No he would have to bide his time and wait to see what they did or were going to do here. His hope was that they were just passing through on their way to fight the Turk.
The monastery was empty and had been for a long time. It gave him an odd feeling being there and left as soon as he was sure nothing of value or of potential threat was present. Yet he feel the possibility of a threat but is was only a feeling. It was probably only tied to these ancient walls and as soon as he left it would not bother him again. As he was checking out one of the towers he glimpsed a pile of wood that could be a crude hut about three kilometers away.
Normally he would have Yevgeni take a squad and explore the area but he decided he was going himself. He really didn’t want to stay near these buildings any longer than was necessary. He got back in the command car and headed towards where he spotted the pile of wood. He could not see it until he almost ran it over. It was very well hidden in a small crevasse. He sent in a private while he walked the area. When the private came out and stated that there was nothing of value in the hut he entered and lit his cigarette lighter to guide the way.
In the flickering light he saw possibly the most wretched hovel, he had ever seen. He was from Kursk and had seen many bombed out buildings that looked better than this space. Pieces of fish bones, fish skin drying by a fire pit, fish heads being mangled into some kind of tool and then there was the indoor toilet that was swarming with maggots and those were the things worth remembering.
As he turned to go the light from the lighter caught a glimmer of cloth or fabric. Normally he would not have looked closer given the circumstances and condition of the surroundings. But that is exactly why he did become curious. What was a relatively clean piece of cloth doing in here? On his way to ascertain what was there in that hiding place he kicked over a container of rotting fish bones and almost fell on top of the pooling slime.
Once he righted himself he carefully retrieved the wrapped bundle and quickly exited the hut. When he got outside he did not take the time to closely examine the package less the private see what he had and just put it in the inside pocket of his great coat and motioned the Private to get in and drive.[51]
Oct. 22nd, 1946
It was a beautiful day outside. The sun was shining yet wasn’t too hot. The birds were coming down from Europe and settling in by the thousands on the Nile Delta. There was not a cloud in the sky and most people were enjoying the cool temperatures mitigated by the warm sunlight. A young couple strolled by and things were very pleasant outside of SAC HQ.
Inside it was a completely different atmosphere, palpably different. General Nathan A. Twining was standing toe to toe with General Curtis LeMay and neither was backing down. Twining was named the 15th Air Force commander once again and was overseeing a buildup of bombers that would equal the force he commanded in World War Two.
The 15th always got short shrift to the 8th and always had a chip on its shoulder and now SAC was trying to knock that chip off. Here we have two Generals about to embark on a massive bombing campaign only rivaled by the last months of the last war and they were acting like a couple of feuding chimpanzees. If anyone is unsure of evolution all you had to do to convince them was to have them watch these two generals and their childish pissing match to see the similarity to animals in the wild. From the baring of teeth the exaggerated poses to the guttural sounds sometimes emanating from their guts neither was giving an inch as both believed down to their last breath that they were the only thing standing between the American public and Stalin himself.
For LeMay it was the last gasp of a dying cause. SAC was losing. It was losing 9-10% of its bomber force every raid. The feeling of doom among the bomber crews was palpable. The inevitability of death permeated the squadrons. The combination of ground to air missiles, air to air missiles, proximity fused 90mm flak rounds and 20mm cannon shells from fighter planes was proving too much for even the best. The math was inescapable and the logic of the situation too stark.
The damage on the ground mirrored closely the raids on many of the large fuel productions facilities of the Germans and the losses to the bomber forces mirrored the Schweinfurt raids.
The losses in bombers of the Schweinfurt raids had caused a three month pause in the bombing campaign against the Third Reich and now those same statistics were about to defeat SAC and LeMay. Even if you could replace the Super Fortresses that were shot down the odds were clear to the bomber crews. Most could not survive 25 missions. The odds were that you would be shot down within the first 10 missions. The math was once again inescapable.
At the height of its war time production America was producing less than 60 of the most complicated machine ever conceived. 60 B-29 Superfortresses a month represented the apex of American manufacturing when at full capacity. Eventually that could be achieved again. But not in time to save SAC who was losing over 30 a raid at this point despite gaining access to every Superfortress in the US arsenal. SAC was down to 402 effective bombers.
LeMay needed the bombers of the 15th Air Force. He needed the venerable B17s and B-24s that gutted the soft underbelly of Hitler’s war machine. He needed General Twinning and his bomber crews. The Joint Chiefs had predicted this outcome. They had a plan B for just this contingency and plan B needed to sacrifice SAC in order to succeed. Stalin had to be goaded into overreaching. He needed to be drawn further and further away from his source of supply. He needed to be taunted into doing something stupid and that meant sacrificing SAC and some of the 15th Air Force as well.
LeMay knew that if he failed at plan A that he was expected to carry out Plan B. Plan B made SAC a diversion. It made the whole concept of the manned strategic bomber a diversion. If the time came, he was to be ordered to sell Plan B to Novikov, the VVS, to the STAVKA and to Stalin himself. Instead of the major reason for defeating an enemy he was to become a diversion a ruse or a lure.
It was becoming more apparent that Zhukov was within weeks of invading Turkey. His goal was to expand the borders of the Soviet Empire and to eliminate the bases that the bombers and more importantly their shorter ranged fighter escorts were using to attack the motherland. His mandate was to close off the Mediterranean Sea as an invasion route and to also prevent its shores from being used as possible air bases.
He had the forces to accomplish these goals but did he have enough fuel? The distance needed to be covered was about the same as from Moscow to Berlin. The resistance was expected to be much less than what was encountered in Poland and Germany. In the minds of the STAVKA it was well worth the risk and that was exactly what the leaders of NATO were counting on.
LeMay would have none of this plan. He wanted to integrate and use up the 15th while he continued to do the heavy lifting on the oil production plants. He was gaining a good 3% reduction with every raid, including the repairs the Soviets had been able accomplish between raids. So far 12 raids had been launched in 3 weeks. The fuel production facilities across the southern USSR and Ploesti were down an accumulated, additional 10% from where they were. The trouble with percentages is that it takes a long time to reach zero. What the JCS were looking at was actual capacity and each raid was accomplishing less and less reduction in capacity. It was the law of diminishing returns. It was true that less and less bombers were being lost per raid but less and less damage was being dealt as well.
51
Leonardo Da Vinci was well familiar with Armenian art and architecture, but must have certainly gotten his idea of “The Last Supper” (painted in 1495-1498) from an illuminated Armenian Bible manuscript (dated 1038, of Vanian school). This Armenian manuscript is the first and probably the only painting that shows among the disciples a woman, Mary Magdalene, lovingly leaning her head on the shoulder of Jesus!
Da Vinci may certainly have been influenced by this idea of Jesus at the table scene showing a feminine looking disciple sitting on his left.