by Peter Bryant
The modern bomber is an infinitely more complex machine than the crude Fortresses and Lancasters of World War II. It flies more than twice as fast and twice as high. With midair refuelling its range is virtually unlimited. But as the complexity and performance of the bomber have increased, so has the ability of its enemies to track it down and destroy it.
The 52K’s were the last of their line. Their defence systems were the result of a triple alliance between the Boeing designers at Seattle, the weapons experts at Wright Field, and a specially formed electronics company in which both General Electric and Westinghouse had joined forces. Between them, they had made the 52K as nearly invulnerable to attack as any bomber could be.
The two main enemies of the bomber were guided missiles, whether launched from the ground or from another plane, and missiles fired from a supersonic fighter which were unguided but usually fired in salvoes to increase the chances of a hit.
Against the first of these enemies, the guided missile, the 52K deployed a whole battery of electronic counter-measures. As far as was known, the Russian missiles relied on radar in some form or other for their guidance systems. No doubt they were developing other forms of guidance, like the American and British infra-red missiles which homed on the radiations given off from jet engines. But it was thought that all operational missiles relied on radar.
The electronics company, on information supplied by the weapons teams at Wright Field, had designed a big electronic brain which would automatically sense the presence of a missile from its radar pulses. It would then determine the exact frequency of those pulses, assess the speed and track of the missile and beam out a series of pulses of its own. These would supply the enemy missile with false information, confuse its guidance system, and divert it from its target. In certain cases it would have the effect of causing the weapon to explode prematurely, in others of turning it back in its own track. In a whole series of tests against missiles of the same type the Russians were thought to be using, the brain had never failed to sense, and then to divert, an oncoming missile.
The Boeing people had looked at the size and weight of the electronic brain and its associated radar, shaken their heads, and declared it impossible to fit into the B-52. Then they had gone ahead and fitted it. The result was the 52K.
At the same time the electronic brain was being built into the 52, the conventional tail armament was removed. It no longer had the range for dealing with the second of the bomber’s enemies—the supersonic fighter which would approach from the rear and loose off a salvo of rockets. These rockets were of the unguided type, and therefore impossible to divert electronically. If they were aimed right, nothing would stop them once they were launched. The solution was obvious. Kill the rocket carrying fighter before it could launch them.
The Air Force asked for, and got, a weapon which would do this. It had a long and involved set of initials for its name, but among SAC crews it was known as a hornet. The name was apt. A hornet sting is about as bad as you can get. A sting from the nuclear warhead—no bigger than a large grapefruit—of this hornet, would destroy anything within five hundred yards of the burst.
The hornet missiles were controlled initially by radar from the fire control system which Goldsmith operated. They were let slip as soon as a hostile fighter came within five miles range. In the first part of their flight they rode a beam from the bomber. At a range of a mile from the target their own infra-red guidance systems took over and homed them in. They were proximity fused to explode as soon as they were within two hundred yards of their targets. A series of tests had shown that when the missiles were released against a fighter five miles away, it was destroyed before it had penetrated to within two miles of the bomber. This was true even of fighters capable of twice the speed of sound in level flight.
So there it was, Brown thought. The two threats, the two counters. Now it remained to be seen just how the theory would work out in practice.
Andersen’s voice broke in on him. "Two minutes to point A, captain. New course one seven eight. Estimating 12.05 at the primary."
"O.K. Setting it up now. What’s the mid-point of our bomb time, Stan?"
"That’s it, captain. Five after twelve. The earliest and latest times are one after and nine after."
"Right. Engineer, I’ll want a fuel check after this turn. Work out the endurance from point A at this height and speed. Also at this height and twenty less speed. Give it to me in air miles."
"Right," Federov said. He took out his fuel analysis logs and his reckoner tables, and began to make the preliminary entries.
Brown opened his folder of orders again. "Radar?"
"Captain?" Lieutenant Owens spoke up clearly and confidently.
"Switch the brain to fully automatic as soon as we turn. Report to me when it’s warmed up and functioning. I’ll check the frequency search bands with you then. Stan, will the long range search help you on this leg?"
"Well," Andersen said, "we’re a bit far away for the first fifteen minutes or so. Then we’ll start picking up the southern half of Novaya Zemlya. You should be able to pick out Moller Bay a hundred and forty miles to port, Bill. About fifteen minutes after turning. After that I’ll be interested in Kolguev Island and the Kanin Peninsula. Check with me when Moller Bay shows, huh?"
"Sure," Owens said. He turned to his main search radar, tuned it for maximum range, and selected the one hundred to two hundred mile range band. The radar would now concentrate exclusively on the area between two concentric circles, one a hundred and the other two hundred miles from their centre, which was Alabama Angel.
"Time to turn, Captain," Andersen’s voice piped up.
"O.K. Stan, turning now." Brown watched as the port wing rose slowly, held its position steadily through the turn, and then dropped again. He checked the gyro heading, and said, "On course. Time to run to target?"
"Eighty-four minutes," Andersen said crisply.
"O.K." Brown leaned forward and turned the face of a count-down clock until the figure eight-four showed in the boldly framed datum window. He pressed the start button, and the clock began to tick away the remaining seconds and minutes. He watched it until the eight-four had clicked out of view and eighty-three had replaced it.
One minute gone on the attack leg. Eighty-three to go. Eighty-three more minutes of waiting and wondering. After the attack it would be a little easier, perhaps. They could break radio silence to request instructions what base they were to head for. Those instructions might give a clue what sort of damage the States had taken. Might. Of course, the instructions would possibly be sent without any request, as general instructions to the wing. There might even be a recall. He forced the thought away from him, rejecting it as utterly impossible. They were committed now. Some of the wing—those with targets assigned to them deep inside central Russia—were over Russian territory already. There would be no recall.
He ran ever in his mind what he had done already, what remained to do. Lieutenant Owens, the radar officer, said, "Captain, she’s warmed up now, everything functioning. I’m ready to set up the frequency bands."
"O.K. Bill. You call them as you set them. I’ll check with my list." Brown turned the pages of the folder until he reached the sheet that detailed the frequency bands to be set up on the electronic brain for this target and route. He checked off the bands as Owens called them, then said finally, "Right. Let me know immediately if you suspect any malfunctioning. If I’m speaking, break in on me. You understand?"
"Sure," Owens said. "I’ll do that."
Brown turned to the very last page in the folder. He looked at the count-down clock for a moment. God, had only two more minutes gone by? How long were the other eighty-one going to seem? He thought back rapidly to the checks he had made. Gunnery, navigation, radar, fuel. Fuel? "Any idea on endurance yet, Federov?"
"I have the answer at this height and speed, Captain. Gives you five thousand two hundred from the A point. I’m still working on the other one."
&nbs
p; "Thanks, Federov." Brown relaxed. He was two hundred over the safety limit for this particular target. Allowing for adverse winds, and extra fuel used in changes of altitude which might be forced on a bomber for tactical reasons as it approached its target, plan R called for Alabama Angel to have the equivalent of five thousand air miles in the tanks at the A point. He had a small margin to play with.
He glanced again at the count-down clock. It was showing eightly. Perhaps he thought, even now, there would be something which would. . . . The eighty clicked implacably into seventy-nine. He said, "Garcia, Minter."
The two of them replied together, Garcia’s voice blending with the deeper notes of Minter’s.
Brown took a deep breath. "Let’s get to work," he said. "Number one first. Arm and fuse for air burst at twenty thousand. I’ll check the stages with you."
Garcia said quietly, "Request release trigger for number one."
"Releasing." Brown jerked down a switch on the instrument panel, held it down while he thumbed a button on the left side of the panel with his other hand.
"I have it," Garcia said.
Brown let the switch flip up, took his thumb from the button. The crew listened quietly to the preparations. And Alabama Angel continued to push ten effortless miles behind her each minute on the way to the primary target.
Go to Contents
* * *
Chapter 8
Sonora, Texas
* * *
10.40 G.M.T.
Moscow: 1.40 p.m.
Washington: 5.40 a.m.
"Sit down, Paul," Brigadier General Quinten said easily. He waved his hand to a comfortable chair in front of the desk.
Paul Howard looked carefully at the general as he sat down. He noted the haggard face, and the small twitch in the cheek under the right eye. But he also saw that the general’s right hand was steady. And that was the hand holding the point four five pistol the general had produced, as if by magic, as soon as he heard Howard’s first few words.
Quinten lit a cigarette. "So you’ve got on to it," he said. "How did you know?"
"Combination of things," Howard said slowly. "Mostly, the question of a bell ringing. It was there in back of my mind all the time, but it took a while to register. General, that red line phone makes a hell of a noise when it rings. Earlier on, when I came into this office and found you already speaking on that phone, I knew there was something missing. I didn’t know just what. But a few minutes ago I realised it. I hadn’t heard the bell. If it had rung, I’d have heard it for sure. So I began to get the idea you’d made the call to SAC yourself, strictly for my benefit." He paused, waiting for some positive reaction from Quinten.
But Quinten was not disturbed. "So far you’re adding things up right," he said lightly. "I’m not going to quarrel with your conclusions. Go on from there."
"Well, sir, then I got to thinking about the second call, the one that came through while I was talking to you. You said something like, ‘I hear you. All right.’ Something like that. It was just what you would have said if you’d picked up the phone for the first call and asked the operator at SAC to check your line. Anyway, I switched my radio on. The miniature one I keep in my desk. All the stations were transmitting normally, even the small local outfits."
"So?"
"So you’d said we were at warning red. That means air attack imminent. In that case all the small stations would have shut down. The networks would have shifted over to the Conelrad stations. That hadn’t happened. It was then I realised."
"I see," Quinten murmured. "Paul, I was going to tell you anyway. I’d already told SAC, when I sent you to fetch the security officer, because it’s too late for anyone to do anything about it now."
Howard lit a cigarette. He noticed the general had put the pistol down on the desk. But it was within easy reach of his right hand. He remembered one of the general’s hobbies was pistol and small-bore rifle shooting. He relaxed. "I don’t see how it’s too late. SAC can recall the wing," he said.
"No, they can’t. You weren’t at the briefiing, were you?"
"You know I wasn’t."
"So you don’t know the three letter group I gave the wing, for setting on the CRM 114 after they received their attack orders?"
"No, I don’t."
"Neither," Quinten said calmly, "does anyone at SAC."
"But the letters are pushed out by SAC," Howard protested, his voice rising slightly. "They’re bound to know."
Quinten shook his head. "Paul, there are some things about SAC operations you don’t know, and neither does any officer under base commander or deputy commander level. SAC supplies the general code group, sure. But the group for plan R is originated by the base commander himself. There’s a good reason for it. We’ve learned a lot about the nature of Communism and its adherents. We also know we are liable to be attacked at any time. All right, suppose a sudden attack knocked out all our bases except this one. Suppose someone in high places knows the general code group of the day. Someone who is a Communist, or a fellow traveller."
"That isn’t even a possibility," Howard said angrily.
"You’re wrong, Paul. It is a possibility. In a world which can construct an H-bomb and put up its own artificial moons, even contemplate a break-out into space, nothing is impossible. Nothing. Oh, I agree the possibility is very slight, but it exists. Anyway, suppose things happened as I said. I get my planes into the air. But they aren’t going to be much good if the enemy can get through to them and turn them back, or maybe divert them to a base where they can be caught on the ground a few minutes after landing. Plan R takes care of that. We’ve come a long way since Pearl Harbour. That taught us a lesson we’ve never forgotten, and the results of that lesson are written into plan R."
Howard shifted in his chair. Suddenly it was all very clear to him. He remembered how Majors Bailey and Hudson had asked permission to go on a hunting trip. The general had agreed immediately. Come to think, he was almost sure the general had suggested it. Bailey and Hudson had been at the briefing. Apart from the crews of the wing, and the general himself, they were the only officers who had.
"That’s why you sent Bailey and Hudson off?" he asked.
Quinten frowned. For the past fifteen minutes the pain in his head had subsided to a dull throb. Now suddenly, it was again hot and active, clawing at his brain like a wild thing. He said quietly, "I don’t know. Certainly, in the couple of minutes before the boys reached their X points, it was one of the factors influenced me to send them on in. That, and the news about the I.C.B.M. site, and the fact we were running a NORAD exercise so I knew our defences would be alert. You were standing in as deputy, which helped a lot. Colonel England would have smelled a rat immediately I mentioned plan R."
"I don’t see why."
"You’re forgetting that plan R was drawn up to take account of special circumstances," Quinten said gently. "To enable a base commander to act when central command had gone. It would never have been pushed out by SAC."
Howard stubbed out his cigarette in the ash receptacle built into the arm of the chair. "So now what happens?"
"Go and stand by the window, Paul. Listen very carefully."
Howard walked across to the window. He heard nothing. Then he pressed his ear against the thick glass, and felt it vibrating. Very faintly he heard a distant rumble, like thunder over the horizon of a summer’s day.
"You hear anything?"
Howard turned to face him. "A low rumble," he said. "The kind of noise you hear when a wing goes off, if you’re a long way away. That what you mean?"
Quinten nodded. "Exactly. Does it answer your question?"
Howard shook his head slowly. "I don’t get it," he said. "I just don’t understand what’s happening."
"Sit down again." Quinten held the pistol loosely while Howard walked across the room, then replaced it on the desk as Howard sank into a chair. "Take your time to think about it, Paul. Tell me why you think a SAC wing is going off somewhere. You’re gra
duated from the National War College, you know all the theory. Now work out the real thing."
Howard lit another cigarette. In the quiet lecture rooms of the War College it was easy. There was the problem, apply the tools of your training and natural brainpower to it, bingo—there was the solution. But that was when you were dealing with power in terms of paper symbols. The low rumble he had heard in the distance—was it from Sanderson? or Austin? or Uvalde?—was the real thing. It was power in terms of eight jet engines pushing out twelve thousand pounds of thrust each. It was power in terms of bombs with an explosive potential equivalent to fifteen million tons of T.N.T. Real power. Naked, frightening, unimaginable power.