The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [212]
Ferebee nodded, the others standing silently, still staring out to where the B-29 had erupted into fire. More of the crews gathered, and one of the others, the tail gunner, Caron, said, “Fuel ignited. Something had to bust up a fuel line, maybe in the wing. If the prop came off …”
Ferebee interrupted him.
“Nope. That kind of fire came from the bomb load. Incendiaries. I heard about the mission. It was just like last night. That’s mostly all they’re using now. General LeMay likes his bonfires.”
Tibbets didn’t like the talk, felt the gloom, the edginess spreading through all of them.
“Leave it be. That’s not us, and it’s not our problem. Those birds are old and beat to hell. We don’t have that problem. Remember that.”
In the darkness, another voice, familiar, the newest member of the crew to arrive on Tinian.
“That’s right. Don’t give it a second thought. As many hours as those planes have logged, it’s a wonder more of ’em don’t come apart. But we won’t have anything to worry about.”
Tibbets moved closer to the man, said, “Not now, Deak. Save it for the briefing.”
To the others, Tibbets knew it was one more hint of mystery, this new man arriving along with the C-54s that brought part of the special cargo that sat now under intensely heavy security nearby. Tibbets put his hand on the man’s shoulder, said, “My quarters. Let’s have a chat.”
They moved through darkness, away from the others, and Tibbets glanced out toward the guards, ever present, silhouetted against the lights from the distant runways. The sirens had grown quiet, little for any rescue worker to do, the wrecked B-29 likely no more than a pile of ash, along with its crew. The crashes were too common, and he knew that Ferebee was right, that the incendiary bombs meant that a plane’s failure, whether from a fuel leak or impact with the ground, could produce a spectacular disaster. The crashes were common during the day as well, but those were the return flights, the planes wounded by anti-aircraft fire, or more likely, mechanical failure. Some of those never made it at all, adding to the casualty counts of those flight crews lost at sea, or the fortunate, rescued by the navy’s flying boats or submarines. Some were more fortunate still, finding the landing strips on Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
He led the new man into the Quonset hut, to his own office, then past, to his quarters, where the pipe tobacco waited, along with a bottle of bourbon, a gift from General LeMay. The door was locked, and Tibbets pulled the key from his pocket, pulled it open, allowed the man to move inside, then closed the door behind both of them. Tibbets locked the door again, motioned to a small metal chair.
“Take a seat.”
Captain Deak Parsons had been involved with the Manhattan Project from its earliest days, and some had said he was more qualified than General Groves to run the entire affair. He had spent most of the past month at Los Alamos, had witnessed the test explosion of the first bomb, but his role on the primary mission was something brand-new. The bomb’s largest mechanism, the cannon that would drive the two pieces of the uranium together, the very act that would produce the atomic explosion, had to rely on the simplest of devices. The cannon was, after all, a cannon, and cannons were no more sophisticated than the explosive charges that made them fire a projectile, any projectile. Every artillery piece required a loader, even if that piece was centered inside the casing of the atomic bomb. Here the man who would load the cannon had been given the official title of Weaponeer and Ordnance Officer. Unlike the rest of Tibbets’s crew, the man chosen for this job was navy, a captain, William Parsons. Everyone who knew him well knew him as Deak. And those who knew the hierarchy of the crew assembled at Tinian knew that Parsons was also Commander of the Bomb. If there was any doubt what that meant, no one had asked.
Parsons was forty-four, older than Tibbets by nearly fifteen years, and was one of the first men involved with the Manhattan Project that Tibbets actually met face-to-face.