Or would the presence of any food at all in Potsdam make it a more desirable target by this Bazarian person?
Lis squeezed his arm, and they stepped outside and breathed in the fresh air. “I wanted you to see the hospital. If the Russians make it in, they will all be brutally murdered. I’ve heard what happens when they storm a hospital. It will be an orgy of horrors.”
Jack shook his head. That could not be permitted to happen.
Colonel Paul Tibbetts sucked in the mild, cool air of Iceland. After the stifling heat of Tinian in the South Pacific, he found it refreshing. He did wonder just how cold it would get in winter if this was what they called summer.
Considered one of the best pilots in the air force, Tibbetts had flown as personal pilot for Generals Mark Clark and Dwight Eisenhower, and was now the commanding officer of the 509th Composite Group. A demanding and superbly organized taskmaster, Tibbetts had received his orders to pack up and right away move halfway around the world. He had loaded the massive B-29 Super Fortresses with essential supplies and a number of ground personnel and, after several refueling stops, had landed on the cold ground of Iceland. None of his men were surprised at the suddenness of their change of orders and direction. They all knew what was happening in Europe.
The rest of the 509th’s people and equipment would come over on slower C-47s. The 509th consisted of 15 aircrews of 9 men each and an enormous ground crew of 1,700 men, all experts in maintaining and servicing the B-29s.
One thing about Iceland did please him. There were few other air force personnel about to give him and his men a hard time. On Tinian, they had been the butt of jokes and teasing from other bomber crews since all the 509th seemed to do was train or go on reconnaissance runs over Japan. They never went on real bombing runs and they never appeared to go in harm’s way. While just about everyone assumed they were training for something special, the fact that they never shared in the danger of bombing Japan frankly pissed off a lot of other aircrews.
Tibbetts’s men did know they were training for something special, only they didn’t know exactly what either.
Training had begun in Wendover, Utah, and then moved to Tinian, and now, with the Russian menace on the horizon, to Iceland. Technically, Iceland was part of Europe. The part that shits, one of his sergeants had said upon seeing the place, and to a certain extent Tibbetts had to agree.
Training for the 509th generally consisted of taking off, maneuvering, and landing with enormous weights in the bomb bay. The pilots also had to contend with extra quantities of reserve fuel which made the Super Fortress a difficult plane to handle. They had also made practice runs with a strange-looking bomb that was filled with ordinary explosives. Without anything being said, the pilots clearly understood that they were training to drop some other, new kind of bomb.
Tibbetts had proven scathingly demanding of his pilots with regard to accuracy and timing. Only he knew that the decision had been made to use pilots to guide the bomb and not drop by radio control, since no one knew just how the atomic bomb would behave.
All in all and despite the confusion resulting from the sudden move from Tinian, he was satisfied. His men were responding magnificently, as he’d known they would. That left only the question of a target, and his men were speculating openly on the obvious-that the new bomb would be dropped on a Russian target. Only he in the 509th knew that they would shift to England before their attack and that it would not be on Moscow or any other major Russian city.
Use of the bomb, therefore, would be tactical and not strategic. It also meant revising and rethinking the tactic that had the pilots of the 509th flying in isolated groups of three over the Japanese islands. The purpose was to get the Japanese used to the sight of the small groups of bombers and their relative harmlessness. He would have to reinstate it over Europe, where Russian airpower was much stronger than that of the depleted Japs. It saddened him to think that some of his planes might be lost in such training, but it was a price they would have to pay. The B-29’s maximum ceiling was 36,000 feet, which put it at the same maximum as some of the Red fighters.
One of his pilots, a very young major, walked up to him, grinning. “Hey, Colonel, we’re getting up a group that’s gonna find a sauna in town. Are you interested?”
“Not now, thanks,” Tibbetts responded politely. Sweating in a sauna didn’t appeal to him. He’d sweated enough on Tinian.
“By the way, sir, I drew Berlin in the target pool. I think I got screwed out of five dollars. There’s nothing left in Berlin to bomb, is there?”
Tibbetts smiled slightly. “Nothing that I know of. Consider yourself thoroughly and royally screwed.”
The major walked away. They both had known that Tibbetts wouldn’t be interested in finding a sauna, and he hadn’t given out any information regarding a target. What the major hadn’t known was that Tibbetts didn’t know the target either. It didn’t matter. Someone would tell him when the time came. He had too many other things on his mind to worry about that.
When the Soviet infantry reached the Leine River, they did not stop. Instead, the shock troops swarmed across in an assault that was effective because it was so unexpected and illogical. Logical thinking dictated at least waiting until the launches and small boats were ready, or until the soldiers could be covered by artillery and air, or if their armor could cross with them. In this case, General Chuikov had told his men to grab anything that would float, and swim, wade, or paddle their way across.
It helped that the Leine was not a major obstacle. In some places, a man could have stood on one bank and thrown a rock to the other. Thus, the Americans had been shocked and confused by the sight of hundreds of Russian soldiers running into the water and emerging wet and bedraggled on the other side. It simply wasn’t the way Americans fought, and many a local commander was caught off guard.
American retaliation came quickly, and the Soviet infantry on the western bank quickly found themselves scourged by American artillery and mortars. Attempts to reinforce the tenuous foothold on the western bank were mauled and few reinforcements reached the other side. Those that did dug in and waited for help. It was the armor’s turn.
Suslov looked through the hatch as the column’s lead tank gingerly approached the water. The battalion’s colonel thought the river could be forded, and there was only one way to be certain. If that was the case, they could save hours that would otherwise be spent waiting for engineers to build a bridge, hours in which the American planes and guns would continue to pound the bridgehead, shelling and bombing the other vehicles that were lining up to cross.
Suslov opened the hatch a little higher so he could see just a bit better. He was not going to poke his head all the way out. There was too much danger from snipers and from all the shrapnel and lethal debris that was flying around
The tank selected to test the river eased itself into the water like some giant jungle beast. Maybe a hippo, Suslov thought. It paused as the water deepened and its treads churned brown mud and froth. The tank got about halfway across when it lurched, settled deeper into the water, and stalled.
“I think it hit a mud pocket,” Suslov commented.
“Fairly logical,” said Latsis drily. “After all, it is a river.”
“Aw, shit,” snapped Suslov. “Look at those damned fools.”
The tank in the middle of the river had quickly attracted the attention of machine gunners on the American side, and the water around it was splashed by bullets. While in potential danger from American artillery or an airplane, the crew of the stuck tank had nothing to fear from machine guns. Even if bullets should hit the fuel drum strapped behind the turret, the possibility of explosion was not all that great. As Suslov and the others knew, those drums were now fairly empty and they were awaiting replenishment. The tanks would have to go forward on what they had in their internal tanks.