Most important of all, the bombers would go in at between five thousand and nine thousand feet. LeMay was going to gamble that intelligence was right, that the Japanese had not developed a night fighter or converted their antiaircraft guns to radar control. He hoped that, manually operated, the weapons would react too slowly to his low-level assault.
Removing the guns because of the hoped-for absence of night fighters would also increase each bomber’s payload. That, too, was crucial, for LeMay intended the B-29s to carry only incendiaries, and thus put the torch to Japan’s vulnerable wooden buildings.
While formulating his plans about the new tactics he meant to employ, LeMay went on listening, something he was very good at. This very lunch hour on January 20, while listening to a weather officer explaining his problems, LeMay had overheard a naval officer from CINCPAC saying that Admiral Chester Nimitz was raising hell over some flying unit in the States that was trying to get itself shipped to the Marianas.
It sounded an unlikely story to LeMay. The unit was something called a “composite group.” And LeMay knew there was no such designation in the air force.
22
Groves had decided that it was not yet necessary to inform General Douglas MacArthur about the atomic bomb. He approved of the letter Fleet Admiral King had prepared on January 27 for Admiral Chester Nimitz. It was short and to the point, and should end the irritating queries emanating from CINCPAC. Written on King’s official stationery, the letter read:
My dear Nimitz:
It is expected that a new weapon will be ready in August of this year for use against Japan by the 20th Air Force.
The Officer, Commander Frederic L. Ashworth, USN, bearing this letter will give you enough details so that you can make the necessary plans for the proper support of the operations. By the personal direction of the President, everything pertaining to this development is covered by the highest order of secrecy, and there should be no disclosure by you beyond one other officer, who must be suitably cautioned.
I desire that you make available to Commander Ashworth such intelligence data as applies to the utilization of the new weapon.
Ashworth was an Annapolis graduate and combat veteran whom Parsons had personally engaged for the Manhattan Project. Groves respected both naval officers for their professionalism. They spent much of their time shuttling between Wendover and Los Alamos helping to solve the last problems associated with fuzing and detonating the atomic bomb.
Groves doubted that Ashworth would welcome the trip to the Pacific which would take him away from his test work, but the project chief planned to use Ashworth as more than just a courier. He wanted Ashworth to choose the overseas base for the 509th.
Groves favored Guam. It had sophisticated military workshops for any last-minute modifications to the weapon, and a deep-sea harbor. Tibbets preferred Tinian. It was said to have the best runways in the Pacific.
Ashworth was to look at both islands.
23
Beser had spent an hour getting his bodyguard drunk, urging him to relax and enjoy their last few hours in Cuba. The man was sitting glassy-eyed in the base’s officers’ mess, staring stupidly into a fresh daiquiri—the eighth he had consumed in an hour. He was too drunk to notice that Beser had gone.
Beser had hurried to the base motor pool to collect a truck. A Silverplate authorization had overcome the initial objection of the transport officer to part with the vehicle. Then Beser had driven into the old quarter of Havana and supervised a gang of Cubans loading crates into the truck.
Now, the whole secret operation, which so far had gone “like a dream,” was being threatened by an MP at the gate to Batista Field. “Lieutenant, I want to see inside this truck.”
Beser eyed the policeman: he couldn’t be bribed; he would have to be threatened. Crooking his finger—he had borrowed the gesture from a university professor—Beser told the MP to come closer. “What’s your security rating, son?”
Beser was barely twenty-three. He sounded like a middle-aged general.
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Then you had better find out—quick! Move, soldier!”
The MP backed off.
Beser slammed the truck into gear, and it bounded forward into the air base. He drove several times around the administrative blocks to make sure he was not being followed. Satisfied, he then drove to the part of the apron where the 509th was located.
A group of fliers was waiting for him. Beser jumped down from the driver’s cabin, and a human chain formed between truck and bombers. The unmarked boxes were stacked in the cavernous bomb bays of the B-29s.
It took almost an hour to transfer the cargo. Each box contained twelve bottles of the best-quality whiskey.
Beser had discovered a Havana wholesaler offering the liquor at a quarter of the price it cost in the United States. The 509th had needed no persuasion to lay out the money for this bonanza.
The escapade was typical. In the past three weeks, the 509th had established a reputation as hell-raisers. Havana, used to the carousing of servicemen, was astonished by the group. They lived and loved at a frenetic pace, fought those who challenged them, and led charmed lives when authority intervened.
An MP patrol picked up drunken 509th mechanics in a street brawl and took them to the military lockup. Their arrest was reported to the 509th’s duty officer. He checked his rosters; the men were scheduled to service a bomber in the morning. He demanded their release. When the MPs refused, the officer used “Silverplate” to rouse the local commander. He checked his records, found the code rated the highest priority, and ordered the mechanics set free. The legend grew that the 509th were “The Untouchables.”
Tibbets had surprised the rest of the 509th at Wendover by flying back early from Havana to supervise personally the training of the crews he had not sent to the Caribbean. He was determined that when the day came, every one of his fliers would be capable of carrying out an atomic strike.
He worked the five crews still at Wendover hard, sending them back and forth to the Salton Sea bombing range. Without actually saying so, he conveyed to the fliers the impression that although they had not been sent to Cuba, they might still be chosen for the big upcoming mission.
Tibbets received regular reports from Cuba. He was particularly pleased to see that his engineering crews were already showing their mettle: the 509th’s planes were losing less than half the number of engines through malfunction that other air force squadrons based on the island were losing. It was what Tibbets had come to expect from his men.
But he was not willing to do what executive officer John King wanted: “turn the squadron into a spit-and-polish outfit.”
Tibbets knew that King meant well, but he also realized that the officer did not understand his methods: the easy familiarity he had with the enlisted men, the way he invariably called all his officers by their first names. King was “Regular Army; he had never experienced the unique camaraderie of flying as a team, where lives depend on each other.”
Tibbets would never allow anyone to stifle what he believed was a requisite for any fighting air squadron: spirit. To maintain that spirit, Tibbets was spending more time than ever with his men. His wife and small sons rarely saw him. When he did see the children, he was usually too tired or preoccupied to play with them. The shiny new model bombers the boys had received at Christmas were broken, and he never found time to fix them. His wife looked accusingly at him. Their marriage continued its downhill progress.