“How are we going to coordinate this?” Perdue decided that just running his guns past an entire kraut battalion was too much of an opportunity to pass up.
“Captain says just watch, Sir. And listen out on this frequency. No need to coordinate in advance. You just stay put here and wait for the bombing to start. Then just come through as fast as you can.”
“Interesting document from Lucy, Loki.” Branwen put the file on Loki’s desk. “And a… messenger… from Sweden is waiting to talk to you.”
It was a bit hard to decide what to call the visitors from Sweden. Messenger was a good approximation but messengers didn’t have the powers to negotiate things or give opinions. Ambassadors would have been a good option, only sovereign countries didn’t send ambassadors to banks. Even to banks that were a lot older than most countries.
“What’s the document?”
“Very interesting. It’s a description of German plans to deal with damage from bombing attacks. Everybody was expecting to get bombed right at the start of the war, you know that, but it never really happened. There was Rotterdam of course, and a few raids on England, but mostly no bombing until the B-29 raids. And they’ve more or less stopped now. I guess H.G. Wells must be really upset. He was so proud of
“So, what’s the gist of it?”
“Basically, if heavy bombing of their infrastructure starts, the Germans plan to disperse and decentralize their facilities. They will split the existing large factories into many small ones; perhaps as many as forty or fifty. No manufacturing process other than final assembly of aircraft is to be permitted within one and one-fifth miles of airfields. They’ll organize their plants so that the primary plants are dispersed to at least two different places. That way a firm with four plants today will have eight or more different sources of supply. The idea is that if one or two of these places was destroyed, it should still be possible to maintain approximately the same level of production by using salvaged parts from bombed plants.
“The problem is that Speer and his teams believe that dispersal, in their experience, is costly and inefficient. A plant which is subdivided into many sub-units, feeder plants and small shops cannot possibly manufacture as economically as can one large integrated unit. They believe that dispersing the production facilities will reduce production by about 20 to 30 percent. This is due to the need for large control system with many non-productive workers, the duplication of non-productive departments, such as fire prevention, first aid, social and recreational activities, increases in supervisory personnel and the impossibility of duplicating highly specialized single-purpose machinery and equipment.”
“Germany is just about hanging on now. Production equals losses, more or less. Except for their fleet of course; no way that’s being rebuilt.”
Branwen nodded. “Their damage control provisions are interesting as well. Their plan is to form flying squads, in convoys of cars who will go to the site of a bombed installation and organize the work of bringing it back up. The plan demands ‘energetic men’ be recruited, ones with a wide spread of expertise and who will be prepared to work as long as it takes. Their job is to immediately round up military personnel, available civilian labor and volunteer forces to help clean up, aid in casualty rescue, etc, and analyzed the damage.
“The intention is to produce a plan that lists the required machine tool replacements necessary building repair materials and man-power, emergency tarpaulins. Speer’s ministry has completed an inventory of all machine tools in the country with the plants they are located in and the priority assigned to those sites. Using that index, the damage control team can pick up suitable machine tools available in the immediate area and in plants of lower priority than the assigned one. This allows the higher-priority plant to be put back into production quickly. The stated target for the damage control teams is to have the plant up and running in 48 hours or less.”
“So it doesn’t matter what the importance of the target plant is then. It doesn’t even matter of we do manage to identify the key industrial plants. The damage will be repaired by stripping out less important ones. The Americans would have to bomb the same plants over and over again until there are no reserves of machine tools left. Well, Douhet came up with a nice theory but Speer and his cronies have just buried it. The Seer needs to see this; put it in with the next package out to Washington. When are Henry, Achillea and Iggy due over here next?”
“About five or six days.”
“They need to be here sooner than that. Ask them to come right over now. Next, send in our Swedish friend please.”
The door closed quietly behind Branwen. A moment later she opened it for a middle-aged man in a dark suit. “Mister Loki. I am afraid these are not happy times.”
“No Mister Erlander, these are not indeed. Why did those damned fool Finns have to go and do it?”
“You know the Finns Loki, obstinate, self-centered, conceited to a fault. Convinced they have the wisdom of all the world and unable to recognize they are a small part in a very large machine. It appears that the Germans convinced them that this offensive couldn’t fail and it was the way to Finnish greatness. They still believe that. I have been in quiet contact with Risto Heikki Ryti. He is not prepared to listen to reason. He told my representatives that Germany would win the war in the end. Even if it could not win, it would hold on long enough for America and Russia to give up from exhaustion. So Finland had nothing to fear from the allies but much to fear from the Germans. And I tell you this, he may well be right. How much longer will Russia lose its young men in a war that never ends? And how many more of its young men will America lose to keep this war running?”
Loki leaned back in his seat, luxuriating in the soft leather. Once, so long ago, such a chair would have been a throne for a king. “You have heard what has happened to the Germany Navy of course?”
“Of course. But the Navy is hardly the most important part of the German forces.”
“No, but it was a part of them. Now it is gone and what is left is to be scrapped, broken up. The allies own the seas of the world now.”
“The survivors are to be scrapped. I did not know this?”
“They are. Hitler was apparently not pleased. I feel that this whole mad scheme may well have been his. Perhaps, perhaps not. But the fleet is gone. Doenitz has disappeared; probably dead by now.”
“That does not change the fact that this war is being fought on land. America may rule the seas now, but how does a shark fight a wolf?”
“Carefully, I would think. The Finns need to understand this and you must tell them it. They have harmed themselves greatly by taking part in this offensive. They will be punished severely for breaking the peace on their front line. I have heard from my contacts in Russia that they will lose the Aland Islands at least and some of their southern territories. Much of their southern territories. And not a small amount in the north”
“If the allies win.”
“Yes, if the allies win, Tage. If they win. If they do not, then we will all have much more important things than Finland to worry about.”
The Super-Marauders were spread out. Their formation was designed to give the best possible bomb pattern on the ground 27,000 feet beneath them. Normally, they were closed up to give a tight pattern that would devastate the target beneath them. Not this time. That was only one strange thing about this mission, the way the aircraft had spread out to disperse the bombs over a wide area. It was almost as if the brass didn’t really want this target destroyed. If that was so, why had they sent the 424th to bomb it? At short notice too; today’s mission had been to hit another railway junction in the German rear areas. It was a much more normal target for the mediums than one almost on the front line like this. Normally, a target this close in would be assigned to the fighter- bombers.
Around them, the fighter escort of F-80As weaved a defensive fence around the bombers. Originally the B-27 had been designed as a high-altitude version of the older B-26 Marauder that would be harder to intercept. Experience had quickly put an end to that idea. It wasn’t that the fighters could easily reach them; they couldn’t. The FW-190s were running out of steam way below them and the Me-109s were operating at their margins. At first, most of the German fighters had been loaded with additional guns to deal with the B-29 raids. Taking off the extra
