It might be all right after all. If Fargo could get into position, if Kittyhawk could arrive and take up the evacuation work then they could get a proper system working. Keep hangar deck forward as the forward triage station, then have the primary, meatball, treatment area on Fargo and Kittyhawk acting as the main care station.
It was this damned smoke that could destroy well-made plans. Stennis knew his eyes were running and his throat was filling with the stuff. They'd been spared the heavy black smoke but there was a haze in the air that was worse. You could hardly see it but it ripped at the eyes and lining of the nose and throat. Stennis decided he needed an explanation. As he frequently pointed out to anybody who would listen, he was a doctor not a sailorman. That young Ensign looked promising. He'd been sent up from the fire perimeter suffering from extreme heat exhaustion and smoke inhalation. Blackened from the fires, eyes reddened from irritation and skin lightly toasted, he was getting ready to go back.
“Ensign......” Stennis craned to read the name-tag
“Ensign Pickering, I would advise a longer rest. I believe you need longer up here in what passes for fresher air.”
“Thank's Doc, but if I stay away too long the cantankerous old bas....., errrrr, well, my Senior Chief, he'll accuse me of being a Democrat again. From the way he talks, you'd think the bombers that hit us were flown by members of the Democrat National Committee. Anyway, to be honest Doc, your air up here ain't so hot.”
“I was wondering about that. What gives?”
“Doc, normal fire is open to the air, OK. The fire heats the air, the hot air rises and more cold air is drawn in from the surroundings. That's how the chimney in your house works, right. Now if that gets out of control and the air exceeds a certain speed, the fire roars out of control and the whole thing turns into a hurricane. It’s called a firestorm. You don't want to be in one of those. But what we've got here is worse. The fires are heating the air deep in the ship but the hot air can't get out. So the heat is building up all the time, it’s like a furnace down there. The hot air builds up pressure, see, and forces its way out through any way it can find.
“Now, the fire is burning lots of pretty bad things down there. Rocket fuel, jet fuel, avgas, chemicals for napalm, ship's stores, paint, lubricants, you name it. All bad stuff. When they burn, they give up poisons. And this is a new ship, she's got lots of these new plastics in her, they're burning as well and we have no idea what the products are. So all these poisonous gases are being produced and being pushed out along the ship by the hot air from the fire. Some of the men from the firefighting teams, well, you can see they're pretty sick. Take a word of advice Doc, if you're going to stay here, get a breathing mask. And don't leave it too long. And now, I'm going back below to be.........errrrr ..........”'instructed” by my Senior Chief.”
Stennis carefully hid his grin. If that young Ensign thought he was getting a bad time from his Senior Chief, he had no idea what his Royal Navy equivalents would be getting from theirs. Senior Chiefs were like wives, you never appreciated what they were doing for you until they weren't there anymore.
CHAPTER SEVEN APPROACHING DOOM
NAIADS Command Headquarters, Potsdam, Germany
“The RCCs are reporting in Sir”
Field Marshal Herrick started to relax. The last two hours had been nerve racking. Since the original formations of American bombers had been detected on his situation boards, he had been trying to get specific information on raid size, probable targets and approach routes. The problem was that the Mammut and Wasserman radars at NCC and RCC level were producing curiously inconclusive data. The operators were certain it wasn't jamming, it was more as if the targets themselves were blurred and elusive. The long-range, low frequency radars had shown that the raid was coming but little more than that.
Herrick looked at the end of the room. The display board there was now showing France and western Germany. It was one of many such maps, engraved on large sheets of transparent perspex that could be pulled out when required. Some of the women in the room were marking the reverse side of the map with the latest contact data. The combination of large numbers and imprecise data made the raid map look like a cloud covering most of France now.
“North Rhine-Westphalia is starting to make contacts with Wurtzburg and the Jagdschlosz height-finders. Also we are getting reports from visual observers on the ground. We have confirmation of a very large number of aircraft flying at high altitude. Estimated force is over one thousand aircraft. North Rhine-Westphalia is getting altitude data now Sir. Please repeat that North-Rhine. Thank you. Sir, the Jagdschlosz height-finders report the leading edge of the raid is flying at almost 17,000 meters. The main body is a little lower but not much. North Rhine Westphalia is reporting them as flying between 15,000 and 16,000 meters.”
Herrick felt he had been kicked in the stomach. His fighters simply couldn't get up that high. The backbone of his force was the Ta-152C, equipping the bulk of the RCC controlled units. They could barely get up to 12,000 meters. A few units had the high-altitude Ta-152H that could, with GM-1 boost get up as high as 14,000 meters. The problem was that GM-1 boost only lasted a few minutes and once it was gone, the weight of the equipment made the aircraft perform worse than standard models. Yet, for all that, the Ta-152H was the best the RCCs had. The heavy fighters under NCC control were worse off. The best were the Dornier 335s and Ta-154s that could make it to 10,000 meters. How about his night-fighters? The Heinkel 219s could get up to around 12,500 meters, far short of the American bombers. There was a “high-altitude” version of that as well, that one could all the way to 14,000 meters.
The problem was the Americans had redefined the words high altitude. They weren't going to penetrate German defenses, they were going to fly over them. The fighter forces at both NCC and RCC levels were out of the fight. He'd get the Ta-152Hs up just in case any of the American aircraft had to come down, but it looked like the LCCs were going to be on their own. There was one chance though. His four-engined freaks could get up to around 13,000 meters but they had their missiles that could reach still higher. They were worth trying. They should get going now.
“Course, speed any indication of targets?”
“The reported courses are generally eastwards, speed is still relatively slow, around 350 kilometers per hour. Target appears to be Germany.”
“I know that y..” Herrick restrained himself from adding 'you stupid bitch' that would wipe out any chance he had with this one. “But where in Germany?”
“Sir, it’s impossible to say, the formation seems to be dispersing. Ground reports are that it consists of large numbers of elements of three aircraft, the elements are on diverging courses. It seems that there are a small number of aircraft allocated to a large number of targets throughout Germany.”
Herrick felt even worse, that attack plan simply made no sense at all. He'd hoped the information from the high-frequency radars would help in fighting the defensive battle but it was just making things worse. Then it clicked, the Americans were feinting, pretending to attack a large number of targets so that the defenses would be dispersed. Then they would change course and concentrate on the real target. They were gambling that Germany had few high altitude defenses and that these could be made ineffective by dispersal. A good ploy, well conceived but Herrick recognized it now and could act accordingly. He'd get his Ju-635s and concentrate their attack on the key point. But where? That was the question, where?