The “Follow Me” jeep was already in front of them and Texan Lady obediently taxied after it. Down the taxiway, behind the line of bombers that had made it back earlier. Each was bathed in lights as their ground crews worked on them. A couple showed damage. Juicy Lucy seemed to have half her rudder shot away. Mack the Knife looked undamaged but there was an ambulance beside her and a covered stretcher in the back. Further down Sixth Crew Member and Barbie Doll were already in their bays, the ground crew washing them down and polishing their magnesium skins. The follow-me jeep took Texan Lady, past them and towards the “Oh-My-God” hangar. That was the vast indoor facility where B-36s were repaired. It got its name from the first words anybody said when they looked inside. By the entrance, and Dedmon cut the power. Texan Lady would be towed in for her repair work.
After shutdown, Dedmon went out through the nosewheel bay and stood looking up at the aircraft. He was having difficulty standing, 44 hours of vibration made steady ground seem unfamiliar. The port wing was mangled, skin and the jet pod hanging off, two engines chewed. The ground chief was already shining spotlights on the damage and making notes on his clipboard. “Don't worry sir, she's safe with us. It’s not as bad as it looks, the main structure is OK, we'll just replace the engines and re-skin. 72 hours and she'll be ready to go. We'll look after her for you.”
“Colonel Dedmon sir, the boss wants to see you.”
It was an airman with a small truck. One of a type LeMay had ordered so his crews could be picked up after their missions, not have to walk back. “The Boss” meant General Tibbets, commander of the 100th. His office was in the block next to the Oh-My-God hangar. Even that was further than Dedmon would have wanted to walk right now.
Tibbets looked exhausted, much more so than any of the bomber crews walking around, Dedmon doubted very much whether he'd slept since The Big One had started. Still there was a question he had to ask.
“General Tibbets Sir, How many did we lose?”
Tibbets looked even more tired “The 100th? One down two damaged. You know what happened to Angel Eyes, the Me-263s got real lucky. Juicy Lucy had engine trouble and lost altitude. Dropped low enough for one of those big new German fighters to get at her over Hamburg with a missile. The tailgunner got the German and the missile just missed. Tore the rudder up and she lost the rest over the Atlantic. Came in steering with her engines. Fine bit of piloting. And your Texan Lady of course. Raid as a whole? Every nuclear bomber got through but we lost seven others down, a dozen or so damaged. Case Ace was the only RB-36 we lost. She took a Wasserfall near Kiel. Ditched in the North Sea. Haley's Comet and Dragon Lady had the same problem as Juicy Lucy, engine trouble then fighters got them. The rest? We don't know yet. They crossed the French coast but haven't shown up here yet. Probably damage got them over the Atlantic.”
“Mack the Knife Sir, I saw ambulances by her?”
“Accident. After landing. Ground crewman walking beside the undercarriage but didn't put his hand on the door. So he stopped and the aircraft didn't. General LeMay wants a standing report tomorrow.”
Ouch that was bad. A standing report meant just what it sounded like. The report was given standing in front of LeMay's desk. That made certain it was short, sweet and didn't contain circumlocutions or evasions.
“The good news is, Colonel, Germany surrendered at 0300 our time. Unconditionally. Apparently Goering survived, styled himself President and surrendered. Showed more sense than he has for years. We're not going to leave him in power of course, but somebody has to sign on the dotted line. The bad news is, the German Army in Russia and the SS out there are disputing the surrender. All the units are digging in and holding their ground. I suppose they've got nothing left to go home to so they think they'll stay where they are. God knows how it’s all going to end. One more bit of good news, the Germans in the UK have, well surrendered is the wrong word. Agreed to co-operate with and accept the authority of the new British Government. King George appointed Churchill the new Prime Minister in place of Halifax. Who is now in the Tower of London by the way, Churchill sweet-talked the German troops into ‘accepting’ British hospitality”.
“Germany Sir, how many did we?”
“How many did we kill? The Targeteers are working that out now. They're analyzing the information from the camera film, instrument tapes and data from the escorts now. The one who works with us will be coming up as soon as they have an answer.”
The Targeteers. However, did a creepy bunch of civilians ever get to decide the bombing plans and target selection? In fact, that was a good question. Tibbets might know, he'd been with the Manhattan Project from the early days,
“Sir, However, did a bunch of civilians ever get to decide the bombing plans and target selection? I would have thought it was an Air Force job?”
“It is. We decide where to put them. The Targeteers just give advice. Of course we always take their advice. In the early days, nobody understood just how powerful these new bombs were. We thought we would need thousands to destroy Germany. Then people realized we were hitting the same place over and over again, dropping two bombs on two targets even though they were in the same place. Trouble was nobody would give up their priority targets. In the end President Dewey and General LeMay did their good-cop/bad-cop thing and demanded an independent study. So studying the effects got farmed out to a bunch of analysts. They honed and refined the target lists, did the research, came up with the answers. If you like, they make the recommendations and their words go up, the people at the top decide and the orders come back down. They don't do much else now.”
The buzzer went and the Targeteer entered the office. The Seer, they all had crazy code-names like that, was the one assigned to the 100th. As usual, Dedmon got the feel the temperature in the room was dropping and he could swear the plant in the corner of Tibbets office was wilting. “You hear about Germany?” Tibbets and Dedmon nodded “Very gratifying. Not that there is much left to surrender of course. Initial bomb damage assessment is in now. All 200 primary targets were hit, some by multiple devices. Estimated German casualties are in the region of twenty million dead. Industry, transportation, supplies, communications, have all ceased to exist. There is significant radioactive contamination being detected, the instruments on the aircraft picked up way more than we expected. That's going to be a factor we'll have to recalculate for later drops.”
“Dear God, are you serious? Twenty million?” Dedmon remembered Major Pico's words and at last understood what it was that they had done and the thought stunned him.
“For an initial figure, yes. Germany was a peculiarly vulnerable target for the current generation of devices. The cities were almost perfectly sized for mass destruction. The casualties will be far greater than that of course. By the time the wounded have died and the rest of the effects have worked through the system, the final death toll will be twice that, probably even higher. It was inevitable. We were contracted to work out an attack plan that would totally destroy German industry, transportation and their ability to continue supporting a modern military machine. That is, of course, what we did.
“The trouble is that nobody can do that to a country without effectively wiping out the civilian population. Mark those words gentlemen. Nobody can do that to any country without effectively wiping out the civilian population. Including this one. What happened to Germany could, one day, happen here. Will happen unless we do something about it.