LeMay’s supply line was very long and just starting to ramp up. Could he keep the bombers in the air in the numbers needed until he reached the crucial tipping point; the tipping point where one side of the other started to run out of resources; be it pilots, planes, ammunition, fuel or guts. He calculated that he had to reach two to one odds or greater within 60 days to start the long slow slide of attiring the VVS. 60 days of heavy losses on both sides. Would the American public stand for such losses? Would the men themselves figure out the odds and be willing to play with their lives. This raid would be crucial and would set the baseline for future operations. Each side would be at its strongest and each side had the resources to burn in their internal combustion engines, but for how long.
His mission was twofold. Number one was to stop the oil from flowing and number two was to clear the skies of the Soviet planes enough for the coming invasions. The invasions themselves were out of his hands. He was trying to land body blows to make the opponent drop his hands. The coming spring operations were to be the knock out punches. In the fight game you take a lot of punishment yourself trying to land blows to the body of a skilled opponent. He made you pay for every shot you took with jabs and head shots of his own. Sometimes you were forced to lead with your own chin like Rocky Marciano, that new kid he saw fight for the Army. He was cut up real bad in almost every fight but got the job done after his first few blows finally hit home. That kid could take a punch and he could deliver one as well. He knew the boys of SAC could too but could the politicians watching from the sidelines keep from throwing that towel into the ring and stop the fight prematurely. The Brits had and so had we in Western Europe. All strategic bombing has stopped in Germany and France. The Brits were on their knees and were finally getting the help they needed from the USAAF.
Sacrificing the RAF has worked but not as well as planned. Novikov had moved too fast and LeMay had expected at least two full weeks of virtually unopposed bombing on the oil production facilities of the USSR before the missiles and jet fighters of the VVS showed up in sufficient numbers to place the operation in jeopardy. He only got 4 days. Novikov was either a mind reader or very, very good at his job.
Once again the big bombers started to roll and it never failed to send a shiver up his spine of all that power and destructive capability launching on his command. The losses from all forms such as attrition, accidents and combat losses had been seven percent for the last raid. Early indications were that they had destroyed a months’ worth of Soviet supplies. Not bad for a day’s work but much more was needed… much more. The calculations were that he would face over a hundred ground to air missiles, over 400 air to air missiles carried by 100 modified Tu2s Bat medium bombers and the lumbering Pe 9 Beaches, along with 100 or so of those He 162 cloned — Stalin’s Darts and 300 other jet fighters of the Yak 15 Feather and Mig 9 Fargo variety. Add in the estimated 2,000 conventional fighters that could effectively reach 24,000 feet and have enough speed to at least make a pass or two at the bombers and you had a formidable enemy contingent to deal with.
He didn’t quite have 1000 planes. Launching from the Middle East based were 523 B-29s and from Turkey and the islands were 419 P-80 Shooting Stars. The P-80s were going to have to have to keep the Fargos, Feathers, Darts, Beeches and Bats busy, while the Superfortresses were going to have to defend themselves from the thousands of Yak 9s Franks and La 7 Fins. Once one of those Red missiles were launched there was nothing yet devised to help the B-29 survive. It was just luck of the draw whether the missile performed or not. They appeared easy to evade if you were in a fighter or medium bomber and had room to maneuver, but in a tightly packed formation of relatively slow super bombers, you were pretty much dead meat if the missile worked as designed. Many a bomber pilot will be sorely tempted to drop out of formation to see just how hard it will be to evade a missile or two but they would then risk collision and more important the ire of LeMay. Most were more afraid of LeMay than any missile.
This raid should be a real test of the concept of the usefulness of the manned bomber in modern warfare. The words of wisdom uttered early in the war were “the bomber will always get through” was about to be tested as never before. The USAAF has based its post war strategy on that adage. When combined with the atomic bomb it seem a pretty safe bet but then came along the guided missile and the Soviet agent George Koval and all bets were off. When an immovable object met an unstoppable force, what would be the results? The world was about to find out.
For the first time since he was married he did not want to go home. Maybe it was because he had just finished the last piece and solved the last challenge to the newest jet engine of the USSR. Maybe it was because he was feeling a little guilty knowing what this engine in the excellent MiG 15 fighter design would do to his former country’s B-29s. It would not be pretty. The P-80 didn’t stand a chance. The swept back wing was the key to more speed and his engine gave it more speed.
As heartless as it sounded he didn’t want to see his wife. She was still the most gorgeous women he had ever imagined being with but now he wanted more. He wanted conversation and real feelings. Oh she was a good actress but she was not smart. Not even a bad conversationalist about normal matters but he wanted to talk about abnormal matters. Oh he didn’t know what he wanted. He just wanted change. He was sure he could get what he wanted but he was hesitant to approach anyone with the ultimate solution.
He wanted Jill Stone. He was in love with her from the get go. She was smart and pretty enough to satisfy his every need. They talked for hours that summer they spent together, but she was not here in Siberia with him. She was in Pittsburg waiting tables the last he heard because no one hired a female physicist.
But here… who knew. There were plenty of female scientists working with him. Maybe here she could be happy at what she wanted to do. As he recalled it was particle physics. He was so busy telling her what he was doing he had not listened to her when she had talked about her own dreams. He had just watched her face light up and how her body has moved when she got up and paced around the room. She was one of those women who did not know how good she looked or cared.
He had not been able to reach her when he decided to make a run for it. She might have come. She was as a committed communist as he was; possibly more so. He wanted to be with her in the worst way. He wanted to talk with her like he did that summer for hours and hours on end.
But how did one approach someone to inquire about getting rid of his current wife and replacing her with another that was still in America? Who do you call for that kind of thing? That had not been covered in his orientation to the Workers’ Paradise here on the other side of the world. He had to have someone approach her and convince her to leave the capitalist life behind and to work for a better world and as a bonus she could be his wife.
He needed a distraction. Maybe he should volunteer to work on that anti-ship missile that the Red Navy keeps bugging Sergo for. He heard that Sergo didn’t want to let the guidance system be used in uncontrolled circumstances, circumstances where the enemy could get its hands on an unexploded missile or more importantly it’s guidance system. He certainly understood that thinking. The US has not wanted to us the proximity fuse in Europe for fear the Germans would get a hold of some. Funny thing was that they did capture a couple of hundred thousand during the Battle of the Bulge but apparently didn’t understand their significance. Barr and Sobel had delivered a fully functional prototype to Beria in 1944 but Sergo concentrated on the Wasserfal and X4 instead. Again the irony is that now the Soviets had millions of American made VT fuses thanks to the overrunning of the storage depots and Barr and Sobel buying millions and shipping them to the Soviets before the war. American capitalists sure are greedy, but then again so were the leaders he had contact with here. Possibly it was just a part of the human condition that nothing could be done about it. The only way to control it was for other humans to control the more greedy ones.