets when it came to military hardware.
In the West thousands of the best minds were concentrating on consumer products and cleaner, whiter laundry. In the East it was for world domination by military means.[lxix]
THE King Rat
Major Sidney Bedford was very uncomfortable, both physically and emotionally. Here he was stuck in a Court Martial for a man who appeared to be a traitor. Yet one couldn't be sure. Major Cecil Boon was being put on trial for collaboration. John Harvey and Michael Tugby were already let off because of the severe circumstances of the conditions in which they were held. The conditions were some of the worst ever endured in the 20th century. Because of the charges, after the war, they had endured nearly a year of ostracism and suffered the total loss of the joy of homecoming. All three were early survivors of the Japanese conquest of Hong Kong. All three were held for the duration of the war as POWs. All three stood trial.
Boon was considered the worst of the lot. He had 11 serious charges against him.
1. On or about Aug. 21, 1943 he informed on his fellow prisoners who were planning an escape attempt.
2. On or about Sept. 1st, 1943 he assisted in a search that found wireless components being used by fellow prisoners.
3. On or about Sept. 12th, 1943 he informed on Hubert George Carkeet.
4. On or about Oct. 20th, 1943 he informed on Maurice Richard Jones.
5. On or about Dec. 14th, 1943 he informed on William Joseph Buckley.
6. On or about Oct. 18th, 1944 he wrote a letter to the USAAF, who had just bombed Hong Kong, knowing that the letter would be used for propaganda purposes.
7. In May, 1944 he informed on Dutch Naval Petty Officer Waarenberg.
8. Between Aug. 23rd, 1943 and Aug. 17th, 1945 he assisted the enemy in the interrogation of Allied prisoners of war regarding the organization and equipment of the Royal Signals and Royal artillery.
9. Between Aug. 23rd, 1943 and Aug. 17th, 1945 he designed and implemented a system for spying on Allied prisoners of war.
10. Between Aug. 23rd, 1943 and Aug. 17th, 1945 he assisted the enemy in preventing prisoners of war from communicating, receiving medical and other supplies, and assisted with the selecting of medically un-fit prisoners for work duty.
Witness after witness for the prosecution presented damning testimony. Some even told tales not in the official charges, charges of assisting the enemy in searches, bribing the commandant with Red Cross packages, preventing parcels from being given to the men and informing on men who were writing letters home. 44 witnesses testified for the prosecution. One of the most interesting pieces of evidence was Boon’s own diary written in Russian admitting to some of the incidents.
The case boiled down to three questions…
1. What constituted “aiding the enemy”?
2. The meaning of the word “voluntarily’.
3. Intent to commit the crimes.
The Defense argued that many of the alleged offenses were by omission and not ones of commission, such as not asking for the suspension of parade on days of harsh weather. Boon told others to ask the commandant rather than asking himself. Another example would be looking the other way as the “Fat Pig” Col. Takanuka took supplies from the prisoner’s stores and Red Cross packages. “An error of omission, not of commission”, as described by the Defense.
The prosecution made an impassioned argument that Boon had aided the enemy, that he had hostile intent, and that throughout the period he had done it voluntarily for personal gain at the expense of his fellow prisoners. It was argued that he was a Regular Soldier in the Army. That he was brought up and trained to be a soldier and that the raising of a bamboo stick should not make him forget his duty and quake for his life.
“Yes, he is a coward and he let his cowardice aid the enemy.” That statement from the prosecutor rang through the court room.
Major Boon was found guilty of 6 counts and directed to serve 20 years of hard labor. Major Bedford might have sided with the defense in other circumstances. If they were not at war and the public wanted to heal and not dwell on the past, forgive and forget as it were. The fact that they were once again at war and this time with the Soviets, and that Boon had written his diary in Russian, convinced the panel that Boon had to be punished. And punished, he was.[lxx]
Chapter Fourteen:
It Begins
Soviet version of the German Seehund midget submarine
***
Invincibility lies in the defense; the possibility of victory, in the attack.
Sun Tzu
***
Battle of the Beacons Prelude
Seehunds 231 and 124 were on station and about to deploy the beacon. The floating radio transmitter would help guide the series of 1000 plane raids the VVS was about to unleash on the British Isles. A number of other beacons were scheduled to transmit as well today. Something was up and the skipper has become very…well anxious. He was checking things three times and even lubricating things that did not need it. But that was his way and his way had kept them alive through some terrifying times, from storms to depth charge attacks. We still were not sure about that last attack. How had they found us when all the other times we had just chuckled as we slid past underneath them? This last time was different they seemed to have picked something up, possibly the 4 extra packages we were carrying that contained the radio beacons.
It appeared that no physical damage had occurred but one never knew. They had endured a number of unnerving attacks. This time it was their turn. These beacons were not only used to guide the planes but also to attract their mortal enemy the Royal Navy destroyers, sub chasers and frigates that made their life a living hell. There was nothing that could be done about the flying hit men in the sky. That’s what the beacons where for. To guide our killer angels of death who would wipe the skies clean of our nemesis the submarine hunter aircraft. These little beacons out in the ocean will attract a hell of a lot of attention from both sides. They will be defended by our planes and attacked by the RAF. If they do not send enough attackers they will be overwhelmed. If they send many then they will be shot down by many more of ours.
Just like a sunken ship attracts all sorts of predators to feed on the various kinds of new life trying to find a place to reproduce and feed on its newly bare bones. These little beacons will attract many machines bent on killing each other. Machines full of men bent on each other’s destruction. This will be a major battle on the open ocean waged between our ships and planes and their ships and planes. Ours will be under and over the ocean. Thiers will be under, over and on the ocean. We will have the element of surprise and they will have the experience in this kind of warfare.
Our little Pe2s will be weighted down with extra fuel and our Seehunds and XXI submarines will be waiting in stealth mode, waiting for anyone to approach this harbinger of death. These small objects were much like the Sirens of Greek Mythology. They were calling in their prey with an irresistible cry, a pulsing signal that will possibly be irresistible to the Royal Navy. The object of this battle was not much larger than a 50 gallon drum and was mostly submerged. Very little was above the water…very little for such an expected reaction. The larger submarines would be rescuing our downed pilots and capturing or killing theirs. Protected by an air umbrella that would in turn be protecting their comrades. Protecting them until they were rescued by Soviet torpedo boats and the 16 XXI submarines lurking in the area. This was a perfect use for the possibly out dated Pe2s. There was nothing outdated by the bombs they carried. Easily large enough to sink a destroyer, frigate or sub chaser. The torpedoes carried by the IL 4s and submarines were for something larger if it dared to show up.
The Royal Navies aircraft that were expected to show up were not as advanced as the ones on land. The Brits could not spend the money or time to rebuild both land and sea planes to fighting trim and so the naval aircraft had been the last to be optimized. Their best models were not plentiful. Our fighters would be the best and most experienced. These battles in the ocean were to be the opening act and meant as a lesson. If the Royal Navy decided to leave the beacons along then they would continue to do their job switching frequencies to avoid being blocked by the British. If the beacons stood then the other attacks would begin. If they were attacked then the attackers would be the hunted. All the mighty preparations on land by the RAF would not assist their flyers over the ocean.
The Soviet planners believe that the Royal Navy will expect the beacons to be unguarded. For the next 6 hours they will be the most guarded objects that have ever floated in the Celtic and North Sea. Is the thousand plane raid using the beacons for directions of targets over the land or as a ruse to draw in the Royal Navy and its ships and planes? The answer depends on the reaction of the British. Force will be met with overwhelming force or the beacons will stay floating alone sending out their signal. Signals that the VVS will happily use to guide them to their targets on land.
Every Day
For the last week, thousands of Soviet bombers and fighters took off from the fields in Western Europe and crossed the English Channel and North Sea. The initial routes were decidedly predictable with the raids from the Brest area heading NNE towards Plymouth and then before crossing the channel veering away from British soil. The raids coming from Denmark started out almost due West and took divergent routes from there. There were two main routes feigned from Amsterdam and Dunkirk with one initially headed due west and the one from Dunkirk, which headed northwest. All had turned back before contact with the RAF and crossing over into British airspace.
World War Three 1946 Series Boxed Set: Stalin Strikes First Page 65
