There had been a time when the B-36 had bristled with guns like the proverbial porcupine. 16 of them, all 20 millimeter in retracting turrets. Then, the B-29s had been massacred in their few raids from Russian bases. It became obvious that bombers couldn't fight their way through an enemy fighter defense, they had to fly over it or around it. The B-36 had the fuel to fly around and was designed to fly high. So every ounce of weight had been stripped from the aircraft to add more altitude. The guns had gone, the bunks had gone, the galley had gone. The crews now slept in sleeping bags on the deck aft and ate cold sandwiches. Even the paint had gone; the first B-36s had been olive drab but the weight of paint on an aircraft this big took a thousand feet off the operating ceiling. Now, they were silver.
The result was a bomber that could cruise to its target at over 50,000 feet. The crew were supposed to wear pressure suites that high up but nobody did. One crew were reported to have taken their bomber to over 60,000 feet. If that was true, Dedmon reckoned it must have been a Wichita-built bird. The brass denied it but all the crews knew that the Wichita aircraft flew slightly higher and faster than the Fort Worth and El Segundo aircraft but were less reliable. The El Segundo birds on the other hand were believed to be less stable and needed more meticulous flying.
Texan Lady was a Fort Worth Bird, the aristocrat of the B-36 family of course. The others didn't believe that. The Wichita crews looked down on the rest as being sluggards while the Segundo crews saw everybody else as amateurs flying the easy birds. But even for an aristocrat, Texan Lady was being very well-behaved this time out. Not an alert, not a red light, not a buzzer. Just the smooth drone of the engines and the smell of coffee? Coffee? Airman John Smith had brought some up. He was the youngest of the 16 crewmen on Texan Lady and also the youngest married man at Kozlowski AFB. Dedmon thought that life could be very hard for an 18 year old couple whose names really were Mr and Mrs John Smith. Especially since they couldn't use SAC ID cards. General LeMay had fixed that by issuing fake IDs that attributed the crews to other sections of the USAF. He was a hard-assed commander who looked after his men. That was how Sixth Crew Member had gotten her name. The B-36 flight deck had five positions, aircraft commander, two pilots and two engineers and a jump seat for the sixth crew member. That was only used when General LeMay decided to do a check flight on the crew. When the Sixth Crew Member was around, there was a lot of trouble brewing for somebody.
Dedmon put his coffee cup in its holder, waited until Smith was in the communications tunnel then tilted the nose up slightly. He heard a descending “wheeeeeee” as the little cart shot the length of the 80 foot tube. Beat hauling himself along hand-over-hand. Then the B-36 rocked as four fighters streaked over them, turning around to take station on either side. They were Thunderjets, the new fighter that would replace the antiquated P-47s and P-72s in the ground attack wings. SAC would have had them as well, as long-range escort fighters but the switch to high altitude had changed all that. Now the B-36s went in alone. The F-84s also meant that the tankers were on their way up. Dedmon sported theirs, she was below them, climbing hard on all ten engines.
Dedmon pressed the intercom button. “Signal our friends that fuel is on the way”. Messages by morse code signal lamp. No radio transmissions. The K.B-36F was closing fast now swinging in front of Dedmon's hometown. The long refueling boom was already down, the air-to-air refueling operator controlling it from a modified tail position. Above him now, the boom dropping down, edge forward a bit, line the boom up with the fuelling receptacle in the nose, that had been a 20 millimeter gun position once, gentle slide up and.....the fuel boom clicked into place.
“Ohhh darling that was wonderful......'“
It was a warm contralto female voice with a strong Texan accent that seemed to come though the intercom. Major Pico's eyebrows raised “Somebody's a good female impersonator. Second career perhaps?”
Dedmon grinned “We've had that a couple of times. Always same voice, always appropriate. Never managed to find out who it is. Flow rate 400. Nobody's admitting it. We all think it’s King don't we boys?” That caused a laugh. Master Technical Sergeant King was a big man from Alaska, a less likely candidate for that seductive voice was hard to imagine.
Fuelling finished, Texan Lady dropped back and Barbie Doll moved up to refuel. By the time they'd finished with their tanker, 2200 miles from their target, all three bombers were fully fuelled and could fly more than 11,000 miles if the situation demanded. Dedmon reflected that air-to-air refueling had made SAC what it was; now they really could strike anywhere in the world. They didn't need bases, they didn't need allies, they didn't need anybody. The B-36s could go anywhere, do anything to anybody. And nobody could stop them.
Dedmon looked outside again at the white shining streams being drawn by silver arrows across the rippling grey sky. It was indeed beautiful. The bombers were spreading now, some falling back as they completed refueling, others diverging now as their courses took them to different targets. The leading bombers were the ones going deep into Germany, the idea was to get the drops into the shortest possible time. The briefing from the targeteers had told them that. He'd never met any of that group before. Previously raids had been planned to destroy this or that or do something or somebody. But nuclear weapons were new and different. There were few of them and they were immensely destructive. The Targeteers worked out where to put each one for maximum effect. It seemed that the room just got a touch colder when they walked in and the plants there wilted slightly. Pure imagination of course.
And this was just half of it. There was another wave of bombers following behind them. These would hit targets in the occupied countries. A political decision had been made that nuclear weapons would only be used on Germany. So the B-36s going to targets in occupied countries were carrying conventional bombs. 40 tons of them per aircraft.
Right, it was time to climb again. Another hour and a half to 48,500 feet. That should take them over most things. Then higher still for the run through the defenses. And end this damned stupid war and take something very evil out of the world.
Office of Sir Martyn Sharpe, British Viceroy to India, New Delhi
His Most Gracious Majesty, the King of Thailand's Ambassador to the court of the Viceroy of India listened politely to the arrogant squalid little man sitting in his white rag and lecturing them on things he knew nothing about. She smiled her most engaging, affectionate smile and mentally imagined herself slicing an 8-inch saw-backed bowie knife across his windpipe. Just why were they listening to this hypocritical fool? He was a great demagogue that was for sure and his brand of propagandizing had been effective enough but he was a minor problem in the great scheme of things. He could be dealt with so simply. The problems she and Sir Martyn faced were much more important than the complications caused by this ignorant little man were worth.
The Japanese were going to move, that was for certain. Their economy was collapsing and the war in China was bleeding both countries to death. Japan had tried to move North, at a place called Khalkhin Gol in 1939 and the Soviet Union had slapped them stupid. Then in 1941, they'd been preparing to strike south, hitting the US possessions in the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies. That plan hadn't worked either. A few months earlier, there had been an upsurge in tension between the Thais and the Vichy French authorities in Indo-China. Usual story, there were disputes over the border and the French refused to discuss them. Perhaps as a result of the humiliating defeat by Germany a few weeks earlier, perhaps because the collapse of the UK, who knew, but the French had a new policy, They called it dissuasion. If there were any approaches from the Thai authorities over any border issue, Thai territory and citizens would be attacked by French forces. The situation had been escalating towards war anyway and that's when Sir Martyn had stepped in.