Die Glocke

by M C Drake

  The Soviet's stripped all of the weaponry they could from the fallen soldiers. They took pictures and copious notes on what they found. The 5th SS Mountain division was hardcore sons of bitches and they had just been in a hard-fought battle with a US division without any insignia.

  The Russians searched the whole facility but they found nothing of interest. There was a large laboratory housed at the very bottom level of the facility that had a huge amount of electrical transformers; these would generate more power than was needed to run a large city. The Red army could find no clues in the lab apart from a large coating of purple dust, which they took for analysis.

  Whatever was in the facility the Germans had either destroyed it or the American’s had got what they had come for. Zhukov sighed, and filed his report for Stalin and then awaited the inevitable backlash.

  A secret meeting was hastily arranged at the insistence of Joseph Stalin with ailing American President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In the meeting, Stalin raged for hours at American interference in his country's war effort. Stalin repeatedly slammed his fists onto the large wooden table; his face was a vicious shade of red.

  Roosevelt sat patiently through this tantrum; he had seen it all before although admittedly not on this level. Finally when Stalin had finished Roosevelt stood calmly, moved towards the desk and slowly scanned through the document that Stalin had produced.

  "You will sign it Franklin otherwise I can guarantee there will be war between our countries."

  Roosevelt said nothing; he signed the document then sighed heavily. He left for America shortly after.

  The decision he made on that fateful day cast a dark shadow over the world in the years to come. Roosevelt would not live to see it but yet that decision weighed heavily on his shoulders for his remaining months.

  Stalin had got what he wanted; his Red army forces would ‘win' the race to Berlin and would get the glory of defeating the Nazi's in their capital. Stalin would get the barrier he craved and the iron curtain would be born. Even when World War one veteran Harry S Truman was sworn in as the thirty-third president of the United States he could not risk breaking Roosevelt's deal and secretly instructed US forces to allow the Soviets to get to Berlin before them; to the world it looked like a close race to the capital between two superpowers but in reality the result was never in doubt.

  The 30th April 1945 Adolf Hitler sent his last message as Führer of the Third Reich. He dismissed Reichsmarschall Hermann Goring who was second in command and interior minister Heinrich Himmler who had both tried to seize power. Hitler then appointed Karl Donitz as President of Germany.

  As the battle of Berlin raged above to its inevitable conclusion and with all escape routes out of the city gone; Adolf Hitler killed himself in the Führer bunker along with his bride of forty hours, Eva Braun. It took another three days for the Soviets to take the building completely after horrendous room-to-room fighting with their German counterparts.

  The official end of hostilities in Europe was 8th May – VE – Day – Victory in Europe however technically, the war in Europe did not end until a small group of German soldiers surrendered to some Norwegian Seal hunters on the 4th September 1945, they were meant to establish a weather station but had lost contact in May 1945, they surrendered two days after the defeat of Japan.

  Slowly the world began to rebuild itself and the Nazi party members that were still alive gradually to go on trial for the atrocities they had tried so hard to keep hidden from the rest of the world.

  SS Gruppenführer Jakob Sporrenberg SS no:5219 was captured by British forces in Norway in May 1945; he was later questioned by the War Crimes Interrogation Unit who established his participation in a number of atrocities committed in Poland and Russia.

  Jakob Sporrenberg was extradited to Poland in October 1946 and was sentenced to death by a Warsaw Court in 1950. He was hanged on 06 December 1952. His subordinate Berndt Krause was never found.

  Operation Paperclip

  After the war had finished American and Russia stripped Germany of all of her remaining assets. President Truman secretly authorized Operation Paperclip; a Joint intelligence objectives agency program where more than one thousand six hundred German scientists, engineers, and technicians were recruited to U.S Government employment.

  Under President Truman's instructions, the team was led by newly promoted war hero Robert Miller. The most famous of these scientists was considered a real coup; the Russians were known to desperately want Dr. Wernher von Braun.

  Von Braun was the brains behind the V2 rockets that caused such destruction in London but ever since reading the science fiction writing of H.G. Wells, his real dream was to build rockets for space travel.

  Wernher Von Braun was a bright young man when the Nazi military first got hold of him. They pumped money into his research and he was a Nazi party member; however, the Americans managed to look passed this as it could not be proven that Von Braun ever believed in the Nazi ideals.

  The rocket scientist was arrested by the dreaded Gestapo when he was an SS member for his careless remarks about the war effort. This is when he decided to surrender to the US in Bavaria.

  Robert Miller took Von Braun back to the US under ‘Temporary, limited military custody.’

  Miller and his team found a few scattered and charred documents in the depths of the Owl mountain base. They could not get anything of interest from these documents apart from the name ‘Die Glocke’ which means ‘The Bell’ in German and that is was some kind of device made out of a metal alloy.

  Robert Miller interrogated Dr von Braun on his arrival in the US. Unfortunately for Miller and his superiors von Braun genuinely knew nothing of this secret device apart from the name of the scientist that led the project. His name was Walther Gerlach and he had once sent von Braun the solution to a problem with the V2 rocket exploding in flight.

  Miller and his agents looked high and low for Walther Gerlach but after an exhaustive search, they could not find a trace of him. They surmised that the good scientist was dead and closed the file.

  For fifteen years after the end of World War II, Wernher von Braun worked on the US ballistic missile programs. He thought he had swapped one hell for another. In 1950 the brilliant scientist felt his most depressed as he moved to Redstone Arsenal Alabama where he designed the Redstone and Jupiter missiles. Finally, as time went by he worked on the Jupiter C and Juno II rockets.

  Dr. Von Braun become a family man during this period of rough transition, he also found religion and strangely for an ex-SS member he became an Evangelical Christian. When the 1960's came Wernher could finally smile again; he thought privately that salvation had found and accepted him as he became director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. He began his work on space travel in earnest and the Saturn rocket was born.

  Robert Miller and his team continued to research all of the Nazi super weapon programs that they could. They managed to capture another coup during the last 1950's when a secret operation in Chile brought them former SS Commander Hans Kammler.

  Kammler had fled Germany in a U-boat and traveled to South America after the war. The crafty old war criminal had kept secret copies of top-secret weapons documents from Nazi Germany; it was his insurance policy just in case the day came where he was identified and captured. He sang like a bird to the American authorities and in return, he was granted complete anonymity and a new life in the States.

  The world moved on from the threat of Nazi fascism; the two great superpowers fought over the ideals of Capitalism and Communism. Conflict never ended but it was not Europe that was the main problem it was instead Asia where the Americans chose to make a stand against Communism.

  Wings of Gold

  The red and white jet with the striking United States navy colors rolled aggressively left, the pilot concentrated hard as he fought the powerful g-forces acting over his body. A voice crackled over the radio as the pilot of the second T-2 Buckeye training jet told the lead pilot his position. They div
ed towards the deck at a fighting speed.

  The T-2 Buckeye as it was known from 1962 is a two-seat trainer jet with a large cockpit, rather stubby wings, and a large underbelly; despite this it could still comfortably reach 522 mph.

  The two young pilots were in the final stage of land-based training before they could go onto aircraft carrier training. The lead pilot was just twenty-three years old; he pulled hard on the controls to level the aircraft out. The two training jets flew just above the dusty desert floor. The engines blew up a whirlwind of sand and dust.

  "Alright, that's good enough for today, time to return to base lads." The first planes trainer ordered.

  The two jets banked left and raced to the base. Both planes kissed the tarmac runway in the rapidly fading orange glow of the late evening sun. The young pilots chatted excitedly as they were escorted to the debriefing room; their instructors gave nothing away but the feeling was they were ready for more advanced jets.

  It was the 8th January 1965 and the United States had not yet officially entered the Vietnam War, it would be another three months until the first fighting forces waded ashore at China Beach. They would meet with a bizarre fan fair that included sightseers, South Vietnamese officers and a large group of Vietnamese girls.

  The young pilot was ecstatic after his debriefing and had raced to his living quarters to ring his mum; she did not answer though. He laughed to himself as he thought ‘Probably hosting her book club again.’

  He had a quick shower and a shave. He then studied himself in the mirror; his deep blue eyes studied every inch of his deeply tanned face. His jet black hair was cut really short. The young man was 6 ft tall and 11st 8 of pure muscle; he had been trained hard over the last few years.

  A picture tucked into the bottom corner of the mirror frame caught his eye, the black and white image was of a man in a crisp white navy uniform and aviator sunglasses wearing a huge grin on his face, while his young son was sat smiling on his shoulders.

  “I hope you would be proud of me dad? Ma has told me so much about you, how you were larger than life… I wish I could remember you.” The young man said as he brushed his fingertips over the image.

  The Man in the photo was Staff Sergeant Brooklyn Johnson who had been tragically killed in his P-51 Mustang over Europe in 1944 when his son Brooklyn junior was only just three years old.

  Brooklyn Junior was now twenty-three-years-old and was a proud Aviation Officer Candidate (ACO); he had just finished his bachelor's degree and was now a commissioned Ensign. Brooklyn Jnr was proud to be following in his father's footsteps to become a naval aviator. Johnson's family had never understood why a decorated naval pilot was transferred into the US army air force and was completely devastated by the news of his death.

  Brooklyn Jnr had been developing well since his admission to the AOCs program and had successfully passed the high standard of training in the turboprop two-seat T-28 Trojan at the Naval Air Station Whiting Field in Milton, Florida.

  The decision was made; Brooklyn Jnr and his fellow students were going to the next stage of training where they would get to grips with the more explosive Grumman F-11 Tiger fighter and then the famous F-4 Phantom that was going to be used so extensively in the looming conflict in Vietnam.

  Fireball

  A large, brilliant fireball streaked across the sky on a cold winter’s day. The fireball flew rapidly over six separate states after it crossed the Canadian border. Hot metal debris dropped down over Michigan and Northern Ohio; forest and grass fires bloomed.

  A large sonic boom crashed over Pittsburgh that managed to wake the sleeping Chief of Police. He lazily looked out the window as more sonic booms rang out and he caught a glimpse of the object speeding passed at an astonishing pace; calls started to come in about the object.

  The local media were quick to calm people’s fears that the object was not a plane crashing or more concerning an AWOL missiles test. A locally respected scientist made a television appearance just after 17:00 hours, explaining that the object was clearly a small to mid sized meteor that was burning up in the atmosphere. He explained in a dreary monotone voice that the small bits had burnt up causing the grass fires and by the time the meteor reaches the ground it will be so small that it will cause minimal damage.

  The residents in the sleepy area of America that the meteor was heading to went back to their nightly routines, most went to church but others stayed to prepare tea and settle down for a night in front of the television or radio in some cases.

  Jerry Clark was out playing in the woods not far from his home in the backwater town of Kecksburg, Pennsylvania. Jerry was nine; he had dark brown hair and sharp blue eyes. He enjoyed the outdoors and was busy riding his bike up and down the mounds in amongst the trees; he had already fallen off several times and was sat resting when he first heard it.

  Sonic booms rang out as the fireball headed earthwards. The young boy craned his neck skywards to catch the glowing fireball streak across the sky. It headed downwards but then suddenly looked like it changed direction slightly. Jerry rubbed his eyes in a mixture of shock and excitement; he grabbed his bike and peddled as hard as he could in pursuit of the fireball.

  Jerry weaved in between the trees as he kept his eyes peeled skywards. The fireball was now a red and purple haze that descended towards the heavily wooded area. Jerry kept his eyes locked on his target; he watched in amazement as the fireball seemed to slow its descent.

  The object struck the ground and the trees that blocked its path splintered and fell. As the fireball hit the ground the haze changed to a sharp blue that blinded the young boy for several seconds. When Jerry shook his vision clear he noticed smoke filling the area. An intense heat washed over the impact site and finally fear got the better of the boy and he sped off towards home to raise the alarm to his mom.

  An elderly couple was sat listening to their favorite radio show when a shockwave caught the old man's attention.

  “Did you feel that love?”

  “No Brian, I didn’t feel a thing. Like most nights for the last five years!”

  Brian ignored the snide remark and slowly eased himself out of his leather recliner, the fabric made an uncomfortable squelching noise as the old timers skin peeled away from the chair.

  Brian shuffled over to the window, muttering as he went.

  “Definitely felt a vibration definitely did.”

  Doreen rolled her eyes and returned to dosing on the sofa. ‘Stupid old goat!’ She thought before she fell asleep.

  Brian peeked out of the curtain; he liked to keep an eye over his sleepy town. A crowd of people had begun to form outside and a few of the younger men were just getting into their vehicles. There was a fair bit of commotion for a town that normally kept things to themselves, people were pointing into the direction of the woods where smoke appeared to be rising.

  The old man turned to his wife but he held his breath, she was snoring away on the couch; Brian allowed himself a tiny smile. He shuffled into the hallway and then out onto his front porch.

  A commotion was starting to develop next door as that nice young lad Jerry was tugging on his mother’s arm, pulling her forward while excitedly pointing in the direction of the woods.

  Brian waved and shouted, “What’s going on Pat? Why is the youngin so excited?”

  Patricia Clark was a young mother at twenty-nine, she had Jerry when she was only twenty. She was a tall pretty woman with long slender legs. Her vibrant green eyes locked onto the friendly wrinkled face of her neighbor.

  “Hi Brian, I don’t know. Jerry thinks something crashed in the woods and as I looked out of the kitchen window I could see blue smoke rising from the trees just over there.”

  “Not crashed mom, landed in the woods now come on I want to show you!”

  “Jerry ssh I am talking.”

  Patricia smiled, “Sorry Bri I better get Jerry in for his tea.”

  Brian laughed, “No problem love, I would hop in the car with the other lads if I
were ten years younger.”

  “Don’t worry Bri, we will keep you updated with any news when we get back.” A man in his early thirties shouted out of his truck window as he drove off towards the strange smoke.

  Brian watched as Patricia struggled to get her excitable son back into the house for some dinner.

  The ever-growing plume of blue smoke caught the eye of local farmer Donald Ernest; he pulled up on the edge of his large field, his tractor's engine ticked over on idle as he scratched his head.

  ‘Thought I heard something hit the ground. Hope it wasn’t a plane going down, better go check it out, someone may need my help!’

  A steady stream of vehicles started to head into the woods behind the sleepy town. Young men chatted feverishly and a few of the local teens showed off in front of their girls.

  First on the scene were two members of the local fire department. They had bought their radios in case an emergency response was needed. Cautiously Michael Harris and his colleague and friend, Raymond Nelson approached the smoldering area. They had followed the plume of smoke until they had got closer and then the splintered, charcoaled trees gave away the crash site.

  Immediately they could feel the heat radiating through the air as they walked gingerly into the clearing. Plumes of blue colored smokes drifted skyward from a large crater.

  “Clearly something has come down here Ray!” Michael said.

  “Yeh but what? The crater looks too small for a plane crash!”

  Not enough debris scattered around either.”

  Ray nodded, neither of them had actually seen a plane crash before but being in the local fire department they were the self-appointment experts.

  “Fancy braving the heat to take a closer look?” Michael gestured to Ray.