"General Marshall," Halsey said, "I'm not sure I understand how we're supposed to trust a bunch of creative types to come up with something sensible. How can we hope to give them their heads and keep them focused? Give those crazy scientists an inch and they're off in cloud cuckooland before you turn around."
"Not just any creative types, Admiral. Creative types who have produced. Men like Mr. Johnson, here. You too, Commander. Men who have performed way over expectations, men who even under our old system provided miracles that astounded the world. Let's see what they can come up with on their own. That's all I'm saying. And I guess it's time for our demo."
Everyone sat expectantly, looking for the hat, waiting for the rabbit.
"Mr. Johnson," Marshall said, "I take it that you agree with Martel on the inadequacy of the Navy's aircraft to deal with the Luftwaffe within range of a large number of their airfields?"
"Yes sir, I do."
"Well, do something about it."
"Sir?"
"You, sir, are one of the world's foremost technologists. I want you to come up with something to give the Navy a chance against the Luftwaffe. The fleet will consist of approximately twenty carriers and various escorts. Keeping the oceans safe for our convoys is all very nice, but by the time the fleet arrives England will be in the final stages of the fight of its life. If the RAF is about to be suppressed, and the landing barges are spewing out German soldiers, what good will supplies do? As of now it looks like the Navy will literally be sunk if it attempts more than providing port-to-port protection. Unfortunately we are arriving so late that that won't be enough. We have to be able to deal with German air power in a better way than simply skirting it.
"One more thing: The fleet sorties in three weeks."
Even a man as confident of his powers as Kelly Johnson could be taken aback. "Three weeks? I could about start to assemble a team in three weeks, sir."
Marshall leaned forward and looked Kelly in the eye. "Wrong answer, Mr. Johnson. Let's try again. You can have anything you want or need. If you tell them to, men will sprint from place to place following your orders. The President backs you one hundred percent, and whatever you want, I will make happen. In about twenty-seven days our fleet will be fighting an enemy with more and superior aircraft. If the fleet loses, England is conquered. If England goes, well, so do we. We could lose our country. Only you can save us."
"Three weeks," Kelly mumbled. His face took on the slack look of someone very bright whose entire mind is engaged. "Nothing. It's just not enough time."
There was a collective exhalation of disappointment from around the room.
Marshall was the first to speak."Well, that was a longshot. Three weeks is hardly a fair —"
"Well, maybe one thing," Johnson said.
"What?" repeated three times from three different throats.
"Well, we've got a whole slew of just about useless P-82s, and another whole slew of P-51s in open storage that we can't use in a serious fight."
"So?" Jim asked, after noting his superiors' continued silence. Perhaps better than anyone else in the room Jim knew just what Kelly was talking about. The P-82 was about the oddest plane ever built. It was essentially a pair of Mustangs glued together, sharing the inboard wing and horizontal stabilizer. For stupid political/budgetary reasons it was powered with the very same unsatisfactory Allison engines that had limited the original P-51 Mustang to ground-attack roles until the RAF tried replacing the Allisons with Rolls Royce Merlins. A hangar-queen abortion of an aircraft that pilots loved to hate, its only saving grace was that on the rare occasions it actually flew it flew for a long way, and was sort of a fighter plane when it got there. It had been conceived as an intercontinental escort for the B-36 bomber expected to roll out in a year or so.
"So, we take a bunch of Merlins out of the P-51s and drop them into the P-82s we have gathering dust out on the Consolidated-Vultee ramp at Downey. We can also set up a line to turn pairs of P-51s into P-82s. We can have five, six hundred planes rendezvous with the fleet as it goes into action. Since they are double-piloted they wouldn't even have had to land first. If the action started late in the day, the first thing the Germans would know of them was when they saw them coming out of the sun."
Harrison looked inquiringly at Marshall, who turned to Martel. "Commander? What do you think?"
"I'm not sure, sir. Even with Merlins, the P-82s are not going to last long against 262s and Gothas. And of course I'll take your word for it that we could actually have the work done in time."
"Oh, I'll see that the work gets done," the man who had buried the Japanese Empire under American ordnance said grimly. "But is it worth it? That's the question."
Jim said unhappily, "Anything is better than nothing, I suppose."
The President looked at the engineer. "Is that all you have for us, son?"
"Well sir, we might soup up the P-82s a little."
Marshall interjected. "You already told us about the Merlins...."
"No, not Merlins—well, yes Merlins, but not just Merlins."
"What then?"
"Rocket boosters scabbed into the tail sections."
"RATO pods?" Jim asked dubiously, but with a dawning hint of hope.
"Not exactly," Kelly said. "An internal booster. Aerojet came up with it for a Northrop project that "— his broad face broke into a grin—" never got off the ground. We've been fooling around with the notion out at the Skunk Works. It'll add some weight, but no drag to mention, so it won't hurt the range much at all. We have the specs already. Aerojet's actually built a few. Each unit'll give two thousand pounds of thrust for as long as it burns." He sobered and added, "That's if it doesn't blow up instead, which it will, sometimes."
Jim shrugged. "Blowing up won't kill the pilots any deader than 262s will if those P-82s go in without the rockets. Can you really fit them in three weeks?"
"If we can get the boosters built in time. Aerojet isn't expecting a big order, you know." He paused. "Or any order at all, for that matter."
It was Marshall's turn to look dubious. "I said I could get them built, and I can. But again, would it be worth it? How long will the rocket pods keep thrusting?"
"The ones we played with were limited to three minutes," Kelly responded.
"And you think that would be worth the effort?"
Now, Kelly, perhaps the greatest aircraft designer the world would ever know, was in his element and answered confidendy. "Absolutely."
"Why?" the President asked.
Unable to contain himself, Jim answered for Kelly. "Because, sir, for those three minutes the RATO'd P-82, or whatever you want to call it, will be the fastest thing in the sty"
"Speed increase will be about a hundred miles an hour," Kelly added. "In six months I'll build you a swept-wing, Nene-powered screamer that will outfly a Gotha and maybe break the sound barrier." He looked at Marshall. "But a RATO-boosted P-82 powered with Merlins is what I can give you in three weeks."
President Harrison's expression was an odd combination of relief and disapproval. "Why didn't I know about this? If we had this stuff on the shelf, why aren't we already using it?"
Jim answered hesitantly. "Well, sir, this is a stopgap measure. We weren't expecting to need anything like it, and, I guess, nobody really thought about it." Jim paused to look at Johnson. "Well, from the look on Kelly's face, I guess it's passed through his mind, but not seriously, or he'd have had it on the tip of his tongue. Actually, I guess I've thought about it in general terms —from my Berlin days I know that the Germans had been playing around with this technology too, mostly for launching, but some in-air stuff too. They started losing interest as they got going on jets in a big way. Frankly, I figured that we would be wasting our time too, and never recommended anything beyond trying to keep track of any new German developments. By 1950 any prop plane, no matter how goosed up, will be obsolete in a serious war, and who thought we'd be fighting the Third Reich in 1946?"
"I want to emphasize o
ne thing again," Kelly said soberly. "These rockets are dangerous and I don't mean a little bit. They burn fuming nitric acid and aniline. Any leak, any flaw in a combustion chamber—" He snapped his fingers. "And something else. When those rockets fire off, these planes will suddenly be flying at velocities way outside their design parameters, and there won't even be time for practice."
Jim winced at the sudden mental image of shuddering breakups, spinouts, and explosions, but again answered for his peers. "You tell a prop-plane fighter jock that if he lives through the startup he'll have a shot at waxing the ass of any jet-powered Kraut he meets, and just try to keep him out of that cockpit."
"Just so everyone is clear," Kelly said doggedly.
"Have the test pilots power down the Merlins before
lighting up the first couple of times," Jim suggested.
Kelly shrugged his assent. Apparently that much was obvious.
Marshall began to turn toward the President when impulsively Jim said, "But wait, there's more."
Donovan did a double take and grinned.
"Yes?" Marshall prodded.
"Unless there's something funny I don't know about the structure of the Bearcat, we can also switch out every Bearcat in the fleet for a RATO'd model, and then start on Mustangs."
Kelly looked troubled. "I don't know how many Bearcats we can have retrofitted before the fleet sorties," he said. "There will be some startup time. We'll do as many as we can, of course, but with their shorter range the logistics are more difficult. With the P-82s we can just fly 'em to meet the carrier group wherever it happens to be. That gives us an extra ten days .. . well, eight days more if you're willing to fly the Bearcats out to it while the fleet is still in range."
Jim smiled triumphantly. "We can keep switching them out right up until contact with the enemy. Past contact with the enemy! And when we finish with the Bearcats, if there's time we can start stashing RATO'd P-51s on the left coast of England!" He looked around, realized he was getting a little excited, decided to hell with it. He was excited. He turned to Halsey. "Sir, if we're only going to have twenty carriers ready for fleet action, that must mean that at least ten more could be gotten far enough out of mothballs to steam, as long as they aren't called on to fight or run their elevators, right?"
Halsey nodded. "I expect half of them could run their elevators well enough, as long as they weren't hurried."
Jim continued. "So here's what we do: Five of the not-quite-demothballed carriers will form a bridge to the fleet, one carrier every six, seven hundred miles. The 'Cats land, they fuel up, they take off. One every five minutes or so ought to be feasible. We won't even need to fit them with drop tanks! So it won't be just a wave of six hundred or so P-82s come roaring out of the sun that the Germans will have to worry about. Twenty-five hundred . . . call them RatCats will light up just as the Germans see the P-82s." Martel grinned. "We're going to give those Kraut sons of bitches a surprise!"
Admiral Halsey was so enraptured by Martel's vision that he forgot to be offended by a lieutenant commander telling him what they were going to do. A slow beatific grin began to spread itself over his beefy features.
A thoroughly vindicated George Marshall looked to the President for silent confirmation.
Speechless, Andrew Harrison could only nod. He did so for quite a long time.
Speechless also, Betty looked at her man with eyes shining.
Caught in the moment, or perhaps unhappy on the periphery, General Douglas MacArthur broke the spell of silence. "That's great for the Navy. How about the Army? We'll be landing in England while all this is going on, maybe in the face of German resistance. What have you got for us?"
Martel was on a high, and didn't bother to come down. "Plenty! First, any extra Bearcats can continue straight on to England, if the Brits have kept their airfields open. Second, the Germans think that by taking Iceland and Greenland they've interdicted fighter-ferry-ing to England. Not enough range. Wrong! Remember those other five carriers? They're going to cycle back and forth from East Coast ports to about five hundred miles out loaded with RATO'd Mustangs. From there the Mustangs can fly nonstop to England as long as they have a place to land. Each carrier can handle one hundred and fifty planes in a ferry mode. Call it eight hours for loading and fifty hours for the round trip and that's seven hundred and fifty RATO'd Mustangs every three days or so. Say the flow starts in two weeks. That leaves two weeks before contact. Six, seven thousand RATO'd 'Stangs." He paused, thought. "We don't have that many.
How many do we have?" he asked, turning to Marshall.
In his own tribute to the moment, Marshall grinned and said, "About two thousand, sir."
"Damn. We're gonna run out of planes." Suddenly Martel heard that 'sir' from Marshall and recollected how and to whom he was speaking. Strangely, when he looked around he saw that no one seemed to have minded. Perhaps the fact that he and Kelly Johnson had shown how to upgrade and position every single Bearcat and Mustang in inventory into a pseudo-jet ready to take part for a magic three minutes in the Second Battle of Britain had something to do with that.
Marshall turned to Harrison. "Mr. President, I think that concludes my demonstration."
"General Marshall, it does indeed. And you have made a sale. And do I get to keep the free sample?"
"You do indeed, sir." Marshall replied, then added thoughtfully, "We have to work out the details, of course— most importantly, Aerojet's capacity to turn out those RATOs. The whole scheme depends on that. I'd better fly out there personally."
"Shall I join you?"
"I don't think so, sir, but a phone call might be in order."
"Very well. Set it up with Mayhew."
As Marshall hesitated, Donovan broke in. "Sir, I think we should maintain the same security precautions for a while."
Harrison frowned. This was growing inconvenient.
"I can take care of that for you, sir," Betty offered.
Harrison's face cleared. "That will be fine. Ah, Miss McCann ... ?"
Donovan spoke for her. "I'm sure Miss McCann would be delighted to serve as an unofficial administrative assistant while we sort things out—wouldn't you, Betty?"
Betty nodded solemnly.
There was a knock on the door and Mayhew's pained face appeared. "Mr. President, there are several people here who really need to speak to you right away."
The President glanced at his famous mantel clock and stood. "General Marshall, I'm going to have to do other things for a while. I really don't have a choice. Tomorrow I'll be addressing a Joint Session and demanding a declaration of war. Let's meet here at six this evening." As he started to stride from the room the President paused and glanced at Martel, who was visibly swaying as the adrenaline suddenly left him. "General, I want you and Martel to spend the intervening hours in bed here in the White House. Miss McCann, perhaps you could find someone to escort Commander Martel to the third floor. Then have whoever you find send a physician. General, you take the Green Room. Betty, have a physician attend General Marshall as well, if you will."
When Marshall made to demur, his Commander in Chief said simply, "That was not a request, General. I need you well."
As the meeting broke up, Kelly said disconsolately to Donovan, "And I didn't even get a chance to mention the Shooting Stars. We can strengthen their nose gear and launch them off the carriers."
Donovan smiled happily. "Oh, I don't think your idea will have been had in vain. Just wait for this evening."
Comforted, Kelly Johnson accompanied the small crowd as it exited the Oval Office in the President's wake.
1:00 P.M.
Lincoln's Bedroom
"Amazingly, there is nothing terribly wrong with you that a week in bed wouldn't cure," the attending physician told Martel. "But do not let that blind you to the potential seriousness of grenade fragments. In future avoid them if you possibly can."
Martel was almost certain the man was joking, his deadpan way of taking his patient's mind off the pr
ocess of probing and prodding of the affected areas. That had not been a lot of fun, but it was over now, and the good doctor was busying himself with dusting, injecting, and rebandaging. Soon he would be gone.
Betty stood behind him, a little to his right, as if supervising. Framed by the early-afternoon sunlight streaming in behind her, she glowed like a creature from a higher plane, or so it seemed to Martel. Would the two of them really be alone at last? It hardly seemed possible. ... And yet, snap, the black bag achieved closure, and with a final admonition that Martel was to avoid any exercise, the good doctor walked the considerable distance to the door to Lincoln's bedroom, and was gone, leaving the door discreedy ajar.
With a barely visible hesitation Betty sat beside Jim where he lay gazing at her. Their hands sought each other, clasped. They drank each other in.
"I thought you dropped me, girl."
"No, never, Jim." Carefully not letting go of his hand, Betty leaned over and kissed him softly for a long time. Jim felt a single tear fall from her cheek to his as, exhaustion finally having its way with him, he sank into reverie, and then sleep.
6:00 P.M. The Oval Office
As the group was ushered in, each taking the same seat as the time before, the President spoke somberly. "There is more bad news, I'm afraid. German forces have completed their seizure of Greenland and Iceland. It will take us months to extract them. For a while we thought they were going after Bermuda as well. That turned out to be a simple airfield seizure, part of the Oak Ridge operation. Apparently the idea was to provide a refueling base for the bombers. We've captured the lot of them. They blew up their planes though. Other than that not much has changed in the last few hours. The country is going crazy of course."
The President shook his head, then continued. "Well, let us turn to the matter before us. General Marshall, rather than deal immediately with the underlying philosophy of your proposal or the details of execution, I would like to continue the demonstration just a little further."
"I'm not quite sure what you're after, sir," Marshall said after a puzzled moment.
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