Eagles at War (40 page)

In this interval of quiet, Hafner offered her a flask of cognac. She took it and drank greedily, not forgetting to wipe the mouth of the flask before she turned it back.

"You think I've learned a lot; it's the British who are learning, and the Germans who are forgetting. I was in Cologne during the first big raid—you remember, a thousand bombers?"

Josten nodded.

"The next day, the roads to Cologne were clogged with relief trucks. They set up a hundred distribution points, handed out millions of cigarettes, food, clothing, liquor, everything. Then they brought in workmen; in a few weeks, we had windows again. What happens now? You're lucky to get a slice of sausage or a bowl of soup. Everybody is bombed everywhere, so there's no relief trucks to send."

The conversation was taking an unamusing twist. War damage claims for civilians had grown into so many billions of marks that the country could no longer afford to pay them.

"So you see we have true democracy here, my son. Everybody gets bombed. Even rich
Bonzen
like you, with your cognac and your leather shoes."

Hafner saw that she was wearing the straw-topped, wooden-soled "war shoes," the only kind still obtainable.

When he glanced back her lips had curled into a gummy smile. "It doesn't matter. People will live. As long as there's enough food for today, and a plank to put over a hole, people will live. It won't go on forever. It will just seem like it. At my age, that's not too bad."

As if in reply to her stoic endurance, a tremendous explosion directly above them shook the shelter, showering them with dust and knocking out the flickering light.

*

Over Regensburg-Pruefening/February 25, 1944

"Steady, steady, PDI centered."

"I've got the airplane."

Chet Schmidt turned the last few hundred yards of the bomb run over to the bombardier, relaxing his grip on the control wheel, but keeping his fingers curled around it, ready to take over at once. The airspeed was locked on 160, the heading indicator on 135 degrees, the altimeter read 24,500 feet. So far they had not been hit by flak or fighters.

McLean was professionally quartering the sky, glad that there were no fighters in sight, ignoring the bubbling wall of flak that flickered around them, black dahlia clouds, creased with obscene red centers. Raw tension compressed the crew's energy into an anxious coil, ready to spring forth at the first sign of a fighter.

Eckerle led his Messerschmitts' attack on a heading of 210 degrees, slanting down from ten thousand meters, cannons blasting at the outermost B-17 of the formation, then rolling inverted to dive away.

As he'd done a hundred times before, Eckerle tugged back steadily on the Messerschmitt's stick, pulling its nose toward the earth, the G forces shoving him into his seat, curving away from one set of flickering guns into the mouths of another. He glanced quickly back over his right shoulder at the B-17 they'd attacked, saw that it was on fire, edging out of formation. The victory cry
"Horrido"
was forming on his lips when, among all the premeditated danger, he accidentally plunged his fighter into
Bonnie's
cockpit. Where in one instant there had been two airplanes and eleven men, there was now just a vaporous explosion and nonexistence.

*

Washington, D.C./March 21, 1944

The committee was in recess while Senator Harry S Truman attended a roll call. Henry Caldwell sat with his hands folded, thinking for the one-hundredth time that he could so easily have been aboard
Bonnie
and gone to his death with Schmidt and his crew. Two hundred twenty six bombers had gone down during Argument. Yet it had been worth the grievous cost. The targets had been heavily hit, and a decrypted Ultra report indicated that the Germans had lost one third of their single-engine fighters and 18 percent of their pilots during February alone. No army could withstand casualties like that.

Then, on March 6th, the Americans had bombed Berlin for the first time, with Mustangs as the fighter escort. No matter what else happened, no matter who was aware of it, Caldwell knew in his heart that the air war was won. And he knew what he had contributed to that victory.

Being shot down might have been better than being badgered by this obscure senator from Missouri, with his nasal voice and thick glasses. Hick or not, Truman was tough and well prepared. He'd scarcely had any assistance from the covey of aides who sat behind him in the hearing room.

So far the questioning had been ominously innocuous. Truman was simply laying his case out as if it were a jury trial. Hell, I'd be better off if it was, Caldwell thought. This way, he's the judge and jury combined.

The Missouri senator had established that while McNaughton Sidewinders cost about ten thousand dollars more than a P-40 and six thousand more than a P-51, their performance fell far below either airplane. Truman had been fair, pointing out that the P-47 and P-38 were both more expensive than the Sidewinder, and that while better than the Sidewinder, neither were considered to be as effective as the P-51.

Caldwell had been warned that the real issue was the Lend-Lease program. Harry Hopkins had been filling Roosevelt's ear about Russian complaints, and Roosevelt had personally met with Truman on the matter. The last few questions explored the reasoning behind giving virtually the entire production run of Sidewinders to Russia. Truman was no Russia-lover, but he was under the gun by Roosevelt to establish that there was no official decision to furnish substandard airplanes under Lend-Lease.

Caldwell also thought he'd detected the faintest whiff of interest in his personal dealings with McNaughton. He might have been mistaken.

"No, indeed it has not. The thing that surprises me, though, is that it hasn't measured up to its own test reports. There is a serious discrepancy between the official test report figures and the performance of production machines. Will you comment on that, please?"

"Senator, I've been in England, as you know, and I'd like to ask if I can provide you with the answer to that question for the record. I'll personally go to Nashville and get at the heart of the matter."

"I'm glad you feel that way. Let's return to the matter of Lend-Lease. Are you aware that the McNaughton Sidewinder is regarded as a death trap by Soviet pilots?"

"I don't think that's the case, Senator."

Truman picked up a sheaf of folders. "These are reports from U.S. pilots on the Alaska-Siberia route, ferrying planes to Russia. Everyone states that their Soviet counterparts are openly contemptuous of the Sidewinder."

"There were some initial difficulties with the aircraft, sir. It was much more sophisticated than anything the Russians had used before, and they took a long time to adjust to it."

"Is that your opinion, or do you have some objective proof?"

"Senator, may I give you an original letter from my counterpart in the Soviet Union, Commissioner Giorgi Scriabin? I've taken the liberty to have it translated, but you may wish to have someone look at the original."

Truman read the translation, glancing briefly at the original in Russian, as if to compare them.

"General Caldwell, this makes me very happy. Let me enter the entire letter into the record, but I want to read the last paragraph aloud: 'As we have come to understand the proper employment of the McNaughton Sidewinder, using it in a ground attack role, we have found it to be entirely satisfactory.' "

Caldwell knew what he'd paid in terms of promises to get that letter. And he knew that Scriabin would never have provided it, not for any reason, if the Luftwaffe had not been bled white in Europe. Now the Sidewinders were operating as tank-busters, virtually without interference.

The questioning went on for another two hours, in a much friendlier vein. When the meeting was over, he motioned Caldwell to accompany him to the senators only elevator.

When the doors had closed, he grinned and asked, "Tell me, General, what in hell did you promise Scriabin to get a letter like that from him? You got us all off the hook."

There was no point in lying—Truman was obviously relieved just to have the issue put to bed. "Sir, I said that we would send him P-51s starting in September, Lockheed jets by the fall of 1945, and B-29s in early 1946."

"Remind me not to try to trade horses with you."

*

Nashville/March 28, 1944

Caldwell felt so devilishly well! He had asked Hadley Roget to come with him to Nashville, to try to figure out what happened to the prototype. And while Hadley was rooting through the mounds of paperwork, Caldwell had finally taken Bandfield's advice and sneaked away with Elsie for a few days in New Orleans.

It had been a glorious round of raw oysters, absinthe-laden Sazeracs in the lush Roosevelt Hotel bar, and riotous lovemaking. He'd been like a sixteen-year-old, ready to go morning, noon, and night. The combat tour had keyed him up, started his juices flowing, given him a love for life that he'd forgotten, a sense matched by her own earthy ardor.

He chuckled at the memory of Elsie's little tribute. One afternoon they were out riding in one of the little horse-drawn carriages, "taking a mattress break" she called it. Elsie had them stop at a florist. Making him stay in the carriage, she rushed in to get a little box, saying only that she'd ordered it earlier.

That night, after they'd reached a pleasant state of excitement, she'd pulled the florist's box from under the bed and removed from it a horseshoe-shaped wreath made out of forget-me-nots, a miniature of the kind awarded to Kentucky Derby winners. On it was a card saying, "Champion John Henry Junior, March 24-27, 1944." She'd insisted on trying to make love with the wreath around him, but it was too uncomfortable. She made life so wonderful with crazy things he'd never dreamed of!

Her snapping back to her normal, loving self was probably what made him feel so good. Just as in the early days of their courtship, she laid care over him like a silken suit. She went on with her important work at the plant, calling in several times a day. He enjoyed listening to her swift transition from his consort to the tough executive, scolding, pleading, encouraging. Troy didn't trust anyone but Elsie to oversee the accounting and purchasing side of the operation, and when any of the managers wanted something a little out of the ordinary done, they came to her. She was a marvelous woman, a champion in her own right.

The joy of Elsie's turnabout was complemented by equally good news from Europe. Decrypted ULTRA interceptions indicated that the German jet program had received a massive setback from the Regensburg-Pruefening raid. The details were scanty, but it appeared that the 262 tooling was totally destroyed. It gave him breathing room, a chance to get both the McNaughton and the Lockheed jet fighters operational.

The Merlin-powered Mustang was working out beautifully, as more and more of them arrived in England. The young pilots were going right out on long-range combat missions, knocking the Luftwaffe down in the air, shooting it up on the ground.

Only the B-29 was troubling—another "Battle of Kansas" was shaping up. Hap Arnold had demanded airfields to be built by the Chinese by April 15, 1944, promising that he would deliver B-29s
in China
on that date. Fortunately Caldwell had sent Lee back to take charge in February, and he was on the spot directing the campaign, getting the parts, the subcomponents, the labor.

It was this sort of thing that justified all the risks Caldwell had taken. As the Sidewinder phased out and the jet production was building up, McNaughton Aircraft had a temporary surplus of labor and equipment. Lee had latched on to these, flying back and forth between Wichita and Nashville almost continuously, working with Elsie to get parts and tooling built. If he hadn't gambled on McNaughton, the company wouldn't have been there to bail the B-29 program out when it was needed. Picking the right people was the key. Lee was an extraordinary officer; Caldwell had recommended him for promotion to brigadier general.

Hadley bounded into the room, grinning. He tossed a pitot tube, the sensor for the Sidewinder's instrument system, on Caldwell's borrowed desk, saying, "It's right there in front of our eyes. Been there all along. See if you can pick it out."

Caldwell examined the device, a piece of aluminum tubing about a foot long and half an inch in diameter, exactly like that found mounted on the wing or nose of virtually every airplane. Some were built with a ninety-degree angle, some were just a straight piece of pipe. The Pitot tube provided the airspeed indicator with a reading by measuring the difference between the pressure of ram air entering the opening in the end of the tube and the static pressure taken at its base. It seemed perfectly ordinary to him.

"So what?"

"I pulled this off a test aircraft. Look right there."

Roget's gnarled forefinger, the nail lost years ago in a fight with a table saw, pointed at a minor bulge just in front of the openings of the static port.

"I don't see anything special."

"It's this bulge. Looks like a washer was sweated on to the pitot tube, then filed down. Or maybe it was reamed from the inside some way. Anyway, it's just big enough to act like a little airfoil, setting up a negative pressure in front of the static port."

"I get it—the low pressure area gives the airspeed indicator a false reading."