The increasingly aggressive posture of the Soviet forces against which we are arrayed is a matter of great alarm for both our nations. In recent days, we have seen provocative acts by them as they attempt to dominate both the Baltic and the skies over the Allied zones of occupied Germany. Their brazen action on the sea appears to have precipitated its own undoing; incautious seamanship resulted, no doubt, in a Soviet battleship striking a mine—either one laid by the Germans or perhaps one of their own—and sinking off the Polish coast. An equally brazen action in the air—Soviet bombers intent on attacking our positions in occupied Germany—was thwarted only by the heroic actions of your airmen who, in testament to their extraordinary skills and judgment, forced the hostile aircraft to the ground without a shot being fired. It is only a matter of time—a very brief matter of time, I am afraid—until ground offensives by the Soviets will be launched with the intent to seize all of Allied-occupied Germany and extend their already excessive footprint on the Continent into Denmark, the Low Countries, and beyond.
With this dire eventuality in mind, I believe we of the Western Allies must jointly embark on a bold program of our own to rid Eastern Europe of that vile Soviet boot on its neck. I propose immediate preparations for a two-pronged assault, with British and Polish forces performing amphibious landings at the Polish ports, especially Gdansk, while American, French, and other forces at your disposal sweep in through Austria and Czechoslovakia to complete the encirclement of the Soviet forces and expel the Soviet presence from Poland as well as the rest of Eastern Europe.
There is no better time than now for these actions, Mr. President, while the Soviets remain exhausted both physically and materially from their long and brutal march to Berlin. While it is true we still bear the considerable task of defeating Japan, I doubt Stalin is of any inclination to assist us in that undertaking, regardless of what he may want us to believe. I am confident we can defeat the Asian scourge without Soviet help, so I remain unconcerned that actions we take against his forces in Europe will be to the detriment of our Pacific campaign. The coming Potsdam conference will provide the perfect cover to disguise our true intentions, expose specific Soviet weaknesses to be exploited, and possibly gain concessions that will make our task easier.
I look forward to discussing this further with you at the conference. I anticipate nothing but the continued fine coordination of our military staffs.
Sincerely,
Winston Churchill
Harry Truman placed Churchill’s message gently on his Oval Office desk, as if rougher handling might cause the paper to ignite. Then he stood and faced the windows, staring across the White House’s South Lawn, seemingly deep in thought. If the other men in the room could have seen his face, though, they would’ve known the president was seething.
Once he’d composed his thoughts—or rather, his list of grievances—he turned to General Marshall and said, “He’s lost his marbles, gentlemen. For example, let’s begin here—what the hell does Churchill mean when he mentions other forces at your disposal?”
In his usual calm and forthright manner, Marshall replied, “I’m sure he’s referring to the talk of rearming German troops to fight by our side against the Soviets, Mister President.”
“Talk?” Truman replied. “Who exactly would be talking like that—out loud, yet—except the Prime Minister?” Before Marshall could say anything, the president blurted, “Oh, don’t tell me…it’s that raving lunatic Patton, isn’t it?”
Marshall’s silent nod was all the answer he needed. Truman was working up to a rant now.
“And another thing,” the president said. “Is he seriously suggesting Britain is making a major contribution to the fight against the Japanese? I don’t remember hearing about any British soldiers dying on the beaches of those damn islands.”
“Begging your pardon, sir,” Marshall replied, “but MacArthur’s use of his Australian divisions to do a major share of the fighting—and dying—on New Guinea freed up his American divisions for the advance to the Philippines and beyond.”
Admiral King, the Chief of Naval Operations, wasn’t being so generous. “Australians aren’t British, Mister President. They just kiss the same ring. And aside from a small handful of ships, they aren’t contributing more than a bucket of spit to Nimitz’s campaign in the Pacific…the campaign that actually matters in that ocean.”
King wasn’t finished. “This story the Brits are spreading about that Russian battleship hitting a mine…well, that’s just bullshit, Mister President.” Looking to Marshall, he added, “Isn’t that right, General?”
Marshall replied, “Our intelligence does indicate that in all probability, that battleship was sunk by a British submarine, not a mine.”
“Well, isn’t that hot shit,” Truman said. “I can understand the Prime Minister trying to bullshit the Russians, but I take great offense when he tries to bullshit me. You can expect me to get a straight answer out of him once we’re face to face at Potsdam. What’s your read on all this, Jimmy? Has the man lost his ever-loving mind? I didn’t think we won the war in Europe just so we could crank up another one.”
Jimmy: James Byrnes, the newly appointed Secretary of State.
“It’s no secret Churchill despises Stalin, Mister Presi—”
But Truman cut in, saying, “And I don’t have to remind you that I’m no fan of the man, either, do I? Didn’t we already instruct Eisenhower not to be such a patsy with the Russians?”
“Of course, Mister President,” Byrnes continued. “But as far as Mister Churchill goes, most of his strategic suggestions these past few years—which we ignored—were as much about cutting off the Soviet advance as defeating the Germans. His obsession with Poland is incomprehensible at this point, and this delusional idea for a seaborne incursion there is just—”
“Just more bullshit,” Admiral King interrupted. “Sounds like another Dieppe Raid in the making. The next Churchill fiasco…or maybe just another chance to sacrifice more Canadians and Poles. He’s been quite successful at that.”
“All right, enough, gentlemen,” Truman commanded, silencing the room. Then he asked Marshall, “What’s the story on these Russian bombers our flyboys forced down?”
“We’re not sure yet, Mister President. The Soviets have been silent on the matter.”
“They’re probably trying to come up with a way to make it sound like it was our fault,” Truman said. “I’ve been thinking…should we tell Eisenhower to make it policy to shoot down Russian planes over our territory?”
“I’ve been giving that some thought, too,” Marshall replied. “So has the Air Force. At face value, if those Russian bombers were just doing the same thing we’re doing—overflying the other’s territory to test their reaction—then no real harm has been done, and issuing a shoot down order seems unnecessarily provocative.”
Truman asked, “Are you concerned they’d attempt to close the Berlin air corridors if we did issue that order?”
“No, Mister President. General Arnold assures me his Air Force is fully capable of keeping the corridors open if necessary.”
“And yet you don’t think a shoot down order is a good idea?”
“Not at this time, Mister President. Why trigger a fight that wins us nothing we didn’t already have?”
Truman let the room fall silent as he weighed his options. When he finally spoke, it was again a question directed only to Marshall. “General, suppose the Prime Minister isn’t actually nuts, and we decide he’s right about the damn Soviets wanting to march farther across Europe. What’s our next move?”
“In that case, Mister President, we must take the planning for that eventuality out of British hands immediately, since the biggest burden of that fight won’t fall on them. It will fall on us.”
Truman had a question for Byrnes now. “Jimmy, this election going on in Britain. What would happen if Churchill lost?”
“We could expect a victorious Labour Party to take a somewhat less belligerent s
tance against the Soviets, Mister President. Not one of outright accommodation, though.”
Truman seemed amused by Byrnes’ comment. “They don’t need to bother with outright accommodation. We’ve got Eisenhower for that.” Turning serious again, he added, “But an electoral loss for Churchill’s Conservatives doesn’t actually lessen the Soviet threat, does it?”
“No, Mister President. But with Labour in power, it would undoubtedly increase our military burden should conflict with the Soviets actually break out.”
“What do you reckon the odds are of Churchill actually losing this election, Jimmy?”
“Small, Mister President. Exceedingly small.”
Truman sagged into his chair, seeming to be a much smaller man behind the desk than he’d appeared when standing. Europe might have technically been at peace, but the decisions that had to be made felt like a war was still raging, and each decision could have ramifications far beyond 1945. He’d only been president three months, but the weight of the job had already aged him years.
“Gentlemen,” the president said, “we will formalize plans for a European offensive against the Soviets should they break the territorial arrangements we made with them for the occupation. I assume we already have something like that stashed in some War Department desk?”
Marshall replied, “Only in very broad strokes, Mister President.”
“Well, then, General, let’s flesh that plan out immediately. And let me make this clear beyond any doubt: the plan will be implemented if—and only if—the Soviets attempt to advance one inch farther into Europe. And if they do, I intend to come down on them like the proverbial Hammers of Hell.”
He let his words sink in. Then he said to Marshall, “General, I have just one question for you: is Eisenhower still the man for the job of Supreme Commander?”
Without a moment’s hesitation, the general replied, “Yes, Mister President.”
“Very well,” Truman replied. “Just make sure he understands that if those damn Russians pick up so much as a whiff of what we’re doing here, his head will roll so far he’ll never find it. We’ll be face to face with Uncle Joe Stalin in a few days—and perhaps many times after that—and we don’t need our intentions being turned into bargaining chips to be used against us…not by the Reds and not by the Republicans in Congress, either.”
It had been three days since the Russian bombers surrendered to Tommy’s flight. The aircraft had been quarantined by the MPs in an isolated corner of the Bremen airfield ever since. The Russian aircrew weren’t prisoners or defectors; they were guests of the Americans until suitable arrangements could be made to return them to their own airfield near Berlin.
But even guests—however deceptively the term was used—could be subject to interrogation. The only Russian pilot who spoke a word was the flight leader, a major, who—through an interpreter—stuck doggedly to the line that their training flight had become lost and was then menaced—over Soviet-occupied territory!—by American interceptors. Fearing for their lives, they had no choice but to bend to the will of these Yankee gangsters.
When asked why their aircraft were loaded with high-explosive bombs for a training flight, the Russian major explained that it was standard procedure for combat aircraft to be armed at all times.
Tommy had been allowed to listen in on the interrogation. The senior intelligence officer—a light colonel—had told him, “It’s convenient you were the guy on the scene, Moon, since you’ve got all that experience working with the Reds.”
“I was only with them a couple of weeks, sir,” Tommy had replied.
“That’s a couple of weeks more than the rest of us, Captain.”
Once the interrogation was over, Tommy was asked for his impressions. “First off,” he said, “it was the Russian’s idea to surrender, not mine. We couldn’t talk to them up there. He wasn’t bending to anyone’s will. If he could really tell what my will was, he would’ve just turned around and gone home. No one would’ve gotten in his way.”
“Were you considering engaging them at any point, Captain?”
“Only if they shot first, sir. That’s the rule, isn’t it?”
The intelligence officer shifted tack and asked, “In your experience, Captain Moon, is it really standard procedure for Russian aircraft to be armed at all times?”
“Not from what I saw, sir. They fueled and armed up for whatever the mission was when they were handed that mission, just like we do. Besides, they know that having armed ships just sitting around on the ramp is a recipe for one hell of an accident.”
A maintenance officer stuck his head into the room, telling the intel colonel, “You’d better come see this, sir. We found something really interesting on those Russian birds.”
Tommy asked, “Mind if I tag along, sir?”
“Why not, Moon? They’re your catch, right?”
On the quarantine ramp, the show and tell was done by a master sergeant who was maintenance chief for the base. He led them to the open bomb bay of the lead aircraft. Looking up into it as they squatted beneath the mid-fuselage, they could see eight bombs hanging from the racks. The sergeant said, “The ordnance guys figured out the bombs in all these ships still had their safety pins in the fuzes, so we ain’t too worried about them blowing up on us. Wouldn’t take nothing to pull the pins out, though, even if these crates were up in the air.”
He stood up inside the bomb bay and pointed to a mechanism from which one of the bombs was hanging. “This release mechanism,” the sergeant said, “it’s broken. In fact, they’re almost all broken, on this ship and the others, too. Looks like a really bad design, one that requires a lot of cleaning and lubing, and nobody’s been doing it, that’s for sure. The only reason the mechanism is staying closed is it’s wired in place.” He put his finger on a loop of dull gray wire that would’ve looked more at home in a barbed wire fence. “They did it with baling wire, too. This, gentlemen, is one hell of a Rube Goldberg setup.”
The intel colonel asked, “So these aircraft couldn’t even drop these bombs, Sergeant?”
“Oh, they could drop ’em, sir, if they really wanted to. But some Ivan’s gotta squeeze into this bomb bay with a pair of cutters, snip the wire, then force the release mechanism open with something like a big screwdriver. Or maybe a crowbar. But they’d have to do it one at a time. It would take forever to drop this whole load. Not exactly conducive to precision bombing, I’d say. And if he ain’t real careful, he just might fall out while he’s doing it, too.”
Tommy stepped over to the rear of an engine nacelle, which was coated along its bottom with a thick, grimy slick of oil. There was a smaller set of doors there, too, but the coating of oil disguised their outline. “What about these bomb bays in the nacelles?” he asked. “Are they bombed up, too?”
“Negative, Captain,” the sergeant replied. “Everything in there’s gummed up with oil and pretty much useless. We got a bath just trying to open them. Same on the other ships. I never seen inline engines leak like this. They must think they’re radials or something.”
Tommy smiled. His plane—the P-47—was powered by a big radial engine that always leaked oil somewhere. The maintenance crews had an old saying, If a radial ain’t leaking, it’s out of oil.
The PE-2s weren’t powered by radials but twelve-cylinder Klimov inline engines. The sergeant was right, though: they were leaking like radials, only worse.
Tommy asked, “How do you get one of these engines to leak this bad, Sarge?”
“Simple, Captain…you don’t take care of it, just like they ain’t doing with the rest of the stuff on these crates. If these were my birds, I’d red-x every last one of them.”
Red-x: marking an unairworthy ship’s logbook to indicate its grounding.
The sergeant added, “If you’re going up in one of these crates, running into the enemy may be the least of your worries. These things will probably kill you quicker all by themselves.”
This close-up inspection had been sobering
for Tommy. Only a few months ago, he’d flown a Russian aircraft—a Yak-9 fighter—on two “cooperation” flights with a Soviet unit. The Yak had seemed in good working order to him, and none of the systems had ever let him down.
But I never got to inspect that Yak as closely as I’m doing to this ship.
Wouldn’t have known what the hell I was looking at, anyway.
Well, at least it wasn’t leaking oil…much.
I know I’d never trade one for a jug, though.
The sergeant told them, “There’s lots more broke stuff on these ships, too, gentlemen, if you feel like having a look-see.”
“No, I think we get the drift, Sergeant,” the intel colonel replied.
When they returned to the operations shack, the colonel immediately picked up the phone to 9th Air Force HQ. “There’s no point holding these Russian pilots any longer,” he told HQ with brisk confidence. “They’re just going to keep lying to us, anyway…Yeah, that’s right, sir. Training mission, my sweet ass. I’m sure they were trying to stir up some shit…Yes, sir. I guess they did succeed at that. But those planes of theirs—they’re staying. They’re in such bad shape that we have no choice but to consider them safety risks and ground them.”
Then the colonel offered this: “I’m telling you, sir…it looks like the whole Soviet Air Force is in real bad shape. We don’t have much to worry about from them, at least.”
He fell silent as the officer on the other end spoke. His face dropped, and when he replied, his voice sounded repentant: “You’re absolutely right, sir. We can’t be judging the readiness of their entire air force based on a handful of aircraft.”
Chapter Ten
The streets in the Soviet sector of Berlin were dark and deserted on this first night of August. Sylvie and Mirka were making slow but steady progress on their bicycles, groping their way down streets they were traveling for the first time. They’d committed the street plan of the Karlshorst district to memory. The last thing they needed was to look like interlopers by having to consult a map.
This Fog of Peace (Moon Brothers WWII Adventure Series Book 4) Page 9