1945 Read Free

teeming with Russian POWs, the blood-spattered basements of Gestapo headquarters, and, still only whispered about, a nightmare called "the Final Solution." Let him spend a few years out of the way, fixed so he can learn to keep his mouth shut good and proper, the thinking had gone. And so had come the posting to Berlin. To Jim's way of thinking, the worst part of it was that he couldn't keep up with the details of cutting-edge research in the USA. On the other hand there was some pretty damned cutting-edge stuff going on right here in—
    As the last SS battalion passed by, Jim was pulled from his reverie by a sudden high-pitched whine that quickly rose in volume to a wailing shriek as a group of Me-262 jet fighters grouped in the shape of a swastika came roaring in, their shadows racing them down the boulevard. Mason, who was also a pilot, looked up at them with hostile envy. Jim shared Mason's envy, but was more phlegmatic about it, perhaps because he knew the plane fairly well.
    Behind the 262s came a formation of less familiar shapes, and Jim abandoned his camera for his binoculars to get a closer look. He hoped his companion, who was snapping away, was doing his job right. The Germans were building three carriers, and American intelligence was still trying to figure out which planes would be adopted for seaborne operations.
    As he watched, the flight of Arado 234 twin-engine jet bombers swept by, breaking from their swastika formation to climb almost vertically up through the scattering of clouds. Compared to the 262s, they did not seem all that agile, but as torpedo attack planes they would be formidable, far different from the lumbering Avengers the Americans had flown during three years of combat in the Pacific.
    Jim still kept as a souvenir a picture of a young American pilot, Lieutenant George Bush, standing on the wing of a splashed Avenger. He'd flown cover for the kid while he waited for rescue. Martel smiled as he thought about him. He had been one of the youngest flight leaders in the fleet, but by God if you needed someone to lead a group straight into enemy flak like they were on rails, he was your man.
    After the 234s came the twin-engine Me-510s, prop-driven ground-attack bombers, their fifty-millimeter antitank guns looking like long ugly stingers slung under the nose. Either plane would be well suited for carrier-based operations, but the Germans were keeping that part of their hand close to the chest; none of the planes flown today had the necessary arresting gear for carrier landings.
    "Here come their new heavies," Mason yelled as he pointed back up the street. Martel swung his binoculars around. Below, the crowd broke into wild yet inaudible cheers as a flight of Me-264 heavy bombers thundered overhead at rooftop level. Wait. . . this was a variant on what he'd expected. Longer... and the wings—were they larger too? There had been rumors of a new "stretched" 264E. Clearly this was it.
    For the final two years of the war England had slowly increased the pressure of night bombing with their fleets of Lancasters. Though the destruction had never seriously hindered the German war effort, Hitler had not been amused—and Göring had sworn to his Führer that never again would Germany lack the means to retaliate in kind. Next time, Jim thought sourly, both sides could dedicate massive portions of their industrial capacity to the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians.
    This Me-264 variant was massive, even bigger than the American B-29s they rather resembled with their glassed-over forward canopies. Unlike the American plane, however, these were a curious mix of prop and jet: four BMW 901G radial engines and two Jumo 004 turbojets. Mason was again busy with his sixteen-millimeter camera. Like any hunter, he had focused in on a single member of the herd and was clicking away.
    Though fully briefed on the standard-version specs, Martel watched in silent awe as the fast and deadly behemoths passed overhead.