The Air Force and the Navy’s problems palled into insignificance in comparison with the travails of the Army and the Marine Corps. First the Battle of Washington had sucked painfully scarce resources into the Maryland-Virginia sector and held them there; then the South had started burning, and now the Chicago Front had literally, blown up in First Army’s face. Just making a start to repairing the ‘peace dividend’ damage to the US Army had been a nightmare. Following the Battle of Washington the National Guard had had to be stood down in several states, and in others — most notably the three West Coast states of California, Oregon and Washington — state governors had refused to permit their formations to be reintegrated, or employed out of state by the Federal Government. In many parts of the country servicemen who had been summarily dumped back into civilian life during 1963 had declined the invitation to rejoin old units, many in rallies organized by veterans so disgusted by the way they had been treated that they publicly burned their reenlistment papers. Thousands of men and women who had previously had unblemished, distinguished service records had simply decided that their families, communities and their native states needed them more than a government which had so recently, betrayed them. And besides, many honestly felt that the post-Cuban Missiles War United States was no longer the same country to which they had previously sworn allegiance.
Ten weeks ago when the Soviets had invaded Iran — from the outset it was obvious that this was only a prelude to a campaign to seize the Kurdish oilfields, the British holdings on Abadan Island and to threaten the Arabian Peninsula the Chiefs of Staff had activated contingency plans — Operation Mobile Bay — from the late 1950s to deploy a Marine Expeditionary Force and to transfer significant air assets to Saudi Arabia to ‘backstop’ the British and to safeguard Arabian territorial integrity.
Inevitably, given the weakened state of the US military machine implementing Operation Mobile Bay had meant denuding the North American ‘continental reserve’ of its best units, and making preparations to redeploy vessels from Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf via the Cape of Good Hope, a voyage of over twelve thousand miles.
Since there was no prospect of transferring ships of the Sixth Fleet from the Central Mediterranean, the Chiefs of Staff had regarded the President’s order to send Carrier Division Seven to the Indian Ocean as a substitute ‘phase one’ of that 1950s ‘global response’ to Soviet aggression in the Middle East. However, it had never been envisaged that the Kitty Hawk and her battle group would operate in ‘glorious isolation’.
What the President now wanted to do was — overnight and without any reasonable planning window — implement selective elements of the air and naval plan of Operation Mobile Bay.
Which was insane!
The thinking behind Operation Mobile Bay had evolved after the Suez Crisis of late 1956. It was specifically designed to halt the Soviets in Iraq if and when the Kremlin decided to attempt to annex Iran and or Iraq, and to deny the Red Navy a base with access to the Indian Ocean. In its original, pristine form the plan had called for the bottling up of the Red Navy in its ports, the employment of three carrier battle groups, the transfer of up to six hundred aircraft and over a hundred thousand troops to the Middle East, and assumed the active support of major British and Turkish ground, sea and air forces to support US operations.
What Curtis LeMay actually had ‘in play’ was one carrier division and theoretically, several B-52 wings based thousands of miles away in North America. There was no such thing as Turkey any more, and the only remotely friendly troops on the ground were British and Australasian; whom the Administration regarded as being part of the problem not the solution.
Operation Mobile Bay had started out being about the projection of crushing American military might anywhere in the World where US interests were threatened by Soviet aggression.
Operation Mobile Bay — lacking two-thirds of its naval strength, and without any kind of presence on the ground — was now entirely dependent upon Carrier Division Seven somehow interposing itself between the warring parties half-way around the World from Philadelphia.
Nobody at Camp David had actually been able to satisfactorily describe to Curtis LeMay what that looked like in practice.
Heck, if the CO of Carrier Division Seven made a bad move everybody would end up at war with everybody else!
LeMay was still trying to get his head around the Commander-in-Chief’s injunction to prep a Bombardment Wing for operations in the Middle East flung out of Soviet air bases!
Who in God’s name was the man planning to bomb?
The conference room in the blockhouse between the Naval Air Station and the sprawling dockyards and storehouses was crowded with aides from the entourages that accompanied each of the Chiefs wherever they went. Silence fell as LeMay marched in and clunked his attaché case on the table.
LeMay shook hands with each of his fellow Chiefs.
“The Chiefs and I need the room!” He announced gruffly, with the grim purpose he had demonstrated dispatching his fleets of B-29s to fire bomb the ancient cities of Japan in 1945.
Le May pulled a small batch of envelopes out of his case and pushed them towards his fellow Chiefs.
“I didn’t believe what I was hearing this morning, gentlemen. I didn’t think you’d believe it either so I requested the President to put it in writing. You’ve each got a copy. YOUR EYES ONLY until the President says otherwise.”
A highly polished oval table had been positioned in the middle of the floor for the five members of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, and rows of chairs arranged for the members of the supporting cast.
“I’ll give you all a few minutes to read the Commander-in-Chief’s directive. Then we’ll talk.”
LeMay settled into his chair, began to fulminate as he tried to fathom the inscrutable faces of his colleagues.
Admiral David Lamar McDonald, the tall, fair-haired, fifty-seven year old, was the straight-dealing Georgian-born Chief of Naval Operations. He was a naval aviator who had commanded the USS Coral Sea, later Sixth Fleet, and been deputy CNO responsible for implementing the Navy’s contribution to the ‘peace dividend’ before his elevation to his present post.
Fifty-nine year old David Monroe Shoup, the bespectacled stern-faced Commandant of the Marine Corps and Military Governor of the District of Columbia; was Marine Corps legend. The hero of Tarawa had led the defense of the Pentagon last December and subsequently been invited to be a permanent member of the Chiefs of Staff Committee by the President.
General George Henry Decker, the re-called Chief of Staff of the US Army’s cool, unruffled demeanor gave no clue to the fact he had only flown in from Illinois that morning where he had been personally overseeing ‘fire fighting operations’. LeMay had half-suspected the old soldier had taken direct personal charge because he was worried that without the strongest possible leadership parts of the Chicago Front might collapse.