At Lindsey Air Station in Wiesbaden, which hosted the headquarters of the USAF in Europe, Lieutenant General Gus Moon closed his office door before unlocking the pouch that had arrived on the overnight flight from Washington DC. Standing, he riffled idly through the contents while trying to dislodge a stubborn fragment of breakfast bacon from between two molars with his tongue. Boring . . . boring . . . semi-boring . . . aha! A document with the Defense Intelligence Agency’s blue seal caught his eye. He picked it up and sat down at his desk. Its Top Secret heading was followed by the code word CORAM, meaning information that must on no account be seen by a NATO ally. That was fine by him. Had it been left to Gus Moon he would have shared as little as possible with most of them.
He noted that the original document had been forwarded from Headquarters Command, USAF, where it had been copied to just two other names besides his own. Both were high-ranking colleagues and one, General Hubert T. Buchinger, was a personal friend. Moon read on:
DIA agents in the United Kingdom report RAF Bomber Command may be in possession of (i) a new radar system, and (ii) a new bomb guidance system. Both are subject to UK level 3 security and probably of near-deployment status. If true, this suggests development has taken place unilaterally, care having been taken expressly to shield these projects from US eyes. The Director suggests discreet, repeat discreet, enquiries be made of Strategic Air Command base commanders at both RAF Mildenhall in England and Offutt, Nebraska to ascertain whether any information about the existence of these alleged new systems has yet been divulged by their British counterparts. An affirmative answer would also confirm the reliability of DIA sources.
The Agency notes there were rumors within SAC after Exercise Skyshield II in 1961 that the success of the RAF’s Vulcan contingent was due to their employing a radar technique or ECM advantage to which SAC was not made privy. This has since been discounted as a face-saving device on the part of NORAD. In our opinion these latest intelligence reports may simply be a ‘Chinese whispers’ resurgence of this old rumor. It may now have been embellished to include an alleged new British bomb guidance system that could rival or even exceed our own Paveways that are nearly ready for deployment.
All the same, in view of these reports and the great urgency of deploying the best available battlefield technology in South East Asia, the Agency respectfully suggests the Air Force take steps to ascertain the reports’ validity. This might conceivably be achieved by means of joint USAF/RAF exercises.
‘Well, well,’ said Gus Moon as he laid the document down. The DIA quite often got its facts right. The idea that the British might be pulling a shitty surprised him, but not very much. In his career he had made good friends with several RAF types, some of whom were now high-ranking officers. There might well be matters of national pride at stake here. Britain’s V-bomber force was a perfect example of the store the Limeys set by doing things their own way with their own equipment. Moon didn’t doubt that if they really were working on something new they would share it with the USAF as soon as it was ready.
At this moment his aide, Captain Polick, came in to give him the good news that his meeting at 11:00 with the French general had been cancelled on account of the general’s ill-health.
‘Great,’ said Moon. ‘With any luck he won’t recover and I shall never again have to listen to him passing on complaints from that pain-in-the-ass de Gaulle. The Frogs are going to pull out of NATO anyway, and the sooner the better.’
The last time they met, the French general had had the nerve to wag a warning finger about Dien Bien Phu and what he called ‘Indochine’ generally. ‘You watch out,’ he’d said. ‘That General Giap’s a military genius.’ Moon had been hard put not to retort that the yellow fellow might well be a genius, but he’d been facing the fucking French Foreign Legion, or whatever it was, and not the combined military might of the United States. A very different ball game, monsieur.
It was no secret that his assignment to USAFE was getting Moon down. Despite not having flown an aircraft in eleven years he still thought of himself as basically a stick-and-rudder man. Yet this command required him to be more of a diplomat than anything else, and it severely tested him almost daily. There were times when NATO seemed less a partnership of allies and more a rabble of warring tribes. Despite the imminent threat of mutually assured destruction in the northern hemisphere and an increasingly bloody communist insurgency in Southeast Asia, some of America’s so-called allies seemed to be more focused on endless squabbling, especially about their equipment. Tomorrow, for instance, he would be having yet another meeting with the Germans about their F-104 Starfighters. The aircraft had already earned itself the newspaper nickname of ‘Widowmaker’; but whose fault was that, given how much extra avionics gear the Krauts had insisted on stuffing into them? No surprise the damn things were overweight and fell out of the sky. In that case the Dutch would soon come calling to complain that their own F-104s were inferior because their avionics weren’t as advanced as the Germans’. And finally the Italians would bellyache that they’d heard the Dutch aircraft were getting an upgrade that would leave the Italians’ own Starfighters as the weak link in the southern chain. The widespread rumors that Lockheed had only been able to sell the aircraft by means of widespread bribery didn’t help, either.
Still worrying at his shred of bacon, Gus Moon sighed and reached for a cable slip.
TO: GEN BUCHINGER/USAF HQ CMD JBAB 12/3/64. YOUR DIA COMM OF 12/2/64 NOTED. REMEMBER RAF HAS VULCAN SERVICING FACILITY AT OFFUTT SO EASY TO CHECK IF SYSTEMS ALREADY DEPLOYED. SURELY IF ALREADY IN GENERAL USE WE WD KNOW? SUGGEST I GET JOHNNY PIERCE TO INVITE RAF TO RADAR/BOMB COMP ASAP STRESSING NEED FOR BEST AVAILABLE FIT. CONFIRM AUTHORIZED SOONEST. VAE VICTIS MOON.
He had Captain Polick take this down to signals and find him some toothpicks. Wiesbaden was five hours ahead of Washington DC so he wouldn’t be hearing from Hubie until after lunch at the earliest. Meanwhile the rest of his mail was waiting. He worked his way through the usual dispiriting news in the form of yesterday’s cables and reports from South Vietnam. It was clear to Gus the war would have to escalate massively. The air force was already building up its forces in Tan Son Nhut and Bien Hoa, and sooner or later McNamara would surely authorise fighters and bombers to strike north of the 17th parallel. At which point they’d come into the sights of the SAM batteries the Viet Cong had got from the Russians. Gus knew what that would mean. Back home public attitudes about the war might be overwhelmingly supportive, but he had a premonition he knew was shared by some of his colleagues that things might not be so easy. He vividly remembered his own days as an air force base commander in Korea and the hell that was unleashed on his pilots who crossed the Yalu River. Technology had improved a lot in the last fifteen years, and not just on the American side. All the more reason to ensure that if the British ECM and bomb guidance really was superior, their secrets should be shared without delay.
At 14:30 his aide brought him a flimsy envelope. Inside was a message from Hubie Buchinger:
TO: LT. GEN. A. MOON/USAFE HQ LDY 12/3/64. AUTHORIZATION CONFIRMED FOR PIERCE INVITATION RAF BOMBER CMD RADAR/BOMB COMP SOONEST. VAE VICTIS HUBIE
Colonel Pierce and Gus Moon went back a long way – to World War II, in fact, when Johnny Pierce had been Gus’s wingman flying P-51 Mustangs with the 8th Air Force out of southern England. Now, many years on, Pierce was commander at Wheelus Field in Libya. This was rapidly turning into the biggest American air base outside the United States, its importance increasing daily as pilots posted to Vietnam stopped on the way for intensive practice of low-level strikes on the Al Watia and Al Usara bombing ranges. When they had last met Johnny told him they had just built the most accurate possible replica of a Soviet Guideline radar installation out in the desert and this, too, would be used for pilots staging out to Vietnam. It would be the perfect place to find out whether the intelligence reports about the British had been correct.
Lieutenant General Moon unwrapped a toothpick and dealt decisively with an infuriating remnant of lunch. Europe did at least have that to recommend it: it was a toothpick culture. Then he lifted the receiver of his red telephone and placed a call to Colonel Pierce at Wheelus.