Winter Warriors

by Stuart Slade

  “Call me Knyaz. We were told of your crash by a partisan group. They also told us where to look. You were leading the Germans very well, so we left you to get on with it. Then it was easy to set up a good ambush for them.” The lieutenant’s voice was slightly strained. He was trying to conceal his amusement at the way the two Americans had been stumbling around in the snow. “Did your survival people never teach you how to make snow shoes from branches?”

  Marosy shook his head. He watched with awe at the way the Russians were moving with casual ease in the snow. He’d thought the Germans had been skilled. Now he saw them as inept blunderers compared with the ski troops around them. And if they ‘d been inept blunderers, what did that made me and Bressler?

  “Another thing you Americans must learn about the Russian winter.” Knyaz was trying to stop himself laughing as he reached out and tapped the American’s flight suits. “Snow is not green. Come, we must move away from here. Can you ski?”

  “A little, not as well as your men.”

  “No matter. Our vehicles are only a few kilometers away. My men are finding you some skis and some camouflage suits that are not too badly bloodstained. We are heading home now to rejoin our division and we will take you with us. Also you can carry a banana rifle, we have captured quite a few this time out.”

  That was, Marosy thought, an improvement over a .38. As he and Bressler struggled into the German snow camouflage suits, they saw the young soldier with the bloodstained face getting slapped on the back by the others. Knyaz saw the look and explained. “When a recruit joins us, he is a drug, a worker. He is fit only to do the dirty jobs in the unit. But when he has killed his first Hitlerite, he becomes a comrade, a brat. A brother. Then, he can make other drugs do the dirty jobs for him.”

  “Ah, I see. You speak English very well Knyaz.”

  “Thank you. I learned some in an American hospital. My division always tries to have one who can speak English with each ski patrol, for just such times as this. Now hurry; we must move on before the fascists can follow up.”

  Arado-234B “Green Seven, Reconnaissance Flight, II/KG-40, over the Kola Peninsula.

  It was a good thing to be in the reconnaissance units; they had been first to receive the new jets. The Arado Lieutenant Wijnand was flying was a good example, a neat, twin-engined recon aircraft that could outfly pretty nearly all the fighters up in this benighted part of the world. Well, not the Ami Shooting Stars, but there weren’t that many of those around, not yet, not here on Kola. Mostly they were on the central part of the Eastern Front, where the Amis fought. Wijnand and ll/KG-40 had been stationed there for a while and it had been a nightmare. The Amis never seemed to run short of fighters; their Thunderbolts and Kingcobras were everywhere. The bomber squadrons were still flying Ju-188s and they’d been caught badly. That was why the group had been moved here, so they could recover on a quieter front.

  Wijnand looked down. The snow-covered landscape really was quite beautiful. Then he looked more closely. Way off to the left, heading off in a quite different direction from that the experts had predicted, were two long clouds of smoke. Wijnand banked around and set off to have a closer look. Sure enough, it was what he was looking for. Two trains pulled by steam locomotives.

  A closer inspection with his binoculars showed that they weren’t just what he was looking for. They were the ones he was looking for. The front two trains had each had one huge gun with a line of carriages. Following them, in a desperate effort to keep up, was a diesel locomotive pulling two more carriages.

  “Base, this is the Flying Dutchman here. I have found the prey, heading west.” Wijnand looked at his maps and carefully calculated the position, then read it out over the radio.

  “Well done my little Dutchman. The map shows a bridge up ahead. We already have bombers ready to go, we will take that out. Headquarters wants those guns captured and already the Amis have blown one of them up. So we will make sure the muddy-feet get a chance at the two remaining. Stay with them; we will tell you when the bridge has gone.

  M-188A-2 W+KQ, II/KG-40, over the Kola Peninsula.

  This was the sort of raid the Ju-188 was good at. A quick take-off, a sneak over the lines at a specific target and back before the Amis or Ivans could react. The 188 was fast low down. It could make almost 450 kilometers per hour and it could slide under the radar surveillance that the damned Amis had set up almost everywhere. Mind you, low down was all that mattered on the Russian Front. The Ivans flew low and the Amis not much higher. A fight 5,000 meters up was a rare thing.

  Captain Schellberg spread his map out on his knees. He was getting routing instructions from his navigator but he wanted to see the terrain for himself. The raid was a very specific one; a railway bridge that should be other the next ridgeline. His eight bombers would be making their runs along the length of the bridge. The bombing errors were likely to be in range, not deflection; so a run along a bridge gave a higher chance of a hit than one across.

  There it was. Schellberg grabbed his radio. “Second section, make your runs now.” Second Section were the novices; the newbies with only one or two missions under their belts. There were all too many of those these days. Give them the biggest targets. If they brought the center spans down, Schellberg’s veterans could drop the end spans. But if the newbies missed, then Schellberg’s section could still rectify matters.

  The first of the Ju-188s crested the hill and started it’s ran. The two thousand-kilo bombs wobbled free and lurched downwards sending up fountains of water beside the middle spans. Shaken it up a bit, Schellberg thought, but still standing. The second pair of bombs were way short. Good for line, they chewed up the railway tracks short of the bridge, but the bridge itself was still standing. The third pair were very close. The water spouts actually soaked the bridge girders but still no collapse. The fourth pair hit home. It was as if the crew had watched what the others had done and averaged out their errors. The explosions blackened the sky around the bridge. When it cleared, the center span was down, one end in the river and the pier it had rested on broken.

  “Well done Number Four! First section follow me.”

  Schellberg put his Ju-188A into a dive, aiming the nose at the abutment where the bridge met the bank. He held his breath slightly, squeezed the release just so, and saw the boiling black cloud erupt as his thousand kilo bombs slammed into the target. The bankside span crumpled and collapsed.

  As Schellberg pulled away, he saw the damaged center span collapse into the river as two more bombs took down the remaining pier holding up its other end. Three of the four spans were down now. It was down to the two remaining aircraft to deal with the last. Schellberg saw the cloud of smoke rising from the bank and cursed. Thick as it was, he could see the last remaining span of the bridge was still standing. Still, the bridge was down, decisively down. That meant the mission was achieved.

  The eight Ju-188As headed back for home. Just for once, it had been an easy mission. The Ami and Ivan fighters had been tied up hitting the German units advancing in the southern section of the Kola Front. The Canadian aircraft were supporting their troops fighting the Finns. There had been no flak around the bridge. It would be a long, long time before there was another mission like this one.

  Curly, Battery B, US Navy 5th Artillery Battalion, Kola Peninsula.

  It was still called the TBS even though it wasn’t used to talk between ships. In fact, this particular set wasn’t even installed on a ship. It was used to communicate between the carriages that made up the gun train of Battery B. Yet, this was a United States Navy train, traditions still held good and it was called the TBS. The signals Lieutenant answered it. The message wasn’t good news.

  “Sir, we’ve just received word. The bridge we were intending to use has just been blown. German bombers took it down about an hour and twenty minutes ago.”

  “Damn.” Commander Perdue wanted to put it rather more strongly than that. “Ask Major Boldin to join us. And order all the trains to halt.�
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  Perdue stared at the map. Unless there were spur lines that weren’t shown, they were trapped. The spur they had intended to use was on the other side of the now-destroyed bridge. The only alternative was to go back east and hope that the German advance hadn’t blocked that particular route out. A faint hope and one that exposed his guns to risk of capture, the one thing he was under strict orders not to allow. It was a situation that deserved something better than a single damn.

  The ASTAC Major entered the command car and Perdue explained the situation briefly. “So, Tovarish Major, is there any chance of repairing that bridge? If not, can we get out by retracing our steps and heading out east then North? Failing those two options, what can we do?”

  “The bridge? It is destroyed. We cannot repair it. According to the partisans, the central pillars and the far side piers have gone. We would need to build an entirely new bridge; it will take weeks. As for going back, that also is impossible. There is nowhere to turn the trains around and to go backwards so far, with such a load as we have, we cannot do this.” Boldin stared at the map. “But there is one alternative, very risky, very dangerous; but open to us.”

  “Better than giving up and blowing up our guns here.”

  “Indeed so, Tovarish Commander. But when I said very dangerous, I am not joking. You see this ridge that runs along here, parallel to us, you can see it to our right. That ridge has deposits of low-grade coal in it. Not good coal, but useful. So, before the War it was decided to dig new mines in that ridge to recover the coal. Two such mines were dug here and here. “ Boldin’s finger tapped the map at two points a few miles in front of the trains. Points on almost opposite sides of the ridge.

  “And to get the coal out, they needed a railway siding. One for each mine. Don’t tell me there’s a tunnel through the ridge at that point. Where the mines join?”

  “Sidings yes, both sides of the ridge. There is no tunnel through the ridge. If there are points where the two mines join, there almost certainly are, a simple safety precaution, they would be man-sized only. Not big enough for great trains like these. But, the two sidings are joined by a line that goes over the ridge. We can take the trains along one set of sidings, over the connector and out by way of the other set. That will take us out onto this line here. We can head east along it, then north along here to rejoin our original route at this point here.” Boldin’s finger tapped out the route.

  “That seems to be ideal.” Perdue paused. “There’s a problem isn’t there? We can’t be this lucky.”

  “There is indeed a problem. The mines never produced good quality coal and when the war started, all the available equipment was concentrated on the mines that could. These particular mines were closed, their equipment taken away for use elsewhere. We would have taken up the railway lines as well but there was not time. The Hitlerites advanced so fast we never got the chance. So the lines are still there, but they have not been maintained since 1941. Four years of winters and summers, of snow and ice forming then melting. They will not be in good condition, those tracks.

  “There is another problem. The tracks were built in the years of the great purges. The engineer was told to get the cross-ridge line completed by a specific date. A party congress perhaps or somebody’s birthday, who knows? Now the original design was to run the rails up the side of the ridge, keeping the slope to a minimum, about three percent, then turn the tracks through 180 degrees on the level ground at the top of the ridge them bring it down the other side. Only there was not enough time and not enough track. So rather than complete the job late and run risk of liquidation, he took some short cuts. The slopes up and down are much steeper than they should be. So much so that the coal trains had difficulty managing them and there were some accidents. To take these great guns along those tracks...” Boldin shrugged. “It may be possible. It is our only way out.”

  Perdue thought the problem over. “There are sidings both sides of the ridge?”

  “Yes Tovarish Commander.”

  “So we can try this. We will take the guns to the foot of the ridge and the mines there. We will park the guns in the siding and use both locomotives to pull the carriages over to the other side. The diesel shunter should be able to manage without help. Then we use both locomotives to bring each gun over in turn. The problem will be coming down the other side. Will it be possible to turn the train around so that we can have the gun in front of the engines, that way they can act as a brake? Then we can assemble all the trains in the sidings the other side of the ridge, sort ourselves out and be on our way.”

  Bolding thought carefully. “I think this may work yes. Your Mikados are powerful engines, this I know.” Then he smiled brightly. “Tovarish Commander, you are very determined to save your guns, yes?”

  “Very much, Tovarish Major. If I lose another one, the Navy will take the cost out of my salary.”

  United States Strategic Bombardment Commission, Blair House, WashingtonD.C. USA.

  “General LeMay to see you, Sir.” Naamah made the introduction without giggling over the ‘sir.’ In the anarchistic environment preferred by those who worked on Project Dropshot, the word was rare indeed.

  “Curt, it’s good to see you. How goes SAC?”

  “My B-29 bomber crews are getting shot to hell in Russia. The new groups are short of planes, pilots, equipment, everything we need. Apart from that its going well.”

  “That bad? I thought the D-models were rolling off the lines now.”

  “They are. And most of them go straight into modification centers to have faults fixed or be modified. I’ve got groups out there with three serviceable aircraft. The 100th has been operational since October, on paper. In reality, it’s got twelve bombers out of the 75 it’s supposed to have. We’re flying the birds around the clock; one crew brings them in, another takes them out. I have to tell you, that’s putting a lot of hours on the airframes that aren’t too strong to start with. Don’t sweat it though. We’ll get the crews ready, it’s the planes that worry me.”

  “We can treat the D-models as a training cadre. The first really operational ones will be the E-ships. When they start arriving we’ll be converting the Ds to tankers.”

  “Glad to hear it.” LeMay paused for a moment. “Look, Phillip, it isn’t really that bad. The B-17 program was worse and the 29 production problems were even more chaotic. You remember what happened with my first B-17 group?”

  Stuyvesant shook his head. “Not from the inside, no.”

  “December 1941, we were supposed to be based in Iceland. We’d packed up to go, our ground echelon, all our spares, baggage, tools, everything was on its way to Iceland. Then they start to talk about sending us to Hawaii as an emergency deployment instead. Can you imagine, 35 B-17s suddenly arriving at Hickam without any of the thing needed to keep them flying? Disaster. Only thing worse would be arriving in the middle of an air raid. What the hell caused that flap anyway?”

  “Never got to the bottom of it Curt. The Japanese were up to something. For a while, it looked like they were going to hit all ways at once. Phillippines, Dutch East Indies, Malaya and Singapore, you name it. Some of the radio intercept guys even suggested the Japs might pound on Pearl. Then suddenly, it all went away. The Japs stood down and poured their military power into China instead. They’re still there, making headway, and we’re turning a blind eye because the supply line to Russia runs right under their nose.

  “Well, nobody told us that; just that orders for the Pacific were coming down. I had to get the whole group out of the zee-oh-eye before the orders to they arrived. At least we haven’t had that with our big birds. If Consolidated can get the production sorted out, we’ll be ready. We’re ready now if we really have to be. We can put about a 150 birds up for a strike. Some of them are older and slower than the rest but they’ll still give the krauts hell. You give us the packages, Phillip, and Consolidated the birds, we’ll take their whole damn country off the map.” LeMay shifted his pipe from one side of his mouth to th
e other. “So, how’s your side of the planning going?”

  “Pretty good; we’re refining the target list now. Looks like around 200 targets for optimum. Fewer than that, we leave bits of the war machine working. More and we just start rearranging the rubble. I want to hit some targets, Berlin, Munich, Nuremberg, with more than one device. They’re political targets. We wipe them off the map to make a point. Other targets are going to need at least two devices. They’re hardened targets like shipyards and certain factories. So, I’d say somewhere between 220 and 260 devices. You’re still planning three-plane sections?”

  “Right. We’ve been trying all sorts but that seems to be the best for the big bird. We can position them so all the approaches are covered by gunfire from the turrets.” LeMay shifted his pipe again. “Spent a couple of trips up there myself, talking the birds into position. It works, if we need it to. Might not. You hear about Paul Tibbets’ experiment?”

  Stuyvesant shook his head.

  “Boeing stripped a B-29B right down; took out all the guns except the tail mounts, all the armor, everything not strictly needed for flight. Even took the arms off the seats. Tibbets took the lightweight bird up to 30,000 feet and some P-47s tried to intercept him. He outmaneuvered them all, chased them all over the sky. Nobody could believe it but he did it, right in front of them. Nobody expected the result to be so dramatic. Even the people who designed the birds are saying there’s something about these big birds high up we’re not allowing for. But, you’re right, three plane sections. Those sections are called Hometowns by the way.”

  “Right, so with 75 planes per group, we should be able to use between eight and ten groups to drop the devices. That gives us a heck of a margin for safety. We’ll be OK for the big birds Curt.”

  LeMay laughed. “Stuyvesant, you’re a great planner and a great industrialist but you don’t know squat about running a bomb group. Look, each group has three wings right? 24 birds per wing. That’s eight three-plane sections. Each Bomb Wing will be doing well if it gets five of those sections up; three if we’re unlucky. The rest of the big birds will be down for repair or in the shop for modification. Then, there’s the crew. We have to keep some of them back in reserve for additional strikes, the first crews in won’t be flying again for days after a two-day mission. So call it four sections per Bomb Wing. That’s 12 sections per group, not 25. You do your maths again.”