Black Bear Blues

by Stephen Wishnevsky

  “Thank you. I will do that.” Off he went, Felipe and Pablo right behind. Jesus.

  >>>>>>>>>

  Unlike the other stories we were trying to follow, the Spanish stations were full of vehement exposition, no censorship there. Franco’s Spain was not even the strongest voice on the air. There was not much hard data, but there was plenty of eloquence, which Barbara dutifully noted down before moving on up the dial. I kept looking at maps. After a while, I got smart, walked over to bother Ray again, he let me look at the master railway map.

  Impressive, it was all the way to Karamay, six hundred miles, and a few branches striking out into the desert. I sketched a copy, violating innumerable regulations, and hustled back to the Recon Train. When I got there, Bob Weeks had drawn up something resembling a blue print, plan and elevation drawings, and was looking like somebody who was itching to get started. It was too late already, but we ran over to USAS HQ, set up a flight back to Dalny first thing in the morning, I typed notes to Eppi, Billy Ardmore, the Machine Shop boss, and Darrell Hoskins, the shop foreman. “You might have a week, if Eppi can’t get this prototyped out by then, we will have to go to Plan “B”.

  “Sounds like loads of fun.” He rolled up the sketches, and that was that day.

  >>>>>>>

  The next day, was another day of waiting, there was very little on the radio that meant anything. The Persians had established an English language service, but had little to say of current interest. There were some battles in Africa, and more in Afghanistan, and in the surrounding not-quite-nations; Punjab, Kashmir, Sindh, North-West Frontier Province, and Baluchistan. Locals against Brits and Germans, all very confused, as all these colonies’ troops had been trained by the British, still carried Enfields, wore Brit uniforms. The Bengalis were also restive, but against who, nobody was quite sure. We gave it up as a bad try, anybody who claims to understand Muslim politics is either a conman or a goddamned fool. Bob Weeks was off bright and early, HQ was still plotting and scheming, and the tanks and planes still roaring west. I got to thinking about tanks versus airplanes, and could come to no conclusions. Obviously, a dive bomber could take out any tank, if it could hit it, and there was damn all the tank could do about it. Anti-aircraft guns would provide moral support, if that, the damn planes just moved too fast to hit. It takes a damn good shot to hit a pigeon or grouse at what, thirty miles an hour? And the goddamned birds can’t shoot back. Maeve and I had been under dive bomber attack at Angarsk Airfield, and it was no damn fun at all. Airplanes are pretty damn fragile, but when they are screaming down your throat, they sure don’t look very fragile. Hiding under things is the only intelligent response.

  Just as I was about to give it up as a bad job, the phone rang.

  “Recon. Kapusta.”

  “Miles, this is Courtney Hodges. I have need of your… Sideways thinking. Under the table, if you will. This war is shaping up as between aircraft and tanks. Goering…” He paused.

  “Is a fighter pilot. I was just thinking about this… matter. I really don’t see any way tanks can shoot down dive bombers. They are just too fast, and too small a target.”

  “I do know one end of a gun from the other, and I agree. Skeet shooting is nothing compared to this.” I knew that Hodges had been the best iron sights rifle shot in the Army for decades, winning the Camp Perry competitions almost every time, well into the war years.

  I also knew that Patton considered himself one of the world’s greatest athletes, polo players, and marksmen. I had spent a drunken evening with an old fellow who had been a trainer for the US Army’s team for the very first modern pentathlon at the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm. The team consisted of George S. Patton, and his ego. Patton was a runner and a fencer, was most proud of his prowess with a pistol. But in the event, he insisted, the old guy remembered, on shooting with a .38, and not the standard .22 target pistol. He claimed that the holes in the paper from his early shots were so large that some of his later bullets passed through them, but the judges decided he missed the target completely at least once. He pitched a typical fit, even though he had been warned several times. There was something about cocaine and morphine use, Patton’s doctor shooting him up with drugs to get him through the grueling events.

  Be that as it may, out of forty-odd competitors, Patton placed twenty-first on the pistol range, seventh in swimming, fourth in fencing, sixth in the equestrian competition, and third in the footrace, finishing fifth overall and first among the non-Swedish competitors. These numbers were burned in my drinking buddy’s brain, I wrote it all down for a possible story, which I was too chicken-shit to actually write. Back to reality. “Excuse me, General, I was wool-gathering. I’ll do my best.”

  “The reason I come to you, is because you were actually under dive bomber attack. At Angarsk.”

  “Believe me, I won’t ever forget. All I can think of is to put as many bullets in the air as possible. Quad .50s or better. But they all traverse too slow. Perhaps truckloads of riflemen with BARs, but they would be sitting ducks once the bombs started falling.”

  “A pretty problem. I agree. But I feel that conventional thinking will come up empty on this.” Hodges’ voice was quieter than ever. His idea of emphasis. “Again, that’s why I came to you. Go back to first principles; If you can’t shoot them down, can you make them miss? Can you make them stay too high to be accurate?”

  “That’s a possibility. Balloons with wires on them? But that would lead the bastards right to the tanks. How fast can you raise a balloon?”

  “I don’t like the idea of tanks of hydrogen in our tanks. And… Crew exposure. Not good.” I could almost hear him think. “Why don’t you run out to Karamay in the morning, observe the Dive Bomber School, they have a range, talk to some of the instructors, maybe that will get your brain cranking out ideas?”

  “You want me to fly?”

  “Don’t fly yourself. Stick to your last. You can have that Maggie White give you a lift in her Trimotor, or we can lay on a flight. We have trains every few hours out there, but they might be too slow.”

  “My brain is slow these days. I’ll take the train, I can bring some paper work, maybe make a few drawings, if nothing else.”

  “I understand. Airplanes don’t have dining cars, after all. Ray will have your orders first thing. Thank you. We are sure you will come up with something.”

  Did he just make a joke? Amazing. I said goodnight, and went to have a good think before bed time.

  After a few weak drinks, and a nice piece of cake, it came to me that a big enough plane with enough machine guns on it could sweep dive bombers or bigger bombers out of the sky, not have to mess with this dog-fighting nonsense. I knew pilots all had to act like they loved that kind of thing, but I also knew that it was a chancy business, one on one equals a fifty percent chance of dying. Dive bombers and the big guys are slow, so maybe… I wrote a few lines down, and took my fat ass to bed.

  >>>>>

  I woke just before dawn, with the opposite to my problem in my mind. The Germans would have tanks, just like we had dive bombers. The two problems were inseparable. How could our dive bombers have better luck against their tanks? Turn that around, was there an answer? What did dive bombers do that other bombers did not do? Well, they came in low and slow, and were therefore just that more accurate. High level bombers could not hit shit, they relied on tonnage, dropping lots of bombs to hit things more or less at random. So, more bombs, versus low and slow. You could not aim regular bombs, so how could you mess up the dive bombers accuracy? I got up, threw on some clothes, grabbed a cuppa and a sweet roll, called Ray. The next train left in an hour, just enough time to kiss the Barbara girl, pack a bag, and go pick up my travel orders. I brought a lot of paper, a couple pens, and my binoculars. I also had a slide rule I barely remembered how to use, but that might come in handy.

  When I got settled in my seat, opened my briefcase of travel plans, I found that Ray had included a few manuals and data sheets on various bombs, m
achine guns, assorted ordnance of all sorts.

  They had an older pamphlet on barrage balloons, but they were all too large to do much good. France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom had all used barrage balloons in the European theater of the Endless War. Around London, strings of balloons were used to lift a "barrage net", steel cable strung between the balloons and more cables hung from it. These nets could be raised to the operational ceiling, 15,000 feet, of the bombers. By 1918 the barrage defenses around London stretched for 50 miles, and captured German pilots expressed great fear of them. That sounded helpful, if not practical; maybe smaller balloons dragging something like baling wires might help around fixed installations. Pass.

  The next manual was translated from the German, with notes, more about incendiary bombs than I ever wanted to know. The B-1E Elektron fire bomb, the Elektronbrandbombe, was ignited by a thermite charge, but the main effect was from the magnesium and aluminum alloy casing, which burned at 1,100 °C, emitted vapor that burned at 1,800 °C.

  The Zepps loved them, the light alloy casing meant that each bomber could carry a larger number. The German High Command devised an operation, Der Feuerplan, which involved the use of the whole German heavy bomber fleet, flying in waves over London and Paris and dropping all the incendiary bombs that they could carry, until they were either all shot down or the crews were too exhausted to fly.

  The hope was that the two capitals would be engulfed in an inextinguishable blaze, causing the Allies to sue for peace. Thousands of Elektron bombs were stockpiled at forward bomber bases and the operation was scheduled for August and September 1918, but on both occasions, the order was countermanded at the last moment, probably because of the fear of Allied reprisals against German cities.

  The Royal Air Force had already used their own "Baby" Incendiary Bomb, the BIB, which also contained a thermite charge. An insane plan to fire bomb New York with long range Zeppelins of the L70 class was proposed by naval airship fleet commander Peter Strasser in July 1918, but it was vetoed by Admiral Scheer. I could just bet they were dusting off those plans, and I made a note; a zepp base in Newfoundland could lay the whole industrial heartland of the States open to attack.

  Not my problem. I made another note that incendiaries might be useful against tanks, but it seemed dubious. They would probably just bounce off and burn alongside the roads.

  Well, do what I thought before. Turn it around. If you shot up a thermite bomb and blew it up, spread flaming shit into the dive bomber pilot’s face… Nah, all you would do is set the woods on fire. What am I? A scientist?

  We had been riding all day, by this time, twelve hours, just chugging through the outskirts of Urum-qi. Getting on toward dark. The city is built on a river that has water in it some of the time, and is in a good defensive situation, mountains shouldering the river from east and west. Out here, cities that are not in good defensive locations don’t last all that long.

  Anyway, as we passed through a little farming village, I saw they were having some kind of celebration, somebody’s birthday or some damn thing, and they started shooting fireworks into the darkening sky. The little kid in me likes skyrockets, or did before France and the AEF. This seemed safe enough, the booms of the explosions were muted by distance and the glass windows, so I thought I could enjoy the traceries of colors in the sky.

  The Chinese sure do love their fireworks. Then I got it. Fireworks. Cheap, available, and easy to use. It would be no problem to have a bin on the back of tank, or a train for that matter, full of the biggest sky rockets we could get our hands on. With a few seconds warning, you could set the whole mess of them off, and the sky would become a very crowded place. Some could trail a hundred feet of wire; once that got wrapped around the propeller, the enemy pilot would have to get out and walk. You might not get the first guy, but the second would be duck soup.

  Worth a try anyway. Make them cautious at the very least. Which made me think of “the rocket’s red glare,” and all that. I dredged my brain and remembered the Congreve Rocket, used in the War of 1812 against Fort McHenry… Details were sketchy, there was a vague memory that Congreve, whoever he was, had based his missiles on ones invented in India, Mysore, perhaps, even earlier. So, if true, that meant that these were just bigger fireworks, a design almost a hundred and fifty years old. For sure the Chinese could make those.

  Worth a try. If I hadn’t been such a dumb-ass, I could have thought of this in the first place and saved myself a train ride. Surely there was enough info in my old Britannica to get started. Now I would have to go another three hours to Karamay before I could head back home to my cushy private car and Barbara. How I suffer. Write it down. Rockets.

  The setting sun illuminated a red rock mesa in the center of Urum-qi, maybe a couple thousand feet high, with a temple on the top. Good enough. I could be a sightseer. A pretty sight. Enjoy it while you can. I dug out my binoculars and checked out the nine-story pagoda near the temple. A perfect spot to catch the red light of the sunset, simply marvelous, standing above the bare ruddy rock of the mountain. So pretty it made me hungry again… I am a great lout, it’s true. Off to the dining car.

  Something had caught my eye, I turned back to look closer. Oh. There were fresh excavations visible on the north side of the red mountain, and hint of sandbags. Below were obvious artillery emplacements on the flat lands below the red cliffs. A cork in a bottleneck. I wondered whose troops were manning those defenses, but it didn’t really matter. The 36th, under Delany, most likely. Delany was a dough, and AFL dock-walloper from Southie, who had been exiled to union organizing. Good man, and now he was commanding a division. Amazing, but promotion comes fast in the Polar Bears. So does death, but every job has its little drawbacks.

  From my table in the dining car, I could see battle wreckage flanking the right of way, before it got too dark to see. There had been at least two battles for Urum-chi in the last month alone. The trucks that got past Karamay to attack Jiu-quan, had bypassed Urum-chi, but had tried to flee back through there, with a notable lack of success. Urum-chi was one of those places that was nowhere in particular, but if you wanted to get to someplace worthwhile, you had to go through here. This was the farthest place you could be going east, and the Great Wall was the farthest place you could be going west, with damn-all in the middle.

  Now, with a division, no matter how improvised, here, life would be a lot rougher for any invader.

  >>>>>>

  It was only another three hours to Karamay, somebody had sent a telegram, there was a corporal with a staff car there to meet me at the new station, he took me to a BOQ that was so new, it hadn’t been painted yet. Raw green lumber boards with the sap dripping out. You could almost hear them warp as the Siberian moisture dried out in the Gobi heat. The beds were adequate, so no complaints. I kicked off my shoes, threw my duffle in the corner and passed the hell out. I had already noted the location of the slit trench and the latrines, so all the necessities were covered. You need to not mistake the one for the other, even in times of stress. It’s important.

  The sound of radial engines woke me before the ass crack of dawn, as was to be expected. Up and at them. No coffee, tea that was blacker than the heart of a Prussian, eggs, something that might have been grits, but wasn’t, no bacon, but some of that red-candied pork, fried in grease. Close enough for government work.

  That same corporal, Simmons, found me, and took me to check in at HQ. I didn’t see her, but General Earhart was CO, and most of the troops were black men, under Remus, I supposed. A Colonel Fortuna scribbled me a pass, and we exchanged a few words. He was from Fisk, had been a professor of music, until Patton decided that Negroes needed no education. “It just makes us uppity…” Fortuna mentioned in passing. He was nice enough, he better have been, seeing that my orders were signed by Hodges himself, but I got a sheaf of papers giving me the cooperation of the base. I felt a kinship with Fortuna, we both had better things to do than play soldier out in the fucking desert, but because the powers
that be hated us for simply being who we were, we were out here in the ass-end of no-place, trying to survive. I’m sure would could have had a few convivial belts together, had we met back in the states at some literary function somewhere. Dream on.

  I thanked him, and went to see the dive-bombing range. They were dropping dummy bombs on a couple-five battered trucks out west of the field, they had observers in bunkers scoring the drops, and semaphore setups to transmit the results. Now that I had time to observe rather than cowering in a trench, I could see that the bombs were on an “H” shaped hinged harness, that would swing down to make sure the bomb cleared the prop. The steeper the angle of attack, the instructor told me, the more accurate the bomb, but the better chance the pilot had of diving right into the ground. There was a greater risk of getting hit with your own fragments, too, obviously enough.

  I asked his opinion of my idea, he thought it might work, depending on how fast the rockets could be launched. “But, he explained, “As the planes attack in vees of five, wingtip to wingtip, the first plane would be home free, but the other four might well be in deep shit. It would depend on the spread of the rockets, speed of launch, a host of things.” I could not think of any safe way to test my plan, so I watched for a while longer, then went back to HQ to send a long telegram to Hodges, and incidentally grab lunch. First things first, and second things second, all in proper order.

  Another thought struck, as they often do, in clusters. If you could put enough machine guns on a plane, you might be able to throw enough lead to seriously injure a truck or a light tank. There must be a limit as to how much weight and recoil even a bigger plane could take without being shaken to death. I had a vague memory that the Brits had tried to make a recoilless rifle, one that shot a load of lead and grease backwards as hard as it shot forward. They tried it in dirigibles, but with limited success. People had tried to shoot down zepps with rockets launched from the wings of pursuits in France, again with no great victories. The rockets were too erratic. I seemed to remember some expert saying that the word erratic was coined to describe the flight of skyrockets.