“Will we have enough B-29s?” The RAF man had not read up on this.
“In truth no, production has only recently switched into high gear with the Liberator line being switched over. We can start with two hundred ships, a mix of tankers and bombers; production will cover attrition and add about two dozen aircraft a month indefinitely. Our airfield engineers officers are already on Crete in small numbers helping the British engineers lengthen the fields.“
Marshall took over the briefing, “The aircraft will come in via Brazil to French West Africa then to Egypt. We expect our first raids to begin in May. That clears the way for the main event. Admiral?”
Bill Leahy stood, “While the major naval effort will be in the Pacific, our first large landings will be in the Mediterranean. Looking at a D-Day of 1 May, Operation Anvil will take Corsica and then three weeks later make a multi-corps landing on the Riviera.”
For the first time the Chief of the Imperial General Staff spoke, “This worries me to no end. Is the American Army ready to expose itself to the full force of the Germans in the main theatre of operations?”
“War cannot be fought without risk.” Marshall replied, “we are counting on the synergetic effect of an increased bombing campaign combined with the new threat on the North Cape to pull the Germans in three directions at once. The Soviets can be counted to launch a major attack on their national day, the first of May. In addition, our political leaders,” he nodded at the British, “are trying to work some magic with the Italians.”
Admiral Leahy supported his friend, “At some point we must land in Europe, if for no other reason than the Provisional French are demanding it. All in all, we can be certain that early May will be a very busy time.
“Amen,” Hap Arnold added.
The B-29C rose up from Crete in an ungainly manner. She was lightly laden, with about twenty percent of her full fuel load. The winds were favorable and she gained altitude quickly until she reached her sister ship orbiting patiently south of the island. The reaching for altitude was dangerous in the A model, the engines tending to overheat when brought to full power.
“Thank goodness that’s fixed.” Paul Tibbets noted that his C was down to ten percent fuel as he lined up with the tanker’s probe. “Just enough to get down safe,” he thought. Lots of things could go wrong with air refueling. He checked his throttles and cut four back to half power. The fifth engine went back to zero, no need for that now. He made the hookup on his first attempt and began to replace the fuel he burned on lifted off. Then he topped off the tanks. After thirty nervous minutes, the two aircraft flew north together, the tanker sinking down to Crete, the Enola Gay gaining altitude as she headed into harm’s way.
The navigation radar was not set up to detect German fighters, they saw the first pair of 109s over the coast of occupied Greece. The older fighters were no factor to the fast, high bomber. Reaching 30,000
feet, the pilot fired up the slave engine in the center of fuselage. Sucking in the thin outside air, it compressed it and passed it to the four Pratt & Whitney’s on the wings. The slave gave a satisfying vibration through the airframe and into the seats in the cockpit. Engine temperatures dropped and the plane resumed its slow climb as more fuel burned off.
The clouds cleared over Yugoslavia. “Cameras on, start the photolog.” Tibbets called on his intercom.
Cruising at 41,000 feet did not make for good tourism with the naked eye. The plane handled poorly in the thin air, fortunately the mission required a nearly straight flight path. The radio operator brought up coffee.
“190s, six o’clock, very low,” the tail gunner called.
Everyone sat up straight, “How low?”
“At least six thousand feet, maybe more, I just caught a reflection off a canopy. We’re leaving them in the dust anyhow.”
“They’ll get used to it, they can’t catch us and climb at the same time,” the copilot said.
Forty minutes before Moscow, Tibbets walked back through his aircraft. He smiled and called each airman by name. The tail gunner seemed especially pleased to see another human. “Back in time for dinner,” he promised.
Over the captured Russian capital, the huge aircraft made a wide turn and began to return along a route slightly to the west of the one they flew up. The winds aloft report was right and the Jet Stream gave them another 100 knots over the ground. A wide swath of the German rear area was photographed for later analysis.
That evening, dinner was roast beef with potatoes.
Dozens of American convoys arrived in the French African ports. Loaded to make the best use of their cargo space, the ships contained enough equipment for three mechanized divisions. French soldiers having already left their own equipment in Metropolitan France, they now turned in their British vehicles and began to learn about Fords and Chevys. Coca Cola was greeted with suspicion. Even more equipment began to pile up in huge dumps under the watchful guard of formations of the new twin-tailed Lockheed Lightning fighters.
Only then did the troopships arrive. Converted passenger liners for the lucky soldiers. Metal bunks stacked eight high in a Liberty Ship for the rest. Regiments came and formed into brigades, then divisions, then corps.
On April Fools Day, 1942 Omar Bradley declared American Third Army to be operational.
Along with the Army came the Twenty-First Tactical Air Force crowding the airfields already occupied by the large bombers of the Mighty Eighth.
The French President joked that Algeria had become an unsinkable aircraft carrier, one that just might sink under the weight of just one more P-39.
The island of Corsica was poorly-defended, a backwater for centuries its procession was meaningless to the larger war. But it was easy reach of North Africa and that was enough. The landings began on 4
May with an American and French corps going in side by side. The LSDs moved into place to discharge their Sherman tanks and APCs into the sea. LSTs ran directly onto the landing beaches bringing even more fighting vehicles.
A single German division defended the island. Honor required they fight and more than a few potshots were taken at the Allied troops with hand-held rocket launchers as they sped by. Casualties were few however as the invaders were under orders to speed inland and secure potential landing grounds for a counter-invasion. In three days the garrison was in a few demoralized pockets surrounded by Moroccan troops with oversized bayonets and a license for revenge. New airfields were already operating when the last German died.
Newsreels around the world recorded the drop of American paratroopers into the middle of the island. The airborne troops cheered the ‘jump that never was’ in the cinemas of Casablanca.
“Useless diversions, nothing more,” Hitler said.
“Things are certainly very different this time around,” Hermann agreed. “The Anglo-Americans have the Mediterranean as a lake. With airbases in Norway, and now Crete and Corsica we are open to air attack from all directions. The u-boat campaign has all but failed. Yet we are unable to grapple with main force of the English.”
“Nor they with us,” Hitler observed. “While we cannot bring force to bear on them, invasions of the North Cape and Corsica are meaningless. We have lost some of the initiative in the West, just at the moment we are about to achieve victory in the East. Churchill and Roosevelt desire a stalemate, they are seizing territory to use later at a bargaining table.”
“In my time some scholars postulated that Stalin was a bigger danger than we were. They claimed it was better to let the Germans and Bolsheviks bleed each other white than to permit Stalin’s thugs to remain in place. It was a minority view, but not without good arguments.”
“What would they want? France? Perhaps, Poland? Poland is ours. In any case with the resources of Russia in our hands we can deal with an American Empire in twenty years or so.”
A staff colonel handed Hitler a note on blue paper. “The Iron Man says that bombers are approaching. We should go downstairs.” Hitler looked out the windows and
saw it was already dark in the garden outside. Closer, he observed a pair of black-uniformed men already opening a pair of wide doors. “It seems the SS insists, Herr Doctor.” The two strode out of the room together.
The airfields on Crete were able to launch attacks only slowly. A set of three American bombers could be seen by ground radars approaching the German capital from the southeast at an untouchable altitude.
Even before the arrived, the next set appeared behind them on the same course.
Each aircraft was loaded with a half-dozen bombs of advanced design. After each left its plane it extended a long probe, simple weights on the ends of cables. The armor-piecing bombs used a very large shaped charge that needed to detonate above the ground for full effect. The others were heavier, being completely full of explosives, these detonated thirty feet above the city streets, shattering buildings without wasting energy digging deep holes into the ground.
The raid was uneven, some part of the city were untouched, others received more than a fair share of attention. The government district, presumably the main target took a number of hits. One destroyed a wing of the Agriculture and Food Ministry annex set up in the former British Embassy.
The Royal Air Force came too. One hundred and fifty Manchesters slamming the city with great intensity in the space of thirty minutes. The British ruined a large area; but it was the American raid that did the most psychological damage. One hundred planes, in sets of three arriving every half hour. The population was forced into the shelters for more than twenty hours. In fact, a second British night attack marked the end of the marathon. The last Americans dropped thousands of landmines across the city along with propaganda leaflets. “What you did to Warsaw, we will do to Berlin.”
The city was exhausted physically and spiritually.
Hitler screamed. Goering and his Air Staff could offer no defense for themselves or for their city. While the British bombers were vulnerable to fighters and antiaircraft fire, the high-flying Americans were untouchable.
Two nights later the weather closed in over the city with low cloud cover and rain. The Americans came again, flying above the weather and using their radars for guidance, this time they scattered tens of thousands of three-kilo antipersonnel bombs. While no buildings were destroyed huge numbers were damaged. Fires started by the American thermite bomblets spread in some areas, until contained both by either the valiant firefighters or the high humidity.
Speer seemed to have some sort of special authority to speak the truth to Hitler, “It seems they can hit any of our cities at any time of day in any weather. My ministry cannot get anything done. In the past two weeks we have lost well over half of our man-hours, and I am speaking of my office workers, the factories might be worse.”
“What of our new fighters?” Hitler asked?
“The 190s can deal with the British, but they were not designed to operate at the high altitude of the Americans. Their B-29 is the ultimate Schnell bomber.”
“Can the 190 not be improved? These tricks the Americans have done with the engine, this is not gypsy magic.”
“The 190 with the new Jumo 213 engine will reach them. But even the first of these will not fly for another week, and the Jumos are in short supply. I will be unable to deliver one hundred new high altitude planes for ninety days or more.”
“So we are to pounded to bits for three months?” Hitler left the thought unfinished. A messenger came in and said something in his ear.
“The Americans have just invaded France.”
The irregulars were a motley bunch. Some were recruited by the Communists in the Marseille longshoreman union and others came from elements of the local underworld, a half-dozen local policemen in uniform rounded out the team. They were led by three officers from the Provisional French government in Casablanca. Alerted by a British broadcast four hours ago, the group had assembled in a warehouse just outside the parameter of the port itself.
The twenty men were heavily armed with a collection of small arms, but much more important were the dozen or so crates shipped in from Italy. They had been mislabeled as canned goods. Inside each was a number of demolition charges. Already most had been laid in buildings surrounding the port. Each building had a trusted team of minders sitting by the detonators.
The assault element sat behind a makeshift wall of boxes, the captain, and engineer by training, muttered something under his breath and fired his charges. Before the dust had settled, he was leading his men into the next building.
The wall of the Harbormaster Office exploded with no warning. Crazed men, some wearing uniforms ran through the opening and began to kill everyone they saw. One team rushed to the only staircase and cut down four Germans responding to the commotion in their underpants.
“Go! Go! Go!” the captain knew the key was fast action. One team charged out the door on the left and across the street where more Germans awaited slaughter. Another group rushed up the stairs to destroy the radio room before a cry for help could be sent out. A third team used the door on the right and ran for the main pier. Already French commandos were flooding off a Spanish ship cutting wires connected to the demolition charges around the port.
Hearing the small-arms fire, the eight smaller teams fired their charges, collapsing buildings on their occupants as well as nearby German strong points and blocking all the roads into the port.
The captain was deafened. He screamed at his men to reach the squat command post at the junction two wharves. They reached it and killed the three men inside. He hit the floor and listened.
The gulls were complaining at their early wake-up. A horn sounded from a tugboat. Otherwise silence echoed from the brick walls of the harbor. He felt his heart in his chest. He started to laugh.
In a few minutes he gathered his men and took positions with the commandos defending the new roadblocks. He wondered how long the Americans would take to get there.
The French Rivera was defended. After the invasion of Corsica, a blow there was obvious. Berlin ordered four additional divisions to move from the hell of Russia to the beaches of the south of France.
None made it to the region soon enough to stiffen the nine second-rate divisions already there.
The first wave came in well before dawn at low tide. Throughout the day the rising tide helped get the landing ships and craft off. The tanks did not have that trouble; leading the way they came ashore and released their floatation kits with the sound of a thousand gasoline cans smashing together.
The units opposing them were static divisions, lacking any but the most basic transport. These were the last units in the German military relying on horse carts. The Americans had a doctrine of shock, and tried to hold to it, charging off the beach even before it was fully secured. Some resistance nests fired at the American tanks as they passed by, then running out of ammunition surrendered.
For some units, the most time-consuming delay was shooing a celebrating population off the main roads.
At first light, an A-9 spotter autogiro lifted off the deck of a nameless LSD. It made a steep climb and a hard turn to the right to let the pilot and his spotter gain their bearings. The guns of the battleships Texas, Provence and Bretagne, were reaching for their preplanned targets far inland. They paused only long enough to fire blue and green flares far into the distance. These were the visual cues hundreds of aviators used as navigation aids. Putting one flare on his left and the other on his right, the pilot went off in search of the First Infantry Division.
The commander of the Big Red One had promised himself, and the Corps commander, he would make the deepest penetration on D-Day. He was six miles along National Route 6 on his way to Marseille when his lead regiment was ambushed by a some people who had barricaded themselves in a local police station.
“Red Six, this is Blackhawk Eight Seven, I am in position, over.”
For the first time, the Major General reached for his Air-Ground radio, “Blackhawk Eight Seven, Red Six, I am on my route, look to your southe
ast about nine miles.”
“Coming, how can we help this morning, Red Six?”
“Panzerfausts in a building three miles to my front on route, top of the column, I need them hit.” The blades of the autogiro slapped at the air making a distinctive sound, but the Division commander could not see the aircraft.
A few minutes went by. “Red Six, I see them, blue tile roof. You need no rubble, correct?”
“Blackhawk eight seven, that is correct. Fast and clean, if you please.“
The general told his aide to notify the unit in contact to be alert to incoming air. The spotter used his other radio to call for two pairs of Mustangs from the taxi rank. He explained the need for a clean kill.
Before they arrived, the light aircraft dropped low and gained its maximum, but still modest speed. The pilot lined up the building in his crude site and fired a single white phosphorus rocket.
“Target marked in white, blue roof, whitewashed walls.”
The autogiro was comic. The Mustangs were terrifying, each mounted eight fifty caliber machine guns, together the aircraft put almost three thousand rounds into the little building in well less than a minute. The defenders were laying behind sandbagged windows, from the ground they were protected. From above they were completely exposed. The last pilot found the target obscured by dust as a portion of the roof had collapsed, he fired into the rubble.
“That should do it, Red Six, I am ready for an immediate repeat if you request.”
“Pass thanks to the fighters, Blackhawk.” He consulted with his aid who shook his head, “Another strike is not required. Take a look at Bridge Seven for me and report back.”
The Big Red One and Third Army continued to roll along.
“It is time,” Mussolini said to his advisor, “come with me and see why I should have gone into the opera.”
Paul Adkins Page 13