Armageddon (79 page)

“Sir, we’ve picked up two planes from Gatow.”

“What altitude?”

“Six thousand feet. They’re drifting into the Rhein/Main stream.”

The officer took the microphone. “Tempelhof to all Big Easy craft. Raise your altitude one thousand feet.” Hiram Stonebraker detected the anxiety in the transmission.

In Tempelhof a call to Gatow confirmed that a bloc of British Yorks had stacked for landings and two of the craft had been blown out of their holding pattern toward Tempelhof.

The ground-controlled approach system was given an auspicious inauguration as the first three craft were “talked down” through the blinding storm.

Ground-controlled approach talked to Big Easy Four and started to lower him over Berlin in a large square pattern. Scott knew a relatively inexperienced pilot was at the yoke of Four.

When he missed his approach and was started around again it caused a chain reaction. As the Rhein/Main bloc bit the Planter Beacon they had to hastily climb into holding patterns.

Scott took his ship up to twelve thousand feet over the beacon and the crew broke out oxygen masks. The planes in back of him were forced to climb up to twenty thousand. It was like taking a long train of railroad cars and suddenly stacking them skyward, end to end. Scott looked out of the corner of his eye as the general’s anger grew.

As the planes stacked higher the chatter over the radio became greater, breaking down the rigid discipline needed. In the radar shack, a new emergency arose as Big Easy Twenty-nine drifted clear out of the corridor.

The bloc was now like a tall column of cyclone-blown planes moving in a vicious circle. Across town the British were having the same trouble over Gatow.

Ground-controlled approach tried to nurse Big Easy Four down a second time but the inexperienced pilot missed his second approach by coming down the runway too fast.

The planes pushed up higher. A bloc would be following from Wiesbaden soon and breathing down their necks to make the situation impossible. Another plane from Gatow drifted toward Tempelhof. Communications collapsed.

Hiram Stonebraker knew that they would not be able to prevent a mid-air collision or a crash much longer.

“That’s enough of this crap for one day,” he mumbled. He picked up the microphone. “Clear the air! This is General Stonebraker in Big Easy Fifteen! This is a direct order! All craft will be diverted to their home bases immediately! Suggest the same procedure to Gatow.”

A shattering silence followed. Their hearts sank as Tempelhof dispatched them one by one back to the zone.

Igor Karlovy had arrived early at the Berlin Air Safety Center so he could follow the progress of the day when he learned of the bad weather. He monitored the American and British confusion, and heard them sent home in defeat He smiled inwardly as his prediction came to pass.

Chapter Nineteen

C
LINT WAS SO WORRIED
that the general would have a seizure on the return trip that he forgot how rough the flight was. But the general was amazingly calm. The worst had happened. While the young hands floundered, his years of experience averted a crash. On the return to Rhein/Main he sat at Nick’s seat with a pad and pencil searching for an illusive bit of magic.

Clint Loveless was down as he had never been down. He hardly heard Judy’s cry for joy when he returned to the hotel. As luck, or someone else’s misfortune had it, an Army colonel from Camp Perry had broken with his wife and their house became available. Judy had seen it. It was a lovely six-room place on Gustav Freytag Strasse in a beautiful area where most of the American families lived in requisitioned houses.

What she did not know was that Hiram Stonebraker had threatened the housing procurement officer’s life if he failed to find a place for the Loveless family.

“What the hell’s the difference,” Clint said sourly, “we’ll probably be going back to the States soon. The Lift was finished today.”

“Oh, Clint ... I’m so sorry. The general?”

“He still refuses to believe it.”

A mantle of gloom fell on Airlift Headquarters as the Tonnage Board in the Control Center read
ZERO
for the second straight day as the weather closed Berlin down.

Hiram Stonebraker stayed in his suite and studied. The Lift in basic form was two one-way streets into Berlin, the North and South corridors. A single one-way street, the Central corridor, was used to leave Berlin.

Similar makes of aircraft flew in bloc times at the same speed and staggered altitudes of five hundred feet. Precision flying in the narrow air lanes through absolute power settings had become a science. It all narrowed down to a single bottleneck—the air over Berlin.

The ground-controlled approach system had put down the first three planes of the bloc cleanly. When Big Easy Four made two missed approaches it caused the rest of the bloc behind him to stack ... and then the breakdown in communications, radar control, holding patterns. The key lay somewhere in the behavior of Big Easy Four.

What was it? What was it? What was it?

M.J. broke up Hiram’s two-day meditation. There was to be a cocktail party and dinner to honor the arrival of his British counterpart, Air Commodore Rodman, for the formal signing of the joint Bases Agreement at Celle and Fassberg. He sent his chief of staff to meet the Commodore and his party at Y 80 and took him to the Schwarzer Bock Hotel.

Stonebraker stopped by at Rodman’s suite later and apologized for not meeting him earlier.

Rodman understood. “Bloody nuisance, this weather,” he said in the understatement of the year.

On the main floor of the Schwarzer Bock was a room rebuilt intact from a fifteenth-century castle. The general’s cocktail parties were held here, and on such occasions he baffled his staff by making a lie of the terrible stories about him. He was the epitome of charm to the ladies and his British guests.

Over cocktails:

Judy Loveless gushed with joy over the new house. M J. would be happy to go hunting for household wares.

Jo Ann Sindlinger, wife of the chief of staff, a tall, gravel-throated, happy Texan, gave Judy the word on where she might obtain a German maid. “They work for little more than room and board, you know.”

Clint and Group Commander Dudley speculated about the Burtonwood Base. Clint didn’t think that the base would be able to handle more than five craft a day on the two-hundred-hour overhaul.

Chief of Staff Sindlinger and Group Captain Cady were pleased with the way American/ British cooperation was shaping up.

Sid Swing, the logistics chief, talked to Lieutenant Colonel Mendoza, the maintenance chief, and Ben Scudder, the chief communicator, about changing the VHF crystals at Erding and they told Squadron Leader Nevins they wanted to study the British Eureka/Rebecca radar systems more closely.

Sid’s wife, Mary, was flirting with a British officer, as usual.

Ann Mendoza and Sue Scudder complained about the overcrowding at the high school.

Lou Edmonds told Chief Pilot Matt Beck the weather might clear.

Sarah Beck told Betty Edmonds there was a crystal factory at Neu-Isenburg that cut glass to your own pattern, was dirt cheap, and they made a date to drive over.

Air Commodore Rodman said he had landed a twenty-two pound salmon in Scotland on twelve-pound line. Hiram reckoned that the best battle, pound for pound, was with the Chinook salmon and invited the Commodore to come to Malibu some day when the albacore were running.

Dinner was served. As the first course arrived, Hiram Stonebraker stood up suddenly. “Commodore. Would you ask your people to adjourn immediately to the next room?”

The Englishman looked baffled.

“Ladies, will you excuse us?” Hiram said. “Gentlemen, please.”

Those who knew Hiram Stonebraker were not surprised at the sudden conference call. He shut the door, then had a tablecloth pinned on the wall. “Gentlemen. I have just solved the way to end the stacks over Berlin.”

They were all stunned.

He drew a diagram of the flow of the air bridge: planes following each other at three-minute intervals to the Planter Beacon on the first approach leg at Tempelhof.

“Here is the new difference. There will be no more stacking in case of weather. If a plane misses his approach or for any reason cannot land he is to return to his home base in the Center corridor and come back in the next bloc.”

If Big Easy Four had been sent back after his first attempt during the fiasco, there would have been no stack over Berlin!

It was so utterly simple, but so utterly perfect!

“We will not only fly to Berlin in three-minute intervals, we will land in three-minute intervals. The rhythm will not be broken by a missed approach. The craft will return to base and the beat ... beat ... beat will continue behind him.”

For a moment no one moved, scarcely breathed.

“He’s got it,” sputtered Air Commodore Rodman.

“Why in the hell didn’t we think of this earlier?” Stonebraker admonished himself. “Well ... let’s return to the ladies.”

Born from the fiasco of Blue Monday and Black Tuesday, Hiram Stonebraker had found the magic key to convert disaster into victory.

TO ALL AIRLIFT STATIONS: IN CASE OF MISSED APPROACH, AIRCRAFT IS TO BE DIVERTED TO HOME BASE THROUGH CENTER CORRIDOR AND RETURNED ON NEXT BLOC. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES WILL AIRCRAFT BE ALLOWED TO STACK. STONEBRAKER.

For the first time in the history of aviation the ancient ritual of stacking and holding patterns was eliminated and there was the feeling for the first time that the Airlift could succeed.

In a matter of days the tonnage rose from three thousand to thirty-five hundred tons ... to four thousand tons ... and then the daily goal of forty-five hundred tons was reached. It was reached on a stormy day during which ground-controlled approach talked down 80 per cent of the flights.

The joint British and American bases at Fassberg and Celle went into operation with the arrival of more Skymasters. The daily tonnage went over five thousand! The inevitable merger of forces came into being. As in war, the old Allies combined in peace with Hiram Stonebraker commander and Air Commodore Rodman vice commander of
COMBINED AIRLIFT TASK FORCE
.

The air bridge roared on day and night, and now the beat ... beat ... beat ... was that of a giant metronome, and with each beat another ten tons was transfused into the city of Berlin.

The engineers and the Berliners labored in a fury to complete the third airfield at Tegel. Day ... night ... day .. . night ... beat ... beat ... beat... ten tons ... ten tons ... ten tons.

Although the miracle had come within grasp for the first time, the greatest single challenge still lay ahead, for soon they would face that long time ally of the Russians ... General winter.

Chapter Twenty

“H
OW THE DEVIL DID
you get here?” Sean asked.

“Lil Blessing drove me over,” Ernestine said. “Well ... do you ask me in?”

Sean held the door of his flat open, awkwardly.

“So this is your sanctum.” It was a lovely flat, of course. The occupation forces took the best. “Well, aren’t you glad to see me?”

“I wasn’t prepared for an invasion.”

“Look,” she said, reaching into a shopping bag like those carried by all Berlin women. She produced two steaks.

“Where the hell did you get those?”

“Black market.”

“You, in particular, with your uncle’s name should never go to the black market,” he lectured.

“Oh, stop it, Sean. Lil Blessing gave them to me. She said I could find my way to your heart with these, but you don’t have one.”

“Ernestine Falkenstein, look at me. I said, look at me. Are you tipsy?”

“Poo-poo-poo.”

“You’ve been drinking.”

“Poo-poo-poo. Just enough to have the courage to storm into your fortress.”

Sean knew he must relent or he would have a bawling female on his hands. “Okay, there’s the kitchen. Get busy. I’m starved.”

Ernestine heaved a sigh of dismay. “Oh dear, I thought you would say that. Oh Sean, I studied so hard to be a lawyer I just never learned to cook. I’ll just ruin the steaks and you’ll never see me again.”

“Well now, didn’t you and your great friend Lil Blessing prepare for such a contingency?”

“You might just offer me a drink, you know.”

He found the mildest liquor in the cabinet, sherry. She sipped, breathed contentedly, set the glass down. “I made reservations for us at Humperdink’s. It is a fine restaurant, even though it happens to be in the Russian Sector. Uncle and I eat there often. Franz said he would personally attend to the steaks.”

“You’ve got yourself a date. Stay away from the booze and I’ll make myself dashing.”

As he left the room, Ernestine walked to his desk and looked at the pictures of his brothers and his father.

Humperdink’s, about the only building on Gernerstrasse not flattened, was a large house converted into one big room broken into paneled booths. The walls and crannies held boar and stag heads, beer mugs from the Middle Ages, Dresden figurines, and tapestries.

Lothar, an elderly blind man, played the zither at the entrance of the candlelit room. Actually his name was not Lothar, nor was he blind. As a former SS officer, the disguise proved excellent to keep him out of the hands of the justice seekers.

“Herr Oberst,” Franz said bowing profusely again and again. “An honor, sir.”

He took the steaks, swore to do them justice, escorted the two to a choice booth already enhanced with the presence of a bottle of chilled champagne. The room was warm and sentimental. Ernestine sipped, then sang to the zither melody. Sean, she thought to herself, have you grown tired of me before you even let yourself know me? Oh, you lion among men. It was growing painful now and she knew she could not show him. She longed to say,
“Ich liebe dich.”

“What are you thinking about?” he asked.

“Nothing in particular.”

Franz ushered three German couples to a large table in the center of the floor. She recognized her brother Gerd among them.