Petain climbed to his feet, shaking more with shock than fear. Gamelin was shaking with rage as well as fear. But it was Petain who spoke, in a voice made weak with age. “Soon, the Germans will be leaving France. They cannot remain here, they must either leave to salvage what is left of their homeland or the Americans will invade and drive them out. We must make it clear to both them and the rest of the world that our liberation was our doing, it was our efforts, our endurance, our willingness to suffer hardships that brought about final victory. The German occupation of Paris must be ended by our troops and marked by victory celebrations in which our troops are the center. Only then will history record the true picture of the efforts of the French people.
Marshal Purneaux saw that the prowling fighters had pulled out by now. The streets were emptied, everybody had taken cover. Yet in the distance there was a strange sight. A great silver bomber was approaching, surrounded by a swarm of dark blue fighters. Obviously one of the giants that had destroyed Germany. What on earth were the Americans up to?
Bomber/navigation station. B-36H “Victory Parade” over Paris
Captain D C Cameron lay on his belly, his eyes glued to the K-3 optical bombsight. They had dropped a reference bomb a few minutes earlier; the K-5 had plotted its descent and compared its impact point with that of the prediction made by the system. Then, it had calculated the correction and fed that to both the K-5 radar sight and the K-3 optical. It wasn't perfect, far from it, but it would do until somebody invented a bomb that steered itself to its target. Cameron had heard such things were being developed, he'd believe them when he saw them.
Now, in the cross-hairs of the K-3, he could see Paris unrolling beneath him. The intervalometer was set. Once he pressed the release switch, the thousand pound bombs would start to drop out of the four bomb bays at precisely determined intervals. They would continue to do so until he released the switch. Alignment was absolutely crucial here, for the last few minutes he'd been making minute adjustments to the course held Victory Parade, adjusting for wind and drift as he approached the start of his target. Cameron quickly scanned the telescope up and down the target. Perfectly aligned with the center. And the fighters had done a superb job of sweeping the streets clean. They were deserted. The bombs were fused for impact so people in their shelters should be safe. The whole purpose of this raid was to demonstrate power and precision and to make a political point, not to cause casualties.
Back to the impact point. The cross hairs of the K-3 were sliding across the Tuileries Gardens now, towards the Place de la Concorde. A split second before they touched the end of the Champs Elyseé, Cameron squeezed the release button. He could feel the bang as the snap-action bomb bay doors open but the release of the thousand pounders was undetectable. He'd done this before, many times, but never on an enemy target. The whole idea for the raid had started at a B-36 firepower demonstration, LeMay and a Targeteer had been watching and they'd come up with this use for what was, until then, little more than a party trick.
Below him the first thousand pounder exploded exactly where the Champs Elyseé joined the Place de la Concord. A fraction of a second later, the second exploded exactly 100 feet further down the Champs Elyseé. From there, the line of explosions, each bomb impacting exactly 100 feet further down the Champs Elyseé, marched across the very heart of Paris. Through the Square Marigny, towards the Place d'Etoile.
Far above Cameron was working hard, keeping the bombsight cross hairs tracking the target. It would have helped if the French had built it straight but they hadn't. There were odd turns and changes of angle that had to be accommodated and, above all, the last eight bombs had to be reserved for the final act. The clicks on the bomb control panel continued, Cameron was sweating now. It was hard work and his eyes had to be in two places at once, one keeping the cross hairs aligned, the other watching the bomb counter. 72 - 73 - 74 - 75 - 76. That was it, Cameron released the switch, holding thousand pounders 77 - 84 in the bays. Now was the even more precise bit. Cameron adjusted course and saw the Arc de Triomphe. He'd flipped off the intervalometer now so the last eight bombs would release at once. As the cross hairs started to touch the final target, DC Cameron salvoed all eight one thousand pound bombs into the Arc de Triomphe.
“Bombardier to pilot. The fat lady has sung. Let’s get out of here and let’s get up high, back where we belong.” Cameron felt the engines of Victory Parade surge and the jets cut in. The aircraft banked around onto the course for home and started to climb. Cameron seized the chance to take a last look back. The whole length of the Champs Elyseé was a large smoke cloud, the site of the Arc de Triomphe hidden under explosions. He guessed the Strategic Air Command had made its point.
Salon Marat, Elyseé Palace, Paris
The three Marshals watched appalled as the long line of explosions snaked down the Champs Elyseé and ended with the Arc de Triomphe exploding under a group of hits. Gamelin was cursing incoherently, swearing foully at the Americans who could do such a thing to the center of world culture, Purneaux reflected that he wasn't actually making much sense; his swearing was disconnected and seemed to be more concerned with using obscenities than constructing elegant insults. Like a little boy whose parents were out of earshot. Petain was standing there with tears streaming down his face. For a moment Purneaux pitied him. He wasn't a bad man or a fool or an incompetent. He was an old man, frail with the burden of years. A man who had seen too much and simply wanted no more. Truly, old age was a shipwreck. He didn't deserve this humiliation. For a moment Purneaux himself raged at the Americans who had so casually carved the heart out of Paris and, in doing so, carved the heart from France.
“Who were they to do this? What are they telling us? What is their message?” Petain's voice was small, broken and weak, Gamelin was too busy swearing at “the anglo-saxons” to answer. It was Pumeaux who replied.
“They are telling us that we will not be holding a victory parade. They told us that we didn't win, that we were not on the winning side. They delivered the message airmail.”
It was more than that, Purneaux knew. Looking at the giant trench that stretched through the heart of Paris, he understood what the Americans, perhaps unwittingly, had done. In a superb display of airmanship, of technology, of precision, of power and of applied ferocity the Americans had told France who was leading the world now. Of who was dominant, who was the hegemon. And there was more than that. They'd destroyed the dreams of la Gloire de France. Oh, the Parisians would rebuild the Champs Elyseé and the Arc de Triomphe and hold their parades again but they would be imitations of the real thing. Everybody would know it and everybody would know why they were imitations. But French gloire had been a hearty healthy stew, a rich and genuine one, based on real history, of real achievement, of glorious victories, of gallant defeats, of great leaders and powerful armies. What would be left after today was packet soup.
Perhaps it was all for the better. Perhaps with the heart carved out of Paris, with the self-perpetuating elite that ruled it discredited, France would become more flexible, more open, less prone to dictating solutions to its neighbors. Perhaps but probably not. France would remain France, her leaders inflexibly committed to their own dreams of glory and their own vision of a Francophonic world.
Idly, Purneaux wondered if being a Marshal of France qualified him for an American Green Card.
Cockpit Go-229 Green Eight, 48,000 feet over Eastern France