Harry Kellogg III - The Red Sky - The Second Battle of Britain

“No Excellency. I am familiar with the origin and the play by Capek. I read it when I was younger and we were allowed such activities. So I am familiar with the term but I have not experienced anyone referencing me as an automaton. I do have emotions Excellency I just don’t know how to express them properly so I just avoid the situations. Fortunately for me you have given me an outlet for my… creativity. Although I would prefer to be designing planes that can transport people instead of bombs and be designing great landing fields and all the infrastructure that would be needed to fly hundreds of thousands of people a day to places all over the world I realize that I must concentrate on stopping the Americans and British from delivering their bombs. Later perhaps you will allow me to build my transportation system using the sky when we are through with this unpleasantness, Excellency?”

“Yes Sergo you shall have the chance to create your roadways in the sky. Imagine a peasant from Gori traveling by plane to all parts of the world. Thanks partly to you Sergo someday I might just give such a trip a try. I understand you have never flown either, yet you dream of putting hundreds of thousands of others at risk. You must have your reasons, and it is not worth my time to find them out. I am getting weary Sergo… leave!”

“Yes… of course Excellency.”

“I do enjoy your way of relating to the world around you Sergo… no groveling or bragging, just the facts and logical conclusions. You just focus on what we need to accomplish and leave the politics to others. Very enjoyable and refreshing for me to be able to interact with such a… robot.”

“Am I supposed to react or comment Excellency?”

“No Sergo. That would foul our association and that is the last thing you would want to happen, and quite frankly I would not care for such an outcome as well.”

“Yes your Excellency… should I leave now?”

“Yes Sergo… now you should leave.”

Sergo turned and slowly walked to the exit. He had no idea if the interview went well or not. He had no idea if he would live through the day. Such was life under Stalin. He had seen a number of people happily leave Stalin’s company only to disappear never to be seen again. He guessed it was one of Stalin’s ploys to terrorize everyone around him. He understood that fear was a great motivator. He preferred logic but then again he was incapable of deceit and that meant that he could not instill fear without actually killing everyone around him. He could not “play act” that he was going to kill someone only to instill fear in others. He would have to actually kill someone like he threatened and that was a waste. He could not bluff so therefore he did not threaten. He acted if the situation warranted it and the odds were favorable to survival. All in all he avoided these type of situations and just did his job.

Why couldn’t others be like him? It would be such a better world all the way around. You worked at something you enjoyed and that was reward enough. He could see it even on the factory floor. Some of the prison laborers actually took pride in their work. Even though they were helping to keep themselves slaves they went out of their way to do an excellent job and for what? They almost never got any kind of reward just the self-satisfaction that they had done a better job than anyone else. Vitaly Ginzburg was a perfect example. He enjoyed matching wits with Vitaly yet Stalin was going to have him put in the gulag for imagined crimes. He now worked happily beside him just for the sake of pure science. He did not wallow in pity he just did his job and seemed to enjoy himself. His colleague Semyon Kosberg was scheduled for torture by Beria himself for some slight at a party function. What a waste that would have been. He now is instrumental in bringing the newest jet engine to be matched with MiG’s newest creation. A truly stunning plane but worthless without the innovations they garnered from the American jet engines found in France and that American William Pearl working alongside Semyon have done wonders with the jet engine program. The captured jet engines were just wonderful creations and thankfully relatively easy to recreate with the likes of Pearl, Semyon and Vitaly on the job.

The greatest crime to Sergo was waste, especially the wasting of a great mind. He had saved many great minds since 1943. Many who would have been used for suicide missions or as common infantry and wasted to the bullet. What would history have been if such minds had not been saved and put to good use? He thought that America knew this and gave certain kinds of individuals the freedom to excel, men like Boeing or a Ford. He had heard that Ford failed many times before succeeding. Imagine if they ever let their Negroes go to proper schools. How many Gurevichs or Ilyusions were dying of starvation in Africa at this moment? He was convinced that skin color had no part in greatness. Much of it was luck. Just like his story. Who would have thought that being singled out a one of Stalin’s horrid “parties” would end with him being in control of so many resources and a confidant of Stalin? Allowed to work on such projects as the Wasserfal and X4 missile. Inventions of the greatest minds in Germany almost abandoned and then resurrected too late to be of use to the Nazis. Luckily he was allowed to take them to fruition. They were pressuring him to design missiles to attack ships as well as planes. Very easy to do actually, but he was very uneasy at the thought of an unexploded warhead falling into the sea and being recovered by the West. Until they designed another guidance system the current one would be rather easy to defeat. No he had to keep the admirals from using their greatest deterrent to the atomic bomb in such a reckless manner.

They were approaching production of 100 a month and by next month 300. By spring they would be producing 600 a month. Combined with the new MiG, a shield would drop over Eurasia by the end of the Summer of 1947.

The X4 equiped Pe 9s were rolling off the production lines as well. The ubiquitous Tu2s had been pressed into service as and could carry four X4 plane to plane missiles. They could only fire one at a time without the extra missile drivers that the Pe 9 could provide but they were faster and could get to the area of need quicker as well as survive better once attacked. They also lacked the high altitude capabilities of the Pe 9 as well. Some of the variants were very promising however. We now had 40 Tu-10s which were a modified Tu-2. This was a four-crew aircraft fitted with inline Mikulin AM-39FNVs of 1850hp. At 8600m it attained a speed of 641km/h. Ceiling was 10,450m but range fell to 1,740km. This plane fitted with the X4 had the speed and the altitude to catch and launch its missiles into any bomber stream that NATO could initiate.

The heavy bomber would be a thing of the past and missiles would ascend to take their place, guided missiles with massive warheads that could reach across continents. He was sure the Americans, with their captured Germans, would be working towards that same goal. In fact thanks to Beria he was sure of it and had many of their plans already. Possibly some kind of stalemate would ensue. Where neither side would attack the other for fear of massive retaliation. Knowing that there are plenty of men like Stalin he didn’t doubt that they would find other ways to fight. Such is the nature of man, at least in his life time.

Just read this order from the area commander about letting Negros fight. I’ve seen them loading and unloading, driving and repairing things even heard of a few units of them fighting under white officers. It says that they are going to be placed in units regardless of race. I personally don’t have a problem with this but it will be hard for some of our Southern boys to get used to I imagine. Being from a small town in Iowa I never even saw a Negro until I went to Chicago with my dad when I was about 7. Wonderful trip going to the museums and even went up one of the sky scrapers.