World War III in May 1946

[Hairog]

Wait...wait...now! Easy, easy, common you beautiful thing...that’s right now keep the nose up. “How are we doing Wilkins?...over”

“Looks good Skip. The rest of the squadron is turning in unison. I never thought I see a squad of B-24s doing an aerial ballet. It looks real good from here and everything is nominal Skip...over.”

Okay rolling back to the port...nice and easy.

“Squadron...simulate a jink to the starboard on three, two, one, mark.”

Pull hard... rudder opposite keeping that nose up... come on don’t fail me now. God damn you’re doing a thing of beauty here.

“Tail to Skipper... Watch Flying Wedge Skip she’s close to stalling out...over.”

“Copy...over.” Lieutenant Storm, get your speed up! You still have your trim flaps full.”

Jesus, who would have thought that I would have to help these guys fly as well as keep my bird in the air.

“Good call Tail...over.”

“How are the other squadrons doing Owens?..over”

“Remarkably well Skipper. It looks like number three has worked it out and their last maneuver was a thing of beauty...over”

“Good to hear....over.

Owens had a ringside seat for some pretty amazing flying. We’ll let him tell the tale.

“When we first started it was awful. I mean bombers aren’t built to dodge and weave and especially when surrounded by other bombers. I mean everyone but LeMay knew it was possible, but no one was sure it could be done on a squadron level without putting other squadrons in danger.

12 B-24s dropping out of formation and making a tight turn in unison and then reforming with the rest of the bomber stream was quite a sight to behold. Yet, they were pulling it off. You really had to think in three dimensions to make it work and they had figured it out ...in theory. We had yet to try it in combat. In fact, the whole 15th Air Force had yet to drop a bomb or see a Soviet fighter much less those missiles they shot at you."

The whole concept boiled down to the fact that those missiles were going so fast that a well-timed turn or change in altitude could make them miss. Well timed is the key. Make the maneuver too soon and the damn things adjusted. Make it too late, and well, it’s too late. The real challenge was timing and spacing.

The really new concept was that the maneuver involved the whole bomber stream. There was nothing new about turning in unison. Every time a squadron turned for home, they banked and turned together. They had that move down pat. It was everyone’s favorite part of every mission besides landing. The bomber stream followed as they got to the point where they had dropped their bombs.

They had all watched in envy as the fighters blithely jinked this way or that, and faked out the missiles. Very few fighters were shot down by either air to air or ground to air missiles anymore.

Even a single bomber could just barely out maneuver one of Stalin’s Fire ground to air missiles if they did not have to worry about colliding with their neighbors. The air to air missiles were another matter and they would have to rely on the fighters to keep the launching platforms at arm’s length.

This new emphasis on squadron maneuvers might not have much effect on the actual hit rate of the missiles but it would have a huge effect on moral. The missiles seemed to always lock in on the lead bombers. Even if the whole squadron could not get out of the way of the missile, at least now the flight leaders had a fighting chance. The predictions were that the hit rate would go down only a small amount but that the damage would be more evenly spread out and not just the flight and squadron leaders.

Spreading out the damage was not emphasized or even spoken openly about. The goal was to lower the hit rate overall but everyone knew that it would have the effect of spreading out the danger more evenly. The missiles were focused so intently on their initial targets that it was easy to tell which squadron and even which plane it was locked on to and they very rarely deviated and chose another target. Knowing you’re the target of the missile meant two things for the plane in the crosshairs. One was a distinct advantage. The second was terrifying. Terrifying to know the missile was locked on to your plane and attempting to blow you and your crew to pieces.

The rule was that whatever squad started a turn first was given priority and until they had complete their evasive maneuver no adjoining squadron could leave the formation. If you left the bomber stream too soon you would be subject to charges. If you maneuvered too late you might get hit.

Any thinking person could see that this would not make much difference in the overall hit rate but is would boost the morale of the crews and at this point in the war that was critical. Twilling knew his men and how much they could take. This tiny gesture could just give him another month or so before it became apparent once again that they were not winning.

SAC was already at that point. The 15th would step in and take over for a while. He and his brand new but old, shiny B-24s were polished up and ready for action and they would give SAC a breather...a respite from the inevitable. Basically the bombers of the 15th were just more targets for the Reds to shoot at. They would be no more successful than the B-29s at reversing the oil production rate. They could and would slow it down and that was good enough in the eyes of the Joint Chiefs.

That was good enough to justify their possible deaths. Sacrifices had to be made and they were.

 

[Hairog]

***

We have no idea where or who took the movie. We do know when. It was shot before the Soviets started their attack on Turkey. We are just going to describe what it shows.

***

The Boy and the Porpoise

The initial scene is a beautiful day on the Sea of Marma. You can see a number of unmistakable landmarks in the distance. The exact bay or inlet we are looking at is impossible to tell. The first couple of shots are just the sun and water so it must have been in the afternoon. The cameraman is obviously hiding from something that is across the water. He zooms in on one of the tanks the Soviets have moved up in the night.

All of a sudden the camera jolts to the left as if the cameraman hears something and is trying to find it while looking through his viewfinder. Then we see it. What is it? At first it’s just a ripple of something just under the water, but very near the surface, like a fish gently feeding on a bug and sucking it into its mouth.

It starts to move fairly fast and we see the dorsal fin of a harbor porpoise with something else trailing behind. That something else turns out to be a very small boy holding on to the fin and being dragged along by the porpoise. The child is so small that even the porpoise easily carry him. If you had to guess you would say the boy is about four years old at the most.

You can see the boy take a breath of air but it is not a breath of desperation but one of normal activity. Then, he turns his face towards the camera just as the photographer zooms in. You see a look of utter joy on the boy’s face. He obviously is having the time of his young life. He is enjoying himself like no one else ever has. The porpoise is willingly giving him a ride and they both are enjoying it.

For a second he lets go and his playmate disappears and then suddenly leaps out of the water and over the boy’s elated face. The porpoise disappears from the surface again, then leaps once more as the boy reaches up and touches his playmate’s belly when he comes into range and soars over him. It happens again. The boy cannot swim too well so the porpoise comes along side and lets him catch his breath by holding on.

It is a mesmerizing sight to behold and a wonder. Who was this boy? How had he and the porpoise become friendly? How long had they been doing this? Were they both still alive?

The porpoise nuzzles the boy and he in turn pats its head and gives it a kiss that the animal seems to like. The porpoise sweeps around again and comes up under the boy letting him hold on once more and they speed off. The porpoise in front and the boy almost flying behind. Once again you can see the joy on the boy’s face. Then, they dive. The camera searches for them. It follows the path that they would have been on had they gone straight. After a few moments the operator zooms out and starts to pan first right then left searching for the pair. Nothing...it goes on like this for a couple of minutes.

Such a small boy couldn’t have held his breath that long. Where was he? Had he drowned? The care the porpoise had shown for the boy led you to believe that it would never let him come to harm. But, where did they go? It is a film clip full of the joy and wonder of life, yet also full of questions.

Questions that have never been answered. After spending a few more seconds looking for the pair the cameraman pans back to the Soviet units moving in along the western shoreline.

You don’t feel sad when the movie ends. Even though the boy and the porpoise have disappeared beneath the water. The final scene is of the enemy lining up for an assault. This should put you in a pensive mood. On the contrary, if you ask most who see this small clip they are filled with a feeling of joy and hope. The look on the boy’s face will stay with you forever and may even rekindle your love for mankind, it is just that powerful.

No one knows where the clip came from. No one knows who have the filmmaker was. But anyone who sees the clip, doesn't seem to care.

 

[Hairog]

21 November 1946

Jonesy was a tail gunner in the Ypsilanti Queen B-24 bomber that was the tail end Charlie of the first box of 12 Squadron in the 7th raid on Baku. Over the last month, three raids had been sent with sorties of 500 or more bombers on each. The one raid where the planners pushed the envelope went through the deepest defended route. It was the fastest and most direct route and that is why it had the most flack batteries and missile installations. Their theory was the least amount of time you spent over enemy the fewer the losses. The planners’ theory was wrong.

The mission leader himself was lost along with 15% of the raid. It was the most devastating loss the Air Force had ever experienced in a single raid. 612 bombers entered enemy airspace and 522 returned to base. 99 crews and their planes were lost. Over 900 casualties were incurred. The next mission they tried something new, they had to.

The squadrons who had been practicing “Moving Boxes” were allowed to move their bomber box. Moving the box required an extreme amount of coordination and practice to prevent chaos during the maneuver. This simultaneous turning movement of a whole squadron was nicknamed the “Wiley Coyote.”



Bomber Box - In part developed by General Curtis LeMay

The first five bomber boxes in this raid had all worked together before. The box that a missile was directed at was allowed to turn to port at the appropriate moment. The timing had to be precise and the choreographing well-rehearsed, to make it work.

The thought was that the Stalin’s Fire Missile was fairly easy to out maneuver if you were allowed to do so. Even a B-24 could prevent being hit if a hard turn and dive were performed. The fighters and medium bombers were doing it all the time and until today the Heavies had not been allowed to break formation. For the first time, the Heavies were to execute the new maneuver in squadron-sized formations.

The 15th had taken over the brunt of the sorties against the oil fields of the USSR. SAC was worn out and in desperate need of planes and personnel. LeMay had rolled the dice and lost. His men could not keep up with his ego and the B-29s were getting shot down faster than they could be made.

In the previous war, LeMay was a real advocate of change and of innovation. He had had a number of war winning ideas to his credit. He could rightfully take credit for the bombers’ box formation. There was a significant reduction in losses over Europe once the innovation was in place. Similarly, he recognized the Norden bombsight was of no use over Japan. The fast-moving river of air dissipated the bombs and accuracy was limited. LeMay’s brilliant and lucky response was to fly below this fast moving current of wind, striped the bombers of all their defensive guns and gunners. He had them pack the planes full of incendiaries. It had worked. Most raids of this type, killed more Japanese civilians than the atomic bombs.

For whatever reason, LeMay could not grasp that his current methods were not and would not work against the combination of flack, fighter planes, air to air missiles and surface to air missiles. He was locked into a mindset that did not let him admit defeat or let him change tactics. Consequently SAC’s losses had caused the Joint Chiefs to halt all operations and to turn it over to the 15th.

General Twining was in his element and operations were going smoothly as possible. The losses were unacceptable but within expectations. On this mission they were going to boost morale. The special Wiley Coyote squadrons were going to lead the way. They were to use their highly practiced maneuvering scheme to try and mitigate the Soviet SAM missiles. They were going to make the God Damn SAMs miss.

The moniker SAM had just recently caught on. It stood for Surface to Air Missile and was easy to say and remember. So SAM it was from this point forward. The Soviets would still call the missiles Stalin’s Fire but NATO called them SAMs.

The missiles fired from the Soviet medium bombers were given the name AAM for Air to Air Missile. Whatever their names, the various missiles were still very good at creating huge holes in the bombers’ combat boxes where the Soviet fighters could slip through for easier kills. In addition, the missiles were targeting the lead bombers and taking out the most experienced crews, adding to the demoralization of the units

Jonesy had a ringside seat to the action behind him and he was an integral part in the formation flying they were about to engage in. The oil fields at Baku were spread out and dispersed after the initial raids. As Soviet repairs were completed, redundancy and camouflage were incorporated. It was very hard for the recon flights to discern what was wreckage and what was new construction made to look like wreckage. Some say that it was by accident and Soviet workmanship that the sites looked destroyed when others knew it was by design.

The Soviet repairs meant that the time for precision bombing was over. The fact that there might be gaping holes in the bomber stream didn’t matter. These holes would continue to be created periodically by squadrons doing a Wiley Coyote maneuver of turning as a squadron to make the missiles miss. The chances were that the area not bombed was vital. But then again, it might not.

The Soviet SAMs and AAMs had made Carpet Bombing a thing of the past. The missiles wreaked havoc in the tight formations needed to accomplish such a bombing mission. Huge holes would have been torn in the formation. Holes that had previously been filled by men and machine. Holes that would for a split second be made of bones, flesh, blood and metal after the missile’s warhead exploded. Then the pieces of a once beautiful airplane would combine with pieces of sons, brothers and fathers slowly falling to the ground.

Jonesy was still awed by the sight of the whole squadron quickly veering to port. Also, he was amazed at the skill of the pilots in avoiding each other while still remaining in formation. It was a wonderful display of skill. The commander had called out SAM launch and everyone had waited to see who would be the target. They had not tried to out maneuver the AAMs sent their way. The escorting P-51 and P-38s were doing a fair job of keeping the medium bombers from launching properly so there were numerous loose AAM missiles seeking targets. Jonesy had actually seen one slam into a Soviet bomber that was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This time it was for real and this time it would hopefully save a life or two. As they approached Baku, the skipper was the first to report SAM! Jonesy couldn’t see it from his rear facing position but he could feel the ship get a little tenser.

Something happened to catch his eye off to the West. It was another SAM and he dutifully called it out. He had beat Williams in number three that time. They had a running tally going on and this was his and his alone. Williams was up by three until this one. You didn’t get many chances from the tail position to call a SAM out.

The Soviets must be altering their tactics as well. He heard the Skipper say a quick “oh shit’ and knew that they were the target of the first launch. They had already fought their way through a gauntlet of AAM thrown at them by a bunch of Bats the Lightnings had seemed to have over looked. Out of twenty missiles fired three had hit, far too many. The P-38s had got a measure of revenge by shooting down 2 Bats that he could see. They were unusually aggressive for this early in the bomb run. Must be some kind of ultimatum going on in the Commie world. He didn’t care as long as they were easier to shoot down.

He himself had gotten two of those radial jobs, the La7. It looked a lot like the FW190 and just as deadly. The guy must have been stunned by a near miss because he just showed up not 150 ft. behind the Ypsilanti Queen. It was an easy shot. The La7 blew up quite spectacularly as a tracer must have hit some misting fuel. It happened two sorties ago and was still fresh in his memory. He could have sworn that he saw the upper torso and head of the Commie go spinning to the ground. Maybe he was trying to get out of the fighter that was going down from previous damage when Jonesy had hit him.

Another violent shutter brought him back to the moment. His headphone crackled…

“Five, four, three, two, one GO!”

He heard the skipper yell.

The Ypsilanti Queen shuttered as it dove and turned for all its worth to the left. The other planes followed in a precise move that was incredible to watch. Then, he saw it…this was his part of the drama. It was his moment to contribute.

“She missed Skip…SHE MISSED! He shouted as he caught sight of the missile straining to turn with his ship. It flew right past about 300 feet. Thank god the Reds had not figured out a way for the missile to change targets in mid flight. They seemed hell bent on the destruction of just one bomber at a time and didn’t switch course once they honed in on a target. Then they would straighten out and go for another few kilometers and then explode. Probably some kind of failsafe mechanism he had heard an Egghead say.

A few seconds after he made his pronouncement, the Skipper counted down again and pushed the engines to max as they climbed to regain formation. He watched some circling fighters warily but none seemed interested in attacking their seemingly lost Box. Jonesy guessed they were waiting for Ypsilanti Queen to get separated further from the stream. When she didn’t it was too late for them to pounce. He figured the fighters were somewhat stunned by the squadron’s maneuver but would probably adapt soon enough in this war of move and counter move.

It seems like when one side or the other gets the upper hand, the other figures out a way to gain it back in spades. Take for example the atomic bomb. Rumor has it that it was sabotage that stopped the program but then we used our last 4 bombs. They should have been the knockout punch, but true to form the Soviets came right back with their air defense systems. They had started to use modified VT fuse on us now! It was kind of hit and miss so they weren’t as deadly to us as ours were to the Japs but they were still far too accurate for anyone’s liking.

And there they were right back in formation with the whole maneuver taking about 15 minutes. Not too shabby in combat conditions. He spotted three other squadrons doing the Wiley Coyote maneuver as well. One got caught though. He guessed from the aftermath and smoke trail of the missile that the leader had turned too soon. Easy to do considering what was coming at you. If you turned too soon the missile had time to turn with you and WHAM (as they say in the comics) your dead. It looked like two bombers went down with that hit. He had heard at a demonstration of the Wiley Coyote maneuver back at the base that you had to be within a three second window to make the turn fast enough yet not too soon. No wonder those guys had misjudged.

They dropped their bombs and lost another dozen or so of their number to missiles and fighters on their way home. The Ruskies followed them all the way back it seemed. The fighters had their hands full for almost the whole flight with the Reds launching as soon as they could and following us back as far as they dared.

He was just starting to relax when one of those little jets snuck up from below and caught him day dreaming. A small movement caught his attention. The ball gunner had completely missed the little bugger as it rose from nowhere to suddenly be on their tail. The jet was lining up on Jonesy’s nose with its 30 mm cannon. The Stalin’s Dart fired first but Jonesy was more accurate and the little plane exploded as the last of its 30 mm cannon rounds took off Jonesy’s left ear, and the right leg of the left waist gunner named Cooper. Miraculously the round did not explode and must have been one of the tracer rounds. Otherwise, they would have been cut in half as well.

Bleeding like a chicken with its head cut off, he screamed, into the intercom for help and to see if the rest of the plane was still in one piece. The Skipper replied calmly, that all was well, and Michaels would be back to help him soon. In the meantime, he should stop the bleeding. Jonesy was able to calm down and found the first aid kit. He was trying to tie a bandage to his head when Michaels showed up covered in blood. Jonesy thought he was hit but Michaels assured him that it was blood from Cooper.

His ear was shot clean off and was still in one piece, so Michaels decided to keep it cold and see if they could sew it back on. That really did the trick and Jonesy got his act together, insisting that he could still man the tail gun. That action won him the Silver Star among other things including his wife who he met on a War Bond Tour nine months later, complete with his ear sewn back on. Reunited as it were with a piece of himself. His wife was movie star gorgeous and a business woman as well, but we’ll continue their story later.

 

[Hairog]

He was churning up inside. On the outside he was as cool as you can be, but inside he was producing all sorts of chemicals and his body was not in balance with what he was thinking. His mind was overtly controlling how he was perceived but his inner chemistry was jacked up. The cause was his concern for the bombing crews he had sent out this morning. They were going to try a new and very risky operation. LeMay had warned him that if the planned Wiley Coyote maneuver ended up in tragedy, he would personally see to Twining’s courts martial. But, that really wasn’t his main concern.

He was genuinely worried about his crews, about the boys he saw everyday walking to the briefings and standing in the chow line. He didn’t care what anyone said. They were his boys and his responsibility. If he had done anything to increase the chances of them not returning to their mothers and fathers then he would never forgive himself.

In other words, he was a good commander and an outstanding leader. His men could sense that and they would have followed him to Moscow if he ordered it. On the other hand, they knew he would not put their lives in needless danger so they didn’t question his leadership. He had, himself, experienced ditching an airplane. He spent six days in a life raft during the last war when the plane he was on had engine trouble in the Pacific between Guadalcanal and Espiritu Santo. He knew what it was like to feel abandoned and forsaken.

The fighters appeared first as usual. They were the lowest on fuel and the fastest. A CAP was formed when they were about an hour out to prevent or as least harass the inevitable Soviet attempts at incursion over their base’s airspace. Without the strong CAP, the crazy Ivans would follow them all the way home and shoot them down as they landed. They had actually experienced that a few times. The VVS has sent flights of longer ranged Yak 9s at very low altitude towards their forward bases. They had done a good job of shooting up the place. So, now a strong CAP was SOP at low altitude to deter the Ivans in the future. For the most part, it worked.

He could tell from the radio chatter that morale was good. Improving morale was one of the main reasons he had let the development of the Wiley Coyote progress. The losses were not sustainable, yet the Pentagon kept ordering them in. The Soviets were losing pilots as well. But, they were flying fighters and a few medium bombers so every plane shot down by us only involved the loss of one man. Each of our bombers shot down was seven times worse. From all reports, the VVS was keeping up with trained pilots and fighter planes where we were not. We were losing more bombers than could be replaced in a timely manner, especially when it was the B-29. Even at full production, we only were able to produce 65 a month. Before SAC was given a breather, they were on pace to lose 100 a month.

The most maddening part was that the Soviet’s oil production was increasing despite the SAC’s best efforts. The slow but inevitable loss curve in bomber numbers had developed much like the one the Luftwaffe experienced with their fighters. Unless something changed, they were going to lose this fight.

He heard the first of the venerable B-24 Liberator bombers’ engines and decided to go back inside and wait for the reports. He was actually optimistic at least as far as morale was concerned. Temporarily, at least, the Wiley Coyote had done the trick.

A few hours later, the reports were added up and he was looking at them with renewed hope. Twenty squadrons had pulled a Wiley Coyote and only three were hit by a SAM. Seventeen had successfully evaded the missile shot at their mission leader’s plane. This was very good news indeed. Losses were actually sustainable for a change and hovered around 6%. Very close, but sustainable when America’s manufacturing finally hit its stride.

The corporate leaders had finally been shamed into making the switch once again from consumer products to military production. It seems the US was out of money. Being the good capitalists they were, it took some arm twisting to get them to support the war effort. Ford was poised once again to pump out B-24s and it looked like they would be the workhorse once again. The B-17 got the headlines while the Liberators did the work.

It was kind of interesting that this war had been mainly fought using the last war’s equipment. He supposed that if the war dragged on more and more sophisticated machines would be fighting it out. For now, it was still the propeller vs. the propeller for the most part.

You just couldn’t crank out jets as fast as you could piston engines. You could shoot them down as fast however. He mused that future wars will be fought and won or lost very quickly due to the fact that it was eventually going to be quality over quantity that would win the day. Today it was still quantity and they were fighting an opponent that was second to none in producing good-enough equipment in massive quantities. Quantity had been the issue for the Germans. Their equipment was superior to ours but they lacked the industrial capacity to match us. Their superior jets and tanks were not superior enough to overcome our greater numbers. But now we were in a war with an opponent who could potentially keep pace with our production.

The Soviet Union and the US had something in common. Unlike the Germans and the British, our means of production were almost impossible to attack at the moment. Hell, we didn’t even know where their facilities were located. For the most part their manufacturing sites were so far inland and hidden that it was very similar to us having the Atlantic Ocean between us and their attacking forces. Their ocean happened to be the vastness of their country. We executed a very well planned attack on their oil fields and refineries before they could react, but they closed that window surprisingly fast.

His mood took a turn for the better as he read the After Action reports. They were very positive and the Wiley Coyote maneuver was a qualified success. It had increased morale as well as shaved a point or two off of the losses. The reduced losses meant that on a 500 bomber raid another five or ten crews made it to base and 35 to 70 Americans made it home. 70 less letters that had to be written, and 70 more men would not be ripped from their families and shipped overseas, and that was worth it.

 

[Hairog]

The First Hours

November 25th, 1946

Nazik reasoned that they wouldn’t waste another rocket of shell on a location they already destroyed. So as soon as the shell hit, he jumped into the newly created crater. It was still warm and smoking, but otherwise a good hole to hide in. He didn’t think there was one piece of Turkey within his eyesight that was not destroyed. The barrage of rockets, shells and bullets seemed to reach a crescendo and then, to his amazement, increased. How could they have so many guns and rockets pointed at his poor country?

He had his back to the Turkish Straights and was one of the first to notice the parachutes. Thousands of them coming down behind their lines. He had only the vaguest idea of what a parachute actually looked like. He had even a lesser understanding that some of the chutes were attached to armored cars like a balloon vendor’s cart. He did comprehend the men hanging from the majority of white cloth mushroom caps. More importantly, he was clear that they were between him and safety. The very safety he was going to run to when the shelling stopped. He would have left earlier, but the American had been watching him and his squad. When the American was wounded, he and many others started to look to the east. They urgently needed to escape the shelling and what they assumed was about to follow.

For now they were about to be possibly cut off from even that avenue of retreat. It appeared that there was an avenue of escape left open to the southeast where fewer parachutes had fallen. Others saw what he saw and started to jump from crater to crater in the only direction that still seemed open to them. A trapped animal is at its most dangerous and a trapped Turkmen is even more dangerous individually than your normal soldier. No one excels at individual survival than these masters of stealth and hand to hand combat.

It is quite possible that the way to freedom was purposefully left open. No records can be found of such a plan but it was curious that a quarter mile wide gap was conspicuously left open by the Soviet paratroops. This avenue of retreat led to a desert wasteland devoid of any strategic value. Armored cars where particularly useful in keeping the Turkish forces moving in a southeasterly direction.

As Nazik made his way to the open avenue of escape, he noticed the Ruskies soldiers were not even shooting at them and even the ground was less tortured by the rockets and bombs. Contrary to what you might think, these details unnerved Nazik even more than the massive barrage of hours earlier.

Nazik and his men went to work. In less than an hour, he destroyed an armored car and shot or stabbed 7 other paratroopers. That made 13 kills including the crew of the armored car and one officer who was hanging around the vehicle. He had made his personal quota and it was time to save his life and lives of his men for another fight. Every bone in his body told him not to take the obvious retreat route left open by the initial paratroops. His animal instincts told him it was not safe. He had lost none of his squad and they had done a good job despite the others around them running at first chance.

Three of his squad snuck off and ran with the waves of others to the corridor open to the southeast. Nazik led his men directly east from his original area of operations, the Kucuksu Palace on the shoreline overlooking the straights. It was a small palace that had been renovated in 1944 and was used by royal hunting parties as a stopping off point towards parts unknown. Nazik and his men had enjoyed their stay on the grounds. It was now a pile of ruins and rubble destroyed by the initial shelling and rocket attacks.

Knowing full well what was about to happen, the Turkish high command made the controversial decision to make the Western part of Istanbul or European side an open city. They were hoping to avoid Istanbul’s destruction, once again by an invading army, and had heavily fortified the eastern side or Asian side across the Turkish straights. Nazik was thankful that the western side was devoid of fortifications as it made his escape much easier. His departure would have been without drama, except for the 10,000 or so Soviet paratroopers between him and short term safety.

In his mind, he had made his twelve-kill quota and if everyone did as well they would have won. He did his part and his squad had done theirs as well. Now it was time to survive to fight another day. The centuries old Kucuksu palace had been obliterated in very short order because that is what enemies do to each other’s potential strong holds. From what he could discern, only a handful of artillery pieces had destroyed hundreds of years of history in a matter of minutes.

There were some others who were actually making better time than his men and he. They shouted out that the Ruskies were coming across the straights in small boats and rafts by the thousands. With most of the opposition decimated by the guns, rockets and heavy attack aircraft, it was going to be a very easy crossing. There were no bridges to speak of and the government had destroyed all the ferries that had plied the straights.

He supposed the Reds had built their own ferries and would be bringing them from the Black Sea once they gained both sides. They had decimated the opposition and had no problem with the great rivers of Europe. Consequently navigating the straights would be trivial. The paratroopers would clear the waterfront of all opposition and the small boats they were using would bring enough troops over to defend until the larger tanks negotiated the transports.

Nazik caught a glimpse of something moving to his right, and signaled for his remaining men to spread out and go silent. He mentally thanked the American sergeant for teaching his troop the use of hand signals. Although some didn’t make much sense when translated into Turkish, others worked quite well. A couple signals were offensive. He chose to ignore them. His men had devised others to replace them while still remembering the meaning of the discarded ones. The figure he caught a glimpse of was wearing a similar uniform and carrying a weapon at ready. He moved differently than his countrymen and that is what caught his eye. He couldn’t put a finger on it yet this kind of instinctual decision-making is what had kept him alive in all the years of combat he had been through.

He spoke the code word for the day and waited for the proper response. He got it, but with an obvious accent. Then, he knew who it was. It was the American assigned to his company. The one who trained them and made them fight until he was wounded. Here he was back from the dead. He shouted out the American’s name so he would know they were friendly. Sure enough, Mankowitz popped his head up for a second. They all heard firing close by and ducked. Mankowitz hobbled his way towards them. He was still bleeding from a leg wound. Someone had bound it up pretty well and he appeared to be in good shape considering. When Nazik last saw him, Mankowitz was unconscious. The same rocket had hit them both but the Yank’s wound was much worse.

 

[Hairog]

The sergeant was still reeling from a concussion. All he knew for sure was that he was in mortal danger, surrounded by people who spoke a different language. Strangely, they were wearing the same uniform as he. Oh and one more thing, they were panicking. For that reason, he decided to make his escape or possibly he was going AWOL. He didn’t care.

He knew he was a sergeant, but could not recall his name, or what he was doing here, or even where he was. But he did not panic when he saw his chance. It was time to react! Fight or flight was a basic reaction and he was down to basics. He grabbed his 45 Colt and M1 Garand rifle when they were not looking and slipped out.

The majority of the noise and explosions were coming from the west, so he went east. Most of the men in uniform seemed to be going southeast. He decided to head for the sunrise. He did hear and understand the word “paratroops.” Then, he remembered those were the soldiers who jumped out of perfectly good airplanes to land behind enemy lines. He couldn’t remember if he was one of them or the enemy. He decided that despite the fact that all those around him didn’t speak his language (whatever that was), he would not shoot them. That course of action seemed to be the correct decision as they basically left him alone.

He had to use a crutch because of a huge bandage on his right leg. He hadn’t had time to examine the wound. He must be on some powerful medication because even though blood was seeping through the wrapping, he felt only a slight discomfort. He had a feeling that his pain level would change dramatically in a few hours.

He was stumbling along, almost dragging his rifle, suffering from a concussion, missing a big chunk of his calf muscle, and loopy from some drug. Suddenly, some guy comes out of nowhere and shouts a word he recognizes. Without thinking, he shouts another word back. Some kind of greeting he assumed. Anyway, it worked. A man he vaguely recognized poked his head around a piece of wall and didn’t shoot at him. The fellow didn’t seem too pleased to have found him, whoever him was, or was it whom he was.

As the man approached him, he recognized every third word. While, not all of it was completely clear as to it’s meaning, it was enough to trust the guy. Another 12 or so sullen individuals appeared from behind various hiding places. They seemed to know him. But again, were not very happy to see him. He felt kind of like a bad penny showing up. He couldn’t worry about that now as a big, ugly plane with red stars flew over them at very low level. He was going to take a shot at it, but the others warned him not to. The bullets would just bounce off and it would only warn the pilot that something unfriendly needed killing in his target area.

The plane flew straight and level over a particular section of the city. Liquid flame started to pour out of the tanks on its wings. That was enough to get the small group running to the east at a very fast pace with him trying to keep up, bad leg and all. He felt something squishy in his boot and stopped for a second to check it out. Every time he took a step a squirt of blood oozed from his bootlace holes. Not good.

The leader of the group doubled back and added another rag to his bandage, tying it very tight. The bleeding seemed to stop for the time being. When he stood up, he was very unsteady. Once again, his companion came to his aide. Luckily the man was on the large size and almost as big as he was. They made a good pair and soon caught up with the others.

Just as the others had disappeared around one of the seemingly endless corners, a man with their back towards them shouted something to someone else out of sight. Mankowitz shrugged off his human crutch and as he was dropping to the ground he unslung his rifle and shot the man just as he was about to shoot one of the other men in his group. Well, it was very nice to know he knew how to use the rifle he was lugging around. The move he just made, even impressed him, and he had no basis for being impressed. Hell, he couldn’t even remember his name.

His companion helped him to his feet, and once again, they hobbled east. The attack by the plane spewing fire made them go beyond exhaustion. It was two hours later, and he was feeling the pain and lots of it. He jerked away from the grip of his rescuer and fell towards a set of steps. He just barely caught himself before his head hit the ground. He lay there and waved on his companions, motioning that he was too tired and too much in pain to continue.

Out of nowhere, one of the squad pulled out a syrette…now, why did he remember that word and not his own name…and jammed it into his leg. Then, the soldier squeezed the tube and administered the medicine. He didn’t think that was how it was supposed to be done, but within seconds he didn’t care. They pulled him up and two others half carried and dragged him for another couple of hours. They stayed just ahead of the massive explosions and the ominous sounds of those flame throwing planes.

He finally learned that Nazik was the name of the leader and that his name was Sargent Mankowitz. He really didn’t think that was his name but he was assured by all in the group that it was. Also, learned that he was American, they were Turkish, and the enemy were Russians. None of it made any sense to him what so ever. He remembered another war where the Russians were his friends, and he had even gotten drunk with a bunch somewhere. No matter, memories were starting to return. Now, he could start to really think about the long-term survival of this little band of men who had saved each other’s lives. And that’s what it’s all about in the end he was sure. It didn’t matter if you were enemies one day and fighting side by side the next it seemed. Today was what mattered and today meant he would survive until tomorrow.

In the North, the story was similar to that on the banks of the Black Sea. What was left of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet bombarded areas 100 km from the Dardanelles along with massive attacks by the Soviet version of the Marines. Many of the troops were veterans of the Moonsund Landing Operation in the Baltic. They were better trained this time, thanks once again to the Americans. The Soviets had even more of the amphibious vehicles called DUKWs or more commonly Ducks. Over 5000 had been left behind in Germany and France and were now being used in the Black Sea.

The Turks opposing the landings had never seen anything like the DUKWs. For the most part, the Turks didn’t even try to shoot at the vehicles with small arms fire believing them to be more heavily armored than they were. In hindsight, a good 50 cal would cut through their hulls like a buzz saw. But, that was hindsight for you.

The end result was that 10,000 Soviet troops were on dry land north and east of Istanbul in a matter of hours. Also, the DUKWs could be used to transport supplies and troops on land like any other truck. These odd looking, possibly heavily armored, vehicles were quickly dispersing Soviet troops throughout the area around Sile. Soon, they were on their way to Izmit in an attempt to cut off three divisions of Turkey’s finest soldiers.

The old Russian battle cruiser Parizhskaya Kommuna took part in the bombardment along with the remainder of the Black Sea Fleet including the cruisers Molotov, Voroshilov, Krasnyi Krym and Krasnyi Kavkaz. These ships proved devastating to the shore defenses once the VVS and IL-10 Beasts had napalmed the shore batteries that could have posed a danger to the old ships. Unfettered from their fears of retaliation, they drove in close to shore and used their guns to silence all opposition worth note around the beaches of Sile. Shutting down the resistance gave the DUKWs an almost leisurely cruise and got the troops well on their way towards their respective objectives.

Things were going so well that something had to go wrong and it finally did. Finally, the Turks discovered that the DUKWs were just floating trucks and very vulnerable to small arms fire. They were not the fearsome armored beasts they had expected. That would come later. For now however, the DUKWs and the troops in them started to die.

The Turkish military was very good at small unit tactics and their soldiers some of the bravest in the world. When their generals did not place them in hopeless situations, they could more than hold their own. The invasion of the DUKWs ended at Tiki or about 19 km from Sile on the way to Izmit. A combination of rugged terrain and even more rugged Turkish soldiers started to devastate the flock. Even the shells of the old battle cruiser could not reach out and assist them now. The VVS did not have the range to make use of its ground attack arsenal. The IL-10 had a formidable collection of weapons, but it also had a relatively short range without drop tanks. It was the Soviet soldier with his small unit tactics and heroism against the Turkish soldier on even terms. The fighting became up close and personal as both sides preferred.

Scenes straight out of Stalingrad and Berlin started to unfold with meaningless buildings suddenly taking on life or death significance. One such building was the local mosque in Teke. Without artillery or anything larger than a grenade, this holy building changed hands over and over again for two days. 239 men died within its walls by ones and twos, while killing other men in ones and twos. After the first few attacks and counter attacks, every grenade thrown, was muffled by the dead bodies lying around. Following the first day, most who entered would shoot anybody who didn’t have a bullet hole in their forehead, just to make sure it wasn’t someone playing dead. It was a house of horrors with recognizable body parts lying all around from previous attacks. Large artillery and bombs tend to vaporize most human remains whereas grenades just chop them up.

How could you keep entering a building filled with such gore with the intent of creating more? Yet, they did, squad after squad went in with the goal of winning the view from the minaret or preventing the enemy from gaining that view as well. Then, squad after squad followed them in and carnage continued.

These types of assaults were repeated all along the lines until the VVS finally was able to move it bases closer to the front and started to end the Turks’ hold on these small strong points.

 

[Hairog]

A number of the riders on truck were veterans of rough roads. Many of them were from California where driving off road on the beaches was commonplace. Someone even made special vehicles that were designed to drive on the sand dunes near the beach and also in the desert. Nothing in their wildest imagination prepared them for what they were experiencing now in the duce and a half. The ride was the roughest imaginable. The road had ceased to exist days ago or when they were now just following a donkey trail. The guide seemed to know where they were going but he couldn't drive. So each of the passengers took turns. Half of the truck was filled with fuel as there were no filling stations within 100 miles.

They were on their way to the border of Russia and Turkey, and what is called Armenia. The men were all volunteers from United States army. Some were of Turkish heritage that most were not. They were here to train the Turkish army of the north. The north being this god forsaken expanse country. The terrain is nothing but sand and rocks with the occasional goat herd and human companion.

The men were on a mission to train some of the best individual fighting man in the world to become a cohesive fighting unit. The mission to train the army of the west was well underway. An invasion from north coming from between the Caspian and Black Sea seemed like a very remote possibility two months ago. But with reports of Russian forces moving into the area, the possibility is quickly becoming a reality.

In the truck were six men and the guide. They had been on the road for four days and would reach their destination tonight. Two other divisions on their way to the same spot they were heading towards. These 15,000 men did not have trucks to ride in and were marching towards the border. One hell of a way to wage modern war thought the captain.

The situation reminded him of The War to End All Wars where everyone walked, including into machine gun fire. He didn’t know what was worse, the American Civil War, where you marched up to the enemy standing straight up. Then, took a few volleys before you either ran from or charged at the enemy. Or, as in World War One where you marched into fire and hoped they ran out of bullets before they got to you. Imagine being in that first wave.

On the border were just under 15,000 soldiers of the Turkish army. Their commanders had just started to take the threat of the Soviet seriously. Reports were that they were facing 15 divisions under one of the best Soviet leaders. The Turks were feverishly digging trenches, placing antitank mines, and praying. The men on the truck were “advisors” to the Turkish Army. They were supposed to explain how to stop modern armored equipment and survive the proven tactics of the Soviet Deep Battle. Oh, they had plenty of equipment to work with. The only problem was that it was 30 years old and left over, for the most part, from World War One and about twenty percent from early 1940s. Five years makes a hell of a lot of difference in times of war.

Captain Marsh didn’t even make an effort to learn his men’s last names. If he had time later he would make an attempt. But it didn’t look or sound like they had much time left or even that much time together before the shit hit the fan. From the report this morning it was really going to be a lot of shit to deal with and fairly soon as well.

Sargent Bill was supposed to be an expert in mines and tank traps. Sargent Clem was supposed to be an anti-tank wizard who could kill a Tiger with a spoon. Corporal Jim was an artillery magician. Corporal Frank was an expert in small group tactics. Corporal Mike specialized in heavy weapons and he was scared shitless and an expert in strong point defense. All he knew for sure was that they were there for show and not much else.

What could they do with no supplies and heavy weapons or trained troopers to man them anyway? From the short conversations he had with “his” men he ascertained that many and possibly all of them were screw-ups. Perfect for this job. Corporal Jim had taken swings at a few of his Sergeants in his career. Sargent Bill was frequently drunk. Corporal Mike might have murdered a fellow soldier over a card game but he could not confirm that before he shipped out. Corporal Frank was rumored to be a homo. Captain Marsh had no idea about Sargent Clem. He looked completely benign yet he must have done something to be put on this operation.

Captain Marsh, was a general’s wife fucker. He was caught twice and busted twice. Not the thing to do for an officer and a gentleman, but hey they wanted it more than he did. Was it his fault that their husbands couldn’t get it up any more? He was just providing and long overdue service to keep up the moral of the women behind the men. Besides, General Cooper’s wife had a mighty fine behind as well.

His dalliances were what had landed him here. Here, was exactly nowhere and nowhere was where it looked like he was going to die.

 

[Hairog]

Not Enough and Too Late

The barrage started at 0330 hours and continued until 0456. By that time most of the frontline Turkish troops facing the Soviet Union’s forces on the Armenian border were dead, maimed or running to the south. Zhukov had gotten all the toys in the west to force the Turkish Straights and Bagramyan got more artillery batteries and Katyusha rocket units.

The Turkish soldiers sent to the Armenia border, were poor quality even by Turkish standards. They were to be sacrificed and the Turkish commanders did not want their best units to be wasted. Even their unit names have been erased from history. They were just 15,000 poor souls, who were soon ground into the earth by over a thousand tanks that quickly raced to the South. Some of the better Turkish units turned the Reds away during their initial assault when the Soviet commanders got too aggressive and ran into some well laid traps and ambushes.

The Turkish Colonel could tell that the tanks being thrown at him were the older but faster T34-85. He knew that these tanks were more than a match for the few old tanks he had gotten recently from the Americans. The Soviet tanks were just as fast as and maybe even faster than his more lightly armored Shermans with the 76 mm gun. His problems were many. He had very few tanks, his tankers had not seen combat, and they had no air cover. They held their own, however, in the first brush with the T-34s. His unit gave as good as they got.

The T-34s withdrew a few kilometers and then came the flying tanks of the Red Air Force. The Il-10 Sturmovik Beast had a large number of ways to kill a tank and they used their repertoire very quickly on his dozen tanks. The one Bofers unit, he had been given, actually did a good job and took down two Beasts before being destroyed by 23 mm cannon fire.

The Turkish Colonel’s own tanks died to more exotic weapons such as floating bomblets and liquid flame. One by one the tanks died and back came the Soviet T-34s.

This time, the Turks special anti-tank groups did their job using Molotov cocktails and, once again stopped the Red’s advance. A quick Soviet artillery and rocket barrage put a stop to these Turkish tactics as well as killing much of the supporting infantry. Again, the few men the Turkish colonel had alive performed extremely well. If they would have had some support, they might have even staged an effective counter attack. But, they had had no further support. His commanding General had decided that discretion is the better part of valor and had run to fight another day.

The General actually did perform quite well weeks later near the village of Bitlis where his division put up stiff resistance. The Turkish unit held up the Soviet advance for almost three days before the General was killed and his troops overwhelmed. On this first day of battle however, the General was on the run and this meant a quick death for the colonel and his battalion.

 

[Hairog]

Match Made in Mayhem

Our truckload of American Advisors sent to the border almost made it to the front before the attack began. Their truck was quickly commandeered at gun point and the aforementioned General used it for his escape. As the Captain and his men were standing there stranded and trying to figure out what to do they heard their first, of many, T-34s coming from around the buildings. Sergeant Clem took an ordinary grenade from a dead body and sprinted towards the sound. What the hell, thought the Captain, might as well get it over with. And, for some reason, the rest of the squad followed him as he ran after Sergeant Clem.

Sergeant Clem was crouched behind some rubble when the Soviet tank came within sight. It was unsupported and out in front of the infantry, who were huffing and puffing their way towards them. Without saying a word, Clem dove in front of the tank letting the treads pass on either side of him. The Captain lost sight of him but when the tank passed over what should have been his body, the sergeant got up and sprinted back to their hiding spot minus the grenade. The captain kept waiting for the grenade to at least go off. He never expected it to even scratch the tank but it didn’t blow.

He looked at Clem who just indicated that they should wait, and then about 10 seconds after he rolled out from under the tank it suddenly started on fire from underneath. It wasn’t quite a spoon but somehow Clem had killed that tank with a standard frag grenade. The captain looked at Clem who just grinned and winked. Well I’ll be damned, he thought.

The few surrounding Turkish soldiers, who saw all that had happened, seemed to be very impressed by what they saw. They motioned the group of Americans to follow them as they made their way to the next strong point. The Turks chattered all the way, pointing at Clem to whoever they met. He had no idea what they were saying, but they all started to look at Clem with new found respect.

The group made a sprint to the rear and ended up in a trench line that was well hidden. A Soviet column of vehicles, led by one of the oddest armored cars the captain had ever seen, was going to drive right by their position. They were unaware of the group’s location and the column was just moving forward like it didn’t have a care in the world. The Captain decided to give it a few cares.

He yelled for Corporal Mike and grabbed a bazooka that one of the Turks was carelessly holding with no intention of using. He looked into the terrified eyes of the Corporal and winked. Then, he threw him the bazooka and grabbed a round, stepped behind him, loaded the round, and tapped the Corporal’s helmet.

Without thinking further, Corporal Mike found a gap in the rubble, took aim and launched. It was the longest and best shot anyone had ever seen on the lead armored car. It was easily at the extreme edge of the bazooka’s capabilities. The rocket fired grenade had just enough energy to go through the lightly armored vehicle which erupted with a very satisfying explosion. The warhead continued to travel on its own momentum with a mane of flames streaming backwards. The armored car must have been going 80 kph.

Now I don’t know if you’ve ever been in combat in an armored vehicle but if you have you will know that it is very hard to get situational awareness. You are partially blind to what is going on and are even devoid of the sense of hearing when you are buttoned up. This flaming torch continued to roll for a good 100 yards on a slight incline without even slowing down. It finally ended its death roll with a loud bang that snuffed out the flames.

The rest of the column seemed not to notice the calamity that had befallen their lead vehicle for a good five seconds. Then, panic ensued as three of the lead vehicles veered to the south and the remainder turned north with two of them colliding knocking the smallest vehicle on its side which started it sliding. The slide was interrupted by a large bolder that started the small armored car rolling. After two rotations, it stopped back on its side and exploded.

Two of the armored cars stopped and started to look for the perpetrator of this attack. By this time, the contrail of the bazooka round had dissipated. The smoke from the flaming torch and exploded slider hid our group and the armored cars had no idea of where the attack had come from. The Captain looked at Corporal Mike and smiled. They ran back to their next defensive strong point. All were smiling like maniacs and the Turks with them were as well.

Unfortunately, the salient fact was, that in the end, they were still running backwards as the Soviets continued their rapid advance virtually unchecked. The remainder of the Soviet troops didn’t even blink as they passed by their still smoldering, former comrades. The rout was on and it did no good to think about the fallen. There would be many more smoldering wrecks to pass, all by created by the bodies of their comrades and enemies.

For our group of misfits they had seen how each would react under pressure and were pleased with what they had seen. At their next resting stop point, the captain made a point to ask and memorize everyone’s last names, including the 7 Turks who had adopted the little group of Americans.

 

[Hairog]

Dr. Skinner had just finished his lecture as the Chair of the Psychology Department at Indian University. He liked to lecture from time to time, especially to the best students in his care. It was almost a year since he came to Bloomington, and it was starting to wear on him. He missed Harvard terribly and its proximity to the Appalachians. He needed some kind of change in elevation, large trees that turned gorgeous colors in the fall, and that fresh Green color in the spring. Bloomington was not blooming at this time of year and the colors on the trees had faded fast. It was time for another grey winter with not much to look forward to.

So, he has started to write a book about the future unofficially named Walden Two. The book was a kind of play on Thoreau's Walden Pond. While Thoreau expounded on the virtues of self-reliance, he theorized that the real virtue of self-reliance lay in a community where the free will of the individual is weak when compared to how environmental conditions shape behavior. He was very leery about writing in today’s academic climate about such things no matter how much he believed in them. His observations and remarks could easily be taken for communist leanings that he did not possess to any degree, certainly not Stalin’s version that he had just begun to study.

Also, he was becoming aware of just how dangerous this new war was. He had heard of tales of rockets and jet fighters, and, of course, the atomic bomb. He hoped no one would ever place an atomic bomb in a V2-like rocket. Such a device would lead to total annihilation of the human race if his theories were correct, and if that did occur, he fervently wished to be wrong.

Skinner’s fertile mind had taken him far a field in his career. He was still working with his favorite test subjects and had used some of the principles of his work with them for his work with children. It all started in 1944 with his daughter. He noticed that his wife was spending too much time caring for the baby’s physical needs. He wanted to see if he could make her life easier as well as make a safer crib for his daughter.

So, he invented what resembled a hospital incubator. He was working at the University of Minnesota at the time. He put in a heater and other additions to a crib. These experimental features allowed his daughter to sleep in total comfort without the need of layers and layers of blankets. The trouble started when a writer for the Ladies Home Journal did an article on the crib and titled it “Baby in a Box.” During the interview, the photographer noticed that the baby had woken up and was looking at the assembled group. He took her picture. She had just woken up and was using the glass to get her balance. The photo made it look like she was trying to get out.[1]

Well, the crap hit the fan even though he and his wife explained that the special crib was just for sleeping. The fact that he had invented a “lever box” for rats and pigeons to test their behavior just made the situation worse.

The lever box was used to see if an animal’s behavior would alter by giving them rewards for doing the behavior you wanted to them to do. He didn’t go into the punishment side of behaviorism, as some of his colleagues had. He was all about rewards. When a test subject did the optimal behavior or even took a step in the right direction, it was rewarded with a piece of grain, some seeds, etc. He had used his theories to teach pigeons to play ping pong and…his mind wandered briefly to another use. But, he quickly turned away from thinking about what he considered a short-sighted failure of imagination by the people in charge. He never thought about that project for long, even though it lasted for a good year.

Time to move on. He was used to being misunderstood by people who…well, thought differently than he. Not better or worse, just different.


[1] - Psychology: Six Perspectives by Dodge Fernald pg. 170

 

[Hairog]

Jim was wandering around the University of Indiana’s campus asking questions about where he might find Dr. B.F. Skinner. None of the students he asked took him seriously. After all they were 18 or older and knew a 16 year old when they saw one. He was a high school kid at best and not worthy of a college student’s time.

Jim later recounted that “The students’ attitude was beyond frustrating to me. The last straw was when a big football player gave me a shove. I instinctively let fly with a punch that just glance off the big goon. His buddies were holding me down when the campus security came along and started marching me off campus.

Then, I saw a fellow who had to be Skinner about 100 feet away. The guy looked like I imagined from the grainy magazine article my uncle had clipped. I took a chance and shouted “Dr. Skinner!” The man actually quickened his pace, and that threw me into a panic. Just as Skinner was about to get out of earshot I shouted the title of the top secret report, “Project Pigeon!” at the top of my lungs. My outbreak startled the security guards. They were literally dragging me away when Dr. B.F. Skinner appeared out of nowhere and convinced the guards to let him talk to me.”

“I explained about my uncle, what I knew of his project, and his dying words written on the chalkboard. I went over how I was looking through his papers and totally dismissed “Project Pigeon” on first glance, and then how I put two and two together and came up with Skinner and his guidance system.

Skinner seemed unimpressed to say the least. He had taken a beating at the hands of the military when they had basically laughed in his face and showed him the door. His wife was listening to us at dinner and asked some very good questions. I think he was about to show me the door, as well, when she shot him a zinger. “Don’t you believe in your own research and conclusions about this Project Pigeon? Did you waste almost a year and a half on a fool’s errand?”

That stopped him in his tracks. He looked at her, got up from his chair walked over to her. Next, he picked her up and kissed her full on the lips for a long time. She was quite embarrassed, as was I. Then, he shouted, “Thank you my dear for putting it so elegantly and being so direct!”

He motioned me to the living room. We discussed how he was going to approach this dilemma and convince the Pentagon that they were more than wrong in rejecting his proposal. In addition, he had to convince them that the Soviets had gotten hold of his idea and were possibly using it to guide their missiles.

Skinner then asked me to go back and look over my uncle’s papers and see if there was anything that mentioned unusual material in the wreckage of any recovered bombers, etc. Something must have spurred my uncle’s memory about Project Pigeon. Possibly, it was dead pigeons or parts of pigeons or some such clue that got him thinking.

He said he was going to start contacting his old sources, once again, to try and get his foot in the door. The key, he kept repeating over and over again, was what had gotten my uncle to think of his project? What had awakened his memory of an obscure and rejected guidance system?

We both had our assignments. I went to bed, had a great sleep and an even better breakfast. I was on my way back to my uncle’s house by 7 o’clock in the morning. Skinner was on the phone calling in some favors as I was leaving. It was up to me to find the smoking gun. I had no idea if it was in my uncle’s house or if it was in his now re-occupied office. If what we were looking for was in his office, the game was probably over.

 

[Hairog]

Jim Crenshaw was lucky. The weather for this time of year was very mild and he had a great run back to the Washington, D.C. area on his motorbike. He parked his motorbike a few blocks away from his uncle’s house and started to walk. When he got to the house there was a for sale sign in the yard. His heart stopped and all hope drained until he looked in the window.

Everything was still there. Luckily, his father was lazy and nothing had been done with his uncle’s belongings. He found the hidden key and went inside. The power had been shut off. He found a flashlight and started to bring files down the basement. He wanted to go unnoticed.

The search of the voluminous records his uncle kept was daunting. He would spent days pouring over the files. He wasted the first few hours by looking at files dated before the war. Then, he remembered that what he was looking for had to have occurred after the war started. This fact greatly reduced his workload. He took a chance and just scanned the files instead of reading them carefully on the off chance that one would stand out. It didn’t.

On day two, he was almost caught when a realtor appeared at the door. He just made it to the basement as the agent started to walk around upstairs. He hid behind the furnace and waited. They guy didn’t take long and was gone in ten minutes. Luckily Jim was eating out and had not spending much time up stairs.

At the end of day three, he was getting discouraged. Nothing…absolutely nothing pointed towards what had triggered his uncle thinking about Skinner’s pigeons. Then he found it! It was in an obscure newsletter put out by The American Racing Pigeon Union. An article mentioned how a Soviet diplomat had become very interested in buying large numbers of pigeons of all varieties and was sending them back to the USSR at great expense. These shipments were made during 1944 and early 1945.

Stapled to the newsletter was a report dated July, 1946 by a colonel in the US Air Force. The report described recent losses by the Army Air Corps in its attempted raids for the months of May and June 1946 in Western Europe. It was a footnote that really caught his eye, and his uncle’s he was sure. It mentioned bird feathers and parts being found in three damaged bombers that had made it back to base. All three bombers had been survivors of missile strikes. Three in the course of 3 months of war was not a lot, unless you were looking for clues. The note suggested that the bombers in question must have hit birds sometime during their mission. “OR THE BIRDS HIT THEM!” Jim shouted to the furnace.

The Colonel’s name was Henderson, Miles Henderson. He called Skinner from a pay phone just down the street within ten minutes. He got Mrs. Skinner who promised to pass on the information. He was sure she would. He went back to the basement of his uncle’s house and went to sleep for the first time in days.

 

[Hairog]

Dr. Skinner hung up the phone and stared at his fingers. His wife had called him at his office in the university and passed on Jim Crenshaw’s news. Holy mackerel, he thought to himself the Red bastards are doing it. They have used my research to kill American and British bomber crews.

On one hand, he was proud that all his hard work had come to fruition. But, he was more than terrified at what the Soviets had done with his creation. He had never even considered using his pigeons on bombers. He had read in passing a few newspaper articles referring to the Reds use of the German SAM missile technology. Wasserfal was the German name for the ground to air missile.

Also, he had heard that the Soviets had modified another German super weapon, the X4 air-to-air missile. Skinner was sure his guidance system could be used for that missile as well.

The speeds of both missiles had to be incredible if they were based on the V2. The Germans must have figured out some kind of proximity fuse as well. He doubted his invention could maneuver that well at the speeds he was imagining. A fast fighter plane should be able to easily out turn a speeding bullet. Not, however, a whole formation of bombers.

He snapped out of his musing and knew what he had to do he had to get a hold of Colonel Miles Henderson. He needed to gather all the anecdotal stories and official reports on crash sites as well as bombers that survived missile attacks. He would call in all his markers and he had to do it very creatively and quietly.

First, he had to ask for personal leave. Luckily, the holidays were coming up and the new semester started late. He would over about 45 days to track down the reports and witnesses. Next, he needed to fabricate a hook so he could be seen as doing research for one of his projects.

How about “The Effects of Combat on the Behavior of Bomber Crews”? What better subject than that for the world’s leading behaviorist in time of war. He would be in a position to ask for all sorts of reports and papers on recent missions. His invented project would afford him the opportunity to track down Crenshaw’s theory. Also, the process of collecting the information could provide a segue to discussions about his guidance system and its possible use by the Reds.

He’d enlist Jim to assist and get him registered at the local high school. During Jim’s short stay his wife, Yvonne, had observed him keeping Shinner’s youngest daughter Debora from harm a number of times. Jim seemed to enjoy playing with their daughters. His wife even suggested that they ask Jim to stay and they would help get him through high school and possibly beyond. “He seems to be a very bright and committed young man. It would be a shame to send him out in the world without a good education.” Yvonne had said after Jim had left to go back to the Washington area.

He planned to ask Jim to come back and live with them. In addition to room, board and helping him with his education, Jim could assist with the research and be a live-in baby sitter. Skinner was sure Jim would excel, after all Skinner was an expert in human behavior.

 

[Hairog]

Dr. Skinner had been kept waiting by generals and admirals numerous times. This time he was particularly anxious due to the fact that every hour wasted, meant more American boys were dying. The unnecessary deaths didn’t seem to matter to these Pentagon types. Skinner had never been in the military but even he knew that there were two kinds of soldiers, the Fighters and the Clerks. He was always being kept waiting by the Clerks. The Fighters on the other hand always got to the point, and more importantly got the point. The guy he was waiting for had to be one of the Clerks.

Finally, an aide to the Admiral motioned him into the inner sanctum of the most senior Clerk he had been privy to. The admiral was huge, both in girth and height. The Clerk introduced himself as Admiral Reinhardt. He was in a spotless uniform. Unusually, for a Clerk, he got right down to business.

He had a low voice that Skinner was sure could still be heard for blocks. “I’m going to be blunt Mr. Skinner, I was the one who pulled the plug on your bird brained idea the first time. I personally thought at the time that your proposal of pigeon guided bombs was one of the most lame brain ideas I’ve ever encountered. When the project came across my desk I took one look at the initial proposal and immediately canned it. I never looked back.”

Skinner was about to explode on the man but the officious Clerk held up his hand and continued. “I have since seen the error of my ways. It seems my right hand man races pigeons. When he came across your memo proposing that the Reds were using your unorthodox guidance system he became very, persuasive. Over a period of a few days, he harangued me on the virtues of your bird’s brains. He cited chapter and verse of your paper along with others he brought to my attention, extolling the virtues of pigeons. He was certain that the Soviets had indeed taken the idea I rejected and created a “wonder weapon” that had stopped our bombers cold.”

“Quite frankly, he wore me out.” The admiral pointed to the officer standing near the door. “Captain Claiborne this is Dr. B.F. Skinner. Dr. Skinner this is Captain Claiborne.”

Captain Claiborne rushed forward and grabbed the Doctor’s hand. “I’m very pleased to meet you finally Dr. Skinner. Your idea is brilliant and the facts all point to the Soviets using your theories” His enthusiasm went on for a good five minutes before the Admiral had had enough. Skinner himself could not get a word in edgewise and was very glad that Captain Claiborne was on his side in this discussion.

After Admiral Reinhardt put an end to the Captain’s filibuster, he once again got to the point.

“I think you can see how the Captain eventually was able to get me to take a second look at your theory, that the Reds are using your idea to shoot down our bombers and more importantly to me, how they will probably use the system to damage and sink our navy. Please arrange a demonstration for Admiral King, within a week, to assist us in convincing him to take your idea seriously. Don’t worry Doctor, this time you will have expert assistance in exactly what you have to do in order to convince a jaded Admiral like me. Captain Claiborne will be attached to your side (and quite frankly away from mine) for the remainder of this project.

You will need to do two things. Present and then convince Admiral King of your theories and devise a way to counteract your own creation. Captain Claiborne here has assured me that this is a real and grave threat to any future and current naval operations. If the Commies are working on a guided missile that can outrange our guns and even planes we are in deep shit as you are fully aware.

For your information, we believe the Soviets’ have already tested shall we say…a guided missile, on one of our ships near Sicily. Many of us thought it was a random hit from a stray Soviet SAM, but in light of your theories, we now believe it was indeed a guided missile. A guided missile that was deliberately sent to sink a freighter loaded with 7000 troops on their way to Egypt. By sheer luck it went right through the ship and exploded after it exited the other side. 16 were killed, it should have been much worse. It would appear that the Reds have not perfected the warhead…yet, but according to witnesses on the freighter it came from over the horizon and headed unerringly for their ship…‘like it was being flown’ were the exact words of the Captain of the ship and several others.”

The missile flew so fast that very few saw it or heard it until after it hit the ship, very much like the descriptions of the V2 rockets. That’s probably why it went right through the ship without exploding. Just too damn fast.”

Skinner finally got an opportunity to talk. “Admiral, may I have a copy of all the reports and testimonies of the witnesses? I will need all the information I can gather if I am going to fulfill the second part of your mandate. I will need everything pertaining to this project and access to all who have seen the weapon in action.”

“Of course, Doctor. Once again, I do not regret the decision I made the first time I laid eyes on your project. In my opinion it was just too outlandish and too good to be true. I now admit that I was wrong and humbly ask for your help in ending this scourge of missiles. Give me a 16-inch naval shell the size of a small car and the smell of gunpowder over this guided bullet any day. That’s how a naval battle should be fought.”

Somehow, Dr. B.F. Skinner had a hard time picturing the Clerk getting anywhere near a 16-inch naval cannon or gunpowder, but left the room on a cordial note.

 

[Hairog]

Nebe was a product of war. It was all he knew for the last eight years. He lived in Sudetenland and had been under occupation by one enemy or another for eight of his sixteen years. He knew nothing else, but being ordered to do work here, or take your belongings and move here. All, seemingly at random.

He and his companions were Lalleri Gypsies and were considered by to be different than the Roma, and other ethnic groups that the Nazis rounded up and exterminated by the millions. In some people’s minds, Lalleri’s difference was good, and in others, it was bad.

For almost unexplainable reasons, the Nazis had let them roam almost freely throughout the war. Himmler exempted two tribes in 1942, and his was one. It seemed that Himmler considered them good gypsies, who had Germanic traditions and would spread those traditions throughout the areas they traveled to. As long as they didn’t intermarry, they were left alone. But, due to jealousy, and scarcity of food and shelter, the Lalleri stayed very mobile and moved quite often. https://d.docs.live.net/70a66518663298a7/WWIII/Boxed Set2.docx#_edn1

Their special status did not mean that they were totally left alone. They were the first to be commandeered for this or that public works project. Also, they were forced to work in all manner of factories during the war years, which ironically made them very valuable and talented. Their reputation and skills had gone so far as to reach the Soviet Union. At the end of the last war a detachment of NKVD troops had sought them out on orders of a mysterious man everyone called Sergo. Under Sergo’s orders, they were shipped by rail to St. Georgen in Austria that held the Bergkristall underground factory and concentration camp.[ii]

Everyone in his group thought the end was near. Two men from his group, of over a thousand, tried to flee and then fight back. They were not killed, however. They were just caught, punished, and put back in the group. It was understood that if they tried again, they would be killed.

When the group arrived at Bergkristall, they were met by a huge man everyone just called Georgie. Once Georgie looked at you, you did not attempt to run or cause trouble again. He didn’t even have to say anything. You knew from his gaze what would happen if you tried again. Bergkristall was where the Germans assembled the first combat jet, the Me 262.

At the end of World War Two, the Americans reached Bergkristall first, and looted all they could before the Soviets took over by a negotiated agreement after two weeks. Bergkristall was in the Soviets’ new territory as was Peenemunde, and most of the other secret Nazi weapons development sites. It turns out the Americans did not find the most important part of the complex. It was where Nebe had been sent to work along with his relatives and other tribe members.

The Lalleri Gypsies were to become the most valuable factory workers in the Soviet Union. Sergo knew this from his tests that everyone had to take. This group had scored off the charts in various and very valuable skill sets. Their spatial skills were like something no one had ever seen. To a person they had solved incredibly hard third dimensional puzzles that Sergo had designed himself. And, they had all solved them with ease.

In a world of brute strength and back breaking physical labor, these people were almost useless. In a world of science, they were worth their weight in gold. Sergo understood the extraordinary value of their skills and talents. His plan was to match them up with Alan Turing.


https://d.docs.live.net/70a66518663298a7/WWIII/Boxed Set2.docx#_ednref1 - Gypsies Under the Swastika By Donald Kenrick, Grattan Puxon

[ii] - St. Georgen - Gusen - Mauthausen: Concentration Camp Mauthausen Reconsidered By Rudolf A. Haunschmied, Jan-Ruth Mills, Siegi Witzany-Durda

 

[Hairog]

He was so bored he thought he was going to jump out the window. Luckily it was closed. His “teacher” was more like a professional circus performer past his peak. He strutted around extolling the virtues of Stalin, the Soviet system, and Communism for hours on end. His performance was always the same, as if repetition would make it better but it didn’t.

Hervé was being groomed for a high level position in the new French Communist Government once he graduated, but that was two long…long years in the future. Now, he had to memorize saying after Marxist saying and repeat them endlessly, so that they became second nature. Many of the bits of propaganda were so preposterous that it was very hard not to laugh even thinking about them much less perform them. He dreaded repeating the lines in front of the class, or god forbid the whole school on May Day, or some other ridiculous holiday. Oh merde, he thought about God and even used his name in a thought. He was back-sliding into the past.

His father was a committed Communist and a Marxist scholar. Father had joined the Resistance because of his beliefs. He was overjoyed when the Soviets had come to replace Capitalism with the only true governing system that would let the common man live, truly live without the oppression of the controlling elite.

Hervé tried to avoid the clichés even when he was thinking. Words like proletariat, bourgeoisie, Worker’s Paradise just seemed to fall flat and had no essence of what Communism was all about. He was a dedicated Marxist himself just not one who accepted the rhetoric of the current generation. Hervé’s generation would need more compelling rhetoric and not the repeated clichés his instructor was expounding upon now.

Oh merde, it was his turn to recite, and then repeat the cliché response to the quote! He stood up and pried from somewhere deep in his memory…

“Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included...Karl Marx.”

Oh, how he hated this quote and its response. His joy of joys, the love of his life, was considered by most to be ugly. Betty was so beautiful his heart ached thinking about her. But, to the society at large she was horrid. Her ample breasts, slightly protruding teeth, large lips, and those eyes that he could look into forever were most alluring to him. Others saw something quite different.

Except for her breasts, Betty was very thin and her legs were so out of fashion as to be jeered at by many. To him, her legs were divine. They were muscular with the calves almost as wide as the thighs and slightly protruding knees. He could look at them and her walking for hours. Her stomach was amazing with the six muscles that were below the rib cage fairly well defined. He had only seen these muscles on a few occasions when they had snuck away and explored each other’s bodies. She had very un-lady like shoulders that were also quite muscular. He adored them and her very long and shapely arms. But, the defining fact was that she was from Haiti and considered colored. In fact what he loved the most about her was her skin. Skin so black, you could see stars if you looked close enough. Interesting enough her hair was naturally straight and soft. Probably some slave owner raped one of her ancestors, but he preferred not to think about that.

Hervé especially liked Stalin’s version of Communism because he preached racial equality. Not many practiced it, but it kept others from attacking him and Betty when they were in public. Oh, it still happened in private when no one else could hear. Nègre was uttered under the breath of many a good Communist student when they thought they could get away with it. It hurt. It hurt both of them a lot. But, they had each other and a society that overtly condoned their love for each other, and it was love.

They had actually had many chances to make love, but had decided to wait until they were more mature. They really wanted to do what their bodies wanted. Nevertheless, their heads and hearts stopped them from consummating their physical desires for each other. His parents loved Betty and her family. The two groups had raucous dinners together. In fact that is how they had met, through their parents. His parents were French to the core and that was just fine with him.

Betty and Hervé were very excited about the coming summer. The Young Pioneers program had been imported to France from the Soviet Union. Technically they were part of the Soviet Union now, but everyone knew what was meant when that term was used. The program had proved wildly popular. So much so that sons and daughters of staunch Capitalist parents were sneaking out to meetings, to the Centers for comradeship, and all that the program had to offer. The Soviet troops were building meeting halls all over France and Germany and the youth were responding. The parents were having fits, but the authorities were on the side of the youth. Those in charge even went so far as to make the clubs mandatory in areas where attendance was low. From what Hervé had seen in his area, it was very popular.

Betty and he were going to be camp counselors this summer. First they would have to help build the camp, and then they would be on the staff. A beautiful area near their hometown had been acquired, much to the chagrin of a formerly rich family. The property had beautiful woods and a large lake. There was plenty of acreage for the camp to grow and offer a good variety of programs. It would be a summer made in heaven as far as Hervé was concerned. If he was a counselor, no one could whisper Nègre at Betty without repercussions of some sort. Repercussions he was happy to mete out. The camp gave them a chance to truly be alone.

Excitement was in the air tonight. The famous movie “Circus” was being shown at the Pioneer Center. https://d.docs.live.net/70a66518663298a7/WWIII/Boxed Set2.docx#_edn1 It had French subtitles and was about a white American woman who almost gets killed in a small town when she gives birth to a half Negro baby. It is supposed to be very well done and is a heart-wrenching story about the racial problems in America. He was going to proudly hold Betty’s hand and sit next to her. Maybe, he would even put his arm around her. He would have to see what she had to say about that though.

For now, he had to recite the entire justification memory the communist cliché he had just read. The recitation was really very boring even as he was doing the exercise and all eyes were on him. Normally he enjoyed the spotlight, but this was so mind numbing. As he slogged through it, he knew he was going to get good marks. The instructor was smiling away with each rote phrase come from somewhere in his young brain to the fore and translated into sounds others could understand. Some of the audience would never fully understand the meaning but they would understand each word.

Hervé was so good at memorizing and regurgitating meaningless phrases that his mind started to wander. He glanced at Betty who was sitting very properly but with a quite mischievous and exciting look on her beautiful face. Her outward show caused uncontrollable physiological change in his teenage body that he did not want to happen as he was standing in front of the class. She knew exactly what she was doing and he couldn’t take his eyes off of her.

Thank goodness the time to change classes arrived before his urges became totally obvious to all his classmates. He was able to make it to his seat before being discovered by all but Betty. He waited for everyone to leave the class and pretended to rearrange his books on his lap. Just as he got up to leave, Betty who had also been waiting for her turn to speak to him did the worst …or best thing he had ever experienced.

She made sure they were alone and reached over and gently brushed her hand over his crotch. He thought he was going to die but was in heaven. Then she bounced everything she had and walked out of the room to leave him alone in his agony. Oh she would pay he thought she would be so frustrated when he got done with her. He could hardly wait for tonight and this of course did not do his condition any good.


https://d.docs.live.net/70a66518663298a7/WWIII/Boxed Set2.docx#_ednref1 - Under the Sky of My Africa: Alexander Pushkin and Blackness edited by Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy, Nicole Svobodny, Ludmilla A. Trigos pg. 25

Circus - 1936 Soviet Film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circus_(1936_film)