Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [207]
Mid-February, 1948
Colonel Igor Karlovy went into Potsdam to a mansion hidden in the woods. The assembled were V. V. Azov, Russian Commandant Nikolai Trepovitch, Marshal Alexei Popov, an Air Force Intelligence colonel from Moscow, a colonel general attached to Stalin, a party member of the Politburo, and a top official of the NKVD. Last, the mysterious emissary, Captain Brusilov.
Igor had committed nothing to paper as he addressed this powerful group.
“Attempts at major air transport of supplies have usually fallen short.” He outlined the attempt to supply Leningrad by air, a situation he knew intimately. It was a primitive operation and a failure.
“In the spring of 1944, Imphal in the state of Manipur in the India-Burma area was supplied from the air by the American Troop Carrier Command to the extent of twenty thousand tons. It is estimated that a combined force of fifty thousand British and Indian troops were sustained for three months. Also, the Luftwaffe backed up the parachute landings on Crete with an air-supply operation. However, these two cases are of a military tactical nature for an immediate objective.
“In the large picture, the German attempt to air-supply Stalingrad ended in fiasco. All they needed, logistically speaking, was three hundred tons of material a day.
“History shows one great air-supply operation which succeeded was by the Americans, again in the India-China Theater. From the Assam Valley, the Bengal Valley, and the Calcutta area their transports flew over the Himalayan Mountains landing in some nine airfields in China in the Chengtu and Kunming areas. They called it jumping the Hump, or some such. This operation, which lasted from the end of 1942 to the end of 1945, achieved notable results with a major cargo of oil and petroleum.”
Igor went into great detail showing that the Hump deposited as much as sixty-five thousand tons of material a month in China which called for brilliant operational and logistical support, skillful and courageous flying.
“However,” he concluded, “this operation does not parallel the problems of supplying a city the size of Western Berlin and its two million civilians.”
The main cargo, Igor rationalized, would have to be coal and no one knows how to fly coal. In the Hump they had nine fields to land on and innumerable choices of routes. Flying the corridor would call for a precision never achieved in aviation history and there was only Tempelhof in Berlin to land on.
A member of the Moscow group spoke. “Comrade Colonel. Is it your opinion it cannot be done?”
“On a purely mathematical basis one would have to say the Americans and British have sufficient equipment, crews, economic reserve, and skills. In theory, mathematical theory, it is possible.”
“Then, Comrade Colonel, it is your opinion they can succeed?”
“Only in theory. There are too many imponderables. I can present you with the mathematical figures and then those things which detract from the figures.”
“Such as?”
“A calculation must be made of American public reaction and determination to go through with such an operation.”
“Determinations of this sort will be made by our political experts,” V. V. Azov said testily, trying to return Igor to the statistical end of the business.
Igor would not be stampeded by the commissar. “You must calculate if the Americans are willing to commit their global air transport power, MATS, into a single operation.”
Marshal Popov, from earlier meetings, knew this was a key question. Would the Americans dare make themselves vulnerable elsewhere?
“The entire strength of the United States,” Igor continued, “must be put behind this effort. As for the British, they may be able to deliver a quarter of the tonnage. They are short of crews, craft, and in a weak economic position. France? They will give speeches about French national honor, but can make no contribution.”
Trepovitch laughed. He had received his fill of lectures on the glory of France from Colonel Jacques Belfort.
Igor got down