Chapter 44
The President of the United States of America looked old and haggard, his eyes sunken in grey pits. J. William Fulbright, the Secretary of State did not look great either, although his was the fatigue of a man who had been constantly perambulating around the World for most of the last three weeks rather than the exhaustion of a sick man.
Jack Kennedy had the pallor of a man struck down by the latest strain of the influenza — people called it ‘flu’ but nobody believed it was anything other than some post-apocalypse plague — that was beginning to spread out of Boston. The sickness had not reached the greater Philadelphia area or New York but if previous outbreaks were anything to go by it would arrive soon. The ‘flu’ had been seeping down through Cape Cod at the time of the Hyannis Port summit with the British; not that anybody had warned the visitors. Such courtesies had long since ceased to be any part of the US’s relations with its ‘friends’.
Curtis LeMay noted the weakness of the President’s grip as the two men shook hands.
“I’m sorry to find you unwell, sir.”
“It is just a chill. That’s what they say, leastways,” the Commander-in-Chief retorted, quirking the famous smile for a moment, mostly from memory.
A chill in high summer…
Fulbright’s grip was iron-hard as always.
“I’m worried the British don’t seem to be taking our naval presence in the Persian Gulf very seriously,” Jack Kennedy said as the three men took their seats in the ‘meeting’ chalet close to the helicopter landing pad. The Secretary of State and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs were passing through, and this meeting had been arranged at literally the last minute at the President’s request. “I’m also worried that we might be sending out mixed messages.”
LeMay threw a thoughtful look at Fulbright.
Lately, American foreign policy had been about preaching to the converted. In the Middle East that meant to Israel and to the best Iraqi, Egyptian and Iranian exiles money could buy. The same policy was being assiduously pursued in Spain, and more tentatively, with the chaotic rightist and borderline fascistic regimes controlling much of Italy. As for the British; in Malta the US military was still behaving as if it was the old country’s best friend in Christendom, but everywhere else more like an estranged former party to a marriage heading for the rocks.
“We are sending out mixed messages, sir,” LeMay observed bluntly.
“The British must know that we can’t let the situation in the Gulf get out of hand,” the Secretary of State interjected. “They know that given the presence of Soviet-backed insurgencies in Turkey and the Balkans that we cannot allow Syria and Jordan to go the way of Iraq. As for the Arabian Peninsula… ”
Curtis LeMay shook his head and vented a disgusted snort.
“Dammit! I’m the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and you haven’t told me what our policy in the Middle East is,” he fulminated. “How the heck do you expect the Brits to know what it is?”
Jack Kennedy roused himself.
“It is our policy to put an end to the war in the Gulf, General.”
“With respect, sir,” the veteran airman pointed out, “that is the objective of our policy. Our policy to actually achieve that objective is a recipe for disaster. It has too many goddam moving parts and one false move by Bringle or any of the ships or aircraft of Carrier Division Seven and we hand the Soviets the Arabian oilfields… ”
“Yes, we’ve had this debate before, General LeMay,” the Commander-in-Chief reminded him testily. “If it becomes necessary the British forces in the Middle East will be confronted with overwhelming US air and sea power. In this connection, as previously discussed the 319th Bomb Wing should be placed on alert for operations in Iraq and the Northern Persian Gulf. KC-135 tankers should be pre-positioned so as to facilitate B-52 operations in the regions immediately.”
LeMay was silent for several seconds.
Now the Commander-in-Chief was telling him how he should not his job!
Privately, he regarded deploying the B-52s of the 319th Bomb Wing based at Grand Forks, North Dakota, on a mission half-way around the World to operate from makeshift Soviet bases in southern Russia as a paper, war games exercise. He had instructed the Staff to undertake the preparatory work but realistically, right now he needed the eighteen aircraft of the 93rd and 20th Bomb Squadrons of the 319th to spell the aircraft of the 5136th and 100th Bomb Groups committed to Operation Rolling Thunder in the next few days. Sending those aircraft to the other side of the World was… insane.
He had warned the President that he could have Operation Rolling Thunder in the Midwest or he could have the cockamamie ‘Russian operation’ dreamed up by the idiots at the State Department. He did not have enough aircraft to maintain a viable first strike capability, maintain the momentum of Operation Rolling Thunder and to deploy a separate task force to distant foreign bases as yet unsurveyed by his people.
It was one thing for the President’s National Security Advisor, McGeorge Bundy to speculate that the missiles of the Minutemen Squadrons and the Polaris fleet could ‘temporarily fill any capability gap’ in the US’s nuclear defenses, but LeMay had no intention of deploying his B-52s to Soviet territory. Quite apart from the inherent impracticality of such a deployment without weeks and months of planning and the pre-positioning of personnel, spares, munitions and hundreds — more likely thousands — of tons of the right quality and specification Avgas ahead of the arrival of the bombers; he did not trust the Russians not to shoot down or impound his aircraft. Moreover, sending the 319th Bomb Group and a squadron of KC-135 tankers — some of which would have to be based in Russia — violated his personal cardinal rule of command; never give a man an order you know that he might disobey.
LeMay had had order his boys to lay waste Wisconsin, to wage war on fellow Americans. Now his President wanted him to order the same men to — if things went wrong — wage war on the British forces in the Middle East.
“The Soviets don’t believe we have the balls to pull the trigger if the British refuse to peacefully disengage in the Gulf,” Fulbright said grimly. “The Russians can’t actually see the Kitty Hawk cruising a hundred miles out to sea. A dozen B-52s flying over the battlefield will, if necessary, send an unambiguous message to all parties in the region.”
Curtis LeMay was nothing if not a practical man.
“What happens if the British call our bluff?”
“They won’t.”
“They might,” LeMay grunted. “Then what? You want me to order my boys to bomb them. The Brits? Jeez, I fought a goddam war side by side with those people not so long ago! Remember?”
Jack Kennedy stirred in his chair.
“General, if it comes to it I will personally issue the attack order. Your conscience will be clear.”
“What about Admiral Bringle’s conscience, sir?”
“Admiral Bringle is the man on the spot. I will not second guess the man on the spot. Besides, he already has his orders.”