The Romanov Succession by Brian Garfield

Author:Brian Garfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Head of Zeus Ltd

After formation he retired to the partitioned office with Spaight and Pappy Johnson. Spaight said, “How long have I got?”

“Seven weeks starting Monday.”

“Jesus H. Christ on a crutch.”

“If you can’t do it you’d better say so. Right now.”

Spaight dragged the back of his hand across his mouth. Then he looked up. “God damn it the hell if I can’t.”

Pappy Johnson said, “Man I’m still trying to get my breath.”

“Get it fast,” Alex told him. “You’re going to be in the air fourteen hours a day.”

“Shee-yit.” Johnson was leaning against the sill on both hands. After a moment he gathered himself and turned about. “I got two problems right off, Skipper.”

“Name them.”

“First thing, I don’t speak but two words of Russian. No, three. Da, nyet and tovarich. ”

“And your accent’s atrocious,” Spaight remarked drily.

“How’m I supposed to train fifteen Russian pilots?”

Spaight said, “They’ve been attached to the Royal Air Force for a year and before that nearly all of them were flying combat in China or Spain. English is the international pilots’ language. You won’t have trouble with that.”

Pappy absorbed that. “The other thing ain’t so easy.” He turned to Alex. “Ain’t enough high-octane around here to taxi those Forts once around the ballroom. How can I teach them anything if I can’t get them off the ground?”

“You’ll have gasoline by the beginning of the week. In the meantime you’ll have your hands full setting up a ground school. Only five of them have ever flown bombers.”

“Five’s a lot better than none. One more thing then. Where’m I going to find grease monkeys who’ve laid eyes on a B-Seventeen?”

“Colonel Buckner has three ground-crew chiefs on the way here from Boeing. They should arrive tomorrow. Any more problems?”

“Is there anything you forgot to take care of?”

“We’ll spend the next seven weeks finding that out.”

“Well here’s one for starters. You’ve given me pilots but what about navigators and bombardiers, gunners, all that stuff? A Flying Fortress takes a combat crew of ten, Skipper.”

“We’ll wash at least thirty of the ground troops out of training thirty days ahead of D-day. You’ll have those thirty days to make air gunners out of them. I know it’s not enough time but do what you can. We’ll have Red Air Force markings on the planes and the plan doesn’t include shooting our way in. You might run into a stray Luftwaffe plane but I doubt it.”

“Fair enough. But—”

“As for navigators and bombardiers you’ve got a pool of fifteen experienced fliers to draw from and you’ve only got six airplanes. Three bombers, three transports that don’t need bombardiers. Your copilots will have to double as navigators but their problems won’t be acute—it’s a simple flight plan once it’s in motion. If the weather’s bad we won’t go in anyway, we’ve got to have optimum weather for the mission. Six pilots, six copilots—that leaves you three spare pilots. They’ll be your bombardiers. Next question?”

“No. But if you’re fixing to take over the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics with three B-Seventeen bombers and sixty-eight ground troops then you have got the balls of a brass gorilla.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.