Captain Frederick Douglass Robinson’s head swiveled constantly as he scanned the airspace around his P-51. The Mustang’s bubble canopy allowed for exceptional visibility, and the few clouds were of the white cotton ball variety, too small and insubstantial to conceal any serious threat.
Without breaking the rhythm of his scan, he grimaced at the cotton image—his grandfather and grandmother had worked themselves to death picking the stuff, and that legacy was a part of him, always lurking beneath the surface. His parents had made it out of Mississippi to Chicago, but how much better was that? His mother cleaned the houses of white women, and his father helped white men find comfortable seats on the Hiawatha Express train that ran up to Minneapolis and back.
Wouldn’t they all be amazed if they could see him now? Even in the cockpit he sat ramrod straight, an unconscious effect of the self-discipline and pride that had brought him here.
Frederick Robinson—his squadmates invariably called him “Frederick”—had been an instant success at the Tuskegee school for fliers, a natural in the cockpit. His knack for leadership had made him squadron commander. And his keen eye and steady hand had, in the skies over Italy and Germany, made him an ace. He had earned the respect of officers, even white officers, with his competence and determination.
Most of his work had involved escorting American bombers into areas infested with enemy fighters. He had honed his eye on those flights, learned to spot the specks of dangerous attackers as they first came into view. He and his men would chase those attackers away, and—on a good day—send one or two of them flaming in. He took great pride in one fact: On all of those escort missions, they had never lost a single bomber.
But this was a different kind of war. For the last three months, he had been flying alongside the stream of transport aircraft that were Berlin’s only lifeline. He had seen the Red fighters in great swarms, coming far closer to the transports than any German fighters had ever dared to approach Frederick Robinson’s bombers. The orders from SHAEF to the American fighter pilots on these escort missions were clear: Do not start the shooting, but defend yourselves—and those precious transports—if the Russkis make the first move to attack.
So he had learned a whole new class of aircraft identification. He could spot the MiGs and the Yaks and the Laggs. And there seemed to be thousands of Ilyushins, the ubiquitous Sturmoviks that had been the scourge of the German army and the Luftwaffe for nearly four years. The older Ilyushins were slow, more like flying tanks than modern fighters. The newest Sturmovik, however, the IL-10, looked to have serious potential as an adversary to the Mustang. It was lighter and more maneuverable than any previous Soviet aircraft design, and even when the P-51s flew high-altitude cover—above twenty-five thousand feet—the Ilyushin 10s would be up there with them, Russian pilots glowering through the sky behind their oxygen masks.
Today Robinson and the three fellow pilots of his flight were at a lower altitude, right off the starboard wing of the transport stream. The Mustangs flew much faster than the big C-47s, of course, so the young captain and his three wingmen flew steadily past the Dakotas, overtaking the individual planes of the long column.
Overhead, to both sides, and underneath were Soviet fighters, often diving dangerously through the formation of transports, or coming up behind the American fighters in mock combat maneuvers. Robinson knew that there had in fact been a few accidents over the last months, a transport clipped by a diving MiG, and two or three instances of fighters colliding. There had been warning shots fired and tensions inflamed on each occasion, but quickly things had settled down again into the routine of the mainly bloodless siege.
Still, the Russians seemed exceptionally frisky today. The radio had been alive with warnings and curses all along the sky train. The four Tuskegee airmen had flown from a base in eastern France, and while they had not been close to a Soviet fighter today, Robinson’s vigilance never relaxed, head always moving, eyes scanning.
Even so, it was his wingman, Cecil “Ceece” Hooper, who first spotted them.
“Red Star bogies, ’bout two ’clock low,” he drawled, the sound of Alabama in the German sky.
Robinson saw the Russian fighters, a dozen or more of the IL-10s, flying parallel to the four Mustangs and climbing gradually. He checked the altimeter—it read 12,200 feet—and he reckoned the Soviets were two thousand feet below. They flew past a band of water, one of the wide lakes on the outskirts of Potsdam, and abruptly turned, still climbing, toward the sky train.
“Watch the bogies up there.” One of the C-47 pilots put out the warning to his fellows.
“Got ’em spotted—bastards are cutting it close!” replied another.
Robinson clenched his teeth as he saw the Russian fighters wheel more tightly, spreading their formation as they arrowed through the line of Dakotas. They flew past the cockpits of two of the C-47s, one of which lurched crazily as the pilot flinched. The radio crackled loudly, indistinguishable shouts of
outrage. The wobbly Dakota pulled back into line, but the captain could imagine the pilot’s hands, clenched around the wheel to control the trembling, to manage the pulse of adrenalin.
On the far side of the sky train, the Russian planes banked around; it looked like they were going to come through again. Robinson looked over his shoulder. Ceece was watching him expectantly. The captain nodded, then used his throat mike to contact his two mates above and behind them.
“Time to earn our pay, fellows.”
Immediately the four Mustangs growled through a coordinated turn. In pairs they dove beneath the train of C-47s, each wingman sticking to his leader. Smoothly they pulled up and leveled off, strung in a line now and directly between the Ilyushins and the defenseless transports.
The Russians roared in, spreading into pairs of their own. Four of the Sturmoviks converged on Frederick Douglass Robinson in the lead Mustang, but he held steady course. He turned to face them, a glare of challenge—I dare you!
At the last minute the Reds broke, two veering before him, two more taking the low road. At the same time the radio sparked, a single word in Cecil Hooper’s surprised voice.
“Hey—”
Robinson felt the explosion even before he turned around to look. Two planes, an American and a Russian, tumbled wildly away from a smear of smoke and fire that lingered in the sky. Hooper was crashing, the plane engulfed in flames, no sign of a parachute. Fred Robinson cursed in disbelief, shock quickly replaced by fury.
“You sons of bitches!” He yanked on the stick, pulled up and around in the face of two more IL-10s. Both Soviet pilots twisted out of his way, probably shocked in their own right by the collision. Robinson didn’t care; he pulled his nimble fighter around, and the nearest Russian maneuvered desperately to get out of the way.
Only then did the pilots see the Dakota. The window of the cockpit was right there, the pilot looking outward, eyes wide, mouth open in a soundless scream as the Ilyushin collided with the middle of the fuselage. Robinson’s momentum pulled the Mustang down so he dove, trying to get underneath the crash.
The C-47 exploded, a massive fireball sending shock waves through the sky. One large piece, an engine, tumbled downward, right into Frederick Douglass Robinson’s path. His last realization was that the falling engine still had a propeller attached.
Colonel Krigoff had rushed outside when the first explosion had sounded. He watched, somewhere between thrilled and horrified, as squadrons of fighters
roared into the smoking gap in the sky train. More planes fell, burning, and the American transports started to evade, many of them diving low.
Krigoff pressed his binoculars to his eyes, trying without success to follow the aerial melee. There were fighters shooting at each other all over the sky, as the battle seemed to be spreading quickly up and down the long column of aircraft. He heard more explosions, saw trails of black smoke as plane after plane burst into fire and plunged toward the ground.
After the first clash, he was bitterly disappointed to observe that the great majority of these doomed aircraft were Russian fighters. The Americans moved in with surprising speed, their nimble Mustangs driving the Soviets back. Still, the enemy was suffering too. Krigoff had counted at least ten of the transports destroyed, and the steady progress of the sky train was clearly broken.
“Colonel! Look out!” It was one of the lookouts—the man had the audacity to tug on Krigoff’s arm.
He dropped his binoculars to rebuke the man, but he was instantly distracted by the view of a huge, four-engine transport plane, racing low across the ground—directly toward Krigoff! He dropped to his face, felt the air shudder as the big plane roared past, and lay there trembling.
“Get me front headquarters on the phone!” he snapped, realizing what must be done.
Instead, he got General Benko, CO of the Second Guards Tank Army. “What is it, Colonel Krigoff?” asked the general cautiously. “Can you see anything out there?”
“The Americans have started to attack!” Krigoff yelled. “Get Marshal Zhukov’s headquarters! We must carry the alarm!”
“Are you sure? We tried to get a report, but all the phones are out. There is no word from front HQ.”
“The phones are out?” This was the clincher, in Krigoff’s mind. “Don’t you see—it’s saboteurs! Probably the damned Germans, took out our communications. I tell you, General, we have to strike back—now!”
Benko was no doubt mindful of his predecessor’s fate. Still, he was hesitant to initiate dramatic action. “I think we need to wait for developments—”
“By then it will be too late!” shouted the colonel. “Our guns are sighted on the American positions—at least, give them a barrage!”
“Are you sure they are attacking?”
Krigoff wanted to tear his hair out. He looked around, counting at least a dozen pyres of black smoke rising into the air, just in this neighborhood of Potsdam. Even as he watched, a Sturmovik plummeted downward trailing a bright tail of fire. It splashed into the lake and vanished in a hiss of steam and spray.
“Yes—they are attacking everywhere I look! I tell you, General, I will not be held responsible for your hesitancy if you fail to act!”
Benko was silent for long moments. Finally, Krigoff heard him draw a breath, the sound rasping over the line. “Very well,” said the general. “I will order my batteries to open fire.”
“General Marshall?” The Supreme Commander was on the telephone talking to his boss, their voices spanning an ocean.
“Yes, I have Secretary Stimson here with me,” said the chief of staff of the U.S. Army. “What’s going on over there?”
“Looks like the Russians have run out of patience. They’ve started an attack in the Potsdam area. We’re taking heavy shelling, but Patton’s men are holding their ground for now. There was an aerial battle too—they hit the sky train over Potsdam. We hit back, but not before we lost a dozen C-47s. By the end of the day, our fighters were getting control of the skies. We had a dozen escorts shot down—the flyboys claim they got a hundred Russkis, but you know how that goes.”
“What about your line in Zhukov’s HQ? Have you called the old SOB?”
“I’ve tried, General. But they’ve apparently cut off that connection—it seems to be a dead end. There’s no way to get through to him. Dammit, I sure have a bad taste about our boys getting plastered like this. But there’s no way to go toe to toe with them in an artillery duel. Can you authorize the release of the tactical air arm?”
“We’re talking about that. You want to use air power to pound Zhukov’s guns?”
“Yes.” Ike was definite. “It’s the only weapon we can put into play right now.”
The Supreme Commander waited, hearing the soft buzz of conversation on the other end of the line.
“We’ll get word to the president this morning. I think we can get you the air support, but we need to get his clearance. In the meantime, Patton will have to hold as best he can.”
“Yes, sir, of course. But General?”
“What is it, Ike?”
“Listen, about that gadget you’ve been hinting about? If there’s any truth to those rumors, I think we need it over here, right now. Looks like we are going to have to come up with some clout in the situation—you know Zhukov has enough tanks and guns to crush Berlin, if he sets his mind to it. So let’s have that gadget sooner rather than later if it’s humanly possible.”
“I can’t tell you for sure, but I can promise that I will express your thoughts to the president—I happen to agree with you, one hundred percent.”
“Thanks, General. That’s all for now.”
“Keep in touch, Ike,” said the chief of staff. A second later the connection was broken. Eisenhower lit another cigarette, stood up, and started to pace the circle around his office.
It’s a wonder, he thought, that I haven’t worn a rut into the goddamn floor.