The Romanov succession

“No trouble at all. Always bothers the taxpayer in me when we have to ferry those big jobs empty-seems like a hell of a waste of aviation gasoline.”

Johnson was a stocky man with blunt hands and short reddish hair and a square freckled face. He couldn’t have been much over thirty: “Pappy.” At thirty-four Alex felt old.

Johnson drove as if pursued, flashing along the narrow roads of the New Jersey pine barrens. It was hot under the sullen sky and they kept the windows wide open; Johnson shouted to make himself heard. “They got you aboard damn quick down at El Paso. You mind if I ask where you get your drag?”

“The base commander at Bliss is an old friend. We soldiered together in Finland.”

A sudden sidewise glance; Johnson’s face changed. “Danilov-sure. They had a piece on you in Colliers last year, right? ‘This man goes where the wars are’-something like that. Joined up over here to train ranger commandoes, wasn’t that it? Listen, you’ve seen those German planes in action. How do they really stack up?”

“They’re not as good as Goering and Goebbels want us to think. The Spitfires have been handing it to the Messerschmitts.”

“Weren’t you in China?”

Johnson’s professionalism was total: it was a characteristic of good airmen. Anticipating the question Alex said, “There isn’t a plane in the world that can match the Japanese Zero.”

“I’ll tell you something, Colonel, you give me a B-Seventeen Fort and I’ll take my chances against those peashooters. You ever seen a Fort up close?”

“No.”

“Sweetest airplane a man ever built. We had a flight of prototypes for tryouts last year. You think we’ll be in this war, Colonel? I don’t think it’s going to be decided by Messerschmitts or Zeroes or anybody else’s peashooters. I think it’s going to be dogfaces and carriers and long-range four-engine bombers. That’s the three things that will decide it-the rest is all window dressing. It takes carriers to open the sea-lanes. It takes heavy bombers to flatten the enemy’s communications and supply lines. Takes the infantry to root him out and finish him. That’s the whole story of this war we’re looking at.”

Johnson had the earmarks of a long-distance talker but Alex listened with respect because the pilot was a shrewd man and obviously it was a thing to which he’d given a great deal of thought.

Alex said, “I’d add one thing to that list. I’ve seen panzers in action.”

“I don’t agree. That’s only tactics. You can stop a tank easy if you’re ready for it. They’re sitting ducks. Too many ways you can hit a tank. Let me tell you something-I put my squadron through a little experiment last year. We mocked up twenty tanks on the ground out at Camp Hunter-Liggett in the Mohave Desert and then we took off. We made a regular war game out of it-phony flak, the works.

“We plastered hell out of them. On the scorecard it was Air Corps fifteen, Armor nothing.” Johnson flashed a glance at him. “Low-level precision bombing, Colonel. You’re right on top of your target-hell you can’t miss if your bombardiers know their jobs. You know how good a target a big fat tank makes from fifty feet altitude?”

“What if they’d been real tanks-taking evasive action?”

“Tanks can’t maneuver that fast. They turn like bull elephants-catch them on rough terrain even the best panther tank can’t make better than fifteen, eighteen miles an hour. They’re sitting ducks. But the War Department gave me that same line. Christ I felt like Billy Mitchell. They told me to take my ideas and shove them. Well I guess that’s all right-when the time comes maybe I can talk them into taking out that report of mine and dusting it off. We’re not into the war yet, a lot of things are likely to change.”

Johnson guided the Ford smoothly through the main street of a small town. On the outskirts he put it back up to fifty and went swaying through the bends. Light rain began to bead up on the windshield. Alex said, “You can really pinpoint a target as small as a tank, can you?”

“It takes training, Colonel. I never said it was easy. But one of these days it’s going to help win this war.”

6

The train was jammed; he had to stand. It was a commuter express with stops at Princeton Junction and New Brunswick and Newark; filled with businessmen in black fedoras and wide snap-brims. There were soldiers on furlough and vacationing college students in ribboned bonnets and white shoes, giggling their way to New York where you could drink liquor at eighteen. The placards advertised Rupert’s Beer and the Radio City Music Hall feature, Gary Cooper in Sergeant York. Ivory Soap was 99.44/100ths% pure and Lucky Strike meant fine tobacco and the 1941 Lincoln Zephyr was the fine car for everyman. On the commuters’ newspapers the headlines bannered F.D.R. TO NATIONALIZE PHILIPPINE ARMY-Moves in Response to Jap Occupation of Indo-China. Mac-Arthur to Command.