Because the Bridge to Tomorrow Series is designed to show the first confrontation of the Cold War from a variety of perspectives, there is no clear protagonist. Nevertheless. no character plays quite as central a role as Robin Priestman. As Station Commander of the RAF Gatow, he is at the very centre of the vortex. His position enables him to see the bigger picture, like an eagle hovering over the entire mess. However, he is not just an observer. He is also an important actor, contributing often subtly yet sometimes decisively in events.
Readers of my best-selling Battle of Britain novel, "Where Eagles Never Flew" will be familiar with Robin. That novel opens in May 1940 with Robin, then a flying officer, on his way to France with the rest of his squadron. It ends roughly six months later with Robin, an "ace", a squadron leader, and commanding a front-line Hurricane squadron from RAF Tangmere.
The Bridge to Tomorrow series picks up Robin's story in late 1947. After serving on Malta in 1942 and leading a fighter wing in 1943, he has spent the last days of the war in a German POW camp and the first years of peace in a staff position at the Air Ministry. In Cold Peace, Robin is promoted to wing commander and appointed station commander at RAF Gatow, the small, sleepy, grass airfield in the British Sector of Berlin. Although he arrives in Berlin hostile to the Germans, he soon recognizes that the real enemy is the Soviet Union. Overcoming bureaucratic inertia, he undertakes construction of a concrete runway at Gatow, and by the time a blockade starts he identifies strongly with the city of Berlin.
Cold War opens with Robin confronting the fact that HM government and the United States have committed themselves to supplying more than two million German civilians by air -- although the infrastructure necessary to fulfill that commitment is woefully inadequate. As the commander of one of the two “receiving” airfields in Berlin he is particularly alarmed by the fact that his concrete runway isn’t finished yet and in blockaded Berlin neither construction equipment nor concrete is available. Another problem is that air traffic control is an “accident waiting to happen.” In addition to those objective problems, he is confronted with bureaucratic petty mindedness on the part of his direct superior, and then there is the ever-present threat of Soviet sabotage….
Below an excerpt
featuring Wing Commander Priestman:
As he reached for his appointment diary, Sergeant Andrews, the WAAF clerk who ran his office, entered with his morning tea. “Everything all right this morning, sir?” she asked cheerfully.
“So far,” Priestman answered, just as the ceiling light went out. They both glanced up towards the light fixture in the centre of the room.
“Must be the bulb,” Andrews suggested, “I’ll call maintenance.”
But Priestman noted that the sound of the vacuum had cut off at the same instant that the light went out, and he had a sinking feeling. From the hallway came excited jabbering in German. His desk faced the window towards the runways, but the windows on the other side of his office looked out over the rest of the station. Priestman stood and went to look out of these. Just as he’d dreaded, agitated people were emerging from various buildings. A moment later the generator for the control tower groaned into operation. “We’ve lost power all across the station,” he told his secretary in a resigned tone.
“Do you think the construction crews working on the new runway might have cut the main line, sir?” Andrews suggested optimistically.
“We can hope,” he answered as he returned to his desk. Without bothering to sit down, he reached for the phone, half expecting it to be dead; he was relieved to hear a dialling tone. He rang through to the tower. “How many aircraft do you have on approach?”
“Two in Berlin airspace and six in the corridor. All eight aircraft of No. 30 Squadron coming in loaded with flour and other foodstuffs.”
“Get them down. I’ll try to stop the next squadron from taking off.”
“Do we know what happened, sir?”
“I can guess.” Priestman hung up. It was one of the bizarre anomalies of the absurd situation in which they found themselves that — although Gatow received its electricity from the Soviet Sector — power had not been cut on 24 June when the lights went out across the rest of the Western Sectors. Since no one wanted to wake sleeping dogs, the issue had not been raised with the Soviets. It appeared, however, that the Soviets had just discovered their mistake and corrected it.
Priestman started to work through the consequences. The radar generator for the tower might work for another hour or two, but eventually it would run out of diesel. While they still had limited reserves of diesel, without power the petrol bowsers would not work, so they would have to refill the generator by hand, which would take a long time. Yet even if they could keep the tower operational, they still needed electricity for the equipment in the maintenance hangars and to light the flare path for landings after dark, not to mention lighting for taxiways, hangars, and heat to run the kitchens etc.
The Station Adjutant, Flying Officer “Stan” Stanley, was in the doorway. “Are you aware that we’ve lost power across the airfield, sir?”
“Yes. Check with Lieutenant Colonel Russel about whether his construction crews might have damaged something. Meanwhile, I’ll find out if incoming flights can be diverted to Tempelhof.” As he spoke, he sat down behind his desk and took up the receiver again, requesting a connection to Group Captain Bagshot, the RAF Airlift commander.
Priestman was relieved to be put through to the senior officer promptly, although Bagshot sounded irritated — as if he didn’t like having to deal with Gatow. “Sir, power has been cut to Gatow. We’re talking the airborne aircraft down using generators, but our diesel reserves are limited and, of course, without electricity, almost nothing else works either. Would it be possible for you to divert traffic to Tempelhof?”
Bagshot grunted his displeasure, but agreed, “I’ll see what they can handle, but it won’t be everything. What the devil caused the power outage and how fast can you get it repaired?” He made it sound as if he suspected Priestman of some sort of negligence.
“I’m checking on that now, sir. There’s an outside chance that the runway construction crew damaged a power cable but given that our power comes from the Soviet Zone, I’m afraid we must assume that the cut was intentional.”
“Did you just say what I think you said?” Bagshot sounded incredulous and his Scottish accent became particularly thick. “Your power comes from the Soviets?”
“That’s correct.”
“Why didn’t they cut it off before now, then?” Bagshot asked flabbergasted.
“You’ll have to ask the SMAD that, sir.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me about this?”
“I’m sure I mentioned it in your first briefing, sir, but since the Soviets hadn’t cut the power, it appeared that they did not intend to do so.”
“In other words, you assumed everything would be all right,” Bagshot sneered. “Wing Commander” (he stressed the lowly rank of the offender) “Priestman assumed — and was wrong! Don’t you understand that if Gatow has no power, we can call this whole thing off? It’s impossible for us to supply everything Berlin needs by air if we have only one receiving airport! But because Wing Commander Priestman assumed the Soviets would not cut off his power, we’ve started this massive operation and crowed about it to the whole world! We’ll certainly look the fool now!”
This outburst, Priestman decided, did not require a response. He confined himself to asking in a clipped, professional voice. “Will you be able to stop incoming flights to Gatow until further notice, sir?”
“Oh, I’ll stop them all right! But if you don’t get this sorted out very soon, you can be sure you won’t be commanding Gatow for very long — or any other station either! I very much doubt you’ll keep your commission after making His Majesty’s entire government look like perfect idiots to the rest of the world!” With that, the Group Captain hung up.
Priestman put the receiver down and stared at it for a moment as if waiting for it to catch fire. Then, unable to sit, he stood and went to the window overlooking the runways. He watched dispassionately as the first of 30 Squadron’s Dakotas set down decorously on his PSP runway and rolled to the far end, braking carefully. As it turned off the runway, it was met by a Land Rover that led it to the apron in front of one of the hangars. Already the next Dakota was in sight, turning in for the final approach.
After several seconds, Priestman realised he’d been left cold by Bagshot’s threats to his career. The far more important issue was the Airlift itself. As Group Captain Bagshot had so bluntly pointed out, supplying Berlin entirely by air was challenging even with two fully operational receiving airfields. It would be utterly impossible to maintain the Airlift if Gatow were knocked out of the game.
Which was exactly what appeared to have just happened. The Ivans were on the brink of shutting down the Airlift before it fully got off the ground. Embarrassingly, they had not even needed to employ force, making a mockery of Clay’s promise that “nothing short of war” could force the Western Allies out. Far from starting a war, all the Ivans had needed to do was flip a switch. Now Gatow was useless, ‘kaput’ as the Germans said, and that meant the Airlift was over.
Yet, some part of Priestman’s brain refused to accept that very simple fact. Some stubborn part of him insisted there had to be a way out of this fiasco. Maybe there was a chance they could draw power from the one small, inadequate, and overworked power plant located in the West? Obviously, meeting Gatow’s electricity needs, would reduce the amount of power available for the factories, transport, facilities and households of the civilian population, but the alternative was surrender. Furthermore, he had to be sure that was technically possible before raising the possibility with the city government. The man who could answer the technical question was Lt. Colonel Russel. Meanwhile, the arrival of the Sunderlands might distract attention while they looked for a solution. If he was lucky, it might be afternoon before anyone noticed that the airspace over Gatow was strangely silent.
A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts and he turned to call, “Yes? Come in!”
Lieutenant Colonel Russel, Corps of Royal Engineers, stuck only his head around the edge of the door as if he were trying to make as small a target as possible before squeaking out in mock terror. “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! It wasn’t us!”
Priestman laughed, thankful for the engineer’s humour at a time like this. “I never thought it was — I only wished it was. Come on in. I was just about to call you, anyway.”
Russel was a head shorter than Priestman with chest and shoulders too broad and powerful for the lower half of his body, which appeared awkwardly stunted. Russel wasn’t a handsome man either, but he was a bundle of energy. As he came deeper into the room, he was already speaking. “I’ve got something which I think will interest you.” From under his arm, he pulled several large sheets of paper. Heading straight for Priestman’s coffee table and spreading out the large blueprints, he explained, “These are plans of the city infrastructure that Mayor Reuter lent me so we could tap into the gas mains. I remembered seeing something odd on it – something possibly useful. Come and have a look!”
Robin is a character in both of the First two volumes of the Bridge to Tomorrow Trilogy
The first battle of the Cold War is about to begin....
Berlin 1948. In the ruins of
Hitler’s capital, former RAF officers, a woman pilot, and the victim of Russian
brutality form an air ambulance company. But the West is on a collision course
with Stalin’s aggression and Berlin is about to become a flashpoint. World War
Three is only a misstep away. Buy Now
Berlin is under siege. More than two million civilians must be supplied by air -- or surrender to Stalin's oppression.
USAF Captain J.B. Baronowsky and RAF Flight
Lieutenant Kit Moran once risked their lives to drop high explosives on Berlin.
They are about to deliver milk, flour and children’s shoes instead. Meanwhile,
two women pilots are flying an air ambulance that carries malnourished and
abandoned children to freedom in the West. Until General Winter deploys on the
side of Russia. Buy now!
Based on historical events, award-winning and best-selling novelist Helena P. Schrader delivers an insightful, exciting and moving tale about how former enemies became friends in the face of Russian aggression — and how close the Berlin Airlift came to failing.
Winning a war with milk, coal and candy!
No comments:
Post a Comment