It was after one-thirty in the morning, but Romas day was just beginning. The Wings goal was to generate four of its twenty B-1B Lancer bombers and six of its eighteen KC-135R Stratotanker aerial refueling tankers for nuclear alert within the first twelve hours, ten bombers within thirty-six hours, and sixteen planes within forty-eight hours. Crews that had just finished placing one plane on alert were immediately cycled back to begin preflighting another plane while its crews were being briefed. Roma was assigned the task of giving refresher briefings to oncoming crews on nuclear weapon preflight and handling procedures, and he also filled in giving route and target study and inventorying the CMF, or Classified Mission Folder, boxes for the crews placing aircraft on alert.
At the twelve-hour point, nine a.m. local time, Roma was in the Wing Battle Staff Room, attending the hourly battle staff meeting and the first major progress briefing of the alert force generation. The news was not good: Sortie Zero-Four was still at least thirty minutes to an hour from being ready, and it might even require an engine swap or a completely new airplane. It was no secret that the morale of the B-1B community was at an all-time low after flying hours were cut and after learning that all of the B-ls would be going to the Air National Guard or Air Force Reserves starting in October — crew members, officers, and enlisted troops alike were spending more time looking for new assignments or applying for Guard or Reserve slots.
“Aircrew response has been marginal to good overall,” Roma said when asked about how the aircrews were reacting to the recall and late- night generation. “About thirty percent response in the first hour, seventy percent in three hours — not bad when you consider the average commute time is forty minutes for the crew members that live off-base, which is about two-thirds of the force.”
“Its unacceptable,” the group commander interjected angrily. “The crews were dogging it. ”
“I don’t think anyone was dogging it, sir,” Roma said. “It’s Friday night. We just finished a wing deployment exercise and an Air Battle Force exercise. People were out of town for the weekend, going to graduation parties, getting ready for summer vacation — this was a bolt-from- the-blue nuclear generation.”
“All right, all right,” the wing commander interrupted. “The bottom line is we have more crews than planes right now. What’s the problem?”
“The training on the SlOP-required gear and availability of spare parts for the number of planes required for alert, sir,” the chief of logistics interjected, referring to the specialized equipment needed to generate a plane for war under the Single Integrated Operations Plan. “We’re having to break into prepositioned deployment packs for spare parts and equipment. Going from zero planes available for nuclear generation to fifteen ready in just thirty-six more hours is eating up our supplies and overloading the avionics shops.”
“Besides, it’s been almost a year since we’ve moved nukes for real, sir,” the munitions maintenance chief added. “We’ve got a whole generation of troops that only have basic education and virtually no experience in special weapons.”
The strain was showing on the wing commander’s face. “No excuses, dammit,” he said, rubbing a hand over his weary face. “Our job around here is to generate planes and get ready for combat operations, and I’ll shit-can anyone who doesn’t understand that. How well we do on our generation schedule depends on the leadership abilities of the men and women in this room. I want us back on schedule before the next battle staff meeting — I hold the senior staff officers and group commanders responsible. Cancel the intelligence briefing — we’ve got a job to do out on the ramp. Dismissed.”
Things had been somewhat disorganized during the first several hours of a the full nighttime nuclear alert generation — that was situation- normal in any unit Roma had ever been in — but by midmorning things appeared to be humming along pretty well. By the time Roma returned to his office in the squadron building, his entire staff — including everyone recalled from leave — was busy. Everyone had been assigned an alert sortie. Most were not scheduled to start generating their alert line for several hours, so they were busy running simulator sessions, running mobility line duties, running errands for the Wing staff, or helping the maintenance crews to bring a plane up to preload status.
Roma’s E-mail mailbox had more than two dozen new messages in it in just the last thirty minutes, so he turned on the TV in his office to get the latest news and sat down to start reading and returning messages. The news seemed to be a jumble of confusion, very much like the situation at Ellsworth Air Force Base as five thousand men and women were trying to get twenty planes ready to fly off and unleash nuclear devastation on the People’s Republic of China.
Little else was known about the nuclear disaster in Japan except what had been reported hours ago: the American aircraft carrier USS Independence, all eighty thousand tons of it, including approximately 5,200 officers and enlisted men and women, had disappeared when what eyewitnesses called a small nuclear explosion erupted in the late-morning hours in the Gulf of Sagami, about sixty miles south of Tokyo.
Roma couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
The disastrous news didn’t stop there. Two escort frigates and a 50,000-ton replenishment ship carrying 150,000 barrels of fuel oil cruising near the carrier had capsized in the explosion, and all hands were feared lost—460 more men and women presumed dead. Two guided- missile cruiser escorts had been substantially damaged in the explosion, with hundreds more dead or injured. Several other vessels, civilian and commercial, in the vicinity of the explosion had also been lost. The force of the blast was estimated to be equivalent to 10,000 tons of TNT.
The Japanese prime minister, Kazumi Nagai, immediately blamed the accident on the United States, saying that the Independence had been carrying nuclear weapons and that one of the warheads had gone off when a C-2 Greyhound cargo aircraft made a crash landing. U.S. President Kevin Martindale went on national radio and TV immediately, reporting the accident and denying that the Independence or any U.S. warships near Japan were carrying nuclear weapons, but his denials seemed to be falling on deaf ears throughout the world.
The Japanese Diet, under heavy pressure by Nagai, immediately ordered all American military bases in Japan sealed and all U.S. vessels, military or civilian military contract, to remain in port until they could be inspected by Japanese nuclear officials and Japanese Self-Defense Force soldiers. Again, Japan was the site of a nuclear explosion, and accusing eyes were on America. South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, and New Zealand immediately followed Japan’s precautionary move — no U.S. warships or civilian ships contracted by the U.S. military could enter their territorial waters, and they could not leave, until they were inspected and certified that they carried no nuclear weapons.
The People’s Republic of China went one step further, restricting all U.S. warships from coming within a hundred miles of its shores or they would consider it an act of war. They knew that the Independence had been bound for the Formosa Strait, and they surmised that the United States was using the attacks on the two frigates Duncan and James Daniel as a pretext to launch a preemptive nuclear strike on China. All U.S. warships already within the one-hundred-mile buffer zone had twenty-four hours to get out, or they would be attacked without warning. China then revealed the position and even the identification of four U.S. submarines in the Formosa Strait and South China Sea, including two ballistic missile attack subs, and estimated that perhaps as many as ten more were in the vicinity, ready to wage war on the Peoples Republic of China.