Headquarters, No. 3 Group,
RAF Bomber Command
RAF Mildenhall
Observation Deck
July 7th, 1946
“178, out of 214… Not good, but not disastrous. How many fighters are missing?”
“They said the tally was 9, of 48.”
“That’ not good at all Ralphie. What happened?”
“It was just a numbers game Willie. They outnumbered us two-to-one. We did fairly well, considering the odds. We will come up to our 1945-levels, as we rebuild, and they continue to suffer losses. You know how it goes, old boy. Just as in the last war, we must to wear them down.”
“Well, it should get a lot better when the Americans join in. They have better, faster, bombers, and they will be escorted by the new jets… what do they call their Lockheed P-80 again?”
“The ‘Shooting Star,’ I believe.”
“Yes that’s it. Hopefully they will release some of our Meteors for escort duty.”
“Yes, that would be a capital idea.”
“How many victories did we claim?”
“Let’s see… fifty-eight claimed, but, of course they have to be verified by gun camera footage and wingman reports.”
“Fifty-eight… That is just a little over seven of theirs for each of our lost fighter-escorts. Nonetheless, we lost many more bomber pilots and crew, but still not too bad for the first show. Assuming that they had their best and brightest up there, and we had fairly new recruits, it was not too bad at all. We can sustain that as long as the mission was successful.”
“Yes, it was right on target. No more ice cream for Ivan, not today, anyway.”
“When the veterans realize that one way or the other, they will have to get back in it, we should do substantially better. It will be a while I’m afraid, before we will be able to do much in the way of night bombing; just too damn inaccurate for these kinds of missions. As we get more Lincolns and longer-legged escorts, we can join the Americans in their operations down south, but right now we have to wait and protect the homeland, as it were.”.
“The Bolshies don’t really have a bomber force worthy of the name, so there shouldn’t be another ‘Battle of Britain,’ but they will try to destroy our fighter force. Lots of fighter sweeps, and the like, I presume. They can do a lot of damage, even with their medium bombers, as the Germans found out. I wonder if their German ‘guest’ scientists are assisting them, or if they are just locked up in some prison camp. I certainly hope for the latter, as our “guests” are proving to be quite invaluable to us.”
“Yes, so I’ve heard. I’m glad the last war ended when it did. Some of the things I’ve seen have caused my hair stand on end. The Germans were remarkably close to completing many of their wonder weapons.”
“Well, thank God none of those weapons showed up in the field today.”
“Hear, hear.”
The Pentagon
July 8th, 1946
“Well Hap, when are we going to hit them back? I’m tired of getting licked and turning tail. I know that ‘Operation Louisville Slugger’ should give us something to cheer about, but we really need a more substantial victory. When are you going to be ready?”
“There have been a few problems to overcome, as you might well imagine Mister President. First, we’ve had to recover the losses that we took in the initial Soviet attack. Not just in aircraft, but in manpower and crucially, in expertise. All our best mechanics were on the front lines, and the ones that survived long enough to be captured are now in Soviet prisons, maybe worse. Your plan for the draft is working, so far, and we are starting to get many of our veterans back, but it is taking a lot of time. It’s only been nearly two months, since the Reds attacked.”
“How’s that damn pit in England coming along? I want to show them the power of an atomic explosion, if they don’t back down.”
“Again sir, it’s a little more complicated than you would imagine. You have ordered, and rightfully so, that we don’t use the atomic weapon on western European soil, and I totally agree. We cannot leave an atomic wasteland as our legacy. We don’t just want to kill a bunch of Soviet civilians either. Stalin will hold them hostage, and even if we tell them that we’re going to bomb Moscow, for instance, he will not let them evacuate. He will turn tail and run away, and just keep fighting from somewhere else using the civilian dead as communist martyrs. We should choose our targets very carefully even if we had atom bombs to spare, which we don’t.”
“Our conventional bombing campaigns in Europe taught us some very good lessons:
1. Bombing civilians will not destroy their morale. It only makes them want to fight harder.
2. Concentrating on many industries just doesn’t work. For example, we blasted the Germans’ aircraft factories in 1943, yet they went underground producing more aircraft than ever before, in 1944.
3. Bombing transportation hubs and rail lines is only marginally effective.
4. The way we defeated the German Luftwaffe was by shooting them down faster than they could train good pilots. There were plenty of planes, but no one qualified enough to fly them with any skill. It was the same for the Japs.”
“Now can we do that to the Reds? Can we out-produce them, in good, trained, pilots? They have had a year’s head start on us. Their air force was bigger than ours at the end of the war. They just concentrated on tactical- and operational-level not on a strategic-level, like we did. There is no intelligence to say they have not changed their focus, and retrained their Sturmovik pilots to fly fighters. They’ve had a lot of time to do that.
5. They only have to concentrate on fighters while we have to have both bombers and escorts. There is many a co-pilot in those bombers who could be a good fighter pilot. They have the luxury of training that co-pilot to fly a fighter.
6. Bombing oil production and refineries works. You have to keep at it, but it eventually works.[22]
7. We can reach their oil, but they can’t reach ours. Conversely, they can reach Europe’s oil in the Middle East, and, of course, add it to their own.”
“Well, what about the atomic bomb? Once we have enough, we’ll just use them to destroy their country, and heavy industry.”
“That’s true sir, but there are a few more things that you have to know before making an educated decision on this matter. The atomic bomb pretty much destroys, and makes uninhabitable, the area it explodes over. We can’t even use the affected area to travel through. The radiation contaminates everything and has a cumulative effect and kills over time. The area is useless for any normal human purpose, including an invasion route.”
“Another thing to keep in mind is that the combat radius of a B-29 Silverplate is less than 1,600 miles, cruising at 25,000 feet, while carrying an atomic bomb. Those bombs, by themselves, are over 10,000 pounds each, and take an enormous amount of fuel to deliver them. We can get much better range at lower altitude but then, the bulk of the Soviet air force can reach us. We really have to concentrate on bombing their oil production and refining capabilities, and killing their pilots; exactly like we did with the Krauts, and the Japs. Killing their civilians will not be productive in the long run, and we have only a vague idea where their critical factories are.”
“That’s all well and good Hap, but as you are quite aware no one ever won the next war by fighting it like the last one. There could be all sorts of twists and turns we are going to have to adapt to.”
“You’re right, sir, but the bottom line is that we have the atomic bomb, and they don’t.”