Captain Mahan loved Fargo. The lead ship of the improved Cleveland class, she had the new single-funnel superstructure and her anti-aircraft battery had been built around the latest three inch fifties. He'd heard only six of the class were being built since a new cruiser class, the Roanokes were about to enter the fleet. They had 12 six inch guns also but fully-automatic dual purpose weapons in twin mounts. But, for him, Fargo was a beauty, much better looking than the original Clevelands and more efficient. Now, to demonstrate how a cruiser should be handled.
“Full ahead all engines, steer three-one-five.” Captain Mahan pictured the position of his ship, racing towards the stricken and wallowing Shiloh “Three-one-five damn it and move. Crew to hold tight, prepare to receive casualties.”
OK, his bows were pointing at the port forward quarter of Shiloh. Now the next job was to slot into place. The Quartermaster was sweating slightly, it appeared that Fargo was going to smack into the side of the burning carrier, this needed careful timing. “Full right rudder NOW, engine room, full ahead on the starboard screws, full reverse on the port.” OK, that brought the bows clear of Shiloh and had Fargo sliding her stern through the water like a car skidding on ice. Now, at just the right time “Engine room, full reverse all four shafts now!” He could feel the propellers digging into the water, could see the stern nearly submerging as the ship shuddered to a halt. Mahan watched as the weather deck of Fargo slid neatly underneath the flight deck of Shiloh, the two ships less than a good manly stride apart. Easy as parallel parking, Mahan thought contentedly. There was a moment of stunned silence from the watching crews then a burst of wild cheering. Yup, cruisers were the only real command for a true sailorman.
“Cut that crap and get those casualties over.” The crew of Fargo boiled into action, lines were thrown over to Shiloh, all the equipment needed to transfer people from one ship to another following. Corpsmen were already laying out a casualty station between the catapults aft. Their KH-10 missiles had been struck down to the armored hangar below to clear more space. Below decks, men had been lining up to give blood for the wounded and there were more volunteers for the firefighting crews than spots available. A good ship, a good crew, what more could a true sailorman ask for?
Flight Deck, B-36H “Texan Lady” 52,500 feet over the Ruhr.
“Enemy fighters sir, type Ta-152H, far below us, no threat.” That was no surprise, Texan Lady, Sixth Crew Member and Barbie Doll were in their element now, cruising serenely above the enemy defenses, the sun gleaming off their silver skins. Behind them, their thick white contrails streamed across the sky, pointing to their target like arrows. 4,000 feet below them, a group of Ta-152H interceptors were hanging on their props in a futile effort to climb the remaining distance between them and their target. Even as Dedmon watched, their GM-1 boost ran out and they lost the extra power that had made their climb possible. The fighters stalled out and spun, given the Ta-l52Hs flight characteristics it was probable they'd accelerate to the point where their controls locked and they couldn't pull out before they plowed into the ground. Up here, in the thin, thin air, the rules were different.
Idly, Colonel Dedmon wondered if the German defenders had understood what was happening yet. Perhaps it would be merciful if they didn't, if they had just a few more minutes believing that this was just a normal bombing raid. Like the B-29 raids, just bigger and better. Of course it wasn't. And if the Germans didn't know they were in the Indian Summer of their existence, they soon would. The first drops were only a few minutes away now. Once the deep penetration aircraft were clear of the border areas, the methodical destruction of the German Nation could start. The timing was the only subtlety of this mission; once the drops were started, the devices would fall thick and fast, marching eastward across Germany.
There was a double reason for the timing of course. One was the obvious one; the Germans would soon understand that one bomber over a city meant that city was about to die, that a little bit of the sun was going to come down to earth and wipe it from the map. What was it that Targeteer had called it? “Instant Sunrise”, that was it. Once the Germans saw Instant Sunrise over their cities, they'd do anything and everything they could to stop the remaining bombers. That meant everything, up to and including trying to ram them with anything that could get up this high, trying to bring them down before they got to their targets. They'd fail, of course, and even if they brought some of the B-36s down, salvage fusing would see that their devices weren't wasted. And there were some unassigned nuclear bombers in the second wave waiting in reserve in case a bomber shot down meant that a target might otherwise survive.
There was another reason as well. As the Targeteer had explained, nobody quite knew what these devices would do when used for real. The atomic bomb wasn't just a bigger, better bomb, it was an entirely new class of weapon. There had been only two test shots, one to verify the original Model 1561 configuration and one to prove the Mark 3 devices that had been mass-produced. The other device in use, the Mark One, didn't need testing. As the Targeteer had told them, it was so simple it couldn't go wrong. They didn't know how high the blast would reach, quite what the interaction between the devices would result in. The Targeteer had revealed, with an almost satanic degree of relish, that originally there had been a small theoretical possibility that the devices would set the atmosphere itself on fire and extinguish all life on earth. The test shots had eliminated that possibility but their were still unknown dangers. The deep penetration bombers would have to fly back though the results of the attack, anything that limited the exposure was good. Even the word “radiation” had a nasty creepy sound to it.
“Think we can get a bit higher guys?”
Major Pico thought for a few seconds and spoke quietly to the engineering section below and behind them, Sergeants King and Gordon looked at the engine status displays. Everything was in normal operating range but how long that would last was anybody's guess. The opinion was unanimous, “i wouldn't sir. Texan Lady is behaving well above spec as it is. We're holding this altitude fine, no engine problems yet. We couldn't ask for more.”
“Hey, it’s my ass as well.” It was the female Texan voice over the intercom. Dedmon shook his head and mouthed “'Just who the hell IS that?” at Major Pico. The Major shook his head resignedly, whoever it was, they had a first class female impersonator on board. And a damn fine comedian. One who was in the wrong place; the RB-36 attempts to interfere with German fighter control had been foiled by the simple expedient of the Luftwaffe using female controllers. Their in-flight comedian may have been just what was needed to counter that simple countermeasure. Not that it mattered much, up here the Germans simply didn't have the waves of fighters that had crucified the B-29 raids in 1944 and 1945.
“Sir, four radar contacts climbing fast. Position 9 o'clock range six miles. Estimated time to contact three minutes. Targets tentatively identified as Me-263 rocket fighters.” Dedmon quickly visualized the position. By the time the Me-263s reached their altitude, they would have burned nearly all their fuel; they would be at the top of a long ellipse. The top of that ellipse was a circle whose diameter was determined by the speed and fuel status of the 263. There was another circle as well, that was defined by the speed of the B-36 and its turning circle. Dedmon grinned to himself, the German pilots were in for a shock. OK, the most likely combination of speed and fuel gave the 263 a range of 58 miles when he got up here. By then, his speed would have dropped to 535 miles per hour - say 9 miles per minute.