Becker nodded. “Very well Colonel. What do you want me to do?”
“Two Free Royal Navy minelayers,
“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
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
“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.”
“The General will see you now Sir.” The airman in the outer office put an accent of almost supernatural 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.”
“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
“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.
