Of course, with the bombload Texan Lady carried, it shouldn't matter too much. Four Mark III nuclear devices, all now armed and ready to drop. They'd been salvage-fuzed so they would go off at 2,000 feet no matter what happened. That way if Texan Lady was shot down, her devices would still damage somebody or something. More importantly, there would be none of her secrets left for an enemy to figure out. Dedmon shook his head. Four nuclear devices, each equivalent to around 35,000 tons of TNT. He couldn't imagine what that sort of explosion would look like. And Berlin was going to get twelve of them.
Most cities in German would get one or two each, but Berlin and Munich had been singled out for special treatment. General LeMay had decided to virtually empty the US nuclear arsenal in this one raid, well over two hundred devices were going to be dropped. Three years worth of production. Mostly Mark Threes but some bombers carried the older Model 1561s and the Mark Ones. That amused Dedmon, he knew the Germans had given up on nuclear weapons development in 1943, ruling out building atomic bombs as technically impossible. Yet, the good old US of A had found not one way but two to make the “impossible” device. And there were rumors of a third, something so powerful that it made the existing designs obsolete. Something called Super. Something that produced weapons equivalent to millions of tons of explosive, not thousands. What was it that strange and slightly sinister targeteer (Dedmon reflected that all the targeteers he'd met at the pre-flight briefing had been strange and slightly sinister) had called the yields of their devices? Kilotons, that was it, Dedmon supposed that if the rumors about Super were true, that made their yields measured in Megatons. A city would need just one of those, just one.
One of them would do for the B-36 as well, even dropping the existing weapons was a risky business. They'd be making their run flat out with their jets and piston engines firewalled. Even then, they'd be taking a rough ride from the blast. Their tails were especially vulnerable, the combination of size and stresses made tail failure a constant risk. SAC would need something better than the B-36 if Super turned out to be real. Still, the B-36 was it for now and, if the truth was told, Dedmon loved his big bird deeply. There was something about B-36s that won the hearts of those who worked with them and Dedmon knew that Texan Lady was just that little bit of a cut above the rest. Nobody else had ever flown her and, if he had anything to do with it, nobody else would.
He knew the RB-36 crews felt the same. Their birds flew higher and faster than the bombers, they were approaching the borders of Germany now and were running at 55,000 feet. Unlike the bomber crews, the RB-36 crew, all 22 of them, would be in pressure suits against the possibility that damage would puncture the pressurized areas in the fuselage and bomb-bay capsule. They were flying alone, without even the morale support of wingmates. Dedmon wondered if the rumors that at least one RB-36 had made it to the stupendous altitude of 60,000 feet were true. That would almost be like flying in space.
“Sir, Dirk here. Our EW sensors are picking up search radar emissions. Type identified as Mammut. Operating in the 2.5 meter band. The signals are too diffuse to get much of a bearing but I think we're running into the outer edge of the German air search radar net. Mammut is listed as having a range of about 200 miles against targets flying over 26,000 feet, but against us? Up here? We're in new territory. The Crows flying up ahead are reporting both Mammut and Wasserman sir, the latter operating in 1.2, 1.9 and 2.4 meter bands. No sign of the Jagdschlosz height-finders yet, either on our sensors or from the Crows. I guess they are in for one hell of a shock when they do get a solid paint with those. Do you want me to take countermeasures yet sir or shall we keep relying on our formation and engine settings?”
Dedmon thought for a moment, they were still a long way from their target. “Hold off on the countermeasures for a while Dirk, we'll keep as many tricks up our sleeves as long as we can.”
Office of Sir Martyn Sharpe, British Viceroy to India, New Delhi
Ghandi's death had been a Godsend reflected Sir Martyn. He was a kindly man who wished harm on nobody but he recognized good fortune when he saw it. The news of Mahatma Ghandi's tragic death in a traffic accident had spread around India like wildfire. Anti-British agitators had tried to claim that he'd been assassinated by British agents but they'd only made themselves look foolish. There were too many witnesses, too many supporters, too many independent observers who'd seen the Japanese Embassy limousine swerving down the street at a dangerous speed, too many had seen Ghandi stepping out into the road and being run down. The driver, a chauffeur at the Japanese Embassy, had been too obviously hopelessly, incapably drunk. He was in police custody now, it had taken five large Sikh constables to rescue him from a crowd that was set on tearing him apart.
The Japanese had denied everything of course and were demanding the release of their driver. They had come up with some ridiculous story about a car being stolen from their Embassy, a driver being abducted and forcibly fed with whisky and a mysterious third party actually driving the car. It was so ludicrous that even the Japanese Charge d'Affairs in New Delhi, a sad little bureaucrat called Nomura, had been embarrassed to repeat it. Trying to make such ludicrous claims had heated the anti-Japanese feeling even more. There had been riots in several major cities, the Japanese flag had been burned in some, an effigy of the Emperor had been hanged in another. Sir Martyn decided that he would indeed, with the greatest reluctance, have to release the driver to the custody of the Japanese. After all, diplomatic immunity was diplomatic immunity, Japan and India were at peace however tenuously. Releasing the drunken driver who'd killed Ghandi after intense Japanese pressure would intensify anti-Nipponese feeling in India nicely.
Yes, it was clearly and indisputably a tragic accident. One day, purely out of scientific interest, he would have to ask the Thai Ambassador how she'd organized it.
That would have to wait for many years though. The meeting with Nehru had gone extremely well. The man was enraged by Ghandi's death and by the Japanese denial of responsibility. At last, obstruction to Sir Martyn's plans to establish a capable armaments industry and defense force in India would cease. Like so many British administrators who had spent their lives working in the country, Sir Martyn had fallen under India's spell. Although he had never admitted it to anybody, he had a dream of leading India into taking its place amongst the great nations of the world again. Combining its own traditions and values with those of the West, abandoning what it had to, keeping what it could and adopting whatever it needed. Perhaps the collapse of the UK, throwing of the Commonwealth on its own resources, had been a good thing. With Ghandi and his idiot beliefs out of the way, the country could be made strong.
The next job was to crush this nonsense of an independent Moslem state in the North. Pakistan indeed. Ridiculous idea. That would be a recipe for disaster for endless religious wars between the two states. Who knew where that would end, but nothing good could come of it. The problem had been around since 1906 when the Muslim League was founded and they'd demanded a totally separate Muslim homeland in 1930. The name Pakistan hadn't even come from the Indian sub-continent, a group of England-based Muslim exiles had coined the name claiming it meant 'Land of the Pure'. And what to do Kashmir? The Kashmiris wanted no part of India or Pakistan. Another ground for endless wars. Mohammed AM Jinnah was the prime mover of Muslim independence, for a moment Sir Martyn wondered if the Japanese had another drunken chauffeur to spare. He shook his head, one tragic accident was quite enough.