‘’Alright, what about Europe, then?’
‘’Europe it could be, sir, but I would use the 99th Air Wing there the way I used it in Papua New Guinea: I would give it a mission and a number of general objectives, then would let General Dows do her magic and let her fight her wing the way she thinks best to do, irrespective of what tactics and strategies the Eight Air Force or the RAF Bomber Command employs. To be frank, I am still not sure that our bomber leaders in England
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have fully understood their lessons, if I judge by their still high casualty rates and low bombing efficiency, sir.’
Marshall’s eyes narrowed and he then looked at Ingrid.
‘’And how would you do things over Europe, General Dows?’’
‘’First, I would abandon this business of big bomber packages lumbering at high altitude and dropping their bombs ‘on command’ instead of individual y using their Norden bombsights, sir. I would go in with multiple small groups of no more than four bombers penetrating enemy-held territory at low altitude and high speed while supported by radar-jamming aircraft and by escort fighters. Bomb release would be from no higher than 2,000 feet, to ensure maximum accuracy, and each aircraft packet would approach their objectives from different directions, in order to confuse the enemy and prevent him from concentrating his fire. If the weather is acceptable, then they would attack at night, using the night vision devices equipping the planes of my air wing, something that would further degrade the enemy defenses. I call all this ‘raider tactics’. As for the objectives themselves, I would continue the policy I was following in the Pacific: to cut the head of the serpent rather than trying to cut its tail.’
‘’But the RAF and the Eight Air Force already have a strategic bombing plan, with the target type priorities set by that plan. If you play lone ranger over Europe, you will create utter confusion with their plan.’
‘’Sorry to say this sir, but my answer to that is: screw their strategic bombing plan! To date, our strategic air planners in England have proven to have the tactical and strategic talents of a can of sardines. Take for example Major General Anderson, the present chief of operations of the Eight Air Force. He sent unescorted a big pack of B-17s at high altitude to go bomb an industrial target in Germany and lost over twenty percent of his bombers, with meager results. What did he do a week later? He again sends a big pack of unescorted B-17s flying high against the same objective and lost another 22 percent of his bombers. And I am supposed to obey the directives of such an idiot and send my aviatrixes to be needlessly slaughtered? No thank you! If you want the same results as I got in the Pacific, then let me loose over Europe and the Nazis will cry ‘uncle’, sir. However, if you order me to have my aircrews follow to the letter the tactics decided by the higher command in England, then I am ready to present my immediate resignation from the Army Air Force, sir.’
Marshall sat back again in his seat, impressed by the firm and direct answer from Ingrid, while George Kenney had to repress a smile before defending Ingrid again.
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‘’Sir, I strongly believe that the best way to employ General Dows and her 99th Air Wing in Europe would be to use them as a special operations air unit dedicated to strike specific enemy command centers, airfields, naval bases and other high-value military targets. One way I will definitely not use them would be to bomb German cities the way the British do right now. In fact, I fully intend to prohibit such mass city bombing raids by our bombers, sir. In the Pacific, I never condoned or ordered the area bombing of Japanese cities and I will continue to follow that policy in Europe. Let’s continue to target only military or war industries targets, sir.’
Marshall was again silent for long seconds before replying to Kenney.
‘’Your suggestion has merits, General Kenney, and I would agree that General Dows and her air wing would be the best to implement such a concept. I thus approve your idea. General Arnold is waiting for you in his office, so that you could conduct a proper change of command procedure. Once you are officially in place, then your first task will be to arrange the transfer of General Dows and of her complete air wing to the European Theater of Operations. However, I realize that the women of the 99th Air Wing have been continuously in combat on the frontlines for over a year now. They would thus richly deserve a long leave period in the States before they move to Europe. That would also allow us to replace its worn equipment and replenish its personnel list during their leave period. General Dows, good luck to you and your aviatrixes in Europe.
Dismissed!’
Kenney and Ingrid saluted Marshall again, then pivoted on their heels and walked out of his office. Once out on the hallway of that section of the Pentagon, Ingrid allowed herself to blow air out in relief.
‘’God, I thought that General Marshall was going to simply relieve me on the spot without listening to my arguments.’
‘’You effectively risked big by holding your ground against him, Ingrid. Many officers I know would simply have folded in a similar case.’
‘’But I am not a run-of-the-mill officer and never will be, George, and you know it.’
‘’And that is why I like to have you as my subordinate, Ingrid. Well, let’s go and try to find General Arnold’s office in this big monstrosity called ‘The Pentagon’.’
To do that, they needed to ask their way to a couple of passing officers before they arrived at the section of the building housing the command offices of the United
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States Army Air Force. There, a greying master sergeant led them to Arnold’s office, where they found him sitting and waiting on a sofa next to his work desk. Ingrid was immediately struck by how much older he now looked, with deep pockets under his eyes and a tired look. Arnold got up at their arrival and saluted them back before coming to shake hands with both Kenney and Ingrid.
‘’Welcome back in Washington. You two have been doing a fantastic job in the Pacific, particularly with your retaking of the Philippines and the saving of all our people there. Now, you will be able to apply your magic in Europe. General Marshall just phoned me to inform me of the decisions he took concerning you.’
Arnold then looked directly at Ingrid with what appeared to be regret.
‘’I wish that I could have continued to follow your exploits in the air, Ingrid, but my time to go has come. If anything, I now realize how much I needed to rest from this continued high stress from my command responsibilities.’’
‘’And I am sure that your wife wil be equal y pleased to see you being able to relax, sir.’ replied Ingrid, meaning it. ‘’You always treated me and my aviatrixes right and it is only just that you treat yourself right at last, sir.’
‘’Thank you, Ingrid.’’
Arnold was silent for a second before asking her a question in a soft tone.
‘’You are such an exceptional combat officer, Ingrid. I truly hope that you wil continue going up the command ladder. Are you planning to stay in the Army Air Force after this war?’’
‘’I don’t know yet, sir. I love flying but I am getting truly tired of all this kil ing.
One thing I would like to do after the war would be to study and obtain a degree in aeronautical engineering: I find the prospect of designing new aircraft as attractive than that of continuing to fly, sir.’
‘’And you will certainly be able to do such studies with the help of the new G.I.
Bill. One thing you could do would be to transfer to our reserves forces while studying for your degree. You could thus continue flying part-time while in university.’
‘’That is an excellent suggestion, sir. I wil certainly try to follow it, sir.’
‘’Good! Now, to go on with my last day in office. General Kenney, approach my desk, please. I have prepared for your signature the documents concerning this change of command. General Dows, you may stay and look on while we do this.’
‘’Thank you, sir.’
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That informal change of command ceremony took only a few minutes, after which Arnold and Kenney shook hands and exchanged salutes before Arnold led Kenney and Ingrid out of his office, to tour his command’s offices and present them to his staff officers and NCOs. Just as that tour was about to be concluded, Arnold sprung a surprise on them and, calling Ingrid to attention in front of his staff, then took a small box out of one pocket while facing her.
‘’Brigadier General Dows, I truly wanted to conclude my time in command of the Army Air Force with what I will now do: to promote you to the temporary rank of major general. Your outstanding combat leadership and service deserves no less, unless of course General Kenney would object to this.’
‘’Me? Hell no, General! Please proceed.’ replied a happy Kenney.
‘’Then, help me here to replace her rank insignias.’
Blood rushed to Ingrid’s head as the two four-star generals worked together to replace her single-star insignias of brigadier general with the two-star insignias of a major general, with the onlooking staff members applauding and cheering at the end of it as Arnold shook hands with Ingrid.
‘’The way I know you, you are likely to get into verbal scrapes with other, more traditional and conservative general officers in Europe. Better for you to do so as a major general. Again, congratulations, Major General Dows.’
‘’Thank you, sir.’ said Ingrid, not believing her luck.
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CHAPTER 28 – EUROPEAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS
17:08 (GMT)
Friday, December 10, 1943 ‘C’
RAF Charmy Down (USAAF Station AAF 487)
4.8 kilometers north-northeast of the city of Bath County of Somerset, England
Ingrid was happy to finally land on one of the three asphalt runways of the British airfield of RAF Charmy Down, also designated for security reasons as USAAF Station AAF-487: she was anxious to be able to go relieve herself after her long transatlantic flight from Saint-John’s, Newfoundland. No doubt that the other female pilots of her mixed formation of Lockheed P-38NCs and Hughes A-11Rs, F-11Ns and C-11T would also be anxious to visit a bathroom once on the ground. The only women of her
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formation who would be alright in that aspect were the aircrews of her four EC-142E
flying command posts, six AC-142G heavy gunships and six C-142A heavy cargo aircraft carrying her ground equipment and vehicles, who benefitted from full bathroom and crew facilities aboard their big aircraft.
As per her usual practice, Ingrid waited for all the other planes of her formation of 44 aircraft to have landed before landing herself dead last on the longest runway of RAF
Charmy Down, a typical British World War 2 Class ‘A’ airfield with three runways fforming an ‘A’ and with a perimeter track with dispersal points along it. Her P-38NC
then taxied along the perimeter track, behind one of her C-142A cargo aircraft, and was directed by a flag-waving guide to one of the dispersal loops, where she was able to cut her engine and step out of her cockpit. Thankfully, there was on one side of the dispersal loop a small open-air latrine made of a portable toilet seat surrounded by a privacy curtain made of heavy canvass, which she ran to at once. When she emerged from behind the latrine canvas curtain, she found a RAF officer and a jeep with driver waiting for her. The British officer, a squadron leader wearing the wings of a bomber pilot on his jacket, saluted her at attention while keeping his balance with the help of a cane.
‘’Welcome to RAF Charmy Down, General. I am Squadron Leader Frederic Wharton, in charge of the caretaker unit of this airfield, and I am ready to guide you and your aircrews around.’
Ingrid returned his salute, then pointed at Wharton’s cane.
‘’I suppose that you were wounded during a mission, Squadron Leader Wharton?’’
Wharton nodded his head at her question.
‘’Yes, General! I was wounded during a bombing raid on Hamburg but was able to fly my damaged aircraft back to England. Unfortunately, the wound to my left leg resulted in a permanent disability, so I was put on the non-flying roster list.’
‘’And how bad is that disability, Mister Wharton?’’
‘’I wil be limping for the rest of my life, General. However, I can count myself lucky to have returned alive to my wife and kids: many others were not so lucky.’
‘’Well, even if you can’t fly anymore, you certainly can stil be useful to the war effort, like in this case. Me and my aircrews and ground personnel will certainly need
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your caretaker unit in order to find our way around this base. By the way, are all of the facilities on this airfield functional?’’
‘’They are, General. We have fully functional mess and dining facilities, accommodations for up to 400 personnel and thirteen hangars. Our only limitation is in terms of cooking staff. Presently, we have only three local cooks available, who were preparing the food for my caretaker unit and for the army anti-aircraft battery protecting this aerodrome.’’
‘’And how many guns are protecting Charmy Down, Squadron Leader Wharton?’’
‘’We have a total of six 40 mm Bofors guns and four .50 caliber heavy machine guns around the airfield, General. Uh, I notice that your airplane seems to be a new model of the Lockheed P-38. In fact, all of your aircraft which just landed are of models I never saw before, General.’
Ingrid proudly smiled as she answered Wharton.
‘’That is because my unit, the 99th Air Wing, is equipped with the latest models of aircraft available in the United States. My personal aircraft is a P-38NC, the latest variant of the P-38 LIGHTNING, with which my fighter squadrons were just reequipped after their arrival from the Philippines. The P-38NC is even more formidable than its predecessor, the P-38N, with a top speed of 480 miles per hour and an armament of four 20 mm cannons, plus two retractable rocket pods with a total of twelve five-inch rockets and five weapons pylons.’
Wharton opened his mouth wide on hearing the speed she had quoted.
‘’Four hundred and eighty miles per hour? But that’s faster than any of our latest fighters, General. You should be able to make a kil ing in the skies of Europe.’’
Ingrid grinned and took one step to the right before pointing at the nose of her aircraft, which sported a total of 107 miniature Japanese flags painted on its side.
‘’I already have been making quite a lot of kil ing during the past two years in the Pacific, Mister Wharton. You also may find that my pilots are no beginners in this war.
Now that we are in England, the Germans better brace themselves.’’
‘’And I wil be happy to cheer for you from the sidelines, General. Do you have some personal effects in your aircraft that I could put in my jeep before we drive you to your quarters?’’
‘’I do! Give me a minute.’
Walking around her aircraft, she went to the small stowage compartment situated in the right-side boom of her P-38NC and extracted from it a kit bag and a leather briefcase,
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then went to her cockpit and pulled out from behind her pilot seat a suits bag, her M2A2
carbine and her old Springfield 1903 rifle. Wharton opened big eyes on seeing the two long guns and her pistol holster, strapped to her upper right leg.
‘’Dear God! You are as heavily armed as a commando soldier, General.’
‘’And all of my weapons were actually used to kill Japanese soldiers during ground fighting, Mister Wharton. We will roll as soon as I will have put my things in your jeep.’’
One minute later, the jeep’s driver was rolling out of the dispersal loop and speeding down the perimeter track, heading towards a group of buildings centered around the control tower of the airfield. As it did so, the jeep passed by the now occupied dispersal loops situated to the sides of the track, with Ingrid taking that opportunity to briefly name and describe the types of planes they were passing by.
While Wharton was greatly impressed by all of them, the RAF officer sucked air in and opened his eyes wide when they start rolling by the lone Hughes C-11T SEAGULL that had flown in with Ingrid’s armada, a plane with grateful, slick lines.
‘’My God! What a beauty!’
‘’The Hughes C-11T SEAGULL transoceanic fast liaison transport aircraft is indeed a beautiful plane, Squadron Leader Wharton. It is the fast passenger transport variant of the Hughes A-11, which I have in bomber, photo-reconnaissance and night fighter variants as parts of my air wing. The C-11T was designed to be a very fast, very long range 16-seat transport dedicated to V.I.P. transport and medical evacuation over the Pacific. Its top speed is 505 miles per hour, with its normal cruising speed being 460
miles per hour and with a range of 6,500 miles with two tons of passengers and luggage.
Its cabin and cockpit are also pressurized and it can climb to an altitude of 46,000 feet.’
‘’But it is faster than our jet fighter, the Gloster METEOR. How could this plane achieve such performances?’
‘’The answer is simple: powerful engines, careful aerodynamic profiling and good design which incorporates lessons imported from the future by Nancy Laplante. With this plane, our wounded will be able to be flown to treatment in the United States in less than seven hours, with no mid-way refueling stop.’
What Ingrid didn’t say was that the British could have produced a much better jet aircraft than their Gloster METEOR if they would have fully embraced the counsels given to them by Nancy Laplante. Alas, as they had done too often before, the British had let
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their conservatism get the better of themselves, thus resulting in a jet fighter that was actually slower than the fastest British piston-engine fighter already in service, the Supermarine SPITFIRE XIV, capable of a top speed of 448 miles per hour.
After rolling down half of the length of the perimeter track, the jeep stopped in front of a low brick building situated next to the airfield’s control tower, on the north side of the base.
‘’This is the command building of the airfield, General. Your quarters are inside it, next to the operations center and communications section. There are also three more rooms for senior officers in the same building. My driver will help you carry your luggage.’’
‘’You are too kind, Squadron Leader Wharton.’ replied a satisfied Ingrid, who was liking the setup at RAF Charmy Down. With six other RAF airfields in Southwest England due to be occupied by her air wing during this coming weekend, her air wing should be able to start flying missions over Europe within a week.
16:11 (GMT)
Sunday, December 12, 1943 ‘C’
RAF Aston Down, 10 kilometers south-east of the city of Stroud County of Gloucestershire, England
‘’GIRLS, COME IN, QUICK, AND WATCH THOSE FANTASTIC MACHINES
COMING IN.’
The dozen or so female pilots from the RAF Air Transport Auxiliary (A.T.A.) Service who were inside their unit mess rushed to the windows at that call from one of their own. What they saw then were dozens of helicopters lining up for landing along the sides of the airfield’s perimeter track. Prominent among those helicopters were 27 AH-4
HORNET attack helicopters, with their long 20 mm cannons mounted in mini-turrets under the chin of the AH-4s. Another twenty helicopters of differing models were also in the process of landing at the vertical, while six C-142A heavy cargo aircraft were landing conventionally on the longest runway of RAF Aston Down.
‘’Those must be from the American 99th Air Wing, parts of which were supposed to be based here.’’ said one of the British women. Another woman then added to that.
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‘’That’s supposed to be an all-female unit, girls. What do you say that we go out and greet our American sisters?’’
‘’Great idea! GET YOUR COATS, GIRLS: IT’S COLD OUTSIDE.’
Eleven British female A.T.A. pilots ended up running outside as most of the incoming helicopters were now on the ground and cutting their engines. Since AH-4s were the nearest machines to the A.T.A. building, the British women naturally approached the attack helicopters first but stayed at a safe distance until their rotors stopped turning. By then, women of the ‘Black Widows’ were starting to climb down from their machines. The first British woman to have spotted the helicopters, Mary Bailey, approached an AH-4 with the name ‘WONDER WOMAN’ painted on its side, under the cockpit. However, there were also five small ship silhouettes and names painted under the cockpit, along with two images of tanks. Mary’s jaw dropped when she read the names next to the images and recognized what they designated.
‘’This helicopter crew sank the Japanese heavy cruiser TAKAO, a KAGERO-Class destroyer and three Japanese cargo ships, on top of destroying two tanks? Wow!
These girls are real pros.’
Mary then approached the two women who had just set foot on the grass, intent on greeting them to Aston Down. She however froze on recognizing the tall woman who had come down from the front cockpit section.
‘’Miss Katharine Hepburn, is that real y you?’
The actress grinned widely in response while looking at Mary.
‘’Last time I checked, I was me. Captain Katharine Hepburn, of the ‘Hornets’, the 7771st Attack Helicopter Squadron. We came from the Pacific to here to kick German ass.’’
20:13 (Montana Time)
Thursday, December 23, 1943 ‘C’
The ‘Crawford’s Nest Ranch’, Havre, Montana
U.S.A.
John Crawford was reading his newspaper on a sofa of his ranch’s lounge, with his wife Joan listening to music on their radio, when their son Patrick and their daughter
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Marilyn showed up at the entrance of the lounge, their expressions most serious. Joan, who saw them first, felt apprehension on seeing their expressions.
‘’Something is wrong, children?’’
Marilyn, who was the oldest of the two at nineteen, looked at her with some reprobation.
‘’We are not children anymore, Mom: I am nineteen, while Patrick just turned eighteen. We actually came to see you and Dad to announce to you that we decided to enroll in the Army.’
While Joan stiffened with alarm on hearing that, John put down his newspaper and got up from his sofa, to then walk to his two oldest children.
‘’You are serious about this, Marilyn? Did you think this well before taking that decision?’’
‘’Yes, Dad! I want to serve my country, like many other women already do.’
‘’And what convinced you to take such a decision, Marilyn? Ingrid’s example?’
‘’Not real y, Dad.’ replied the tall brunette teenager. ‘’Yes, I admire what Ingrid is doing in this war but what decided me were all those stupidities I keep hearing at school and in town, along with the hypocrisy of the people in Havre. Those matrons and old fossils in Havre spend their time poo-pooing Ingrid and the other women who are fighting in this war, saying that they should instead return to more appropriate roles in their homes, but none of those assholes have had the guts to go themselves serve at the front. I basically told that to the editor-in-chief of the Havre Daily News, where I work part-time as an assistant photographer, when he criticized Ingrid in my presence. I told him clearly what I thought of his hypocrisy before quitting my job and slamming the door behind me on my way out. I am frankly tired of hearing all those idiocies and I want to stop feeling like I am hiding here while other girls do their duties to the United States.’’
John stared for a moment at his eldest daughter, then looked at his eldest son.
‘’And you, Patrick? Why do you want to enroll now?’
‘’I also want to do my part in this war, Dad, like Marilyn. I hope that you and Mom wil respect my decision and will support it.’’
John passed an arm around his wife’s shoulders as he eyed his two eldest children, his mind in turmoil. Joan’s hand then pressed his hand, passing a silent message. He looked at his wife, who nodded her head, then looked back at his two children, containing his emotions with difficulty.
‘’Marilyn, Patrick, we understand and accept your decision. You are making me proud, both of you.’
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Both him and Joan then hugged tightly their two children, with Joan being near tears.
Seeing that, Patrick hugged his mother while talking to her in a soft voice in order to reassure her.
‘’Don’t worry, Mom: I wil be alright.’
‘’And...what specialty will you ask to serve in, Patrick?’’
‘’I don’t know yet, Mom. I wil see what they wil offer me in Havre.’
‘’And you, Marilyn? What do you want to do in the Army?’’
‘’I studied photography and know how to run a photo lab. I will ask to serve as a photo technician in the Army Air Force, which is said to use a lot of such photo technicians.’
Joan felt a bit reassured by that answer from Marilyn: at least her daughter was probably going to serve at a relatively safe distance from the frontlines in such a specialty. John then put his hands of the shoulders of his two children and smiled to them.
‘’We wil go together after Christmas to the Army recruitment office in Havre. It will then probably take a few days after that before you will depart for your military training. That wil give us a chance to prepare a little departure party for you two.’’
09:15 (GMT)
Tuesday, December 21, 1943 ‘C’
Ninth Air Force headquarters, RAF Middle Wallop County of Hampshire, Southern England
With RAF Middle Wallop being in the county of Hampshire, next to the counties where her air groups were now based, Ingrid’s flight to the headquarters of the Ninth Air Force in a UH-1 helicopter had taken only a bit more than thirty minutes before she landed in the grassy area near the headquarters building. This morning, she was accompanied by her air group commanders, Teresa James, Betsy Ferguson, Helen Richey, Betty Huyler and Phylis Burchfield, plus had brought as well her second in command, Evelyn Sharp, and her wing’s intelligence officer, Jenny Kawena. Her UH-1 was thus full to capacity when she landed at RAF Middle Wallop.
With the actual local temperature being above freezing point, the grassy expanse that was used to land and take off aircraft was free of snow when they landed, although the wind that was blowing was quite cold, making the eight women, who had spent the last
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few months in a tropical climate, shiver in their army trench coats, which they wore over their going-out uniforms. Walking quickly to the main entrance of the headquarters building, the group presented itself to the duty officer in charge of the armed sentries posted at the door. The young lieutenant got up from behind his control desk and saluted Ingrid at attention.
‘’Good morning, ma’am! May I see your military identity cards, please?’
‘’Of course, Lieutenant. We are here to see Lieutenant General Brereton.’
replied Ingrid while saluting back, before producing her identity card, imitated by her subalterns. The duty officer examined their cards, then returned them before grabbing his telephone receiver in order to announce the visitors. After a few seconds, he put down his receiver and smiled to Ingrid.
‘’If you will follow me, ladies.’’
Following the young duty officer, Ingrid and her group were soon introduced in the operations room of the Ninth Air Force, where she saw Lieutenant General Brereton standing next to a large map table, along with a Hispanic-looking major general.
Brereton, who knew Ingrid well from her time in the Philippines, smiled and walked to greet her halfway with a strong handshake.
‘’Ingrid, it is real y nice to be able to see you again and even nicer to know that you will again be serving under me. Come to the map table, so that I could present you and your officers to Major General Elwood Quesada, the commander of my fighter command.’
Walking quickly back to the map table, Brereton then presented Ingrid to Quesada.
‘’Elwood, this is the legendary ‘Lady Hawk’, our Ace of aces, Major General Ingrid Dows.’
Quesada, while shocked by Ingrid’s obscene youth for her rank of two-star general, nonetheless shook hands with her.
‘’You have quite a reputation, you and your air wing, General Dows.’’
‘’Bof, you know what they say about reputations: they are mostly overblown...except in our cases.’
The group had a quick laugh at that before Ingrid presented her officers.
‘’May I present first my wing’s second-in-command, Colonel Evelyn Sharp? Also with me are my air group commanders, Lieutenant colonels Teresa James, Helen
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Richey, Betsy Ferguson, Betty Huyler and Phylis Burchfield. Finally, here is Major Jenny Kawena, my wing’s intelligence officer.’
Brereton and Quesada had a round of handshakes, both paying particular attention to the exotic beauty of Hawaiian-born Jenny Kawena, before Ingrid handed an envelope to Brereton.
‘’General Kenney, our new Army Air Force commander, tasked me to hand to you this letter concerning me and my air wing, sir.’
Brereton nodded his head while accepting the envelope and starting to open it.
‘’It probably is the written version of the private secure telephone call I got from him two weeks ago. In essence, he was proposing that, due to the composite nature of your air wing, you should serve directly under me as my strategic reserve and special operations unit. After seeing what you were able to accomplish in the Philippines when left free to use your initiative, I agreed at once to his suggestion. By the way, at how much is now your air victory score, Ingrid?’
‘’A cool 108, sir, and I can guarantee you that my imagination is as fertile as ever.
In fact, I have been tinkering about an operation plan which could make the Germans shit bricks.’
‘’I like plans that can do that, Ingrid.’’ replied Brereton with a smile. ‘’Tell me about it.’
‘’With pleasure, sir. Basically, I was thinking about a variant of my strategic decapitation strike I used against the Japanese high command in Tokyo, but with a political twist.’
‘’A political twist? What do you mean by that, Ingrid?’’ asked Brereton, mystified.
Ingrid then took a few minutes to explain her plan and its specific goals, leaving both Brereton and Quesada open-mouthed.
‘’I would call my plan ‘Operation Guil otine’, sir.’ said Ingrid as she finished to expose her idea. Elwood Quesada wrung his left hand at that.
‘’That’s a damn appropriate name for such a devilish plan, Dows. The question is: can you truly succeed in its execution? You are talking about a number of heavily defended and fortified objectives there.’’
‘’The critical part of my plan is actual y how accurate and up to date our intelligence about the German leadership will prove to be, sir. If our info proves correct and if the timing is right, then we may be able to shorten this war by months or even a year. I mention the timing because we are now close to Christmas and the New Year, a
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period of time when pretty much everyone who can will be away from their normal locations. On the other hand, waiting after the New Year to initiate my plan will give us time to review the intelligence we have at hand, which is the main reason I brought Major Kawena with me today. I also came to get...’’
One of Brereton’s senior operations officers, a lieutenant colonel, then came to their group, a catastrophed expression on his face, interrupting their conversation.
‘’Excuse me, General, but I have General Doolittle on the phone, asking urgently for help. Our big bomber raid on the Messerschmitt aircraft factory near Munich has hit something new and deadly, a sort of guided anti-aircraft rocket. Despite their escort fighters, our bombers are taking very heavy losses, sir.’
‘’Uh, excuse me for a moment, Ingrid.’’ said Brereton before quickly following the staff officer towards the battery of telephones lined on a long table in a corner of the room. That left Ingrid and her officers looking with concern at each other.
‘’A guided anti-aircraft rocket?’’ said Betty Huyler, mystified. ‘’Would you know something about that, Ingrid?’’
Ingrid thought for a moment before she suddenly seemed to think of something.
‘’The V4-A5 WASSERFALL! In Nancy’s history, the Germans developed late in the war, around 1945, an anti-aircraft variant of their V2 ballistic missile with a crude radio-command guidance system operated by a ground controller. If the Germans have indeed developed such a missile this early, then it would be a very bad news for our bomber force and the British bomber force.’’
‘’And is there a way to counter that missile, Ingrid?’ asked a worried Betsy Ferguson, while Elwood Quesada was listening carefully to the exchange.
‘’We could possibly jam its guidance link...if we knew more about it. The one thing we could do right now against it would be to fly low: the WASSERFALL was mostly ineffective at low altitude due to its guidance mode. Teresa, call your fighter group at RAF KEEVIL and tell it to prepare for an emergency long-range escort mission into Southern Germany. Call as well RAF Charmy Down and tell our ground crews there to prepare the three P-38NCs of our wing command element, plus one of our EC-142Es, for a combat mission over Germany. We are going to fly back to our respective bases, so that we could fly out with our fighters.’
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As Teresa James ran to one of the available telephones, Elwood Quesada questioned Ingrid’s intentions.
‘’General, your aircrews only recently arrived in England and have not been briefed yet about the German air defense network. You could lose a lot of planes by rushing headlong into Germany like this.’
‘’There is no such thing as a war without risks, General Quesada. Our bomber boys are in trouble and it is our duty to help them as much as we can. As soon as General Brereton will be finished speaking with General Doolittle, I will ask for his permission to let us go help our bombers.’
Maybe a minute later, Brereton returned to the side of Ingrid and Quesada, his expression somber.
‘’General Doolittle says that his bombers are being cut to shreds over Munich by those guided rockets, while German fighters, including a few Messerschmitt 262 jet fighters, are also harassing our planes. He is asking for fighter escort reinforcements to at least cover our bombers on the return trip portion over France.’
‘’General, my fighter group commander is already calling our airfields to scramble our P-38NCs and one EC-142E in order to support our bombers. Do you have any objections to that, sir?’’
Brereton gave her a sharp look before nodding his head.
‘’Proceed with that, Ingrid. From what General Doolittle told me, his bombers truly need all the help that they can get right now. General Quesada will go get you the necessary list of radio frequencies and callsigns to be used to contact our bombers.’’
‘’I’m on it, sir!’ replied Quesada before walking away at a quick step. Brereton then looked at Ingrid, hoping that her uncommon knowledge about this war would help them now.
‘’Do you know something about this German guided rocket, Ingrid?’
‘’I do, sir!’ answered Ingrid before telling Brereton what she knew about the V4-A5 WASSERFALL. As soon as she finished telling him what she knew on that subject and had gotten a list of radio frequencies and callsigns from Quesada, she excused herself with Brereton, then ran out with her officers to return to her helicopter. A minute later, she was taking off and speeding towards the West-Northwest and RAF Charmy Down.
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Once at Charmy Down, Ingrid stepped out of the UH-1 with Evelyn Sharp, Betsy Ferguson and Jenny Kawena, leaving the light helicopter in the hands of Teresa James, Helen Richey and Betty Huyler, so that they could get back to their respective airfields.
Running inside her headquarters building, Ingrid went to her room to change quickly from her going-out uniform to her wool-lined leather flight suit and boots, which were more appropriate for flying at high altitude over Europe, especially in December.
Another five minutes and she was ready to jump in her P-38NC. Checking first that her fighters and the EC-142E assigned to this mission were ready to go and also getting the list of relevant callsigns and frequencies, she took off, followed by the P-38NCs of Evelyn Sharp and Evelyn Hudson and by the EC-142E piloted by Kathryn Bernheim, in which Jenny Kawena had climbed aboard. Once at medium altitude and climbing, she made a radio call to her planes.
‘’To all Fifinellas, from Lady Hawk: form up on me over Upavon. We will then speed eastward in formation at 330 knots and at an altitude of 35,000 feet. Oracle One, once we will pass the English coast, you will switch to the alternate language when speaking with me. Get updates on the big boys while we wil fly. Lady Hawk, out!’
Concentrating back on her flying and navigation, Ingrid thought about what was happening to the heavy bombers of the Eight Air Force sent to Munich this morning.
While they were now being escorted by fighters all the way to their targets in Germany, contrary to their past practices which had cost them so dearly, it seemed that the leaders of the Eight Air Force still sent their bombers in dense packs and at high altitude, obstinately refusing to drastically change their methods. Something needed to change, drastically, after this new failure. If Eight Air Force leaders refused to do so, then General Kenney was going to need to do some serious cleanup among those senior commanders.
Ingrid and the fifty other P-38NCs she was leading were passing the southeast coast of England when she got a call in Japanese from Jenny Kawena, aboard the EC-142E providing her with radar coverage and electronic jamming.
‘’Lady Hawk, this is Oracle One. The news about the big boys are not good.
They have now turned away from their objective and are on their way back but are constantly under either fighter or missile attack. Their escort fighters have now all turned around and left, out of ammunition and short on fuel. The big boys are thus presently alone over Germany. Their last position was just northeast of Ulm but they are slowed
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down by many bombers having been damaged and are doing only 150 knots, in order to keep a protective box around their lame ones. At that speed, the Germans will have all the time to send successive waves of fighters at our big boys and to prepare their flak units in advance of their passage, over.’
‘’Is the Ninth sending some small boys to help, over?’’
There was a distinct pause before Jenny Kawena answered that question.
‘’The small boys from the Ninth went with the big boys of the Eight, as extra protection. They are now on their way back, short on fuel and out of ammunition. The battle was apparently quite ferocious, over.’
It was Ingrid’s turn to pause. The Eight Air Force already had multiple fighter groups under its Eight Fighter Command. With the fighters from the Ninth Air Force added to them, that would have made for an escort force of over 600 fighters for the bombers sent to Munich, yet that had apparently not been enough. The implications of this were downright alarming.
‘’Message acknowledged, Oracle One. Keep guiding us towards the big boys and be ready to jam the German radars as needed. Lady Hawk out!’
In ‘Oracle One’, Jenny Kawena went to the electronic warfare station, where Hedy Lamarr was watching the radio and radar frequencies used by the Germans stationed along the French coast on the Pas de Calais.
‘’So, do the Germans have many radars active along the French coast, Hedy?’’
‘’Are you kidding, Jenny? There are enough electro-magnetic waves in the air to fry an egg in seconds. I will soon need to start jamming two of the nearest radar stations, whose signals are presently at close to detection level.’
‘’Feel free to jam any radar that you judge as dangerous to us, Hedy. We are going to open a door to let our fighters enter French and then German airspace with the minimum of opposition. Keep an eye as well for any strange or unusual signal which may be associated with that new German surface-to-air missile.’’
‘’What’s the name of that missile again?’
‘’The V4-A5 WASSERFALL. Something tells me that we will end up hearing a lot about it in the days to come, as it appears that the Germans kept the deployment of this new weapon secret, in order to ambush our bombers. We should thus expect most of the main industrial centers in Germany to be now defended by those missiles.’’
‘’You are probably right about that, Jenny.’
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In a German coastal radar installation near the port of Le Havre, at the mouth of the Seine River, a Luftwaffe21 radar operator swore to himself in frustration before twisting his chair to look at his duty officer.
‘’I’m sorry, Herr Hauptmann22, but I can’t break through that radar jamming. I tried switching frequencies multiple times but the jamming followed my radar signal.’
‘’Himmel!’ exclaimed the duty officer. ‘’It must be one of those devilish American flying radar stations they started to field during the past few months. I can only wish that we would have the equivalent in the Luftwaffe. Oberhelferin Steiner, what do you have on the radio frequencies?’
The German female auxiliary made a face at that question.
‘’Uh, I am able to listen to some intermittent and short bursts of radio conversations which are from probable American aircraft, if I judge from their accent, Herr Hauptmann. However, there are two problems with those radio conversations: most of them are in Japanese, while all of them are female voices.’’
‘’What? Are you sure, Fraulein?’
‘’Well, if American men would talk with those kinds of voices, we would be laughing at them and taunting them, Herr Hauptmann. They are female voices for sure.’’
‘’Speaking in Japanese, here over Europe?’
The female auxiliary, who had studied in an arts college before the war, smiled at her officer’s bemusement.
‘’Well, sir, how many Germans can understand Japanese here in France? That would actually be a simple and effective way to encrypt your radio communications, Herr Hauptmann.’’
‘’But who could these women be, speaking Japanese and flying into combat over Europe?’ wondered the duty officer. The female auxiliary thought over that for a second before she remembered something.
‘’You remember that notice we got months ago about a female traitor who was fighting for the Americans in the Pacific, sir? She was said to be leading the first all-female air unit of the American Air Force somewhere in the South Pacific. Maybe her unit got transferred to England.’’
21 Luftwaffe: German Air Force.
22 Hauptmann: German rank equivalent to ‘Captain’.
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‘’Hum, that could be a possibility, Fraulein Steiner. Good thinking! I will contact our regional command post about that. In the meantime, call by landline our fighter base at Le Bourget and alert them about these American planes penetrating our airspace.’
‘’Right away, Herr Hauptmann!’’
11:28 (GMT)
Lead German Messerschmitt Bf 109G-6 fighter
Sky southwest of city of Metz, France
Hauptmann Heinrich Kuntz, leading five other Bf 109G-6 fighters of his squadron, shook his head in frustration as he could only watch from a distance the big formation of American fighters heading towards the German border: those American planes were simply too fast for his own fighters. Besides, for six Bf 109Gs to try to attack fifty P-38s would simply be suicide. As for why those P-38s were heading towards German airspace, the reason was easy enough to guess: they were going to try to escort back to England the huge pack of American heavy bombers which had attacked the Munich area this morning. The fact that those P-38s were flying in only now was telling Kuntz that this was not a planned move by the Americans, but rather a reaction to the disaster that had fallen on those heavy bombers. In that he could only respect the American pilots for trying to help their bomber comrades. Deciding that this pursuit was futile and with his fuel levels quickly going down as he was pushing his engine to its limits, Kuntz finally decided to quit and return to his base in Le Bourget, where he would be able to refuel and then take off again to intercept those bombers on their way back to England. He tried to radio his intentions to his wingmen but met again the annoying radio jamming which had been dodging the whole air defense network since those Americans had crossed the Channel coast. He was thus forced to fall back to hand signals to communicate his intentions to his five pilots. As he was turning back towards his base, he looked way up at the tiny shape of the big four-engine American aircraft flying at very high altitude, just out of reach of his fighters: that plane was most probably one of the new flying radar aircraft which had been making a pest of themselves during the past few months. Unfortunately, the speed and operational ceiling of those radar aircraft put them just out of reach of his Bf 109. Kuntz let out a pungent swear word before leading his wingmen back to Paris.
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Much further east, between Karlsruhe and Stuttgart, another German fighter pilot had reasons to feel much better about the present situation. Despite being dodged by the same persistent radio jamming causing havoc in the German air defense network of Southern Germany, General Adolf Galland, flying a Me 262 jet fighter, had a front row seat to the spectacle of death and destruction befalling the American B-17 heavy bombers which had tried to bomb the Messerschmitt aircraft factory near Munich. ‘Tried’
was the operative word here, as those B-17s had been savaged by salvoes of the new WASSERFALL surface-to-air missiles before they could bomb the factory in question.
They thus had been forced to release their bombs haphazardly all over the Munich area, with swarms of German fighters and intense anti-aircraft gunfire adding to their misery.
Those German guns had proved very effective, again, as they were using shells equipped with proximity fuzes, the same ones found on the WASSERFALL missiles.
Those proximity fuzes, copied from examples captured after the failed Allied landing in Denmark in 1942, had been proving to be a true godsend to the German air defenses, making the fire from 88 mm, 105 mm and 128 mm guns hugely more effective and increasing their lethality by a factor of more than ten. As a result, the more than 700
American bombers which had tried to bomb Munich were now down to less than 500, a total which included dozens of seriously damaged B-17s, which were now slowing down considerably the retreating bomber box formations trying desperately to return to England.
Seeing that the surviving American bombers were now flying in a zone free of anti-aircraft guns and missile batteries, Adolf Galland then signaled by hand to his seven wingmen to attack the B-17s, then veered towards one of the bomber boxes. While those tight bomber box formations made their concentrated defensive heavy machine gun fire quite dangerous, they also made them more vulnerable to the deadly WASSERFALL missiles, whose heavy fragmentation warheads were easily able to down at least two or three bombers in one shot. However, now was a good time for Galland and his wingmen to cause more losses to those American bombers. Aiming his gunsight on one of the intact bombers flying in the rear of one box formation, Galland waited until he was quite close to it before firing a volley of four R4M rockets at the B-17. While
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three of those rockets barely missed the heavy bomber, one rocket performed a direct hit and exploded, breaking the bomber in two and sending both parts down in a death spiral. One of the rockets which had missed that bomber then hit another bomber flying nearby, destroying it and making Galland grin as he zoomed through the bomber formation. A second salvo of R4M rockets then downed a third bomber before he emerged on the other side of the bomber box, pursued by fire from dozens of heavy machine guns. Looking behind him, Galland was satisfied to see his wingmen also do their parts in decimating the B-17 formation. As a reflex he had acquired through nearly three years of air combat, Galland next did a quick visual inspection around him, to make sure that no enemy fighter was after him, despite the fact that most escorting P-47
and P-51 American fighters had turned back minutes earlier, short on fuel and out of ammunition. His acute vision then spotted a group of dark spots diving from up high on him and his wingmen, making him shout in the radio microphone inside his oxygen mask.
‘’ACHTUNG, JAEGERS23!’
He then veered brutally to his left, in time to avoid a stream of cannon shells which barely missed his plane. Swearing to himself for having been ambushed like this, he then went in pursuit of the American P-38 that had fired at him. However, while his jet fighter was faster than the American piston-engine fighter, that P-38 proved to be much more agile in terms of dogfighting abilities and he was unable to stay on its tail and aim his guns at the P-38. The pilot of that P-38 then proved to be no beginner by performing a sudden barrel roll while brutally slowing down by using its airbrakes. From hunter, Galland suddenly found himself turned into the hunted and began a series of brutal maneuvers while pushing his two turbojet engines to maximum power in order to evade the fire from the P-38. However, the inferior agility of his Me 262, compared to that of the P-38, cost him heavily, with a number of cannon shells slamming into his jet fighters and putting one of his two engines on fire. Understanding with bitterness that he would soon have to eject before his plane became uncontrollable, Galland slowed down, praying that the American pilot would not use that chance to finish him off. He was ejecting his canopy when he noticed that his adversary was now flying very close alongside him. Surprised by that, Galland looked at the P-38 and its pilot, noting the dozens of miniature Japanese flags painted on the side of the plane, along with the 23 Achtung, jaegers: ‘Watch out, fighters!’ In German.
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words ‘LADY HAWK’ painted in black and pink letters. He was thus facing an American ace fresh from the Pacific. That American pilot then surprised him further by opening the visor of his helmet and pulling his oxygen mask aside, allowing Galland to see the beautiful face of a young woman. Galland was stunned when he recognized the young helferin24 with whom he had a few very nice nights in France, back in early 1941.
‘’Helferin Ingrid Weiss?’’
Weiss then smiled and waved at him before making a thumbs up signal to him, then slowed down her P-38 in order to take a position on his tail. Understanding that she was going to fire again if he didn’t bail out now, Galland pulled the ejection handle of his seat and was rocketed out of his Me 262. Thankfully, his parachute opened up correctly and he found himself floating down over the German landscape, with the mass of American bombers flying away to the West, now escorted by the newly arrived P-38s. Galland was also able to see with bitterness that six of his wingmen had been shot down at the same time as himself, with the sole surviving Me 262 now fleeing with an engine trailing black smoke. After many minutes suspended under his parachute, Galland finally landed a bit brutally in a grass field, whose soil had been made hard by the cold temperature. He was gathering his parachute when a civilian car stopped on the nearby road, disgorging three German policemen waiving pistols. Galland immediately raised his hands up and shouted to them in German.
‘’HOLD YOUR FIRE! I’M A GERMAN PILOT!’
Thankfully, those policemen didn’t fire then, instead helping him to gather his parachute before offering him a ride in their car. As the police car drove off with him on the backseat bench, Adolf Galland pondered about what the appearance of Ingrid meant.
She obviously had become a top ace on the American side and was now either part of or leading an American unit fresh from the Pacific, all things which were going to be of high interest for the intelligence officers of his wing.
14:45 (GMT)
Over Southeast England
Ingrid felt sadness as she watched the first surviving B-17 bombers she had escorted back to England start landing at their various airfields in Southeast England.
24 Helferin: World War 2 German female Luftwaffe auxiliary.
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Despite her best efforts, more bombers had been lost over their return trip over France, victims mostly from accurate German anti-aircraft gunfire. Thankfully, no missiles had shot at the B-17s while over France, tending to show that those WASSERFALL batteries were only to be found inside Germany, around industrial sites. Dozens of German fighters had also tried to attack the surviving bombers but had been repelled by Ingrid’s pilots at a high cost to them. However, those air battles had also cost Ingrid three lost P38s and their pilots, in exchange for a total of fourteen German Bf 109s and Fw 190s fighters, on top of also shooting down six Me 262. Ingrid sadness then turned to contained anger as she reflected on the causes of this disaster: things were going to have to change at the Eight Air Force...and drastically.
19:32 (GMT)
Ninth Air Force headquarters, RAF Middle Wallop County of Hampshire, Southern England
When Ingrid walked in the operations center of the Ninth Air Force at RAF Middle Wallop, accompanied by Jenny Kawena and Hedy Lamarr, she found a visibly unhappy Lieutenant general Brereton reading a pile of printed message forms next to his big map table, with Elwood Quesada also present. However, Brereton’s unhappiness was not directed at her, as he weakly smiled to Ingrid and her two officers when they entered the big room.
‘’Aah, Ingrid! Just the person I wanted to speak with. Do you have your mission report with you?’’
‘’I do, sir! Here it is.’
Brereton took the document she was presenting him and started to read it, still standing next to the big map table. Ingrid used that time to go speak in a low voice to Major General Elwood Quesada.
‘’Has the Eight Air Force informed you about how many planes they lost in that raid on Munich, General?’’
‘’It did!’’ answered Quesada. ‘’Out of 712 heavy bombers and 611 fighters sent to Munich early this morning, 247 bombers and 68 fighters were lost, while over 160
bombers returned with serious damages, with a few bombers crashlanding on return. By the way, my IX Fighter Command had provided 240 of the escort fighters and I lost 29 of
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them, plus had fourteen more returning with various degrees of damage. What about your planes, Ingrid?’
‘’I lost three of my P-38NCs, along with their pilots. However, we were able to shoot down twenty enemy fighters, including six Me 262s, and damaged another nine more German fighters damaged, including one Me 262.’’
Quesada nodded his head at those numbers, favorably impressed.
‘’You and your pilots truly did a bang-up job this morning, Ingrid. Your quick intervention saved hundreds of our bomber aircrews over Germany. Unfortunately, this stil left over 2,500 of our men kil ed or missing in action.’’
‘’My God!’ whispered Ingrid while closing her eyes for a second. ‘’This means a loss rate of about 35 percent on that raid alone. We cannot afford such a casualty rate.’
‘’Definitely not!’ agreed Quesada, his expression hardening. ‘’Those who planned and authorized this mission should answer for their lack of judgment.’
‘’Let’s call it for what it is, Elwood: criminal incompetence. There were enough preliminary warnings against using such stupid bombing tactics before today. In fact, I thought that those tactics had been put away after that command conference at the White House, last May.’
‘’Well, apparently not everyone got the memo then, Ingrid.’’
They then both fell silent while waiting for Brereton to finish his reading. Once he had finished going through the report, Brereton passed it to Quesada, so that he could read it too, and looked soberly at Ingrid.
‘’You again saved the day thanks to your lightning quick initiatives, Ingrid. I will make sure that everybody of importance knows about that. Your pilots also proved today that they are true professionals of air combat.’
‘’Thank you, sir. However, I believe that something drastic should be done to prevent the repetition of such a fiasco, starting with the firing of those idiots who planned that raid on Munich. To assign a strong fighter escort to it was a positive point but it did nothing to eliminate the deadly threat presented by German anti-aircraft guns equipped with shells tipped with proximity fuzes. You saw yourself in the Philippines how effective such fuzes proved to be, sir.’
‘’I certainly did, Ingrid, and I also remember that you were the one who told us on your arrival in the Philippines about our old, inadequate fuzes, something that allowed us to order in time large stocks of replacement fuzes, including a quantity of proximity fuzes. Unfortunately, we are now facing another mortal threat, that of those new
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WASSERFALL missiles, which we in Europe knew nothing about before today. Would you by chance know a way to counter those missiles, Ingrid?’’
‘’I may, sir. I brought with me Major Jenny Kawena and Captain Hedy Lamarr, who were aboard the EC-142E that went along with my fighters and provided me with radar and electronic jamming support during our rescue mission. Captain Lamarr in particular, who is my electronic warfare officer, was able to record and note a number of things about those WASSERFALL missiles and their guidance system.’
Brereton, like Quesada, couldn’t help stare in disbelief at a beautiful but also very serious-looking Hedy Lamarr, who was taking a file docket out of her locked briefcase.
‘’Miss Lamar, your electronic warfare officer? Uh, what are your competences in the electronic domain, Captain?’
‘’I am the co-holder of an official patent concerning a jamming-resistant guidance mode based on spread spectrum frequency hopping, sir.’
Ingrid nearly laughed on seeing the confused expressions which then appeared on the faces of the two general officers as they stared at the beautiful ex-actress. Hedy then presented her docket file to Brereton while continuing to speak.
‘’This file contains a resumé of my observations and analysis concerning those WASSERFALL missiles we saw fired from a distance, sir. Basically, we were able to intercept and record radio signals compatible with a type of guidance system called
‘Manual to Command Line of Sight’, or MCLOS in short. In such a system, an operator within direct visual sight of both the target and the missile aligns the missile with the target after launch, using a joystick to steer the missile. Normally, it would be very hard to achieve a direct hit with such a system against a high-flying plane, since it is nearly impossible for the ground controller to judge the actual vertical distance between the missile and its target, but the use of a proximity fuze, which initiates the missile’s warhead as it passes by its target, has rendered the use of a MCLOS guidance system effective. However, such a system would only be functional in daylight and good visibility conditions. To achieve hits at night, the WASSERFALL system would need to be paired with a high-definition tracking radar which would replace the manual guidance ground controller.’
‘’Uh, you said that you were able to both intercept and record the radio command signals for these missiles, Captain. Does that mean that you could also jam those command signals?’’
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‘’Not with the present equipment aboard our EC-142Es, sir. However, I believe that, with the help of electronic experts, I could modify one or more of the radio jammers we have aboard our EC-142Es, so that they could be tuned to the frequencies we recorded, sir.’
That attracted a resolute look on Brereton’s face, who pointed an index at her.
‘’I will send you my best electronic engineers tomorrow morning, Captain Lamarr.
This will be your top priority from now on.’
‘’Thank you, sir. May I ask how our bomber boys fared today, sir?’’
Brereton appeared to age by an extra twenty years at that question.
‘’Very badly, I am afraid. We lost over 2,500 men in that raid, which constitutes about 35 percent of the aircrews we sent to Munich.
Both Hedy Lamarr and Jenny Kawena looked horrified by that number, with Lamarr shocked nearly to tears.
‘’My God! We are not going to launch a similar bombing raid after this, sir?’
‘’Not if I can have my word on this, Captain.’ replied Brereton.
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CHAPTER 29 – COUNTERMEASURES
09:24 (GMT)
Friday, December 24, 1943 ‘C’
Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) Bushy House, Bushy Park, Richmond District
London, England
Ingrid landed her UH-1 light helicopter on the lawn in front of the rear entrance of Bushy House, the three-story red brick building which presently housed the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces, or SHAEF in short. Normally, the command meeting she and her officers were going to participate in would have happened at RAF
Daws Hill, the location of the headquarters of the Eight Air Force, the main air formation implicated in the disastrous bombing raid on Munich effected three days ago. However, the meeting had been moved to Bushy House, in London, the location of General Eisenhower’s headquarters, because British RAF leaders wanted to participate in it, as their Bomber Command was deadly concerned about the new threat represented by the V4-A5 WASSERFALL. Ingrid had found that request by the British to be most logical but it still had made her quite jumpy, as she was probably going to encounter as a result the commander of the British Bomber Command, Air Marshal Arthur Harris. That was not out of fear of Arthur Harris himself but rather out of her intense hatred of the man, whom she considered to be a war criminal. She was going to have to tightly control her emotions in order to keep civil in his presence during the command conference.
However, she had come to this meeting with some heavy backing, which included General George Kenney, who had flown in from Washington yesterday, Lieutenant General Brereton and Major General Elwood Quesada. Completing the American Ninth Air Force delegation for this meeting were Teresa James, Jenny Kawena and Hedy Lamarr.
With General Kenney in the lead, Ingrid’s group was admitted inside Bushy House by the armed American soldiers guarding the rear entrance, then was guided to a
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large conference room, where General Dwight D. Eisenhower greeted them with a handshake, starting with Kenney.
‘’Welcome to England, General Kenney. I wish that your visit would be for a more pleasant occasion than today.’
‘’Indeed! However, we now have a big problem and we have to deal with it decisively. Do you mind if Major General Dows’ team gives the part of the briefing concerning their encounter with the German air defenses?’’
‘’Not at all, General Kenney: they faced those defenses and dealt with them directly, so are the logical choice of briefers for that subject.’
Kenney, seeing that a few senior RAF commanders, including Air Marshal Arthur Harris, were already sitting at the conference table, along with Lieutenant General Jimmy Doolittle and other senior officers of the Eight Air Force, lowered the volume of his voice.
‘’General Eisenhower, I anticipate that at least one commander present may object to or even dismiss the recommendations Major General Dows and her team may present. Know that I fully support General Dows’ point of view and told her to feel free to tell the unvarnished truth. It is high time that we face some hard realities.’’
‘’I agree wholeheartedly with that, General Kenney. Would you like to take the time to have a cup of coffee or tea before we start this meeting?’’
‘’Thank you but no: we already had breakfast before leaving for London. Let’s start this show right away.’
‘’Good! Name plaques are already on the table, to designate the seating arrangement.’
As he sat at the conference table, Kenney saw that Lieutenant General Doolittle had brought with him his chief of staff, Major General Nathan Twining, and his operations officer, Brigadier General Hoyt Vandenberg, along with the commander of his VIII Bomber Command, Major General Frank Armstrong. On the British side, he recognized Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal, sitting next to Air Marshal Arthur Harris and Air Vice-Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory. As he was looking at the British participants, Kenney saw the look of pure disdain and contempt on Harris’ face as the head of the RAF Bomber Command eyed both Ingrid Dows and Jenny Kawena. That ticked off Kenney to no little degree and decided him to put the arrogant Harris in his place during this meeting. The first to speak was General Eisenhower, who seemed as the host of this meeting to want to keep the relations cordial.
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‘’Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. As you all know already, we are due to discuss the results and consequences of Tuesday’s bombing raid on Munich by the bombers of the Eight Air Force, with particular emphasis on a new German anti-aircraft missile employed for the first time against our aircraft and on how to possibly counter that new threat. General Doolittle, if you would like to speak first and describe the goals and planning for that raid.’
‘’Thank you, General Eisenhower. The goal of our raid on the Munich area was actually simple: to destroy the Messerschmitt aircraft factory situated in a suburb of the city. To fulfill that goal, I sent a total of 712 heavy bombers from my VIII Bomber Command, along with 422 fighters from my VIII Fighter Command, reinforced by 189
fighters from the Ninth Air Force, as escorts. My bombers were to carpet-bomb the Messerschmitt factory in closed box formation, both to increase the density of our bombing and to provide mutual protection via the machine guns of our bombers.
However, our bombers and their escorts were attacked by successive waves of German fighters and fired on by anti-aircraft guns as soon as they crossed the French coast, forcing parts of our escort fighters to fight and burn their fuel early. However, our bombers’ real troubles began once they crossed the German border and encountered the first sites of German surface-to-air missiles, about which we ignored even their existence, near Bonn. Those V4-A5 WASSERFALL missiles, as I am told they are called, proved positively murderous for my bombers, with warheads powerful enough to destroy or severely damage three to four B-17s in one shot. After passing those first missile batteries, more German fighters attacked our planes. While our escort fighters did a good job of repelling most of those attacks, they were forced to fire away most of their ammunition and remaining fuel, with the consequence that only about a quarter of our escort fighters were able to continue on to Munich with our bombers. More missile batteries were encountered in succession near Ludwigshafen, Stuttgart, Ulm and Augsburg, with our bombers ending up being fired upon by more missiles once near Munich. Waves of German fighters continued to harass my bombers in the intervals between missile salvoes, forcing the last of our fighters to drop their fuel tanks and engage in combat. By the time my bombers approached their objective, none of their escort fighters were left to protect them. By then, our bombers had already lost over 170
aircraft, with many of the surviving bombers having been damaged by flak or enemy fighters. When our remaining bomber force encountered just short of their objective a dense and murderous flak barrage from 128 mm guns firing shells equipped with
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proximity fuzes, the force commander decided that it was not worth continuing on and ordered his bombers to drop their bombs off and turn back towards England.
Unfortunately, the Germans continued their concentrated fighter attacks against our B-17s, using a number of Me 262 jet fighters in the process. Our surviving bombers would have probably suffered more catastrophic losses if not for the arrival of General Dows’
fighters, which succeeded in repelling the German fighters and then escorted my bombers all the way back to England.’’
Doolittle then paused for a second and smiled to Ingrid.
‘’My boys owe you and your pilots a great debt of gratitude for your timely rescue, General Dows. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your brave and timely initiative.’’
‘’Thank you, General Doolittle. You can thank my girls best by inviting them to the next dance nights your crews wil hold in the weeks to come.’’
‘’They wil certainly be eager to send invitations to your units, General Dows.’
replied Doolittle, making quite a few of the men around the table smile in amusement.
Doolittle then finished his description of the raid and its aftermath for the benefit of the meeting’s participants.
‘’As a result of the raid, my command lost a total of 247 bombers and 46 fighters, while 22 fighters from the Ninth Air Force and three fighters from the 99th Air Wing were also lost. As well, 136 other bombers and 32 fighters suffered serious damages, with 27
bombers having to belly crash-land on return to England. As a final result, over 2,500 of my aircrew are gone, killed or missing in action, while another 980 were wounded and hospitalized. All in all, my bombers suffered a loss rate of no less than 37 percent on that raid, a loss rate that my command simply cannot sustain.’’
‘’And what about the damage caused to their target, the Messerschmitt aircraft plant?’’ asked George Kenney. The embarrassed response from Doolittle then shocked many around the table.
‘’My bombers were not able to get to the Messerschmitt plant before they were forced to jettison their bombs, General.’
Kenney stared at him, both disturbed and furious at those numbers.
‘’So, you lost close to 3,500 men, kil ed or wounded, and this for zero results? Is that it?’’
‘’Yes!’’ said Doolittle, lowering his head in sadness. Ingrid felt bad on seeing his obvious pain, as Kenney asked another question to him.
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‘’And what are you planning to do in order to avoid a repeat of such a disaster, General Doolittle?’
‘’I...I haven’t decided yet, sir: we are still analyzing the events and factors from that battle, so that we could formulate new tactics.’
‘’And what about adopting the tactics our bombers used in the Pacific?’’
Doolittle’s operations officer, Brigadier General Hoyt Vandenberg, took on him to answer for his commander.
‘’We can’t compare the tactics used in the Pacific with those used here in Europe, sir: the Germans are way more sophisticated and competent as opponents than the Japanese are.’’
That attracted on Vandenberg furious looks from Kenney, Brereton, Ingrid Dows, Teresa James, Jenny Kawena and Hedy Lamarr.
‘’May I remind you that I, along with General Brereton and General Dows, commanded air units in combat in the Pacific, Brigadier General? Your comment smacks to me of racism, pure and simple. I would like to remind you as well that your surviving bombers were ultimately saved by the intervention of fighter pilots fresh from the Pacific Theatre, which included Major General Dows, present here.’’
Vandenberg was going to defend his comments then but was cut off by an imperious look and gesture from Doolittle.
‘’Cut it off, now, Hoyt!’
‘’Uh, yes sir!’
Doolittle then looked at Ingrid.
‘’General Dows, I was told that your specialists aboard the EC-142E command post aircraft accompanying your fighters were able to collect some electronic information about those missiles which decimated my bombers. What could you tell us about those missiles?’’
‘’We were indeed able to gather some information about the V4-A5
WASSERFALL, General, both from the radio signals intercepted by my EC-142E and from the information contained in our Hourglass files. My electronic warfare officer, Captain Hedy Lamarr, wil now brief you on this.’
‘’Hedy Lamarr?!’’ exclaimed Arthur Harris while stiffening in his chair. ‘’Isn’t she Austrian?’’
Hedy, who was getting up from her chair, stared hard at the old RAF officer.
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‘’Yes, I was born in Vienna, Air Marshal Harris. I also was a Jew and now have my American citizenship, thanks to my service with the Fifinellas. Risking my life multiple times in combat while flying aboard an EC-142E, including over Tokyo, should be enough to convince you that I am loyal to the United States, sir.’
‘’And what about her?’’ said Harris while pointing at Jenny Kawena. Kenney, having had enough of this, banged his fist on the table while starring hard at Harris.
‘’Air Marshal Harris, if you are more interested in the ethnicity of my officers than in the intelligence they are about to give you, then you are welcome to get the hell out of this room! In fact, I believe that this meeting would proceed better without you.’
Dwight Eisenhower, who also didn’t like Harris much but was concerned about preserving American-British relations, was still alarmed at the way the atmosphere in the room was quickly degenerating. However, he could not ignore the fact that George Kenney was a service chief, thus had a higher authority than his own. Eisenhower exchanged a look with Sir Charles Portal, who got his silent message and looked in turn at Harris, a severe expression on his face.
‘’I wil brief you later about the intelligence obtained during this briefing, Air Marshal Harris. You may leave now.’
Turning red with anger and embarrassment, Harris got up from his chair, then walked out while grumbling to himself. Once he was gone, Hedy took out of her locked briefcase copies of a document she passed around before going to an easel and putting a first large cardboard diagram on it.
‘’Gentlemen, this is a rough diagram of how the V4-A5 WASSERFALL missile system works. The missile itself was developed and then built by the Flak-Versuchskommando North, in Peenemunde, and incorporates many technologies used in the V2 ballistic missile, from which it was evolved. The missile itself, which you now have a photograph of in the document I gave you, has a length of 7.85 meters, a body diameter of 864 millimeters and a launch weight of 3,700 kilos. It is propelled by a rocket motor which uses a hypergolic combination of storable liquid propellants: vinyl isobutyl ether and red fuming nitric acid. Its range is fairly short, being only 25
kilometers, or 15.6 miles, and its top speed is 1,700 miles per hours. It is thus a supersonic missile. The WASSERFALL is launched from fixed sites with the codename
‘Vesuvius’. Its guidance mode is radio manual command to line of sight, or MCLOS in short, and it uses the FuG 203/FuG 230 ‘Kehl-Strassburg’ radio guidance system, which is also used with the FRITZ X guided bomb and the Hs 293 rocket-boosted anti-ship
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missile the Germans have already used in the Mediterranean. We were able while flying over Germany to detect and record the parameters of the radio command signals used by WASSERFALL operators, parameters which we then compared on return to England to the information contained in Hourglass Files on secret German weapons. The intermediate frequency band of the WASSERFALL system is in the 3-megahertz frequency band and that allowed us to quickly modify one of our existing radio jammers we use on the EC-142E, in order to allow it to jam WASSERFALL guidance signals.’
‘’Wait!’ said a stunned Charles Portal. ‘’You are saying that we already had information about this missile system in our Hourglass Files we hold in London, Captain Lamarr?’’
‘’Correct, sir. Copies of those files were also held in Washington, where they had been brought to in 1940 by Nancy Laplante. Parts of those files concerning the Pacific war were then used by Major General Dows while fighting the Japanese and we took the remaining parts concerning the war in Europe with us before coming here.’
General Eisenhower made a double facepalm on hearing that, while Charles Portal quickly scribbled a note on a paper pad laid on the table in front of him. Hedy waited until Portal was finished scribbling before continuing her exposé.
‘’We thus have two ways to avoid those WASSERFALL missiles, gentlemen: we could either fly around them, since their range is relatively short, or we could jam them.
Of course, we would first have to test our new jammers over Germany before all our bombers would get equipped with it.’
‘’And who would do that combat testing, Captain Lamarr?’’ asked Jimmy Doolittle. Ingrid then took on her to answer him.
‘’My unit will, next Tuesday. I have planned a number of simultaneous missions over Germany with small, separate bomber and fighter packages, each escorted by one EC-142E electronic command post aircraft. And before anyone here thinks that these will be suicide missions, I will say that I am not the kind to send my crews on one-way missions. In fact, I will be leading the package that will bomb Berlin Tuesday morning.’
The senior commanders sitting around the table either sucked air in, stunned, or looked at her with a mix of incredulity and horror.
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CHAPTER 30 – OPERATION GUILLOTINE
05:38 (Berlin Time)
Tuesday, December 28, 1943 ‘C’
Stavanger Airfield, Norway
Ingrid watched the first wave of P-38NCs from her fighter force, which had come to Stavanger from England yesterday afternoon, disappear as her aircraft climbed above the low cloud cover sitting over Norway, Denmark and Northeast Germany. Normally, most Allied air force commanders would have judged the present weather to be marginal at best for flying but, for Ingrid, this was perfect weather in the context of ‘Operation Guil otine’. For one, German ground observers and anti-aircraft gunners would be incapable of spotting or tracking her aircraft as they penetrated German airspace.
Second, those same cloudy conditions would either reduce or completely curtail German air patrols and would complicate any attempt at intercepting her aircraft. On the other hand, Ingrid’s planes were able to use their radars, thermal imaging cameras and night vision goggles to safely fly and navigate in darkness and cloudy conditions, giving them
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a huge advantage over the German air defenses. With the near totality of her air wing now engaged in this operation, which could well change drastically the course of this war, Ingrid was ready to use any advantage she could obtain over the Germans today.
The batch of ten P-38NCs that had just taken off would now join what Ingrid designated as ‘Package Number Four’, composed of those ten fighters, plus one EC-142E, four F-11N night fighters, three AC-142G heavy gunships and twelve A-11B medium bombers, and would head towards their objectives around Munich and Southern Germany, using what Ingrid described as a ‘back door’ which would keep them away from the main German air defense radar coverage. Since that ‘package’ had one of the longest routes to its objectives, it was flying out in advance of ‘Package Number One’, the group to be led towards Berlin by Ingrid.
About half an hour later, with the Sun about to rise, Ingrid received a radio message in the heated hut in which her pilots were waiting. That message, sent by Jenny Kawena from aboard the EC-142E ‘Oracle One’, was composed only of three words: ‘Potato One Up’. That was the signal for Ingrid and her nineteen P-38NC pilots waiting in Stavanger to get in their planes and take off to join the 33 bombers and mission support aircraft of their package.
‘’ALRIGHT GIRLS: TIME TO FLY OUT! REMEMBER MY PRE-MISSION
DIRECTIVES AND GIVE YOUR BEST.’
Ingrid was the first to run out of the heated hut and to her waiting aircraft, where a pair of female mechanics had been pre-heating her two engines with a mobile heating unit, to avoid the engine oil from freezing in the cold Norwegian Winter weather. Already wearing her parachute, modern flotation vest, G suit and helmet, Ingrid climbed quickly up and into her cockpit and started her engines as soon as her mechanics had moved away to a safe distance with their heating unit. Rolling up to the start of the single runway of Stavanger Airfield, Ingrid waited for her other fighter pilots to be close behind her and ready to take off before pushing her engine throttles forward. Her wheels came off the ground after a 400-meter roll and she then climbed towards the low clouds, going through them and emerging in a clear night sky at the altitude of 4,000 meters. That was when she spotted the flashing navigation lights of Oracle One, the EC-142E flying command post that was going to guide and support her mission force with radar and electronic jamming coverage. Once all of the twenty P-38NCs had emerged above the clouds and were lined up in multiple echelons behind her, the EC-142E switched off its
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navigational lights and replaced them with tail-end low-intensity red lights which would be hard to see from more than a mile or so. The mix of 53 aircraft then took a heading that would make them fly down the coast of Sweden while staying just outside of Swedish airspace. The formation then skirted Copenhagen from the East and continued over the Baltic, flying southeast at moderate speed and just above the cloud cover while following the EC-142E. After some 400 miles of flying, the formation turned towards the Southwest and crossed the German coast, so that it would approach Berlin from the North-northeast, thus skirting the radars and fighter stations of the Kammhuber Line, which defended Germany from air attacks coming from England. Ingrid’s unit was helped in this by the fact that the radar technology of World War 2 was still mostly in its infancy, with detection ranges and target definition much inferior to what would be known in the 21st Century.
The first warning to Ingrid from the EC-142E came as her formation was less than twenty miles from Berlin and came in the form of a verbal radio message in Japanese from Jenny Kawena.
‘’Potato One from Oracle One: we have started actively jamming a targeting radar associated with an anti-aircraft missile battery located in the northern suburbs of Berlin. Our anti-missile jammers are now active as well. We will soon see if our jammers work, although the low cloud cover will hinder greatly the missile operators, over.’
‘’Let’s hope that they do, Oracle One. Advise me when we wil have to start diving on our respective targets, over.’
‘’Oracle One acknowledge, out.’
Taking a couple of deep breaths to calm herself before entering combat, Ingrid glanced at her detailed map of Berlin fixed to one side of the small map board clipped to her upper left leg. On this mission, her personal knowledge of Berlin, in which she had grown up as a teenager until her family home had been bombed by the British in 1940, was going to prove very useful to her and to her attack formation. The main concentration of targets for her group was in Downtown Berlin, along the Wilhelmstrasse and the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. She then got another radio message, this time in English, from the EC-142E guiding her aircraft.
‘’Oracle One to Potato One: dive now, over!’
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‘’Potato One diving now!’ replied Ingrid, also in English, before shouting in the radio to her pilots.
‘’POTATO ONE ALFA FIGHTERS WILL LEAD AND TAKE OUT THE AIR
DEFENSE GUNS. TORA, TORA, TORA!’
While Ingrid and nine other P-38NC pilots dove down at a steep angle of sixty degrees, quickly going through the low cloud cover, sixteen of the A-11B medium bombers also dove down, but at a more moderate angle of forty degrees while deploying their dive-bombing airbrakes, so that they would arrive over their objectives after the fighters. The remaining ten P-38NCs and ten A-11Bs in the formation then headed south on their own in order to go strike another set of important targets, the German military grand headquarters of the OKW25 and OKH26, housed in a complex of underground bunkers in Wunsdorf, some twenty kilometers from Berlin.
As soon as her P-38NC pierced through the clouds, which sat at an altitude of some 1,400 meters, Ingrid started pulling hard on her control stick, in order to raise the nose of her aircraft, suffering a force of five Gs in the process. However, her G-suit, a gift from the 21st Century, helped her a lot in soaking up the centrifugal force and preventing her from having her vision suffer. As she sped at 340 miles per hour towards downtown Berlin, she looked on for any German anti-aircraft batteries which could be an obstacle to her bombers. Within seconds, she spotted a pair of quad 20 mm cannons posted on the flat roof of a large concrete building. The German gunners spotted her at about the same time and started frantically turning their guns towards her. She however won that gun duel, spraying those two gun mounts with her four 20 mm cannons and downing their servants before zooming over them and continuing towards Potsdamer-Platz. Her next target turned out to be a so-called flak tower, a huge cube of reinforced concrete on which throned four heavy anti-aircraft guns and a number of automatic cannons. Performing a quick up and down maneuver, Ingrid ended up in a shallow dive pointed at the flak tower, then selected her five-inch rocket launchers and pressed her trigger, firing off four of her twelve rockets. As her rockets sped towards their targets, Ingrid went up in a zoom climb, followed by a half-loop, ending up diving again on the flak tower after her four rockets had exploded, sweeping off the crews of the four big 128
mm guns and of half of the 20 mm and 37 mm pieces on top of the tower. Two of the 25 OKW: OberKommando der Wehrmacht. German military high command in WW2.
26 OKH: OberKommando der Heer. German Army high command in WW2.
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surviving 20 mm quad mounts tried to target her but their shooting was wild and they missed her by a wide margin. Her own shooting again proved to be on the mark and the last guns still active atop the flak tower fell silent. Zooming again over the flak tower, Ingrid quickly looked around her to see how her pilots were doing and saw the six A-11Bs led by Helen Richey diving on the large complex occupying the city square delimited by Wilhelmstrasse and Volsstrasse. That complex included the old Reich Chancellery, in which Adolf Hitler had his
official Berlin residence, the new Reich
Chancellery, in which Hitler had his office, and the Propaganda Ministry building in
which Goebbels worked.
‘’GO, HELEN! BURY THAT
HITLER RAT UNDER YOUR BOMBS!’
In Helen Richey’s Hughes A-11B medium bomber, diving at an angle of forty degrees and a speed of 260 miles per hour and aiming at the new Reich Chancellery, her navigator-bombardier, Elizabeth Gardner, was in actual control during their bombing dive, since she had her own flight controls on top of her bomb sight, so that she could act as copilot in order to relieve the pilot during long flights. With their flight path lined up on the long axis of the new Reich Chancellery, Elizabeth set her bomb release to
‘concentrated cluster’ and, with the eastern extremity of her target firmly centered in her bomb sight, she pressed her bomb release trigger once down at an altitude of 900
meters. The six AN-MK 1, 1600-pound armor-piercing bombs contained in their belly bomb bay were ejected in quick succession as Elizabeth was starting to slowly raise the nose of their aircraft. Once all six bombs were out, Elizabeth pulled hard on her flight control stick while shouting in her intercom.
‘’BOMBS AWAY!’
Inside the new Reich Chancellery, Adolf Hitler, alerted by his SS bodyguards, was running towards the garden grounds, in which the entrance to his personal protective bunker was, when a series of tremendous shocks coming from the reinforced concrete ceiling of the building made the whole structure shake. A dark object about the size of a big man then pierced the ceiling in a rain of debris and continued its speedy fall through the floor of the Grand Marble Gallery, along which Hitler and his bodyguards
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were running. Before Hitler or his SS bodyguards could react to that, the delayed fuze arming the armor-piercing bomb set it off.
The detonation of the explosive charge in
the basement level of the building then
blew up a portion of the Grand Marble
Gallery,
projecting
Hitler
and
his
bodyguards towards the ceiling, against
which they smashed and were killed. The
six heavy bombs from Helen’s aircraft had
already mostly ruined the large stone and concrete building when the A-11B piloted by Jean Hixxon followed behind Helen Richey’s plane and dropped a second cluster of six 1,600-pound bombs. Those bombs also hit squarely their target, completing the destruction of the new Reich Chancel ery and the kil ing of Adolf Hitler’s personal staff.
Ingrid, a great believer of the ‘belt and suspender’ principle, had assigned two A-11Bs piloted by her two best bomber pilots to hit the new Reich Chancellery, plus had three more A-11Bs aim bombs at the old Reich Chancellery and at the underground bunker situated in a corner of the garden grounds. The Propaganda Ministry, next to the two Reich Chancellery buildings, was also targeted by two A-11Bs, while the Interior Ministry building, the Reich Aviation Ministry building and the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, belonging to the SS Corps, all situated along Wilhelmstrasse and close to the Chancellery buildings, got the attention of a total of another seven A-11Bs, all effecting steep, high-precision dive bombings.
Very satisfied by the results of the bombings against that strategically-important block of buildings and with the anti-aircraft guns located in the downtown area now neutralized by her fighters, Ingrid flew the short distance to the big 5-story stone
building at 8, Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse,
which housed the grand headquarters of the
SS Corps, including the offices of Reich
Führer Heinrich Himmler, the offices of the SD, the security service of the SS Corps,
and the offices and jails of the dreaded
Gestapo, the secret police of the Reich. If
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anything was the image of the brutal, inhumane nature of the Nazi regime, that building was it. Ingrid flew over it after four A-11Bs had dive-bombed it and dropped a total of 36
1000-pound general purpose bombs on the building, thoroughly gutting it and blowing off its roof. While they had done quite a thorough job, Ingrid saw that a small wing of the building was still mostly intact, except for blown windows. With hatred filling her as she remembered how Nancy Laplante had been tortured to death by the Gestapo in Berlin, Ingrid made a tight turn and returned towards the ruined building while selecting her rocket launchers. Aiming at the side wing, Ingrid fired her remaining eight five-inch rockets into it, collapsing that wing as well. She was taking back some altitude when she saw from the corner of one eye a small convoy of one staff car and five military trucks rolling on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse and heading towards the ruined Reich Chancellery complex. Those vehicles were flying Nazi flags and were most probably carrying SS troops, as the regular German army was normally excluded from security duties in downtown Berlin.
‘’You want your piece of the pie, eh? I’l serve you a big piece of it, you bastards.’
Turning around yet again, Ingrid lined up the convoy in her gunsight and copiously strafed it, destroying all six vehicles and killing or wounding the SS soldiers, recognizable at their black uniforms, who were trying to run to safety. She was climbing back through the cloud when she got a message in Japanese from Jenny Kawena, aboard Oracle One.
‘’Lady Hawk, from Oracle One: our bombers and fighters have finished their jobs in Downtown Berlin. No losses incurred at this point. Callsign Potato One Bravo is also finished dealing with its objective and is now regrouping around me, over.’
‘’Any reaction from the German fighters yet, Oracle One, over?’’
‘’None yet, Lady Hawk. If I go by the radio traffic we are intercepting, the whole command structure in this part of Germany is in a mess, with many stations asking what is happening but not getting answers, over.’
‘’I like it that way, Oracle One. Have our formation regroup around you and then let’s head West, over.’
‘’Understood! Oracle One out!’
Once she emerged over the top of the clouds and in the light of the early day, Ingrid spotted nearly at once the EC-142E, flying at high altitude over Berlin and with a
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growing number of aircraft reforming their formation around it. She joined that formation after another two minutes and took the time to fly under it to inspect her aircraft for any possible damage as they all started flying westward towards Cologne and England while staying above the clouds. She felt better once her visual inspection was completed but she still had many other aircraft attacking other locations inside Germany concerned with either German strategic command and control installations, high-level leadership locations, aircraft factories, oil production centers and railway bridges over the Rhine River. However, if she could judge by how things had gone in Berlin, things looked good for her and her unit, while this was definitely a very bad day for the Nazis. How bad a day it had been for them would soon be known once the photo-reconnaissance A-11Rs of her air formations would bring back to England their post-bombing photos of her air wing’s objectives. As for the dreaded V4-A5 WASSERFALL surface-to-air missiles which had mauled the Eight Air Force only one week ago, it seemed that Hedy Lamarr had found the right counter to it.
14:55 (GMT)
Wednesday, December 29, 1943 ‘C’
Main conference room, Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces Bushy House, Bushy Park, London
General Dwight Eisenhower was on hand to greet British Prime Minister Churchill and his retinue of top military brass with salutes and handshakes as they arrived at the main conference room of Eisenhower’s SHAEF. Eisenhower’s keen eyes didn’t miss the fact that Air Marshal Arthur Harris was conspicuously absent from the group of British military leader lined up behind Churchill.
‘’Welcome to SHAEF, Mister Prime Minister.’
‘’Thank you, General Eisenhower. I must say that what I already heard about the success of Operation Guillotine is already making for a happy coming New Year. I can’t wait to see those post-strike air photos of Berlin and other places hit by your 99th Air Wing.’’
‘’Those photos indeed do raise our collective morale, Mister Prime Minister. If you will follow me, I will show you your place at the conference table.’’
As Churchill followed Eisenhower inside the conference room, he saw a number of women in American Army Air Force uniforms, sitting on chairs lining one of the walls and
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apparently waiting for the conference to start. He thus spoke in a low voice to Eisenhower while discretely pointing at the sitting women.
‘’These are some of the women from the 99th Air Wing, General?’’
‘’Yes, Mister Prime Minister! Their leader, Major General Ingrid Dows, is the young one with reddish-brown hair sitting on the chair nearest to the lectern: she is due to brief you on the results of her unit’s raids inside Germany.’
‘’She’s quite a looker, I must say.’ said Churchil with a smile.
‘’Most importantly for us, she is a strategic and tactical genius of the first order and a top air ace, Mister Prime Minister.’ replied Eisenhower, his expression most serious. ‘’Don’t forget that she and her air unit were the ones who decapitated the Japanese high command in Tokyo and then devised the lightning air assault on Manila that led to our retaking of the Philippines and saved tens of thousands of our people being massacred there by the Japanese.’
‘’Another woman of the caliber of Nancy Laplante, then?’ suggested Churchil , making Eisenhower nod.
‘’She certainly is one such woman, Mister Prime Minister. And don’t forget that she was adopted, secretly at first, by Nancy Laplante and was then educated by her about this war.’’
‘’Yet, she was once one of the German women we were holding as prisoners of war in the Tower of London, until that day in September of 1941 when a German V2
struck the Tower of London and killed all those Germans, save for this girl. Her personal story is quite incredible, I must say.’
‘’Indeed, Mister Prime Minister. Here you are, sir. Each position around the table has a docket containing copies of the air photos which will be shown and briefed to you this afternoon.’
‘’Good!’’
Churchill sat down at the head of the table, with Eisenhower flanking him on his left, along with Generals Kenney, Doolittle, Brereton, Bradley and Patton, while the British Chief of the General Imperial Staff, Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, sat on the right side of the table, along with Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal, Air Vice-Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and General Dempsey. On a signal from General Eisenhower, Ingrid got up and walked to the lectern, which was
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set aside a large projection screen facing an overhead transparency projector manned by Jenny Kawena. Eisenhower then nodded to Ingrid.
‘’You may start your presentation, General Dows.’
‘’Thank you, sir. Mister Prime Minister, gentlemen, my air wing launched in the early morning of yesterday Operation Guillotine, an air attack plan meant to decapitate the German High Command, as its name implied. It also had another, equally important goal: to start breaking the grip of terror the Nazis held on Europe and to encourage more moderate factions than the Nazis in Germany to soften their war stance and, hopefully, to push them into surrendering to us. The first phase of Operation Guillotine was actually launched on Monday evening, when the P-38 fighters of my air wing flew to staging airfields in Norway, namely Stavanger and Oslo-Fornebu, in advance of my bombers and support aircraft, in order to have them fully refueled in Norway before they would escort my other planes over Germany. I flew myself as part of that fighter force and spent the night there before flying out on the arrival from England of my bombers and support aircraft. Slide Number One, which is now visible on the screen, shows the number and types of aircraft involved in Operation Guillotine, along with their grouping into five separate attack packages, each package being assigned a group of targets in specific regions of the German Reich. Those attack packages were numbered from one to five and were assigned to the following regions and groups of targets: Package Number One was aimed at the Berlin area, with its primary targets being the old and new Reich Chancelleries used by Adolf Hitler, the SS Grand Headquarters, the Nazi Propaganda Ministry building, the Reich’s Aviation Ministry building, the Interior Ministry building, the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office building, the building of the Ministry for Occupied Eastern Territories and the barracks lodging Hitler’s SS
bodyguards unit. Part of that package split to go attack the underground bunker complex near Wunsdorf, south of Berlin, in which the German OKW and OKH were operating. Once those targets in and around Berlin were hit and destroyed, Package Number One then flew westward to go attack the oil refineries and synthetic oil plants around Cologne, on top of destroying the railway bridges spanning the Rhine River in Cologne, plus the local Gestapo offices in Brussels and Lille. Attack Package Number Two went to Eastern Prussia, where it attacked Hitler’s eastern headquarters complex, nicknamed the ‘Wolfsschanze’, near Ketrzyn. My aircraft there used heavy 1,600-pound armor-piercing bombs and five-ton FAE bombs to take out the numerous bunkers and buildings of that complex. Once done with the Wolfsschanze, that package turned
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westwards and hit the naval base in Wilhelmshaven, a number of railway bridges over the Rhine and the local Gestapo offices in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, before flying back to England. Attack Package Number Three, the smallest of the four packages, hit first the Berghof, Hitler’s summer residence in Berchtesgaden, and the Eagle’s Nest, Hitler’s mountaintop house, then flew westward, first blowing up the railway bridges around Karlsruhe, then to Paris, where it destroyed the local Gestapo headquarters and also blew up the guards’ facilities and the external walls of the Fresnes Prison, where the Gestapo and the SS held their prisoners, before flying back to England. My Package Number Four, on its part, flew to the Munich area through its eastern back door, where it destroyed the following targets: the BMW aircraft engine plant and the SS Court Main Office in Munich; the Messerschmitt aircraft factories in Augsburg and Regensburg; the Dornier aircraft factories west of Munich and in Friedrichhaven, on the Swiss border; the Hirsh aircraft engine plant near Stuttgart and the railway bridges on the Rhine in Karlsruhe and, finally, the local Gestapo offices in Metz, before returning to England. My Package Number Five, which was actually composed of my attack helicopters escorted by P-47 fighter-bombers from the Ninth Air Force, flew out of England and crossed the English Channel at very low altitude, to then use the chaos and confusion sown by my other attack packages in order to attack the radar stations and German fighter airfields of the Kammhuber Line in the Netherlands and in Belgium. On top of seriously hurting the German air defense system as a whole, this also helped open the withdrawal route of my bomber packages returning to England after attacking Germany.’
‘’And how many aircraft did you lose during that operation, General Dows?’’
asked Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal. Ingrid answered him in a sober tone, as any loss among her aviatrixes was taken very seriously by her.
‘’I lost three of my aircraft to either flak fire or German fighters: two A-11B
medium bombers and one P-38NC. Seven more aircraft suffered damages to various degrees but were able to fly back to England, where one of them, a P-38NC had to crash-land in the English countryside south of London. Thankfully, its pilot was able to walk away from that crash.’’
Most of the participants present, except for Kenney and Brereton, looked at her as if she was telling a tall tale to them, with Trafford Leigh-Mallory nearly shouting in disbelief.
‘’You lost only four aircraft while hitting multiple targets deep inside Germany?
How did you manage that, General Dows?’’
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‘’I kept my losses low by using a number of things, Air Vice-Marshal. First, we attacked on a day when most of Germany and Europe was covered by low clouds, which prevented most German anti-aircraft guns to see and track my planes until we dived down through those clouds. Second, each of my package was supported by one EC-142E WAVEMASTER flying command post and electronic support aircraft, which both guided my aircraft to their objective and also jammed the German radars and radio transmissions. By the way, you may be interested to learn that our new anti-WASSERFALL missile jammer was tested in combat during that operation and was found to be completely effective in making those missiles uncontrollable by their operators. All of the WASSERFALL missiles observed to be fired at our aircraft veered wildly in all directions before crashing on the ground.’
That triggered an exchange of happy comments and grins among the American and British air force commanders present, forcing General Eisenhower to ask for silence.
‘’PLEASE, GENTLEMEN, LET GENERAL DOWS FINISH HER BRIEFING.’
‘’Thank you, General Eisenhower. To continue about the reasons for my low level of losses, the third reason concerned the tactics my aircraft used. For one thing, all our attacks were made from low altitude, where the bigger German anti-aircraft guns had big problems trying to track and aim at my planes. Also, my bombers, before they started emerging from the clouds, were preceded by my fighters, which then engaged any anti-aircraft guns they could spot, neutralizing them before they could have a chance to fire at my bombers. Since the majority of German defensive guns were situated in protective rings outside and to the West of the cities and locations they defended, my airplanes, by emerging from the clouds right over their targets and after approaching from the East, had to deal with only a few of those anti-aircraft guns. As for the German fighters, our attacks and our approach from the North and East, instead of from the West, took them by surprise. The confusion caused by our electronic jamming and by the destruction of the various high-level German headquarters also left those fighters without an effective command system and without radar support. These tactics, gentlemen, if used by us earlier, would have prevented in my opinion the painful losses in bombers we sustained in the previous months. Lastly, I will say that precision bombing against purely military, command or industrial German targets, using dive-bombing techniques and low altitude attacks, will maximize the results while avoiding unnecessary civilian deaths. I firmly believe that we should abandon for good our past carpet bombings from high altitude, both at night and in daylight. As for deliberately
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targeting German civilian population centers, such attacks, which some called
‘dehousing’, are nothing less than war crimes in my opinion and only put us down on the same level as the Nazis stooped to. Our ultimate goal should be to break the hold that the Nazis had over the German population, in order to encourage demands from those German civilians for an end to this war, instead of simply trying to bomb them into submission.’’
Ingrid saw at once a number of British and American officers stiffen, angered by her remarks, but she couldn’t care less about their opinions right now: her recent successes and results had amply proved to anyone with an objective mind that she was right, while those generals were proven wrong over and over. The problem here was that many of those minds present were neither objective nor open ones. However, she was not ready to hide the truth just in order to stay popular. At that moment, General Kenney came to her rescue by speaking up to the other participants in a firm voice.
‘’Gentlemen, I fully agree with Major General Dows on these points. She may be holding unorthodox ideas but she has proven both in the Pacific and in Europe that her ways are winning ways, while the past months have seen the failure of our past tactics and strategies, at great costs to us in lives and materiel. It is high time that we drastically change the way we conduct the air war over Europe. When I will return to the United States, I am going to counsel to President Roosevelt that we completely revise our combined bomber offensive campaign and adopt the doctrines and tactics employed by General Dows.’
Those words, coming from the head of the U.S. Army Air Force, made more than a few clam up and swallow their objections to Ingrid’s concepts. Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke then asked a question to Ingrid while keeping his tone polite.
‘’General Dows, were you able to assess the level of actual damage you inflicted on the Germans during your operation of last Tuesday?’’
‘’I was, Sir Alan, as my attack packages included a number of photo-reconnaissance A-11R aircraft, which took pictures of our objectives minutes only after our strikes. Major Kawena will now show you the bomb damage assessment pictures we took, so that you will be able to judge the efficacy of our bombings by yourself.
Jenny, start with the pictures of the old and new Reich Chancellery, in Berlin. Keep each transparency up long enough to let the viewers ask questions.’
‘’Understood!’’
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As soon as the first transparency was put up, showing the city square containing the old and new Reich Chancellery, exclamations went up at the sight of the field of rubble left of the two buildings.
‘’My God! Nobody inside could possibly survive this.’ said Lieutenant General Doolittle, attracting a nod from Ingrid.
‘’That is my opinion as well, General. Our bombing came as a total surprise and, if Hitler was indeed in Berlin at that time, then the probabilities are that he is now dead, along with most of his staff and governing cabinet. As you can see, both Reich Chancelleries are completely destroyed, along with the Propaganda Ministry, the Interior Ministry, the Reich Aviation Ministry and the Ministry for Occupied Eastern Territories, which managed the looting of the Soviet and Polish territories seized by Germany in this war. Jenny, show the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse building now.’
More exclamations rose at the sight of the fuming big pile of stones into which that building had been reduced.
‘’Mister Prime Minister, gentlemen, this was once the center of SS power in Berlin and housed the offices of Reich Führer Himmler, the command offices of the SS
Corps and of the SD security services and the offices and jails of the Gestapo. My adoptive mother, Nancy Laplante, was tortured to death in the basement of that building.
Very few Berliners will cry at its destruction, while many of the worst monsters in the Nazi war machine are now dead. We also destroyed the nearby barracks lodging the SS unit guarding the Nazi regime in Berlin.’’
On cue, Jenny Kawena switched transparencies, showing the said barracks, which surrounded a large courtyard acting as a parade and inspection ground. In that courtyard, hundreds of inert shapes lay on the ground.
‘’We dropped a five-ton FAE bomb in the center of that courtyard, just as the local SS unit was doing its daily morning roll call and inspection. We were able to count over 800 bodies around that courtyard alone. Now, last inside Berlin, we have the SS
Main Economic and Administrative Offices building. Those offices were busy administering the financial and industrial empire belonging, or should I say stolen, to the SS Corps, including the various concentration camps run by the SS around Germany and Occupied Europe, camps where Jews, captured Resistance members, political prisoners and various ethnic groups were being worked to death and exterminated by the Nazis. Now, to the bunker complexes housing the German OKW and OKH near Wunsdorf. By the way, I would like to thank the RAF for loaning us the use of a few of
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your TALL BOY 12,000-pound penetrating bombs: they worked like magic.
Unfortunately, they were destroyed in the process, so we couldn’t give them back on return to England.’’
Laughter greeted that joke from Ingrid as a picture showing what looked like rows of widely separated ‘houses’, with giant craters sprayed among them. Many of the top structures of those ‘houses’ had been blown away, revealing the underground bunkers hiding under them, bunkers which were now utterly destroyed.
‘’Gentlemen, my EC-142E accompanying that attack package confirmed that all radio transmissions coming from that command complex were abruptly cut off after our first TALL BOY bombs fell on it. We thus destroyed the German military High Command and Army Command centers, along with their communications center in the nearby
‘Zeppelin’ bunker complex. We can’t know who exactly was present there at that time but we certainly killed at least a few of the higher-level German officers licking Hitler’s ass in Berlin. Now, to the ‘Wolf’s Lair’ in East Prussia.’’
Dozens more transparencies were then shown in succession, with Ingrid commenting on each of them, covering the rest of the objectives hit by her planes. At the end of it, Ingrid then leaned on the lectern and stared at the meeting participants.
‘’Mister Prime Minister, gentlemen, we may now have a chance to bring this war to a quick conclusion if we play our cards right and if the Nazi leaders we targeted in this operation are indeed dead. If the more moderate leaders, both political and military, left in Germany then take over from Hitler and his clique, we may have to think hard about what kind of compromise we would offer them in exchange for their surrender. On the other hand, any hardline, ‘no compromise’ attitude on our part may only harden the resolve of the Germans to continue this war to the bitter end. We could thus now prevent the deaths of hundreds of thousands more of our people if we manage to obtain the surrender of Germany, so let’s think long and hard about what we will do next as the Germans react to my raids. Personally, my only hard condition would be the complete elimination of the SS Corps and the evacuation by German forces of all the territories taken by Germany in this war. Some may say that politics are none of my business but the long personal experience of my soul, spread over 7,000 years, taught me that war is indeed a continuation of politics by other means. Finally, I will say this: we may be on the verge of defeating both Germany and Japan in this war but let’s not lose sight of the other danger threatening us and democracy which is looming on the horizon. I am
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talking here about Stalin, who is as much of a human monster as Hitler was, and whose Soviet Union will use every opportunity to seize as much as it could of Eastern Europe if we don’t firmly block its path westward. As my late adoptive mother already warned Prime Minister Churchill in the past, Stalin will prove to be as dangerous and greedy for power as Hitler and his Nazis were. Let’s not forget as well that the same Stalin was too happy to sign an alliance treaty with Hitler in order to split in two and take over Poland.
The coming decades could prove both dangerous and painful if we don’t exercise utter vigilance in Europe and around the World, gentlemen.’’
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CHAPTER 31 – CHAOS IN BERLIN
11:02 (Berlin Time)
Thursday, December 30, 1943 ‘C’
Ruins of the new Reich Chancellery
Downtown Berlin, Germany
The German Minister for Armaments, Albert Speer, was inspecting the ruins of the new Reich Chancellery, along with Luftwaffe Major General Adolf Galland, when Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, the commander of the German Navy, walked in, escorted by four armed sailors who were looking with stupor at the devastation around them. Dönitz then joined up with Speer and Galland and gave the minister and Hitler’s chief architect a somber look.
‘’So, do we know what happened to the Führer, Herr Speer? Are there any chances that he could stil be alive after this?’’
‘’While we haven’t found his body yet, Herr Admiral, the chances that he would be alive somewhere under all this rubble are very low, in my opinion. Also, I was told by surviving SS soldiers who were guarding the Reich Chancellery that I was the first high-level dignitary to come and look for Hitler here. You do realize what this probably means, Herr Admiral?’’
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Dönitz frowned as he looked at Speer, trying to figure out what he meant by those words. Speer then helped him, speaking in a low volume of voice.
‘’Admiral, I have been serving the Führer for long years now and I got to know his entourage quite well. If there was anything that followers of the Führer had aplenty, it was ambition and thirst for power. With him probably dead, you would expect them to run here like jackals to claim their part of his power. Yet, none of them have shown up here, which suggests to me that they are either dead, in hiding or on the way to here from some distant location. Since those airstrikes occurred a full 48 hours ago, I would think that this would be more than enough time to return to Berlin by air, even if you came from the Eastern Front.’’
‘’Hum, I see what you mean now. So, you think that all the other members of his entourage must be dead, is that it?’’
‘’It may well be the case here, Herr Admiral. I must say that whoever planned these Tuesday air attacks on the Reich is a true strategic genius, from what I have been able to hear. Only significant command locations and key installations were hit, and this with pinpoint precision and with an apparent desire to avoid civilian casualties as much as possible. This was not the work of your usual American or British bomber commander. The air raids were also executed with incredible brio and flair. To be frank, I stil can’t figure out which American or British general could have planned and executed such raids.’
‘’I can think of one person, Herr Speer.’ then said Adolf Galland, making both Speer and Dönitz look sharply at him. ‘’Don’t call me crazy but this could be the work of one of the rising stars of the American Air Force, a young woman who was born here in Berlin and who was once part of the Luftwaffe. I first met young Ingrid Weiss in France, in 1940, and she was both very beautiful and very intelligent and was passionate about aviation and aircraft. She was captured by the British in a raid in France and taken as a prisoner of war to England. Then, only nine days ago, I saw her again...piloting an American P-38 fighter bearing over a hundred miniature Japanese flags painted under her cockpit and with the name ‘Lady Hawk’ on the nose of her aircraft. She actual y proved to be a true air ace and managed to damage my Me 262 jet fighter and force me to parachute out. When I asked about her at my fighter division’s intelligence section, I was shown a file concerning her, in which I read that she was pardoned and freed by the British in 1941 after marrying an American officer, then went with him to the Philippines.
There, she paid for private flying lessons and eventually was hired by the Filipino
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government as a new fighter pilot, when the Filipinos were desperately short of fighter pilots. Somehow, she gradually became the American Ace of aces, fighting the Japanese and shooting down their planes by the dozen. According to our intelligence, she was eventually returned to the United States, where she formed and commanded their first and only female air combat unit. That unit eventually went to fight in the Pacific and supposedly played a big role in turning back the Japanese attacking in the South Pacific. Unfortunately, our intelligence about her ran dry a couple of months ago, so I learned nothing new about her...until she shot me down near Karlsruhe nine days ago.’
‘’Come on, Herr Galland!’ said Dönitz. ‘’That story is downright incredible.’
‘’Yes, but I also believe it to be true, Herr Admiral. While my fighters were unable to stop those air raids Tuesday, due to American jamming of our radars and radio transmissions, our Luftwaffe radio intercept service was able to listen to and record some of the radio conversations exchanged between the attacking aircraft: some were in English, but some were in Japanese, while all the voices were those of women. I thus strongly believe that this Ingrid and her female air unit recently moved from the Pacific to England and executed those murderous air raids on Germany.’
Both Dönitz and Speer stared at Galland with incredulity before the minister of armaments shook himself back to reality.
‘’That may be quite a fantastic story, Herr Galland, but that still leaves us with a big problem, which is: who is in charge in Germany now and what do we do next? From what I have been told, all our personnel and senior officers at the OKW and OKH are dead, killed by huge deep penetration bombs. Do you know about the whereabouts of FeldMarshal Goering?’’
Galland seemed to age at that question and he lowered his head slowly while answering Speer.
‘’I just visited what was left of the Reich Aviation Ministry, where Goering had his offices. It was totally destroyed and they were still pulling corpses out of the rubble. I also saw and recognized Goering’s staff car, parked near the entrance of the ministry building: it was destroyed and its driver was dead at the wheel. We thus must consider FeldMarshal Goering as dead, along with our Army commanders kil ed in Wunsdorf.’
Dönitz then paled on realizing what that meant.
‘’Then, this would leave me as the only head of service stil alive. Any surviving high-level SS officer could then target me in order for them to take power from our dead Führer. This could become one ferocious rat race in terms of political succession.’
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‘’Well, you can probably breathe easy about that, Herr Admiral.’ said Speer. ‘’I passed by the grand SS headquarters on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse and it was reduced to a pile of burning rubble. The nearby SS barracks were also flattened, with all the SS men there killed by one of those awful vacuum bombs the British have been using against us for more than a year. Those American planes did a thorough job of exterminating every SS man and office in Berlin Tuesday, so you can probably feel safe from the SS...for now.’’
‘’But that stil leaves the question of what do we do now!’ replied Galland, becoming agitated. ‘’Right now, our country and our military are utterly leaderless. We can’t even communicate efficiently with our units around the Reich, since our high command headquarters are now destroyed. The enemy could use our present confusion to attack us again and cause us more major damage.’
Dönitz, like Speer, was left in deep thinking by Galland’s declaration.
‘’Somehow, I found the local offices of the KriegsMarine here in Berlin still intact, with functioning radios. I will go establish a temporary national command post there and will have more information collected about the losses we suffered on Tuesday. You are welcome to join me there. In the meantime, I will ask the surviving guards and policemen around the Chancellery to pass the word to any general officer who will show up here to come and report to me.’
Speer was about to agree with that when a thought struck his mind, making him hold his head with both hands while his eyes bulged out and his mouth opened wide.
‘’Mein Goth! What if the Americans wanted exactly this to happen: to see people like us succeed the Führer, rather than Himmler or another SS man?’
03:10 (Berlin Time)
Friday, December 31, 1943 ‘C’
Administrative offices of the KriegsMarine
Berlin, Germany
Karl Dönitz had been in a deep sleep on the camp cot set in his Berlin administrative office when someone started shaking him awake with increasing insistence.
‘’Admiral... Admiral, wake up please!’’
‘’Uh! What is it?’’ asked Dönitz to the naval officer shaking him awake.
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‘’We believe that another round of American bombings is happening across the country, Herr Admiral.’
That made Dönitz wake up in a hurry and sit on his cot. Taking a few seconds to let his eyes focus back to the light, he then looked up at the duty officer who had awakened him.
‘’What is exactly happening, Lieutenant?’’
‘’As you requested, our various local KriegsMarine recruiting offices had been watching for instances of new bombings around the country and were told to report such instances at once to us, sir. Our telephone switchboard is now lighting up like a Christmas tree with calls from all over the country about noises and flashes happening at various locations. Up to now, those locations include Gauleiters’ residences, local Gestapo offices, SS barracks, aircraft manufacturing plants, important railway nodes, Luftwaffe airfields and command posts and the like, sir.’
Dönitz shook his head in discouragement on hearing that.
‘’Another round of strategically-oriented bombings. We should have expected this. What about our main KriegsMarine headquarters in Wilhelmshaven and our U-Boote Command headquarters in Lorient?’’
‘’They are still untouched...for the moment, sir. However, calls keep arriving to signal more bombings, including in France, Belgium and the Netherlands, sir.’
‘’Very wel , I will dress quickly. Prepare a compilation of those calls and have their observations plotted on a map, to be ready for my review.’
‘’Right away, Herr Admiral!’
The duty officer then left the office, letting Dönitz free to get up and put his uniform back on. That took him mere minutes, after which he walked out of his administrative office to go to the small conference room of the administrative center, which had been transformed into an improvised operations center, complete with batteries of telephones, a few long-range radios and a large wall map board. Going to the map board, Dönitz looked at the freshly marked symbols in grease pencil on it and mentally analyzed what they said.
‘’So, the Americans want to continue taking out our political leadership and our local security offices and units, as well as our ability to defend against air attacks. If this goes on, we wil soon be at the total mercy of American and British bomber raids.’
Dönitz then decided to go wake up Albert Speer, who had been given a camp cot and a small office in the administrative center, as his normal quarters in Berlin, on
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Wilhelmstrasse, were now a pile of rubble. As for General Galland, he had returned to his fighter base north of Berlin. Apart from them, no other military or political leader of importance had shown up to date in Berlin, demonstrating how acute this national leadership crisis was becoming.
Once awakened and led to the improvised operations center, Speer was shown the symbols-covered wall map, to which more symbols were being added each few minutes. Like Dönitz, Albert Speer quickly caught on the pattern of the American bombardments.
‘’Political leadership residences, Gestapo offices, SS barracks, radar stations, fighter airfields: those Americans are consistent in their bombing pattern...at the moment. God knows what will be their next priorities. I would bet on our aircraft plants and oil refineries in this case. Once we will have little to no fighter aircraft left and no radar stations to track their bombers, Germany will then be at the complete mercy of enemy air raids, in which case we would soon have no choice but to surrender if we don’t want to see Germany transformed into a field of ruins.’’
‘’The worst part is that there is little that we could do to prevent that, Herr Speer.
Those new American airplanes have some incredible range, plus can apparently fly at night and in bad weather nearly as they please, contrary to our own planes. Even our new WASSERFALL surface-to-air missiles are now useless, as the Americans have apparently found a way to jam their guidance system.’
‘’Damn! This is looking more and more like a lose-lose situation for us. Another week like this and we might as well give up. What do you think, Herr Admiral?’’
‘’That you are unfortunately right, Herr Speer. Without effective air defenses and without an effective national leadership system, Germany will descend into chaos and our armies deployed to the East and West wil not be able to change that.’
Both men were still looking at the map, trying to figure out a way to get out of this situation, when a navy female auxiliary brought a piece of paper to them, handing it to Dönitz.
‘’Sir, propaganda tracts are now falling all over Berlin. Here is one of them: they all bore the same message, sir.’
With Speer looking over his shoulder, Dönitz read aloud the tract, which was written in German.
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‘’To the German people. Your Führer and many of his top minions of the Nazi Party are dead, killed in our bombing raids of December 28. Your Luftwaffe is powerless to stop our bombers and your war industries are in the process of being flattened by us.
We are also in the process of destroying the Gestapo offices around Germany and the rest of Europe. Soon, you will not need to fear anymore the jackals of your secret police.
If you wish to see an end to this war soon, then use passive resistance and do not believe the lies your Nazi leaders will serve you. Report sick to work, especially if you work in a war-related industry, and abstain from providing any information about your neighbors, friends or relatives to the Gestapo or to other Nazi officials. We don’t want to utterly destroy Germany but, if you continue to support your Nazi Party and its policies, then we wil not hesitate to scale up our bombing campaign. The choice is yours: don’t let Nazi stooges decide for you.’
Dönitz then gave a worried look to Speer.
‘’I hate to say this but this line of propaganda could work on many Germans.
This call to passive resistance in particular could hurt our war industries quite a lot.’
‘’Agreed! Unfortunately, if such tracts are dropped over other parts of Germany, it will be impossible to stop that message from spreading throughout our population.
This is bad, very bad.’’
The young duty officer who had awakened Dönitz then came to him with a printed message transcript, his expression most sober.
‘’Herr Admiral, we just got the news from our office in Amsterdam that Reichskommissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart has been killed in the bombing of his official residence. The nearby barracks housing his SS guard force were also bombed.’’
Dönitz took the message and read it, then gave an acerbic look at Albert Speer.
‘’Well, you could say that this is one bombing raid which will make the local people in Amsterdam happy. If I would be, say, Reich Minister of State Frank, in Prague, I would go find myself a big rock to go sleep under.’’
In the hour that passed, more reports of bombings, all concerning the same categories of targets, continued to come in. Speer was particularly frustrated to hear that the precious oil refineries and synthetic oil plants of the Ruhr, which were so vital to the German war effort, were being systematically bombed and put on fire. Worse, the hundreds of anti-aircraft guns protecting the Ruhr area seemed powerless to repel those air raids, probably because of the combination of darkness and low cloud cover which
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hid the American bombers from the German guns. As for the German night fighters, they had to contend with powerful American electronic jamming and with the shocking revelation that the American bombers were being escorted by a new and powerful model of night fighter equipped with radar. Thus, most of the German night fighters which took off to intercept those bombers either didn’t find them because of the electronic jamming, or were shot down themselves. Then, just before Sunrise, Dönitz was given another printed message, which he read silently before looking at Speer.
‘’It seems that Minister Karl Frank didn’t follow my advice, Herr Speer.’
10:04 (GMT)
U.S. Ninth Air Force headquarters
RAF Middle Wallop, Southern England
Lieutenant General Lewis Brereton knew at once that something was wrong when he saw a furious-looking Ingrid Dows charge into his office.
‘’Uh, something is bothering you, Ingrid?’
‘’Yes, sir: Arthur Harris! That bastard sent a large bomber force to go firebomb Hamburg last night, despite our understanding that the RAF would suspend such bombing raids for the time being. One of my attack packages returning from hitting Nazi leadership targets in Warsaw stumbled on over 300 LANCASTER heavy bombers dropping a mix of incendiaries and blast bombs on Hamburg. Those British idiots were doing so even though they don’t have yet anti-WASSERFALL jammers in their bombers and had no escorting electronic radar-jamming aircraft. I had to divert the EC-142E and the four F-11N night fighters attached to my attack package in order to help those British bombers get out of trouble. If this goes on, I swear that I will go kill that fucking Harris myself, sir.’
‘’Now, please calm down, Ingrid. I understand that you hate that man, while I myself think that he is a mean-spirited, uncaring incompetent, but killing him would put you in big trouble and would also mine our mutual cooperation with the British.’’
‘’Our mutual cooperation with the British, sir? Since the start of this war, the British have done what they wanted while mostly ignoring us. They didn’t do a damn thing to help us while we were fighting to keep the Philippines and they also cut their supply line to Australia, leaving us to carry the full load there, so that they could reserve everything they had to help keep their precious empire. I know that President Roosevelt
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and Prime Minister Churchill had an understanding about putting Europe first in this war but that understanding does not stand anymore, since President Roosevelt shifted our top priority to the Pacific. Now that we are helping strike Germany in a more efficient and better targeted manner, they continue their failed bombing tactics under our nose? I am not sending my women to risk their lives over Germany just to have the British stab us in the back, sir. General Eisenhower must tell the British to stop those useless, costly raids on German cities.’’
‘’Alright, I wil call General Eisenhower right away, Ingrid. Why don’t you go have a cup of hot tea or coffee in the meantime?’
Understanding that Brereton preferred to have her out of his office during his call to the SHAEF, Ingrid saluted him, then walked out.
She had time to drink in succession two coffee cups while sitting in a sofa near Brereton’s office before her superior came to her, his expression sober.
‘’I just got a call from General Eisenhower, who talked to Air Chief Marshal Portal after my call to him, and he is not happy at all. Not because you complained about Harris’ raid on Hamburg but rather because of the way Portal replied to Eisenhower’s concerns. Apparently, Portal never informed Eisenhower in advance about that night firebombing raid and, when asked about it, tried to excuse it, despite our understanding of a mere two days ago.’
‘’So? What is General Eisenhower going to do about that, sir?’’
‘’He told me that he is going to send a message to General Marshal, to ask him to have the President talk to Churchill on this matter. I am sorry, Ingrid, but that is the most that we can do here at this time, as this touches the highest level of policy between our two nations.’
Ingrid, repressing her anger as best she could, got up and faced Brereton.
‘’Fine, sir. But if one of my air groups encounter another British bombing raid over Germany in the next few days, then I will not divert my support aircraft to help them at the cost of my own aircraft. Permission to leave, sir?’’
‘’Permission granted, Ingrid.’
They exchanged salutes before Ingrid walked out, watched by a frustrated Brereton. He fully understood Ingrid’s anger about this and was also pissed at the British but they simply could not afford to see the U.S.-British alliance fall apart right now.
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CHAPTER 32 – POLITICAL RESET
15:51 (GMT)
Saturday, January 8, 1944 ‘C’
SHAEF headquarters, Bushy House
Bushy Park, London, England
Warned via radio of the imminent arrival of the UH-2 medium helicopter coming from RAF Charmy Down, General Eisenhower was on hand to greet its occupants when it touched down on the lawn behind Bushy House. The V.I.P. guest he was about to receive had landed in secrecy at RAF Charmy Down a couple of hours ago, then had transferred into a UH-2 helicopter of the 99th Air Wing in order to come to Bushy House for a crucial strategic meeting with Eisenhower and his main American subordinate commanders. No British commanders would assist to that meeting, as what was to be discussed would be politically very sensitive. Only after that meeting was the V.I.P.
going to go meet with Prime Minister Churchill for what promised to be a contentious discussion. Unfortunately, the uncompromising line the British had chosen to follow during the last few days concerning how to run this war had forced the United States into hardening its own political agenda.
As the aft access ramp of the medium helicopter came down, Eisenhower signaled to the American military band and small guard of honor to stand ready, then walked towards the UH-2. He stopped near the foot of the ramp and saluted at attention as President Roosevelt was rolled down the ramp in his wheelchair, with General George Marshall holding the handles. Following close behind the President and Marshall were General George Kenney, Admiral Leahy, Admiral Nimitz, presidential advisor Harry Hopkins, Secretary for War Henry Stimson, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, plus six Secret Service agents from the Presidential Detail. Closing the procession were Ingrid Dows, President Roosevelt’s secretary and his head steward. The band then started to play ‘Star Spangled Banner’ as Eisenhower shook hands with Roosevelt.
‘’Welcome to the SHAEF, Mister President. How was your trip across the Atlantic?’’
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‘’It was a fast one, which made it agreeable, General. This Hughes C-11T is truly an outstanding plane. It may be relatively small but is still quite comfortable. I will definitely get a couple of them for the Presidential Squadron.’
‘’I am happy to hear that, Mister President. We wil now go inside, so that you could escape this cold.’
‘’I won’t say no to that, General: the British weather seems to stil be as wet and gray as I remember it from my last visit.’
As Eisenhower walked beside the President’s wheelchair, he exchanged a few pleasantries with him.
‘’I thought that your wife was going to come as well, Mister President.’
‘’Oh, she did come, General: she loves to visit England when she can. She stayed in RAF Charmy Down and was going to tour the old city of Bath, with Captain Hedy Lamarr as her guide. She is going to join me tomorrow, in order to visit London as wel . There are so many historical places to visit here.’’
‘’Indeed, Mister President.’
Roosevelt then switched to serious business as they were about to enter Bushy House.
‘’Are the British showing any sign of softening their stance, General?’’
‘’Unfortunately, no, Mister President. They stil insist on conducting this war their own way, complete with the continuation of their night area bombings of German cities.
If they continue like this, they may just derail completely our attempts at inciting the Germans into surrendering without further combat.’
‘’Damn it! What is wrong with Churchil ? Each unnecessary month of war means thousands of deaths on both sides.’
‘’I am afraid that the British want revenge on the Germans for the losses and destruction they suffered in this war. I tried to convince the British that it was better to compromise a bit, so that we could put a quick end to this war, but they refuse to compromise from their position of total, unconditional surrender. There is something that I don’t know about that seems to be pushing them into this hardline attitude.’
‘’Like what?’’ replied Roosevelt, irritated. ‘’Without our support in this war, they would have lost it over two years ago. Why are they now deciding to go it alone?’
‘’Maybe they think that our latest successes in our own bombing campaign against Germany and the deaths of most of the Nazi leadership has softened enough the Germans to allow them to prevail all by themselves, Mister President.’
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‘’Well, if they real y believe that, then I will have to shock them back into reality. I will not let tens of thousands of our boys unnecessarily die now just so that the British can claim revenge on the Germans. I think that their notion of being an imperial power went to their heads.’
‘’That may be it, Mister President.’
Entering Bushy House, the group went to the main conference room of the SHAEF, where the main commanders of American forces in Great Britain were already waiting. After an exchange of salutes and handshakes, Roosevelt was wheeled to a position at the head of the conference table as everybody else took their seats. He then looked around at the participants to this meeting, his expression most sober.
‘’Gentlemen...and lady, I came to England to try to convince the British to adopt a compromise with the Germans on a peace plan that would finally put an end to this damn war. With the Japanese apparently still not ready to surrender and with our forces in the Pacific thus tied down for many more months to come, while our losses there continue to pile up, albeit at a much slower rate, I have decided that we can’t anymore play the second fiddle to British ambitions and wishes. The British will have to realize that, without us, they won’t be able to win quickly this war. They will also have to accept the fact that we were the ones who eliminated the Nazi leadership in Germany, without any help from them. This is thus turning into a political crisis, a crisis I am now resolved to deal with decisively, so that we could end this war in Europe and then concentrate on the Pacific.’
Roosevelt then paused while looking again around the table to gauge the attitudes and feelings of the participants.
‘’Gentlemen, the decisions I am going to announce to you were taken after consultations with my advisors and with a few of you. One of the main persons I consulted is Major General Dows, herein present. Before anyone thinks that she pushed her own views on me, know that I was the one who specifically asked for her advice.
She was the architect and main enabler of our present campaign to systematically eliminate the Nazi leadership and its instruments of terror and repression in Europe, a campaign I believe to have been most successful to date. She was also the person who decapitated the Japanese High Command and who devised our quick response to the news of the Japanese slaughtering our prisoners held by Japan, a response that resulted in the liberation of the Philippines in the matter of mere weeks, and this at least
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a full year before our most optimistic plans. Now, I have heard many complaints about having a young woman overplaying her rank and not staying in her lane. Well, I am most happy that she left her lane and used her strategic and tactical genius and initiative, as we are now winning in the Pacific very much thanks to her. So, I will now say to those criticising her to shut up and listen to what she says, because I have now firmly decided to listen to her advice when faced with difficult circumstances, like today.
She may be young physically but her mind is thousands of years wise. With this said, here is the line of conduct I have decided on for our campaign in Europe. First, the United States will continue its present campaign of air attacks against the Nazi leadership, SS-related facilities, aircraft manufacturing plants, oil industries and the German rail transportation network, in order to push the Germans into surrender as quickly as possible. I am prepared to accept some compromises to get such a German surrender, especially in the case of the German Army units facing the Soviets. A German surrender, if followed by a Soviet push through Eastern Europe, would be in my opinion an empty victory for us and would be the prelude to future headaches at the hands of Stalin, a man I consider to be as much a monster as Hitler was. Second, I am resolved to obtain such a victory over Germany without resorting to a bombing campaign directed at the German people, which would equate to us committing war crimes. I will not sully the United States’ name by intentionally kil ing masses of German men, women and children. We are better than that! Third, our actions will have as their long-term goal to prevent and stop any Soviet attempt at taking over Eastern Europe and to restrict Stalin into solely taking back the U.S.S.R.’s territories invaded by Germany in 1941.
However, Stalin will not be allowed to keep the half of Poland he seized in 1939, when he made a pact with Hitler. One way to do this, if the Germans accept to surrender, will be for the German forces on the Eastern Front to withdraw to the pre-1939 borders of Poland and then hold that border against any Soviet advance, and this until we could ourselves send troops to hold and defend that border. At the same time, as a condition of their surrender, the Germans will have to immediately leave France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark and withdraw back to Germany proper, while leaving behind their heavy weapons, which will then be taken over by the military forces of those liberated countries. The final results I am envisioning with this plan are a liberated Europe, a denazified Germany and a Soviet Union kept in check east of the Polish border. Any questions or comments about this strategic plan, gentlemen?’
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The generals sitting around the table looked at each other in silence at first, stunned by the ambitious goals of Roosevelt’s plan. Eisenhower was the first to raise one hand to ask to speak.
‘’Mister President, what about our planned landing in France, which we were contemplating for this Summer?’’
‘’Such an assault from the sea wil not be necessary if we manage to get the Germans to surrender, General. That alone would prevent the deaths of thousands of our young men as well as preventing extensive damage to French territory and lives. If we are to land troops in Europe, then I want us to do it unopposed by the Germans.’’
‘’What if the British refuse to follow our plan and continue their area bombings of Germany, Mister President?’’ asked Jimmy Doolittle.
‘’Then, I wil tell Prime Minister Churchil that he wil have to continue the fight against Germany alone, without us. Germany has at this stage been weakened enough that it is not capable anymore of presenting an existential threat to Great Britain. If the British insist on landing by force in France this year, then they will have to do it alone.
This may sound callous but we can’t afford anymore to play this game only according to British rules. If the Germans refuse to surrender, then we will reconsider the need for an invasion across the English Channel. That is one main reason why I am not going to let the British sabotage our plan with their indiscriminate area bombing of German cities.
We need to entice the Germans into surrendering quickly, gentlemen, instead of creating more hatred which could harden the resolve the Germans into resisting us at all cost. I am prepared to withdraw most of our troops, bombers and ships from Great Britain and back to the United States, if that is what it will take to convince the British to support our plan.’
‘’So, a lot will depend on how quickly the Germans will accept to surrender on our terms, is that it, Mister President?’’ asked Eisenhower, making Roosevelt nod his head.
‘’Correct, General Eisenhower. One critical factor in achieving that goal is to present as early as possible our conditions for surrendering to the German leadership, at least what is left of it. We could either use the services of a trusted neutral nation, like Switzerland, to pass on our terms to the Germans, or we could send an envoy ourselves.’’
‘’Mister President, that envoy would be on a nearly suicide mission.’ pleaded Lewis Brereton. ‘’The Germans may just kill that envoy on sight, or some of the
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remaining SS fanatics in Berlin could decide to assassinate our envoy in order to sabotage any negotiated peace accord.’
Roosevelt looked back at Brereton with a most serious expression.
‘’I do agree that it will take a person of immense courage to take on that task, General Brereton. Fortunately, we have such a person at hand, a person who speaks German fluently, understands the German psyche and who could see through any attempt by the Germans at tricking us.’
Without Roosevelt naming her, all eyes went to Ingrid, who had kept up to now an impassive expression. She then simply nodded her head once while looking at Roosevelt.
‘’I would be ready to deliver your conditions for surrender to the Germans, Mister President.’’
‘’I thought so, General.’ said Roosevelt before looking around the table.
‘’Gentlemen, I intend to go see Prime Minister Churchil right after we conclude this meeting, to present my plan to him and secure his approval and support for it. In the meantime, and until General Dows can deliver my message to the Germans in Berlin, I want all our air attacks on Germany and German forces suspended, while I will strongly urge Prime Minister Churchill to do the same. If he refuses to listen to me, then be prepared to fly our Eight Air Force back to the United States on short notice. That alone should convince Prime Minister Churchill to become reasonable. If there are no questions now, I will declare this meeting over and will leave to go meet Churchil .’
As the meeting slowly broke up, Roosevelt called Ingrid and Eisenhower to his side before handing to each of them a diplomatic letter, with Ingrid’s copy being sealed with wax.
‘’General Eisenhower, this is a copy of the terms I wil offer to the Germans, for your information, so that you will know what I am asking of the Germans. General Dows’
letter is to be hand-carried by her to Berlin and is to be opened only by the most senior German official in charge there. General Dows will now read your copy, General Eisenhower, so that she would at least know what she is going to bring to Berlin.’’
Those last words made Eisenhower snap his head in surprise to look at Ingrid.
‘’You mean that she doesn’t yet know the details of your demands to the Germans, Mister President?’’
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‘’Only the general lines of my plan. I however never had any doubts about her accepting this mission to Berlin and she didn’t disappoint me this time...or ever.’’
Eisenhower then felt very humble as he looked at the quiet but resolved expression on Ingrid’s young and beautiful face.
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CHAPTER 33 – PLENIPOTENTIARY ENVOY
09:02 (GMT)
Thursday, January 13, 1944 ‘C’
Sky over the French coast, near Calais
Reducing the engine power of his Messerschmitt Bf 109G fighter, so that he could stay level with the American helicopter which had just crossed the French coast, Major General Adolf Galland took a moment to admire the lines of the big helicopter, which was flying at a not insignificant speed of 240 kilometers per hour. In contrast, no helicopter had been put into Luftwaffe service to date and the few prototypes Galland knew about were toys compared to this impressive machine. He and three of his fighter pilots had gone to Calais to escort this helicopter, whose trip had been announced in advance, all the way to Berlin. Galland, who knew about the diplomatic meeting which had been accepted by the Provisional Reich Government, truly hoped that it would somehow put an end to this war on terms which could be acceptable to Germany. He knew too well that the recent targeted bombings of key German industries by the Americans had all but sealed the fate of this war in the Al ies’ favor, as the Luftwaffe had by now lost the majority of its aircraft on the ground, due to the devastating vacuum bombs used by the Americans, on top of seeing nearly all existing German aircraft and engine plants bombed to rubble. With the systematic destruction of German radar stations and the continuing vulnerability of the WASSERFALL missile batteries to jamming, Germany was now nearly wide open to air attacks, a condition that spelled doom for the German military cause. At least, the American bombings had eliminated those fanatics who were too ready to sacrifice the whole of Germany to their grandiose dreams of domination over the whole of Europe. Whoever had planned this had certainly aimed straight.
As Galland was flying level and to the left of the American helicopter, he recognized with a shock its pilot, a young and beautiful redhead.
‘’Ingrid? Again?’
Looking back at him, the pilot smiled to Galland while waving her left hand as a ‘hel o’.
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‘’Damn, this can’t be just a coincidence.’ said Galland to himself. ‘’What is exactly her role in all this?’’
He was still rehashing that question in his head when they arrived over Berlin some three hours later. As previously arranged through the services of the Swiss embassy, the helicopter then landed at the Tempelhof Airport, situated just south of downtown Berlin. Galland and his three wingmen also landed in Tempelhof, so that they could escort back the American helicopter once the meeting with the provisional government would have concluded. As Galland’s Bf 109G fighter was coming to a stop next to the helicopter, which had landed at the vertical, he saw that Luftwaffe soldiers were already surrounding the helicopter, not to attack it but rather to protect it from possible attacks by Nazi fanatics opposed to surrender. However, the recent American bombardments had considerably eased the danger of such actions, by targeting and destroying most of the SS units and command centers in Berlin, opening the way for troops from the Luftwaffe and from the regular army to take over security duties in the capital. Those SS troops still alive in Berlin and who had refused to leave had then been put down by elite Luftwaffe paratroopers and Heer commandos from the Brandenburg Regiment, which obeyed the head of Army Intelligence, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, who was no great lover of the Nazi regime.
Hurrying to remove his flying helmet, flotation vest and parachute and then putting on his general officer’s cap, Galland jumped on the ground and quickly walked to the helicopter, getting there in time to watch its rear cargo ramp lower to the ground. An American jeep then rolled out of the big machine, with two young women sitting in it.
One of them was Ingrid Dows, now wearing a sky-blue beret instead of her flying helmet, while the other was a very young and also very pretty girl who was also wearing a sky-blue beret. Both wore combat uniforms and were armed with handguns. Galland gestured to the Luftwaffe officer in charge of the troops around the helicopter to not react to the fact that the women were armed, then walked around the jeep to approach Ingrid Dows, who was sitting in the front passenger seat. Both exchanged salutes before Galland spoke first.
‘’Welcome to Berlin, Major General Dows, or should I say ‘Weiss’?’’
‘’I would prefer that you call me ‘Dows’, as it is my married name, but simply
‘Ingrid’ will do, Adolf, like in the old days.’
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Understanding that she was alluding to their past intimate encounters in 1940, Galland smiled and nodded once.
‘’It will be ‘Major General Dows’, for the decorum of this present moment. I must say that I wonder how such a young woman like you managed to be first accepted as a fighter pilot in the American air force, then got to climb the rank ladder all the way to two-star general.’
Ingrid made a mischievous grin as she answered him in German.
‘’Well, let’s say that I am a girl full of surprises, Herr Galland. Maybe we could discuss that subject later, after I will have met with your provisional government. By the way, this is Corporal Norma Jean Mortenson, my driver and a member of my air wing.’
Galland smiled to the young woman, a teenager really, who was a lot more than simply cute.
‘’A delightful-looking young woman I must say. I will now guide you to the Hotel Bristol, where a conference room was booked for your meeting with our government representatives. You do know where the Hotel Bristol is, do you?’’
‘’I certainly do, General Galland: my family house was situated not far from here...until it was bombed to rubble by the British in 1940, killing my whole extended family.’
‘’I am sorry to hear that, truly. You have my sincere condolences for your loss.’’
‘’Thank you, General Galland.’’
Galland then signaled to the Luftwaffe’s Kubbelwagen27 light car waiting nearby to come forward, then sat in it, along with two Luftwaffe soldiers. Before guiding Ingrid’s jeep out of the airfield, Galland gave a few instructions to the officer in charge of the troops around the helicopter about safeguarding it.
As the two small vehicles drove off the airfield and started rolling northward along Wilhelmstrasse, Ingrid smiled to Norma, who was understandably tense as she drove her jeep.
‘’You may relax, Norma: you are doing just fine.’
‘’Uh, thanks, General. I must say that driving like this in the enemy’s capital is a bit unnerving.’
27 Kubbelwagen: WW2 military variant of the famous VW Beetle.
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‘’That is quite understandable, Norma. And please call me simply ‘Ingrid’ when in private. The fact that you volunteered to be part of this mission is a testament to your courage, which you already demonstrated many times in this war.’
‘’Thank you, Gen...uh, Ingrid. You said in the helicopter that you were born here, in Berlin?’
‘’That’s correct. In fact, my family home was near this airport. I grew up there until my family was killed in a British bombing, after which I joined the Luftwaffe as a female auxiliary, not because I believed in the Nazi cause but because I wanted to defend my country against further British bombings.’’
Both then fell silent while looking left and right at the parts of Berlin they were passing by while following Galland’s Kubbelwagen. To Ingrid’s satisfaction, most of this part of Downtown Berlin was still intact, a testament to the precision of the strikes effected by her own air wing. However, the scenery changed drastically as they arrived at the corner with Niederkirchnerstrasse and could look at the ruins of both Reich chancelleries and of the various ministry buildings around them. While the rubble and debris which had blocked Wilhelmstrasse had by now been cleared, hundreds of workers and dozens of pieces of heavy machinery were still busy cleaning up those city blocks. Young Norma opened wide eyes at the sight of the ruins.
‘’Wow! Our girls sure did a bang-up job here.’’
‘’They effectively did a hell of a job over Berlin and over other parts of Germany.
I wonder if they have found Adolf Hitler’s body yet. Mind you, I don’t expect the Germans to inform me on that subject. The fact that we haven’t heard or seen him since our bombing raid should be fair proof that he is indeed dead, along with most of his Nazi minions.’
‘’Uh, that General Galland, is he a Nazi believer, Ingrid?’
‘’I don’t believe so, Norma. Our intelligence on him describes him as a talented fighter pilot with no known political links, except for the obligatory vow of obedience to Hitler every member of the German military had to make, like Americans do with their constitution or like the British do with their kings and queens.’
Once past the ruins of the old and new Reich chancelleries, they continued on Wilhelmstrasse until they arrived at the crossing with the Unter Den Linten Strasse, near the Brandenburg Gate, where they turned right, with Galland’s car stil in the lead. Soon after that, they rolled onto the main entrance loop of the Hotel Bristol, one of the most
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luxurious hotels in Berlin, a grandiose-looking five-story Baroque-style building, which appeared mostly intact, save for a few broken windows which were being repaired.
There, Galland got out of his Kubbelwagen and walked to Ingrid’s jeep as Ingrid also stepped out of her vehicle.
‘’The representatives of our Provisional Reich government will receive you in a conference room on the second floor of this hotel, General Dows. If you will please follow me.’’
‘’Could my driver come with me, instead of freezing outside while waiting for me, General Galland?’
Galland nodded his head at once while looking at Norma Jeane Mortenson.
‘’Your corporal is welcome to follow you inside. My soldiers will watch your jeep in the meantime. By the way, I have a question for you. I thought that American aviators wore either a service cap or a wedge garrison hat, yet you both wear berets.’
Ingrid made a gentle smile as she answered the German ace.
‘’You are right about berets not being a standard type of head cover for American air force personnel. My unit, the 99th Air Wing, won the exclusive right to wear sky blue berets as a presidential reward, after we conducted an air assault operation which helped save our people prisoner of the Japanese in the Philippines.’
‘’I see! I heard about this business of the Japanese slaughtering their prisoners of war: quite a barbaric act. Germany may be allied with Japan but we would never commit such an atrocity.’
Ingrid looked at Galland with a hard expression, trying to decide if he was talking out of ignorance or was intentionally lying to her.
‘’You do know that I was educated during many months by Nancy Laplante, the Canadian time traveler your Gestapo tortured to death in 1941. She told me many things about what her history said about this war and one thing I know from her is that Germany committed plenty of monstrous war crimes in this conflict, including the systematic extermination of the Jews of Europe, so please don’t gloat too much about Germany’s conduct in this war, General. However, those atrocities were mostly committed by the SS Corps, while the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine did not participate in those killings. Thankfully, most of the human monsters who committed those acts are now dead. Well, I am here to make sure that such atrocities and loss of human lives final y stop, so let’s go inside now.’
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‘’Right!’ replied the chastised Galland, suspecting that what she had said was probably the truth. ‘’This way, please.’’
With Ingrid and Norma following close behind him, Galland walked through the main doors of the Hotel Bristol and led them up the monumental staircase of the hotel’s lobby, then turned left along a large, carpeted hallway. After walking maybe twenty meters down that hallway, Galland opened a double door guarded by two armed Luftwaffe paratroopers and invited the two women in. Once inside, Ingrid found herself in a large and luxurious lounge in which a conference table and chairs had been set.
Five men in uniform attracted her attention at once, as they apparently were the ones who had been waiting for her. Seeing a few chairs lined against the wall near the entrance door, Ingrid pointed them to Norma.
‘’Please take a seat while I speak with those gentlemen, Corporal Mortenson.’
‘’Yes ma’am!’
As Norma sat down, Ingrid and Galland walked to the group of men, then stopped at attention a few paces in front of them and saluted them. The most senior man, whom Ingrid recognized as being Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, saluted back for the group before stepping to her to shake hands with her.
‘’I am happy to see that you made it safely to Berlin, Major General Dows. I am Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, head of the Reich’s Provisional Government. Present with me are the main members of our provisional government. Let me present them to you.’
Dönitz led her first to a man who wore the yellowish-brown uniform of a Nazi Party official.
‘’General Dows, this is Herr Albert Speer, who is our ranking civilian member of government and who is also our Minister of Armaments.’
Despite being turned off by the man’s Nazi Party uniform, Ingrid stayed polite while shaking hands with Speer, who had the reputation of being a brilliant technocrat and manager.
‘’Pleased to meet you, Herr Speer.’ she said while taking his hand and pressing it with a strength that surprised him. The next man in line wore the rank insignias of a field marshal of the German Army, who presented himself.
‘’GeneralFeldMarshal Erwin Rommel, representing the Wehrmacht units on our Western Front.’
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‘’Pleased to meet you, GeneralFeldMarshal. You gained quite a reputation in North Africa, I must say.’
‘’And you yourself gained quite a reputation in the Pacific, General Dows. Just the fact that you are so young for your rank shows that you must be quite a dangerous foe.’
‘’The Japanese would agree with you on that, GeneralFeldMarshal.’
Next in line for a handshake was another graying field marshal.
‘’GeneralFeldMarshal Hans Guderian, in charge of the Wehrmacht units on the Eastern Front.’
The last man in line was quite old and wore the uniform of a Kriegsmarine admiral.
‘’Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, our military intelligence.’’
‘’I was told after Nancy Laplante’s body was repatriated to England that your agents attempted to free her from the Gestapo but arrived too late. I want to thank you and your agents for this attempted rescue, Herr Admiral.’
‘’It was the least we could do, General Dows. At that time, the Gestapo and the SS were acting in flagrant violation of an order by the Führer to have Brigadier Laplante treated decently and according to the rules of the Geneva Conventions.’
While that surprised Ingrid, she didn’t let it show and nodded her head in salute to Canaris. Then, she took out of a cargo pocket the sealed diplomatic letter which she was tasked to deliver in Berlin, giving it to Dönitz.
‘’Here is the letter from President Roosevelt, meant to detail to your government the terms presented to Germany in order to put an end to this war in Europe, Herr Gross Admiral. You will find identical copies in German and in English. You may take all the time you wish to examine and discuss it with the members of your provisional government. In the meantime, I will go sit with my driver, or do you prefer that we wait outside in the hal way.’
‘’Some privacy would be welcome while we discuss this subject, General Dows.
There is a small dining room next door in which you will be able to have something to eat and drink in the meantime. General Galland will accompany you.’
‘’That is most acceptable to me, Herr Gross Admiral. I am certain that General Galland is dying to compare with me air combat in the Pacific versus Europe.’
‘’I am sure of that. Just out of curiosity, how many air victories do you have, General Dows?’’
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‘’I have accumulated to date a total of 122 air victories, the great majority of them over the Pacific, Herr Gross Admiral.’
‘’More than General Galland? I am impressed, General Dows. Well, we will try to do this quickly, so that you could depart soon to return to England. Be advised that we may ask you to return here in a few days, once we will have finalized our response to your President.’
‘’That is most understandable. However, don’t take too much time before presenting your response. Let’s just say that President Roosevelt had to put some pressure on Prime Minister Churchill in order for him to show patience and abide by this temporary ceasefire.’’
‘’I am taking good note of this, General Dows. General Galland will now guide you to the private dining room next door.’
Dönitz waited until Ingrid and Norma had left the lounge before pointing the conference table to his colleagues.
‘’Let’s sit down and read this letter together, so that we could discuss what we think of it, gentlemen.’
The five men promptly sat down around one end of the table and watched Dönitz open the letter and extract from it two documents: one written in German; the other in English.
Dönitz gave the English copy to Admiral Canaris, who was fluent in English, while keeping for him the German copy, then started to read it silently at first before commenting for the others’ benefit on its content.
‘’Well, here are President Roosevelt’s conditions for our surrender, gentlemen. It first states that us refusing those terms will result in the immediate resumption of air bombardment on Germany and on German units in Occupied Europe. If we accept those terms, then a ceasefire will continue until we will have withdrawn our forces back into Germany, at which time a more permanent accord will be discussed. Here are thus the terms offered by President Roosevelt: first, we will have to immediately withdraw all our troops and units from Occupied France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the Luxembourg and Denmark. While doing so, all armored vehicles except for light reconnaissance vehicles and self-propelled anti-tank guns will be left behind, intact. The same will apply to all our artillery and anti-aircraft guns bigger in caliber than 88 mm. Halftracks will be allowed to go back to Germany but not tanks, be they light, medium or heavy, will be
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allowed to be withdrawn. There will be no restrictions in that respect for wheeled vehicles and towed guns of less than 88 mm in caliber.’
Dönitz then looked at Erwin Rommel, who represented the Wehrmacht units in Western Europe.
‘’What do you think of this first term, Herr Rommel?’’
‘’That it could have been a lot harsher, Herr Gross Admiral. Roosevelt could have demanded that we abandon all our heavy weapons before withdrawing. Instead, this clause will permit us to withdraw back to Germany with enough medium anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons to allow us to defend our western and northern borders. The alternative, with us refusing those terms, would have condemned our troops to the continuation of American air bombardments, which have already hurt us badly.’
‘’And what about our troops on the Eastern Front?’ asked Hans Guderian.
‘’That is covered in the second term of this letter, Herr Guderian. Basically, our units in occupied Soviet Union territory will withdraw with all their equipment and weapons to the pre-1939 eastern borders of Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria and East Prussia, where they will stand facing eastward to prevent any attempt by the Soviets to enter those territories. A simplified map of that line of withdrawal is joined as an annex to this letter. The Soviets will only be allowed to retake their old territories in the Baltic States, Belorussia and Ukraine. If the Soviets try to push further west, then the Americans and British will bomb them. Then, once Anglo-American troops will have arrived in Poland, Rumania and Bulgaria, they will replace our forces there, allowing our units there to withdraw to Germany proper, but without their heavy weapons, along the same lines as our troops retreating from the West. East Prussia will then be given back to Poland at that time. At the end of what Roosevelt calls ‘Phase One’ of his plan, our forces will all be back within pre-1939 German borders, equipped with light weapons and vehicles. The Luftwaffe will be allowed to retain its fighters, fighter-bombers and transport aircraft but will have to scrap its fleet of bombers. We will thus be able to hold our borders and defend Germany but will lose our heavy guns, tanks and other weapons considered as ‘offensive weapons’. As for the Kriegsmarine, our ships and submarines are to immediately cease all hostilities and return to their bases on our Baltic and North Sea coasts. All warship construction will also be halted until further accords will decide what to do with them.’
Albert Speer, who had been reading over Dönitz’s shoulder, then added to that.
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‘’Our war industries are to cease production of all armaments and munitions the moment we will accept the terms of this armistice. That will leave us with enough to defend ourselves for a few months, especially if we stop shooting away our munitions, but will make us incapable of further offensive operations. Once all the terms of Phase One will have been implemented, a future armistice conference will be held in Switzerland between us, the United States, Great Britain, Canada, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark, with Poland participating as observer.’
‘’Uh, what about Czechoslovakia?’ asked Admiral Canaris. ‘’It was joined to Germany via a plebiscite before the war started in 1939.’’
‘’Uh, this letter only says that the status of Czechoslovakia wil be discussed at that future armistice conference. However, there are a number of so-called ‘special clauses’ mentioned in this letter. Firstly, all SS units and offices, including Gestapo and SD offices, will be immediately disarmed and disbanded. If we do not enforce that clause, then this accord will be declared null and void. There is also a demand that all concentration camps and extermination camps operated by the SS be immediately taken over by Wehrmacht or Luftwaffe troops, with the camp guards arrested as war criminals and handed over to the Allies and with the inmates freed and returned to their original homes with adequate compensations for their suffering. Both the SS and Gestapo will cease to exist and will not be allowed to continue operating, while the National-Socialist Party will be banned from existence. The last term concerns the prisoners of war held by both sides. The moment that we will accept the terms of this letter, mass exchange of prisoners will start on both sides, to be arranged under the good offices of the International Red Cross.’’
Dönitz then looked gravely at his members of provisional government.
‘’Gentlemen, these terms may sound harsh to you but I frankly had expected them to be a lot harsher. In fact, I was expecting Roosevelt to ask for our complete surrender, the complete disarmament of German forces and the occupation of Germany.
Instead, we will be allowed to keep intact pre-war Germany, except for East Prussia, and to defend it with our lighter equipment and weapons. The alternative would be for us to refuse the terms of this letter and to then suffer a continuation of air bombardments on Germany. Can we really afford in the long run to refuse those terms and continue this war, gentlemen?’’
Speer was the first to speak after a long silence.
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‘’I would honestly say that we can’t continue like this, Gross Admiral. Our aeronautical industries and oil refineries have been hammered hard during the last month and rebuilding them, even without the hindrance of more bombings, would be the work of many months. Even one month of continued bombings by the Americans would be enough to mostly destroy our other war-related industries, including submarine building and ammunition and vehicle production. If we can at least save Germany proper, then I am ready to agree to Roosevelt’s terms. It seems from those terms that President Roosevelt has correctly judged the long-term threat represented by Stalin towards Western Europe and is ready to use our forces to help contain the Soviets.’
‘’I believe so as well, Herr Speer.’ said Hans Guderian. ‘’If I may say as well, while we presently hold the Soviets in check, there are signs that they are about to start a large-scale offensive meant to retake their territories from us. Without further ammunition resupply and vehicle replacement from Germany, my forces will not be able to hold the Soviets for very long and, once we run out of ammunition, we will then lose all our people and will leave the eastern borders of Germany open to Soviet forces. That last outcome is unacceptable to me. I say, let’s agree to the terms of this letter.’
‘’Herr Rommel?’’ asked Dönitz, making Erwin Rommel nod his head.
‘’I am ready to accept those terms, Gross Admiral.’
‘’Admiral Canaris?’
‘’I also find those terms acceptable, Gross Admiral.’
‘’Herr Speer?’’
‘’I am an architect by trade and was dreaming of building a greater Germany. I will not suffer to see it reduced to ruins just to satisfy the ego of a few fanatics. I say: let’s accept those terms.’
‘’Good! Then we are al in agreement. Let’s call back in General Dows and present her our decision.’
Ingrid appeared to be both calm and serene when she came back in the lounge, accompanied by Galland. What the Germans couldn’t know was that she had been able to telepathically read their minds from the dining room while sipping on a cup of coffee.
The final decision by the German leaders to give up had come as an immense relief to her. Stil , she acted as if she didn’t know yet of the outcome of their discussion.
‘’Have you reached a decision on the terms offered by President Roosevelt, gentlemen?’’
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‘’We have, General Dows. We collectively agreed to accept the terms offered by President Roosevelt. Immediately after this meeting is over, orders will be sent to all German forces, telling them to withdraw as per the terms of this letter. In return, we expect the Anglo-American forces to continue this ceasefire and not resume your bombings of Germany. Can we count on this, General Dows?’’
‘’You can, Gross Admiral Dönitz. I will thus return to my helicopter and fly back to England to bring the good news to my superiors. Expect soon a visit by high-level representatives of the International Red Cross, so that a mass exchange of prisoners of war can be effected as soon as possible. Those representatives will also most probably ask for close protection by Wehrmacht or Luftwaffe units when they will go ensure that the inmates in the various concentration camps and Gestapo prisons are freed and those camps and prison are then closed for good. If you don’t know details about those concentration camps, just ask Minister Speer about them: his industries relied on hundreds of thousands of camp inmates for slave labor. By the way, you can refer to the last annex to President Roosevelt’s letter if you need a detailed list of those concentration and extermination camps. See you soon, gentlemen.’
The eyes of the other German leaders snapped towards Speer at that moment and he had to hide his anger at her departing barb as Ingrid turned around and walked out after saluting Dönitz. Speer became angrier and more frustrated when Admiral Canaris, no lover of the SS Corps, spoke up after Ingrid had left.
‘’With your permission, Gross Admiral, I would like to use units of the Brandenburg Regiment to go escort those Red Cross representatives and to close those camps. I doubt that those sadistic cowards from the SS-Totempkoff will be able to fight off my commandos.’
‘’Do so, Admiral Canaris. If you need support from Luftwaffe troops to do so, then you only need to ask.’
‘’Thank you, Herr Gross Admiral.’
The moment that she had been collected by Ingrid in the dining room and was walking with her towards the exit, with Galland leading them, Norma couldn’t help ask her a question in an anxious tone.
‘’Did our mission succeed, General? Have the Germans accepted the terms dictated by President Roosevelt?’’
670
‘’They have, Corporal. With luck, we are now this much closer to an end of this war in Europe.’
‘’Thank God! Uh, what about Japan then?’
‘’That is stil another kettle of fish, Corporal. We may get peace in Europe but the Pacific and Asia wil be a longer problem, I’m afraid.’’
11:01 (Berlin Time)
Sunday, January 16, 1944 ‘C’
Concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau West of Krakow, Poland
Lieutenant-Colonel Kurt Wagner, of the Luftwaffe’s 1st Paratroop Panzer Division Hermann Göring, stood next to Major Albert Steiner, of the Brandenburg Regiment’s Second Battalion, as both officers looked down at the long and large trench filled with the emaciated and naked bodies of hundreds of dead camp inmates. Wagner, like Steiner, felt nearly sick with disgust and horror as he eyed the corpses of men, women and children piled three-deep in the trench. Their units had arrived early in the morning and had no problems disarming the guards of the camp, which included a number of female SS auxiliaries, before inspecting the inside of the camp. What they had found had enraged the Luftwaffe and Brandenburg men, to whom Auschwitz-Birkenau had supposedly been a prisoner of war camp for Soviet soldiers and Polish Resistance fighters. They were now still waiting for the arrival of a team of representatives from the International Red Cross sometimes this afternoon.
Wagner exchanged a hard look with Steiner before speaking to him.
‘’There is no need for a formal trial in view of such evidence of atrocities. What do you think, Herr Steiner?’’
‘’I agree with you, Colonel. This is a giant stain on Germany’s name and justice has to be served...now!’
With the Brandenburg officer in agreement with him, Wagner then looked at one of his subaltern officers also standing next to the trench.
‘’Herr Major, have the camp guards lined up against the wall of one of their barracks and prepare a large firing squad.’
‘’What about the female SS auxiliaries, sir?’’
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Wagner didn’t think for long before answering that.
‘’Line them up as well, Major. I will command the firing squad myself.’
Lining up the 360 or so camp guards and 55 female auxiliaries took only minutes, with 500 Luftwaffe soldiers formed in two ranks facing them from twenty meters away.
Machine guns were also set up on the flanks, in order to sweep the SS guards from the sides. However, Wagner first pushed the camp commandant, a SS major named Rudolph Höss, in front of the other SS guards, then raised his pistol as he spoke.
‘’For committing war crimes which dishonored Germany, I condemn you to death, Major Höss.’
‘’But I was only...’
POW
Letting Höss drop dead in the snow-covered ground, Wagner then walked to one side of the line of Luftwaffe soldiers and shouted out orders to them.
‘’LUFTWAFFE SOLDIERS, STAND READY! AIM! FIRE!’
The noise of shooting rifles, sub machine guns and medium machine guns was deafening and went on for many seconds, until all the camp guards, male and female, were down on the ground. Soldiers then went forward to finish off any guard still moving or breathing. At the end of it, Wagner spat in the direction of the dead SS guards.
‘’May you roast in Hell, you sadistic bastards. You were not worthy of being called soldiers.’
672
CHAPTER 34 – ARMISTICE IN EUROPE
15:44 (GMT)
Tuesday, February 22, 1944 ‘C’
Headquarters of the 99th Air Wing (the Fifinellas) RAF Charmy Down, County of Somerset
England
General George Kenney sat in a sofa opposite the sofa used by Ingrid after giving her a large envelope and started speaking as she was opening it.
‘’I have good news for all of us, Ingrid. First, as you know, the Germans formally accepted in writing the terms of the letter from President Roosevelt that you brought to Berlin three weeks ago. They will thus sign an armistice with us on March 3, in Geneva.
You will be present as part of the American delegation: you amply deserve such an honor and President Roosevelt specifically asked that you be there.’’
‘’It wil indeed be a great honor for me to attend, sir. Do we have news about Japan? Are they final y ready to surrender?’’
‘’Unfortunately, no! In this case, no news is bad news for us, so we will keep up the naval blockade of Japan until they do finally surrender. This leads me to why I wanted to speak with you. Your wing is one of our few air units now equipped with long-range new generation aircraft like the A-11 and C-142 and its variants, thus would be more useful in the Pacific than in Europe. Your girls also know how to fight the Japanese, contrary to most of our air units in England. For those reasons, your air wing will be moved back to the Pacific at the end of March and will go reestablish itself at Clark Field, Nichols Field and Nielson Field, in the Philippines. I know that your aviatrixes would have liked to stay in Europe but there is still a lot to be done in the Pacific.’
If Ingrid was disappointed by that news, she didn’t show it.
‘’I understand, sir. Supporting our young men will always take precedence for us Fifinel as.’’
‘’And I thank them for that, Ingrid. However, they wil move back to the Philippines without you, for a number of reasons. Please hear me out before you jump
673
on me to scratch my face, Ingrid. First off, Evelyn Sharp will be promoted to the rank of brigadier general, which is a sufficient rank to command an air wing. She has also proven to be an excellent leader and a good air tactician, thanks to your teachings to her and to your other aviatrixes. As for you, you will be detached from your wing once it starts transiting into the Pacific and will stay in Washington for a while afterwards. At that time, your permanent rank of colonel will be upgraded to that of your present temporary rank of major general. That is mostly thanks to President Roosevelt, who appreciates very much your competence, courage and ability to think outside of the box.
He knows how rare your kind of talent is and doesn’t wish to lose or waste such a talent.
I suppose that you will want to stay in the Army Air Force after this war has truly ended, Ingrid?’
‘’Hell yes, sir! Where else could I continue to fly high performance aircraft? I just don’t see myself become a simple passenger airliner pilot. However, how will I be able to fly if I am stuck behind a desk in Washington?’’
Somehow, Kenney smiled at her last question.
‘’How? By not being stuck behind a desk, Ingrid. Rather, you wil be stuck behind a school desk.’
‘’Er, I don’t get it, sir.’
‘’Basically, I will be sending you to earn for yourself a university degree, for a couple of reasons. First, I won’t tell you anything new by saying that you don’t have only friends within the Army Air Force and within the American forces in general. Many male officers resent the fact that you rose so quickly at such a young age, while ignoring or even denying your accomplishments in combat. Be assured that I am not one of those misogynistic idiots.’
‘’And I thank you for that, sir.’
‘’You’re welcome, Ingrid. Second, one of the arguments those male officers use against you is the fact that, contrary to regular officers, you stil don’t have a college or university level diploma, nor did you graduate from one of our military colleges. I replied to some of them that sending you to a military college, like the War College, would be a dumb idea, as you debunked in combat most of the teachings done at the War College.
For you to be forced to adopt their present teachings would be the summum of idiocy.
Instead, I will be sending you to a civilian university, using our new G.I. Bill to pay your tuition and residency fees during your four years of learning.’
‘’Four years without flying, sir? That will feel awfully long for me, sir.’
674
‘’Who said that you would not be flying at the same time, Ingrid? What I intend to do is to transfer you to our air reserves during your studies, so you will be able to fly with an Air Force unit on weekends. How’s that for you?’’
‘’That’s a lot more agreeable to me, sir. Will I be able to choose which university I will study in and which degree I wil be pursuing, sir?’’
‘’Yes, but please don’t go study something like music.’
Ingrid had a chuckle at that remark.
‘’Don’t worry, sir: I am no musician. I have wanted for some time already to study aeronautical engineering, sir. I even used some of my spare time during the war to study on my own basic subjects like advanced mathematics, physics, aerodynamics and general engineering. I am thus confident that I could ace an entrance exam to any of our universities. I particularly wish to be able to study aeronautical engineering at the Boston’s M.I.T28., if possible. General Doolittle studied aeronautical engineering there and highly recommends the M.I.T. to me.’’
Kenney nodded his head in approval.
‘’The M.I.T. is indeed a very highly rated learning establishment, Ingrid. If you could enroll there, it would be perfect. To finish on that subject, the main reason for me and the President to want you to stay and get a degree is that I have little faith in the present Army Air Force generals to be able to guide us towards the future. Very few of them proved to have open minds or to have what I would call true vision. You are a rare and precious commodity in that respect, Ingrid.’’
‘’And once I wil have graduated from the M.I.T., what then, sir?’’
‘’Then, President Roosevelt would like to see you take charge of our jet aircraft programs, so that our air force could enter that new age in quick strides, rather than with the present baby, bumbling steps we are engaged into.’’
The mention of President Roosevelt then made Ingrid’s expression turn sober.
‘’Sir, you did read through the Hourglass Files, right?’’
‘’Well, parts of them. Why do you ask?’’
‘’Because President Roosevelt will not live for much longer, sir. He is already old and quite sick and probably won’t see the complete end of this war. However, his successor wil stil need my talents, so I wil stil follow your plan to fruition, sir.’
28 M.I.T.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One of the highest rated engineering schools in the U.S.A.
675
‘’Thank you, Ingrid. The nation could truly use your continued service in the Army Air Force. I myself intend to continue as head of the Army Air Force for at least two more years and I will insure that nobody at the Pentagon will try to stab you in the back while you study engineering. I will also make sure that the 99th Air Wing is not simply disbanded and that it will become a permanent unit of the Army Air Force, with its female members given all due considerations for their valor and expertise.’’
Ingrid felt relief on hearing that, as she had feared that the numerous misogynists still populating the ranks of senior Pentagon officers and officials could have forced out her aviatrixes at the end of the war. With Kenney present to protect their future military careers, her women were thus going to be able to further serve and advance within the Army Air Force. That, even more than her own future, had been her main preoccupation.
‘’Thank you, sir, for all that you are doing for my women. I promise you that, in a few years, you will see some great jet aircraft enter service in the United States.’
676
ANNEX ‘A’ – WASP GALLERY
This page is dedicated to the hundreds of brave American women who volunteered to serve their country during World War 2 as Army women auxiliary service pilots, also known as WASPs. Unfortunately, I have space here only for a few of them, some of whom were named in this novel as ficticious combat pilots but who did serve as non-combattant ferrying pilots during that war, a number of which were killed in air accidents.
Evelyn Sharp Teresa James
Helen Richey Betty Huyler
Florene Miller
Shirley Slade Elizabeth Gardner Anne Baumgartner Anne Armstrong Delphine Bohn Gertrude Tompkins Hazel Ying Lee Jean Hixxon Maggie Gee Millie Rexroat
Nancy Batson Dorothy Avery
Cornelia Fort Betty Jo Reed
Faith Buchner
677
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