[PART 64]

DAY FIVE: 6 September 1938

The Third Wave – The Ground War Begins

“The air was full of sound, a deafening and confusing conflict of noises – the clamorous din of the Martians,

the crash of falling houses, the thud of trees, fences, sheds flashing into flame, and the crackling and roaring of fire.”

Eyewitness report on Ham Radio

As air attacks began to trail off operational world-wide radars noted a considerable drop in the number of Martian Flying Machines dropping out of orbit. It seemed for the most part the Martians had deployed all of the ground and air support forces they felt they needed to begin ground combat operations. The most destructive part of their “war of the worlds” was about to begin. They would pick their spots very carefully taking full advantage of weather and limited air cover. Very soon they would establish strong footholds in several starting points on Earth.

APOLLO FLASH: TO ALL COMMANDS: “RED SOIL” – ENEMY GROUND ATTACKS IMMINENT – BLOODY THE BASTARDS – GOOD LUCK AND GOOD HUNTING.

Despite the loss of several polar radar sites (north and south) we saw them coming. From both poles the Martians came out of the high ice in three waves in multiple diamond formations, just as one would expect based on past Martian history. The grand Martian strategy to take the surface of the Earth had begun. The first wave of machines flew at high altitude expected to work as high cover, flight control and reconnaissance. The second wave flew in at mid-level expected to engage any of our Earth air forces with the third wave flying in low and fast to land ground combat troops and weapons to begin the ground war. Every operational fighter we had went up to meet them, as well as many not really combat ready including several new ones right from the assembly lines. Our as yet unused bomber fleets were now put on 100% ready standby to bomb in mass any Martian ground concentrations they could get to.

From the South Pole the enemy attacked north in three formations landing ground forces at Cape Town South Africa, Puerto Natales, Chile and just west of Melbourne, Australia near Ballarat. (The landing at Puerto Natales was practically on top of one of our major Grain Storage Facilities G3 code named ‘Earth’.)

From the north the Martians flew south landing in an ice covered field just outside of Winnipeg, Canada, by a lake just north of Harbin, Manchuria and west of Stockholm, Sweden. Starting from these points the Martians moved out along the cardinal points in massive fan-shaped formations. I remember thinking at the time it seemed a bit odd the Martians would advance their ground attacks along primary magnetic points of the compass rather than follow geologic ground contours since the local magnetic fields on Mars are not global and were thus useless for compass navigation on their home world. However, considering how long the Martians had been on Earth the odds were they were just as good at Earth navigation as we are and probably much better. It is funny what one thinks of in times of great stress.

Out of polar orbit the Martians pounded the general area with Heat-Rays and landed a large force on top of the Giza Plateau quickly securing a five mile radius centered on the pyramids. The Martians had set up their “Central Terrain Command Center” at the same location they had favored thousands of years earlier. The Martians had come home! Landings were also made inside the MLZ, CLZ and SLZ. (They must have realized the significance of these areas.) However, due to our lack of radars and spotter coverage in these hostile areas it was difficult for us to estimate just how powerful these landings had been. We needed data that we simply did not have.

In most other areas spotters reported a very fast buildup of ground forces with Martian Walkers quickly moving out from their landing zones within minutes. At no point did it take the Martians longer than 30 minutes to begin moving with Walker operations. This was verification they had vastly improved their Walker capabilities. We also discovered they had brought to Earth three different types of Walkers. We called them small, medium and large. These deadly machines would spearhead their ground attacks. The medium sized Walkers closely resembled the ‘two-Martianed’ machines we had fought during the First Martian War. These had been improved as they no longer had open cowls and were a good deal faster. (The Tango sniper teams would be disappointed.) The smaller single occupant Martian Walkers were about the size of the ones we had found buried at Giza and Cairo at around ten feet tall only these were much better built. We knew at once these machines could easily be used to enter and attack our underground facilities. The large Walkers were on the order of 35 feet in height and were truly powerful machines. These giant monsters held a team of five Martians and would prove to be the most deadly machines on the battle field in the days and weeks to come. All three models had Heat-Rays and all but the small Walkers were able to dispense Black Smoke which considering where they were likely to be deployed seemed a tactical error on the part of the Martians. One of my aids was quick to point out that “they had blown that one.” I was not so sure. From these landings the enemy would continue to re-enforce over the next few days.

We soon learned as the large Walkers moved these machines projected wide magnetic fields which disrupted local energy sources as well as local wireless transmissions. As they conquered territory devices left in their wake blocked all wireless for miles around.

Inside the Mexican Lawless Zone (MLZ)

Ham Radio report (no call sign) (unconfirmed): The Martians have landed all over Matamoros. Hundreds of them are walking around and firing death rays at just about… (Transmission ends)

It was not long before contact with the enemy was made. At many of these landing areas the first troops to engage the enemy were local reserve forces backed by well armed police units. For the most part they suffered heavy losses with some noted exceptions. However, at no point during these first ground battles did any unit back down. They fought with great courage and determination well beyond what could be expected of part-time soldiers.

Fighting at Cape Town

It did not take long for regular pre-positioned combat units to engage the enemy with combined infantry, armor and artillery units supported by fighter/bombers. There was no single line of these first Martian advances not fully engaged in intense fighting by Committee or national forces within two hours of their arrival. The landings at Cape Town, Winnipeg and Melbourne also afforded our bombers the first opportunity to finally get into the fight.

THE FIRST BOMBER ATTACKS

It was time to carry the air war to the enemy. At Cape Town over 150 first line Whitehead B4 jet bombers attacked the landing zones approaching from two directions with jet fighters leading the way. The same tactic was used over the Winnipeg landing zones only the bombers came in from the west in one massive triple “V” formation of 400 bombers beginning their approach near treetop level before climbing to bomb altitude. These bombers were led by Thunder Jet fighters but only after a first wave of jet fighters came screaming into the area from the east in order to deflect some of the Martian Flying Machines in position to cover their landing forces.

At Melbourne fighters from the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) once again swept in, followed by the bombers. After the attack a second wave of fighters swept the area to cover the retreating bombers. Phoenix IIs stationed in Melbourne soon followed going after the Martian Flying Machines flying high cover. During these three missions alone we lost 218 bombers and their crews with first reports indicating only moderate damage to Martian ground forces. Our bomber fleets had bloodied the Martians first landings but it had been a very costly affair – too costly. If we were to succeed we needed to take a close look at our bombing tactics. The Martians had limited our effectiveness by heavy air cover, ground to air Heat-Rays and quickly dispersing and moving out from their landing zones making it difficult to locate and destroy concentrated targets.

At the same time the Chinese Air Force began their attacks on Martian ground forces not with bombers but with jet fighter-bombers coming in at tree top level and dropping fire bombs mixed with high explosive bombs on the assembling Martians. The jets flew in waves from three directions in sets of twelve jets in each wave. For the most part they simply ignored the high flying machines and pounded the targets on the ground. As air reports came in I was amazed at just how fast our forces engaged the enemy. In 1901 it had taken many hours, even days. This time our response to meet the Martians on the ground came in a few hours and at times only minutes! The Chinese units had been most ready and had engaged the Martians faster than any other force. They must have caught the Martians off guard as their attacks were also the most effective of the day. They proved we had to hit the Martians fast or lose the initiative. Even then it was still a close thing as well as a costly one. The Chinese Air Force lost 25% of their fighters who engaged that invading force on the first day. Ground based mobile Heat-Rays had also taken their toll on the Chinese both in the air and on the ground.

Two hours after the first ground forces landed the second wave of enemy Walkers and supporting elements landed at nearby locations in positions to reinforce and fortify the first group of landings. The ever efficient and fast moving Martians were not wasting any time.

At all three northern landing zones the Martians deployed new ground forces north, east and west of their original landing sites. Near the southern landing zones the Martians deployed supporting forces east, west and north of their Melbourne landing, north and east of their Puerto Natales landing and north and east of their landings at Cape Town. These units pressed forward rapidly finding light resistance where they had landed. It would not take long for these additional Martian ground forces to link up and begin joint operations. Earth forces were soon in desperate battles with most of these new enemy units retreating as slowly as they could.

As for the Giza area the Martians simply began building up their strength in the general area from orbit moving out from Giza east, west, and south. Clearly this was to be their equatorial strong hold. It would soon expand to ten miles in diameter. Towards the east they attacked Cairo and overran the north end of the Suez Canal. It would be at Suez the Egyptian military showed their toughest metal. With their backs to the wall wave after wave of infantry and armor units flung themselves at the Martians who at one point were actually forced to pull back due to massed Egyptian artillery. This was ‘home ground’ for both combatants and no quarter was to be given on either side. The ten Earth built Walkers were reported to have done well in point combat against the Martians at Cairo. The fact we had re-built some of the Martian machines seemed to come as a surprise to the enemy.

During the final attack of the day Egyptian commandos actually climbed on to several large Martian Walkers to plant explosive charges. One commando was able to find a small opening in the side of one machine and pumped machine gun rounds into the Walker until he was cut down by Martian fire. Several of these metal monsters were felled before the Martians were forced to turn their Heat-Rays on themselves to “wash” off the very determined Egyptians. It was reported that in the middle of the night a team of Jewish fighters known as the ‘Knights of David’ had made their way to the Martian command area killing several local Martian commanders. The ‘Knights’ had gone down in Jewish history!

By dawn the next day the Suez was in the ‘hands’ of the Martians as the Egyptian force who battled them in hand-to-hand combat had lost 97% of their attacking force. The Suez washed red that day with the blood of thousands of Egyptians and the bodies of hundreds of dead Martians as the “Lost Army” went into Egyptian history books. Later, Egyptian medals awarded for the highest courage against an enemy force would be named the “Red Cross of Suez.” Six were awarded to surviving members of the Lost Army for their efforts on that day. One was awarded to the “unknown Egyptian who represented all members of the Lost Army.”

Committee and Egyptian Infantry attack Martians

At Alexander, Egypt our Committee Secret Service Communication Center Com 10 reported the area was now fully Martian occupied. This underground facility however, was still operational. For how long was anyone’s guess. I recall it was at Alexander we found the first meteorite on Earth known to have come from Mars. One staff member suggested “they were back to re-claim their rock.”

Despite all of the air-power Earth forces could deploy and despite every point on Earth where Martian forces had landed being counter-attacked, at no point along any of these lines of attack could our forces stop the Martians for any length of time. They were gaining ground with great speed as they fought day and night without pause. Defensive lines were collapsing fast. The best any of our ground forces could do at this time was slow them down, yet no matter what we did nothing was stopping them as the cost in lives and equipment continued to climb.

The crush of civilians massed along the roads away from these areas made it difficult to re-enforce our front line units in many areas. We would make few efforts to control the uncontrollable civilian masses as we continued to engage enemy forces. Killing the enemy had to hold the high ground of that discourse.

North east of Melbourne

Ham Radio report UVF18 (unconfirmed): After the Martians landed their cylinders, dozens of small walkers scattered out of the larger machine like a pack of wolves. Groups of three form a triangle and begin to… (Transmission ends)

GROUND ATTACKS CONTINUE

At first glance the Martians appeared to indiscriminately kill anything that moved across their line of sight, both man and beast, but this made no logical sense as it would tend to sap a good deal of their combat strength and time to do so. With this in mind we set about to discover their combat tactical pattern which soon came to light. They were indeed killing everyone and everything in the areas they landed but as they organized themselves and moved out from their landing zones they focused on man-made infrastructure such as power lines and electrical generating plants, communication facilities as well as any medium or large population centers in their path attempting to choke them off. Clearly these attacks spoke to the Martians attempting to isolate and thus control large populations wherever they went. Firing on random humans would pass to specific targets. Their movements indicated they were setting up an interlocking grid pattern of forces controlling surface grid lines with ground forces while leaving the centers of the grid relatively untouched – at least for the preliminary operation. That way they could cover a great deal of ground in a short period of time. It also meant we would have plenty of room to hit them with our stay behind forces and hopefully do some real damage in the wake of their passing primary attacks.

German troops leave defensive positions to attack Martian ground forces

Past wars had brought enemy administration to occupied territory. Not so with the Martians. They were not interested in such mundane matters. Death and total destruction were their only goals. In this war of annihilation mankind was not to be ‘managed’ it was to be destroyed as time and material would permit. Many of their rear forces which consist largely of hybrids and Martian Bs would get the job. The Martian Bs and hybrids were there to do the clean-up. The Martians As considered them to be nothing more than cannon fodder. We planned to oblige them. These areas would see some of the bloodiest close-in hand-to-hand fighting of the war.

Inside Stockholm, Sweden

Ham Radio report SW61V (unconfirmed): Stockholm is under brutal attack by dozens of Martian machines. The military is powerless to stop them. Black Smoke is everywhere. The population is being slaughtered by the tens of thousands. You must send critical re-enforcement. Most of the city is burning. Everything is being destroyed. Nothing stops… (Transmission ends)

Stockholm was the first major population center to come under sustained Martian ground attack. They had earlier sustained the weight of both aerial Heat-Ray and seismic attacks which were now followed by several waves of medium sized Martian Walkers trailed by squads of Martian Bs and hybrids. They also covered their forces with several Martian Flying Machines. Hitting the city from the west the Martians slammed into the cities’ outer trenches and for a few minutes were halted by ignited black tar pits and Walker Traps which reportedly caught the Martians by surprise. Several of their machines fell victim to these traps which allowed military forces the opportunity to pour artillery and tank fire on the temporarily halted enemy. Several of the Walkers were hit and destroyed. However, the Martians continued on simply walking directly on top of their fallen comrades to continue their advance on the city. As they moved thick greasy Black Smoke began to pour from their forward machines. This was answered by Martian Gas Traps and thousands of fire pits being ignited which burned a good deal of the deadly Martian smoke but it was simply not enough. Building by building and street by street the Martians continued to advance seemingly contented to destroy any man-made structure they could see. Once again it would be reported that killing humans appeared to be a secondary target. Even as tens of thousands were being slaughtered, focus remained on the city itself. But only until that work was complete.

Stockholm

Within hours any recognizable section of Stockholm had vanished beneath the metal feet of the advancing Martians as they pushed all the way to the sea where tens of thousands of terrified people perished like rats dropping into the ocean attempting to flee the deadly Heat-Rays. This was not war, this was murder. It would not be long before Copenhagen, Oslo and Goteborg met a similar fate.

Not long after the battle for Stockholm began halfway around the world the Martians imitated their assault on Melbourne in Australia. Moving east and north east from their landing zones the Martians struck Melbourne defense lines along three points five miles wide. As bombers, fighter/bombers and Phoenix IIs sent in from Sydney continued to attack the Martians, both large and medium sized Walkers moved forward to make contact with the outer edges of the city. Firing their Heat-Rays in the direction of movement the Martians walked on what might best be called the world’s most powerful minefields. Unknown even to the Committee outside of Sydney to insure absolute secrecy the Australians had planted a 200 yard wide closely packed set of mines north, east and west of the Melbourne as well as around all of their major population centers. Many other cities around the world had minefields but none could come close to the ones which were set into three interconnected rings around Australian cities. These ‘green circular city parks’ as seen from above were death traps and the Aussies were about to show some of their best work to the advancing Martians. Fully three lines of Walkers, 70% of which were medium sized, had entered the ‘fields’ when three miles of these fields were exploded by cable controls. The effect was devastating. The explosion sent a shock wave over Melbourne which broke widows four miles away. (At least the few that still existed.) It also sent dozens of Martian machines along with the Martians flying into the air, many in different directions at the same time as they were ripped apart by the truly massive blasts.

As the smoke was clearing observers noted the Martians had stopped dead in their tracks as a deep silence commanded the ravaged field now covered with large trenches and dead Martians. For a full two minutes none of the machines left standing, most of which had yet to enter the minefield, made any movement. The Martians had taken their pause. Australian tanks and artillery now opened up a massive volley of fire. Then as one the medium sized Walkers began to turn and move north away from the field seemingly looking for an easier path to advance on the city. Not so for the large Walkers. They pulled their own trick out of the hat. Each of the large Walkers on the forward line simply pulled their legs up and began to hover in place. This was the first time we understood that these monsters could fly. They had not been able to fly Walkers in 1901 thus once again they had improved these machines.

Firing their Heat-Rays the Martians seemed to float over the fields with an easy grace setting down well beyond the edge of the deadly field prepared to continue their attack on Melbourne. The Australians estimated that during the mine field detonation they had destroyed at least 400 medium sized Walkers. This was the largest single loss imparted on the Martians by any combat force on Earth during the entire war. This amounted to around 15% of the Martian ground forces attacking the city at the time. The remaining enemy forces would not go down as easy and neither would Melbourne. There were few sections of Melbourne taken by the Martians which did not cost them heavily. It would be during the height of the fighting for the city that the Committee decided to dynamite seal the entrance tunnels to the Grain Storage Facility G4 at Melbourne code named ‘Mars’. The Martians would eventually take Melbourne but they did not take G4. Sydney’s turn would come next as the Aussies continued to make them pay dearly for every bloody inch of Australian soil.

Lower-Melbourne, Australia

Secure cable report to Sydney Committee Headquarters: LARGE MARTIAN WALKERS CAPABLE OF SHORT DISTANCE FLIGHT AT LOW ALTITUDES – MINE FIELD OPERATIONS SUCCESSFUL – ATTACKS ON CITY CONTINUE – HEAVY FIGHTING CONTINUES – BLACK SMOKE DEPLOYED – LOSSES MODERATE – MARS SEALED – GOD SAVE THE KING.

This information about the newly discovered flight capabilities of the large Walkers was immediately sent to all commands. Adjustments in defensive operations were once again required. The Martians were proving to be even more adaptable than we had anticipated. What we learned next out of Cape Town was even more disturbing. The Martians had brought small boats with them!

The fighting in and around Cape Town had been bloody and fierce but it did not last long once the beachheads had been established and strengthened. It had taken only hours for the Martians to overrun much of the southern African area from Cape Town to Worcester, Port Elizabeth to East London and Beaufort West. The Martian ground forces had swept a wide area with tremendous speed and brutality crushing everything in their path.

It was the final flash report from forces engaged in the fight that informed the Committee the Martians had deployed what amounted to small patrol boats around both Cape Town and Port Elizabeth. We had also lost our Sea Cave Facility, Blue 10 outside Cape Town which was now occupied by Martian water craft. Another new dimension had been added to the war. It was one we had anticipated but had not really expected to see.

POSEIDON VLF RADIO MESSAGE: TO ALL ATLANTIC SUBS (RELAYED TO APOLLO): MARTIANS HAVE WATER PATROL CRAFT OFF COAST OF SOUTHERN AFRICA – BE PREPARED TO ENGAGE AND DESTROY AT WILL – SEA CAVE FACILITY B10 OCCUPIED BY ENEMY FORCES.

The first reliable report we received at our London Committee Headquarter concerning conditions in and around the SLZ came from a Tango operative team who had managed to land on the northern coast by special submarine and set up an observation station. They were able to report that the Martians had set up a water operation center just west of Bargal. This gave the Martians effective control of the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea all the way north to Cairo and the Suez Canal. The Red Sea was now in fact an enemy controlled “Red Sea.” Within days the SLZ would effectively be a Martian controlled area.

We still did not have any reliable information coming out of either the MLZ or the CLZ. The Americans would soon send people into the MLZ seeking just such information. What they discovered would shock them to the core. What they discovered would amount to planetary treason on a vast scale.

By the end of the day we received word that the Committee Space Launch Center at Cape Canaveral in Florida had been attacked by air and for the most part had been wiped off the map. The force which attacked this facility was well beyond what was needed to destroy it. The Martians really wanted complete destruction of the site. This was an emotional response from the enemy we would not have expected. Melted structures and burning debris was all that remained of the facility which had launched Defense 1. We had lost our capability – at least for the foreseeable future – to place satellites into Earth orbit. We also received confirmation our base at Thule had been completely destroyed.

When the dust began to settle (metaphorically speaking) by the end of the fifth day of war the Martians had lost a total of at least 620 flyers, but they held the high ground of orbital space and both poles. They had command of a dozen areas on Earth their ground forces had managed to rip from the people who had called these places home for thousands of years. They had destroyed several cities and were on the march in several areas. On our side Earth forces were fighting with every weapon we could bring to bear – and we were being pushed back along all fronts. Yet when compared with the speed of their ground attacks at this point during the 1901 war these Martians were in fact moving a good deal slower. Perhaps it was with planned deliberation they moved with caution after all they must have known they faced a much better prepared enemy than had been faced in 1901. We were much better armed than we were in 1901 but so were they. However, at the time I could not see how it could be due to most of our combat efforts as we engaged their front line machines and sustained great losses of men and equipment. It was later felt they were slower because they were coordinating attacks on a much wider front than in 1901 and it was over many more areas at the same time than we had seen in the early days of the First Martian War. They were in fact gaining more ground by this time in 1901 because they were attacking so many moiré areas simultaneously.

DAY SIX: 7 September 1938

Continuing their air operations this day saw the Martians dropping Black Smoke canisters on several populated areas focusing on Western Europe and the United States even though they had yet to land large ground forces in most of these areas. This was the first time the Martians had dropped Black Smoke on any location from the air. All previous Black Smoke attacks (including all such attacks during the First Martian War) had been deployed by ground forces pumped out by the Walkers. Once again the Martians had adapted new tactics.

These attacks seemed almost as a test of their effectiveness as they were not distributed over large areas nor did they use this new method to attack more than two dozen cities all of which held medium sized populations such as San Diego, California and Bournemouth, England. This also meant that they were not as well defended as larger cities and thus much safer to bomb. I could only guess, but I imagined from the Martian’s point of view these attacks were not wholly successful as the rains brought on by their attacks on our atmosphere and their fire causing Heat-Ray attacks on our surface structures destroyed a good deal of the effectiveness of these Black Smoke canister bombings. It should also be noted that when these canisters were used on larger population centers which were defended with our own Heat-Ray devices we were able to incinerate much of the low flowing greasy smoke which came into range of our Heat-Rays. Once again we had proof we could, under the correct conditions, defeat one of their most effective weapons they had used against our planet in 1901. We had learned a few new tricks of our own and we were learning more on the run. As for our stockpiles of mustard gas all Committee commands were now authorized to use the deadly gas at their discretion. The Martian attacks had taken the gloves off our own use of this type of warfare.

Wire photo sent from Central China

YELLOWSTONE SUPER VOLCANO

Although noted mostly for advancing Martian ground forces consolidating and continuing their attacks from their landing zones this day did see at least one major attack on the planet itself. (Several smaller areas also saw geologic attacks.) That major planetary attack point focused on Yellowstone National Park in the American state of Wyoming. Long known as a geologic hot spot the entire area had been warping up and outward since the early 1920s now thought to have risen at least twenty feet at the central caldera which measures an incredible 30 by 15 miles diameter. This is the mouth of a single huge super volcano, one of several on Earth, which last erupted violently around 600,000 years ago. When it did erupt that massive event sent debris out so far and so fast that molten rocks from that single blast were propelled into low Earth orbit and had formed a ring around the Earth! Yellowstone is in fact the largest and potentially the most destructive super volcano on Earth. On this day the Martians would attack this continental mantle hot spot with 80 Martian Flying Machines. A clear indication of the importance of this target.

Coming in from the north the Martians flew in four groups of twenty machines on a curved path out of the pole towards Yellowstone. The Martians were tracked on radar along most of their flight path as they appeared to fly away from areas we had stationed more than just a few air resources. At several points along the way as they flew closer to the ground they did encounter some resistance but most of the enemy craft arrived safely at the park. Their flight paths showed they were keeping close watch on our air resources. Orders were sent out for air commanders to keep close eyes on our covered aircraft and ensure they were not lined up in easy to attack areas to be possibly destroyed on the ground.

Wasting no time, spotters reported that the Martians had begun to circle the huge caldera firing dozens of seismic devices around the entire rim of the ancient volcano. Within ten minutes at least 350 seismic devices had been delivered to the target. The last machine was out of the area within twenty minutes of the arrival of the first flyer. Needless to say, with this many devices launched at such a relatively small target the two Cobra teams assigned to the general area did not even bother to respond – they had no chance of success. They did cable a report to Committee Headquarters in Lower-New York City detailing the attack. Within minutes the devices went off. It would be the first – and the only – time a Cobra team could report on the strange “energy hum” given off by so many devices at once. It was to make one nauseous and difficult to keep one’s balance which was greatly affected with headaches and watery eyes being common. More than a few people in the general area simply vomited due to the vibrations which “seemed to come from within.”

Months later we received an eyewitness report. “The ground began to vibrate almost imperceptibly at first as if you did not quite know if something was happening or not. But as the intensity increased steam began to issue from the great area on the south side of the ancient caldera. This was soon followed by massive venting of gases and ash springing from almost every portion of the entire mouth of the caldera. Before the ash and steam could cover most of the ground it was clear that the entire floor of the caldera was on fire as molten rock flowed in and over the cracks in the walls as if a mighty flaming river had become a massive water fall.”

Violent volcanic explosions which began to rock the area could be heard at least 500 miles away. One report stated “one of the fountains of lava sprayed its molten rock and ash at least 10,000 feet into the air.” The only question was: Would this event end with a truly massive explosive eruption on par with the last major event some 600,000 years ago? It would be several weeks before we felt comfortable with an answer. Geologists working in Canada, the United States and the Committee would finally report the Martians had inadvertently released so much gas and lava from so many points at the same time the attack not only drained a great deal of material from the underlying lava chamber but it had released so much natural gas pressure that had been increasing for thousands of years that a massive eruption on the level of 600,000 years ago would in fact no longer be a concern. In short, the Martians had used too many of their devices at one time to cause such an explosive eruption. They had managed to cause Yellowstone to put massive amounts of ash and steam as well as other more toxic gases into the atmosphere for the next two years which was a great plus for them. What they failed to do was cause a massive explosion which would have surely cut the heart out of the center of the United States not to mention the devastation to the entire planet for years.

APOLLO FLASH: TO ALL COMMANDS: MARTIAN LANDINGS MADE AT WICK SCOTLAND – IVIGTUT GREENLAND – PORT HARRISON, MC MURRAY, CALGARY CANADA – PETROPAVLOVSK, PETROZAVODSK, KIROV RUSSIA – KUSHIRO JAPAN – ULAN MONGOLIA – BUNBURY, WOOMERA, BROKEN HILL, DUBBO AUSTRALIA – RAWSON ARGENTINA.

Even though we had lost contact with our Grain Storage Facility G3, code named ‘Earth’ at Puerto, Natales, Chile soon after the Martians landed, we were later sent a message reporting that before the staff were killed they had managed to dynamite the main tunnel entrance leading into the underground facility effectively sealing it off from the enemy. They had given their lives to protect this vital storehouse of grains. It would take some weeks for the Martians to gain entrance if they had the time. We planned to make certain they did not have the time.

POSEIDON VLF RADIO MESSAGE: TO ATTACK SUBMARINES ATLANTIC – TASK FORCE BRAVO – ASSEMBLE AT POINT C-184 – TASK FORCE DELTA TO POINT D-014.

With that message ten attack submarines from Task Force Bravo attached to ‘Poseidon’ made their way to a point several miles off the coast of Mossel Bay. From there the force would coordinate an attack on the Martian boats now patrolling off the southern coast of Africa. It was time to take the battle for the seas to the Martians.

Radio intercepts informed the Committee that the Martians had sent instructions to their hybrid operatives to begin sabotage operations at all designated locations they could travel to. All commands were advised of the potential for sabotage by hybrids which would cause many area commanders to begin whole scale round ups of any remaining free hybrids. Orders were issued by ‘Apollo’ that any hybrid caught committing any type of sabotage was to be summarily shot! Posters were put up to the make the order clear to everyone. All Directors sent out their agreements.

Within several hours of our radio intercept reports came in of several assassinations of top leaders in China, India, Brazil, Canada, Algeria, France, Germany and Korea. In each case the assassin was a hybrid and all were executed on the spot except the hybrid captured in India. That hybrid was practically dismembered one piece at a time by its interrogators before it was “allowed to die”. These deaths caused several hybrids to be removed from sensitive positions in the Committee as well as increased body guard detachments assigned to leaders in all Committee offices around the world. My guard staff was increased to sixteen very well armed men and none were hybrids. Six were Tango operatives.

CS Tunguska reported its location to CS Atlantic ‘Poseidon’ as being just off the Port of Spain continuing to head south. Final instructions as to where to deliver their cargo had not yet been sent to the crew. They were however informed by their captain they were carrying an atomic bomb. Sydney Command Center was to coordinate this final leg of the voyage as the submarine delivered its cargo to an aircraft carrier which would fly the weapon to its target. However, with the Panama Canal no longer operational the mission was passed on to ‘Poseidon’ by ‘Apollo.’ Poseidon then ordered the submarine to continue south to a rendezvous point with Committee aircraft carrier CS Horizon now ordered to a position just off the northern coast of South Georgia Island. From there the weapon would be loaded on a jet fighter/bomber or a Phoenix II and ‘delivered’ to its target.

[END PART 64]

Copyright © R. Michael Gordon, 2020

[Next week: Part 65: Attacks on Command Cities; Invasion Map 1.]

[PART 63]

DAY THREE: 4 September 1938

THE MARTIANS SET THE FORESTS ON FIRE

The next phase of the Martian attack plan put into action before the Martians committed themselves to fully engage Earth’s military forces on the ground was to begin igniting large numbers of forest and grass fires. This was required to not only place a large amount of particulate matter into the atmosphere to help cool down the planet – which it did – but we suspected the real reason was to distract our military forces away from direct military operations to fight the fires. In this point they failed. It had already been decided no matter how many forests were set on fire by the Martians or their allies, or how large they became for the most part Earth forces would ignore them. The forests would grow back in a generation or two and grasslands even sooner so we would spend no time or manpower putting them out. The only surprise was how vast these forest fires would become in so little time. Nevertheless, we stuck to the plan. Killing Martians must come before putting out forest fires. In this regard we received another lucky break due to another miscalculation made by the Martians. The amount of rainfall their concentrated attacks on the atmosphere would produce was much greater in these areas than normal – heavy rains put out forest fires! In several areas the Martians were required to return several times to ensure the fires would not only continue burning but spread. They had done too good a job on the atmosphere. With this work they were using air resources that may well have been better used against our forces rather than attacking the planet. In fact, they had distracted themselves. Nevertheless, our jets went to work on their machines despite the expected losses.

For a full week reports continued to come into command centers of massive fires numbering at least 14,000 individual starting points being set off in some of the largest forest covered areas of the world. Under attack, along with many smaller areas, were the Amazon Rain Forest, the Northern Boreal Forests of Canada (which had been attacked earlier by the Martian Brotherhood as a possible test), the East-Siberian Taiga, the Giant Sequoia, the Scandinavian Taigas and the Russian Taigas as well as some extensive grassland areas in North America, the Amazon and central Russia and China. These massive fires caused great storms of stampeding wild animals in many areas where ever they occurred causing even more devastation. The loss of local wildlife was very high.

When later calculated the loss of vegetation in these and other areas would represent some 40% of the world’s timberlands. With these losses the Earth would also lose some oxygen generating capability from these locations for at least 80-100 years. However devastating these events were, they would not disrupt human life on Earth for the long term to any great degree, but it was still a considerable loss. Nevertheless, we set our sights clearly away from the forests, ignored the fires, and focused ourselves on the Martian assaults we knew were on the way. What we did not know was how truly powerful they would be.

RED WEED ATTACKS

At the same time the forests and grasslands were under attack the Martians began spraying massive amounts of Red Weed on large areas of farmland in North America, South America, China and the Soviet Union with central China apparently the main focus of these attacks. These were some of the same areas that had been attacked in 1901. During that war the Martians had also sprayed areas just behind their advancing ground forces. We expected they would do the same during this war. Changing their tactics they had began spraying these vast areas even before they had been attacked by Martian ground forces. Committee planners had anticipated such attacks and we were ready. This was one area we felt very comfortable with in the knowledge we could overcome these attacks at least on our crop growing environments even if the Red Weed did not dissipate on its own.

Chemicals had been developed a few years earlier which had a neutralizing effect on Red Weed and their seed pods. In each of these areas, and dozens more, old fashioned by-planes left over and refitted from the Great Earth War had been pre-positioned and fitted with these Red Weed killing chemicals in spray canisters that would not harm the crops but would destroy Red Weed. Local pilots, mostly older men who had served in the Great Earth War, were now prepared to spend many hours flying very close to the ground spraying much of the affected areas. It was not a complete solution to the problem but overall some 45% of the affected areas would be saved for future use. As for the bi-plane pilots several would be lost due to accidents flying so very close to the ground but none would be shot-down by Martian Flying Machines. In areas that followed their expected ground attacks we would attempt to follow behind and spray some of the Red Weed from trucks. We anticipated only 10% of these areas could be recovered by that method.

We had also developed fertilizers which included anti-Red Weed components and had been using these special blends in Northern Europe and Canada for several years despite protests from various groups. Testing had shown good results but these new fertilizers had only been available for wide use recently just prior to the invasion. Later examination showed areas which had been fertilized with the anti-Red Weed blends recovered much quicker than those areas which had not been treated. In fact some heavily fertilized areas showed no Red Weed growth at all despite being seeded by the Martians. We had won the battle against the Red Weed. It was not a major victory even though it had to do with feeding the world – but we would take it.

NORTH ATLANTIC AIR ENGAGEMENT

Co-ordinated from our Lower-London headquarters a mass attack by carrier planes was ordered to engage several Martian Flying Machines tracked by radar flying north over the Atlantic after hitting targets in north west Europe. British carriers HMS Valiant, HMS Defiant and HMS Victoria all stationed in the North Atlantic launched their fighters quickly, joined by aircraft from the USS Lexington and Committee Carrier CS Morgan. In total 106 fighters closed in on six Martian craft coming into contact near Rockall west of Scotland.

Closing in from five directions and flying very near the surface of the ocean below the very active cloud deck allowed the fighters to begin their attack runs before the Martians were able to properly react. The fact there was still a good amount of debris in the air did not seem to give the Martians any advantage in the fight, at least not at first. However, only three of the Martian craft turned to engage our fighters as the second formation of three ignored the fighters entirely accelerated and continued to fly north. Once again this was clear evidence the Martians were attempting to husband their air combat resources as best they could. During this engagement we would lose 41 of our fighters while the Martians lost only two of the three engaging craft. At least that was the total losses until the heavily damaged third Martian flew into the path of two Phoenix II fighters flying south out of Thule Airbase in Northwest Greenland. The Phoenix IIs made quick work of the third Martian Flying Machine.

In 1901 we had nothing to use to fight against the Martians in the air and even though this fight was costly in both lives and aircraft at least this time we had something to fight with. It was a lesson our air crews hoped to press hard on the enemies’ will to fight. Nevertheless, if these heavy losses continued it was possible we could very well lose the air war in a very short time.

THE MARTIAN’S MELT THE ICE

Martians were still dropping craft out of orbit on this third day continuing to beef up their now extensive command bases still not conclusively proven to be at both the North and South Poles. Nevertheless, supply spacecraft were landing at the poles with ground forces, walking machines and other equipment at regular intervals preparing to launch simultaneous attacks from their polar bases towards the equator expecting to link up at zero latitude. Their overall strategy to take the planet was to push from both poles like a massive military vice on the ground and in the air and keep pushing until all resistance ended. General hit-and-run air attacks continued on geologic targets as well as selective man-made facilities as well as directed attacks on some “high value targets.”

As this build-up of equipment and forces continued the Martians sent out dozens of flying machines to melt large areas of ice located just south of the North Pole, on Greenland’s ice cap, north of Canada and the Soviet Union as well as the edges of the Antarctic ice sheet. (More than likely they were melting the ice sheet in central Antarctica but we had no direct evidence of this at the time.) At first we could not understand why they would want to melt the ice as it seemed to contradict their known plan to cool the Earth. We soon learned the Martians were very well versed in Earth’s climatological matters. They had done their homework well. By melting the ice in these areas, but not down to bare ground always leaving the areas covered with a shallower ice sheet, they placed a very large mass of water vapor into the atmosphere which at those latitudes turned the water vapor into massive snow producing clouds. The water vapor collected on the ash and dust being produced by the massive fires and volcanic debris acted as condensation nuclei forming wide spread cloud formations. These efforts would cover hundreds of thousands of square miles of ground with clouds and new snow falls which reflected the Sun’s radiation back out into space. By melting the ice they were cooling the planet’s atmosphere. At the few places where they were visible they were producing some spectacular and rather ominous sunsets.

It seemed almost an afterthought that several dozen alpine glazers were also attacked in Europe as well as both South and North America and Asia. These glazers were melted down to bare rock and the resulting crash of water caused a great deal of catastrophic flash flooding and much loss of life. This result seemed more of an added plus for the Martians rather than an attack on those local populations. High winds accompanied these attacks as whole villages were buried by the flows.

Unlike the efforts on the Northern and Southern ice caps which we could do nothing about these other attacks were to cost the Martians several of their flying machines as air engagements were ongoing over dozens of areas around the world in an attempt to fight off as many of these geologic attacks as we could. We were still losing hundreds of aircraft and many pilots but the ratio of our losses in the air to Martian losses was improving. It may seem crass to say but if we could improve the numbers a bit more we could afford the losses but the Martians could not. The way things appeared at the time the Martians were possibly going to run out of aircraft before we would despite the odds. We were going to do everything we could to deny the Martians air superiority at least in the atmosphere if it were possible. At the time despite our losses the air war was pretty much a draw. But the war was only in its early stages. The Martians had yet to establish forward air bases. This would soon be corrected as their ground forces continued to advance.

Ground spotter report near Mount Forel, Greenland

Radio Burst Report (partial) from Greenland: … MACHINES USING PULSED HEAT RAYS TO LIQUIFY GLAZERS AROUND… DOZENS OF… NORTH TOWARDS POLE… MUCH VOL… (Transmission ends)

Off the coast of Upola, Samoa

Radio Burst Report CS Sea Devil 104 Pacific: GEMINI COMPLETELY DESTROYED…100 PERCENT LOSS…FEW SURVIVORS…WILL STAND BY… (Transmission ends)

Reports were also received which indicated Sea Cave Facility Blue 2 at Wake Island was a total loss. Mars Radio Traps MRT 8 on Bikini Atoll and MRT 11 on Adak, Alaska were also destroyed. It was not reported if they had been destroyed by direct Martian attack, as a result of the Pacific Ocean movement or while engaging Martian Flying Machines.

Submarines in the area which had been supporting Upola were released of ‘Gemini’ duty and placed under the command of Director ‘Triton’ in the command submarine CS Pacific. The subs were then ordered to spend no more than twelve hours in rescue/recon operations around Upola at which time they were ordered to conduct search and destroy operations against any Martian machine they could locate. Radio silence and radio monitoring was to continue. With the loss of Gemini, Triton now assumed regional command of the entire Pacific Ocean area. Titan was still in command of southern ground forces. ‘Apollo’ sent his acknowledgement and full agreement by radio burst message.

DAY FOUR: 5 September 1938

The Second Wave – Massive Air Attacks Begin

No other period of time before or after the fourth day (some 36 hours in total) of the Martian invasion saw greater use of massive, widespread and concentrated Martian air power than this short period of time. This longest of days saw attacks on targets ranging from the Arctic and Antarctic circles all the way to the equator with virtually no region left untouched. These attacks came as sweeping waves emanating from the poles; massed point attacks made by craft dropping out of orbit and individual single craft operations on what seemed like indiscriminate Heat-Ray attacks on targets of seemingly little or no military value such as archeological sites in Asia and South America. It was almost as if the Martians were attempting to erase the ancient history of man represented by these remnants of past civilizations as they became early targets of the Martians. Whatever the true reasons these historic sites were most certainly seen as threats to the Martians who were using some of their limited resources to destroy them.

Historic sites attacked on that day included Machu Picchu and dozens of other stone age cities in Central and South America including the MLZ. Ancient ruins in Greece and Italy also saw considerable activity on this day as did Stonehenge. By the end of the day some 3000 ancient sites had been attacked with many of them a complete loss. We had not thought to protect many of these sites although many had been camouflaged.

The Martians also paid close attention to large ships which had not yet made their way to any ‘safe’ harbor. Hundreds of cargo ships were lost along with several warships notably the battleship HMS Dreadnaught, the American cruiser USS Congress and Japanese carriers Shoho and Neosho.

As more and more battle reports came into command and control centers around the world a pattern began to emerge as to how and when the Martians preferred to fight. As we began to plot their air and ground attacks it became clear that the Martians preferred to fight at night or at the very least in low light situations. This made a good deal of sense since the Sun’s light they had become accustomed to on their home planet was about half as energetic as the sunlight we receive on Earth. Full daylight must be a great burden to the Martians. (Could we somehow blind them?)

Later review of old 1901 records showed that same pattern was generally present during the First Martian War – but we had somehow missed it. (Not that we could have done anything about it at the time.) With any luck this was a weakness we could exploit today as word was quickly passed on to all military commands world-wide. Major population centers were also notified to expect a greater number of attacks during periods of low light (there was plenty of cloud cover and very bad weather over large areas of the Earth at this time so low light was quickly becoming the norm) and darkness. We would later speculate this could be the answer as to why a majority of UFO reports we had been tracking over the years were reported to have occurred at night even though not all of them were suspected of being from Mars.

APOLLO FLASH: TO ALL COMMANDS: ENEMY PREFERS NIGHT AND LOW LIGHT OPERATIONS – PLAN Q ACCORDINGLY – GOOD HUNTING TO ALL

CITIES UNDER AIR ATTACK

Even before the Martians concentrated their attacks on the cities of the world national governments had moved their operations to underground bunkers out of harm’s way as they struggled to co-ordinate efforts with other nations to battle the Martians. High, medium and low level attacks on a vast selection of point and area targets began as dusk fell over the mid-Atlantic which at the time was undergoing a series of violent storms. Several hurricanes’ were forming in the mid-Atlantic at a time and in areas where they had never formed before. In total some 39,000 plus individual targets came under some type of air attack during that fourth long day of Martian operations. Many of these areas hit by the enemy had little in the way of air defense.

Nearly every above ground population center, including our three remaining prime command cities and New Washington Center were pounded by Martian Flying Machines firing deadly Heat-Rays, but mostly from high altitude. (Which it must be said somewhat reduced the effectiveness of these weapons as well as our own weapons to defend.) The Martians seemed reluctant to drop down to lower levels to attack our population centers realizing they were heavily defended by an overlapping series of weapons. They were also attacking our false cities set up as decoys which had also cost them attack resources as well as a number of flying machines so at least that part of our deception operation was working to some degree. These high altitude attacks on population centers made defensive counter attacks by Committee jets virtually impossible as they were unable to match the high altitudes of the Martian Flying Machines. However, this did not prove to be the case for our Phoenix IIs as they thundered skyward to meet the massive air threat.

Reports from New London, New York City, Sydney, Paris, Berlin and other key cities which had good numbers of Phoenix IIs indicated that our fighters were giving the Martians as good as they were getting, downing several of the Martian machines despite the fact they were outnumbered at all points. The damage to the above ground facilities in those heavily defended areas was measurably less than areas without Phoenix II fighters. We could however report some success had been achieved by our cities surface-to-air solid fuel missiles which had been deployed in dozens of cities around the world. The only problem was we did not have enough of these missiles as we would have liked to have had. But that can be said of any resource. By the end of the day the Martians had lost another 196 flying machines. We had lost at least 214 Phoenix IIs along with 756 other jets including many of the pilots. These were losses we could not replace even though we continued to build fighters and other war craft in hundreds of underground facilities despite these Martian attacks. (Assembling new jet engines to replace those damaged due to having flown in the clogged atmosphere was a high priority.) It was at this point the Committee began to recruit First Martian War pilots and pull them out of their Red Weed bi-planes. Their flying skills were needed elsewhere. Many would be flying jets for the first time. Not a few of these older pilots would prove to be damn good fighters.

While other Martian machines were attacking at high altitudes to soften up our defenses with Heat-Rays at least fifty major population centers around the world came under attack by mid-altitude machines dropping seismic devices triangulated on the centers of those cities. These seismic attacks were in conjunction with the Heat-Ray attacks adding yet another level of devastation. All of the cities attacked by these devices suffered some damage but major damage could only occur if the local geology was just right. If there were no major fault lines near a targeted city these devices could only generate moderate damage. Nevertheless, there was considerable damage to several cities most notably Los Angeles and San Francisco in California, Chicago, Nanking and Canton in China, Rosario Argentina, Munich Germany, Santiago Chile, Lima Peru, Portland Oregon, Osaka and Yokahama Japan, Wellington New Zealand, Rome and Naples in Italy and Jeddah Saudi Arabia. By the end of the day San Francisco and Osaka were gone – only rubble remained. Several cities which had been supplied with Tesla beam weapons were able to bring down some Martian craft as well as disrupt other attacks using high energy light beams to blind their pilots.

Destruction by powerful Martian Heat Rays at Lima Peru

In many of these areas roads soon became clogged with endless numbers of terrified people streaming out into the open and away from the devastation all around them. We were soon receiving reports of Martian Flying Machines in several areas (mostly in China at the time) coming in close to the ground and pumping Heat-Ray pulses on the fleeing crowds eviscerating thousands at a time! The brutality of our Martian enemies was on full display.

At our ‘Vaults for Mankind’ facility below Wellington (code named ‘Brown’) some disruptions occurred but the facility held up well with only minor damage. Our underground military base (MB4) “Delta” at Rosario also came through the attack virtually undamaged other than some electrical failures which were soon repaired. Damage assessment teams were also sent out from Delta to check on the local area. Due to the enemies’ heavy air attacks there would be little left standing to report on.

Although New London, New York City and Sydney were also attacked by these devices the damage they sustained was minor – none caused any collapse of tunnels at these locations even though surface structures did sustain some damage it was not at a critical level. Fire had done the most damage to the above ground sections of these cities. This was much more than the seismic devices and even that was less than had been estimated. We had built the bloody hell out of these primary underground cities and nothing that the Martians had thrown at these facilities so far was going to destroy them. Off the coasts of New York City and Sydney submarines detailed as prime city defense submarines were able to engage the enemy and bring down several of the Martian Flying Machines with rockets but were limited in their effectiveness due to the number of our fighter aircraft flying over and around these locations. While they were engaged in air-to-air combat we did not want to shoot down one of our own planes.

We were also able to engage the enemy at twenty five city locations which had been outfitted with some of Tesla’s back-engineered ground based Heat-Rays. Already several Martians had been shot out of the air due to these devices giving them a taste of their own bloody medicine. One Heat-Ray squad in central Berlin had shot down two Martian Flying Machines before it was destroyed by several blasts from the enemies’ Heat-Ray. Tesla had positioned forty of these Heat-Rays surrounding all of our four primary cities as well as New Washington Center. I can attest to the fact the crews around New London were very ready to take on the low flying Martians.

Committee anti-aircraft Heat Rays in action

Cobra teams in several locations were able to locate and destroy a number of these seismic devices most notably in Paris and Amsterdam. The teams had developed a new tactic of going after one of the three devices with the full team rather than dividing up their efforts to find all three knowing it took three devices to inflict major damage to any one target. If they were able to destroy one of the devices they could very well save the targeted city from major destruction. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands lost their lives to these seismic attacks and the attacks on our cities had only just begun.

General European destruction

For their efforts on that day the Martians had set hundreds of thousands of structures on fire around the world including many storage facilities, ports, above ground oil reserves and other man-made facilities even as they continued their attacks on the planet itself all from high altitudes. All of this pushed a good deal more debris into an already well-damaged atmosphere. It goes without saying many cities and other population centers were experiencing large spread power failures. The blackouts had been initiated by local commanders, the power failures were courtesy of the Martians.

Just southeast of Thule Airbase

Ham Radio report AF61X (unconfirmed): Thule Airbase is under heavy Martian air attack from at least 30 Martian Flying Machines which continue to pound the base. The whole base seems to be on fire. I see no counter attack by our aircraft. Alpha Fox 61 X-Ray signing off.

CLOSE IN AIR-TO-GROUND ATTACKS

Mid and low level attacks concentrated on airfields, smaller above ground military facilities, radar facilities on both land and ships, dams, canals, electrical towers and electrical generating plants. The Martians were also able to attack and destroy dozens of dams mostly in North America, China and the Soviet Union however, dams located in Europe and South America did not go unnoticed as several of these facilities were also hit. These attacks naturally caused a great deal of flooding destroying many thousands of homes and small towns with the accompanying great loss of life. Throughout the war air attacks would continue to take a great toll on civilians in cities as well as open areas even as hundreds of thousands fled to areas of supposed safety. Needless to say, they also had a detrimental effect on local roads and rail lines making it very difficult for rescue operations to get into many affected areas. For the most part local Red Cross operations were on their own. In many cases isolation would be the norm.

Attacks on our radar facilities included several along both our North Polar Defense Line and South Polar Defense Line (notably the Peter 1 Island facility on the SPDL and the Vopnafjordur, Island site at the NPDL which were both completely destroyed). The Martians were trying to blind our radar nets but even as these facilities were being hit secondary facilities not yet placed into operation went on line. They had not been able to blind us yet. We had deployed four special radar submarines at both radar defense lines (two each expecting to be called to duty very early in the war). By popping up to periscope depth these submarines could deploy deck mounted radar dishes and electronically fill in some of the holes left open by these Martian attacks. When the Martians began to move towards greater populated areas we would deploy our mobile truck mounted radars.

Once again, as in the First Martian War, rail lines were targeted by Martian Flying Machines with mid and low level point attacks. At one period during these attacks the Martians appeared to pay concentrated attention to the Trans-Siberian Railway which crossed most of the USSR. Much of this vital link was destroyed including many of the supporting stations along the way. At many other rail locations around the world thousands of miles of track were being destroyed as well as many facilities constructed alongside these tracks. The Martians understood these were still vital Earth links but they must have also known they could not possibly destroy all of our rail lines as they were far too numerous and at some critical points, mostly near major cities, very well defended. They simply did not have enough resources to complete the job. In one sense we had out built the Martians. Even though they would continue to attack and sever our life-lines whenever the opportunity presented itself.

A strategic shift in Martian combat operations was noted on this day when several canals came under attack. In 1901 the Martians clearly stayed away from attacking canals and their associated infrastructures. However, on this day dozens of canals came under fire including the Panama Canal (not built until after the First Martian War), the Grand Canal of China, the Manchester Ship Canal in England and the Eire Canal in North America. All of these facilities suffered a great deal of damage with the Eire and Panama Canals thought to be total losses. The stand out on this day was the Suez Canal which was over flown several times as Martian craft attacked targets in and around Egypt including Cairo (another area generally not attacked during the First Martian War) but not one Heat-Ray was ever fired towards the Suez. The Martians seemed to have something else in mind for this canal. The same could be said of the Giza Plateau which also remained untouched.

During these low level attacks on the Panama Canal no fewer than five Committee submarines engaged Martian Flying Machines as they came into range. These submarine rocket and anti-aircraft machine gun attacks would bring down three of the Martians however two of our submarines, one on each end of the canal were destroyed by Martian counter attacks. Much of Panama City was set on fire and destroyed as the surviving population fled into the anticipated safety of the thick jungle. There was some truth in the thought that what the Martians could not see they could not kill.

Our underground Committee Secret Service Communication Center (Com 8) near Panama City was still operational but it was now on its own without any local military support. Com 8 would continue to relay reports of local Martian activity to the Committee as well as co-ordinate intercepted low power Ham Radio reports. With the canal now useless there would not be much locally to report. They would however be able to continue working on their primary assignment – intercepting Martian radio transmissions and disrupting them whenever they could.

Off the coast of Panama Canal – Atlantic

Committee Submarine VLF radio message, Atlantic: PANAMA CANAL FACILITIES ATLANTIC END COMPLETELY DESTROYED… ONE BOAT SUNK… ONE MARTIAN FLYING MACHINE DOWNED BY ROCKET FIRE… FIRES ONSHORE AS FAR AS CAN BE SEEN… MUCH MATERIAL IN THE ATMOSPHERE… (Transmission ends)

For most of the day low level attacks were confined to point targets well away from heavily fortified and defended locations. Even so the Martians would pay a price for many of those attacks as Martian machines were drawn into attacking several of our Martian Radio Traps both on land and at sea. We were also beginning to field reports that some of our radio jamming efforts had been effective against some low flying Martian machines.

From radio burst reports, cable and Ham Radio messages as well as VLF submarine reports we learned several Mars Radio Traps had been set off. We lost contact on this day with our traps at Maryuq, Libya at MRT 3, Amsterdam Island, Indian Ocean at MRT 7 and Prince Edward Island in the South Atlantic at MRT 12 (including our nearby radar station). In the fog of war there was no way of knowing if the Martians had simply destroyed them before they came into range of the traps or if they were activated by the Martian craft flying too close and exploding as designed. We did however receive live TV images fed into our Sydney command center of one Martian craft approaching MRT 6 in the Gibson Desert of Australia which clearly showed the destruction of a large Martian Flying Machine hit by the trap’s solid rocket fire. Seconds later we lost the signal. We would later receive reports of at least three of our ship bourn radio traps having also gone off. How effective they had been is also a matter of speculation. In total we had deployed 74 of these ship traps, half would be gone by the end of the day and any success they achieved would be icing on the cake.

The Martians were still engaged in continuing air-to-air combat with our air forces all over the world which were still taking heavy losses the entire day, but we were still very much in the fight. Every available Committee and national combat aircraft from both carrier and land bases other than those designated to protect key city points and vital military facilities were on the hunt for Martian craft. One unconfirmed report spoke of twelve old bi-planes taking off from an American Airfield in the State of Kansas to engage the low flying Martians. None returned to the airfield. Of course they had no chance of success. I like to think they took out at least one Martian craft before becoming victims of their deadly Heat-Rays.

By the end of the fourth day we had lost more than half of our advanced Phoenix IIs in air combat and at least 40 percent of our other jet fighters as well as some 60 percent of our prop driven fighter aircraft but our analysts believed the Martians were paying a higher price than they may have anticipated. We estimated the enemy by this time had lost at least 489 flyers. Combined Earth forces had brought down nearly 23% of the enemies known fighting air force! (This would subsequently prove to be lower than actual Martian air losses.) This was much more than we had anticipated. To be honest I had expected our air losses would be greater. And I had also expected the Martians would own the skies by the fourth day. With the Martians appearing to back away to some degree from air combat we estimated once again this day of massive air attacks despite our losses in the air and on the ground had been a draw at least in the air.

Along with fighting the Martians our air crews had to fight the intense weather at nearly every point on Earth. The vast amount of material in the atmosphere was playing hell on our engines. There was a real possibility we would run out of good engines long before we ran out of aircraft.

That evening we lost contact with CP Magic – ‘Uranus’. We would later learn that ‘Uranus’ had to get the hell out of his holding pattern when several Martian craft flew in to attack Mars Radio Trap MRT 5 on Flores Island, which happened to be just north of his flight location. (A tactical error by our staff who had positioned Uranus too close to a radar trap designed to bring in Martian craft.) ‘Uranus’ flew off to refuel at Azores so low and below much of the debris that high ocean wave spray could hit the windshield! Returning to the mid-Atlantic he re-positioned himself 500 miles farther south – well away from any radar traps.

Recon team inside Rosario, Argentina, SA

Radio Burst Report, Tango 13 Alpha: CITY NEARLY COMPLETELY DESTROYED… MASS CAUSALTIES… REMAINING SURVIVING POPULATION RIOTING…DELTA FORCE FULLY OPERATIONAL… STANDING BY… (Transmission ends)

Late that day over 2000 hybrids being held in two Hybrid Relocation Centers (HRC-12 and HRC-34) in Lower-London broke out of their confinement and attacked local residents. ‘Zeus’ immediately authorized the use of lethal force due to local above ground combat conditions and martial law. 284 hybrids were killed with 401 wounded by reserve and regular military forces backed up by heavily armed police patrols and not a few civilians. The situation was stabilized within four and a half hours. Surviving hybrids were sent back to the centers and the guards were doubled. The hybrids were then read an order by ‘Zeus’ advising them that any relocation camp hybrid found outside of their centers for any reason would be “summarily executed by firing squads”. The situation was far too critical to play games with hybrids. We soon learned that other cities were having similar ‘problems’ with their hybrids. Many had adopted the identical solution!

TRITON VLF RADIO MESSAGE: TO ALL PACIFIC SUBS: BLUE TWO AND BLUE FIVE DESTROYED – BLUE ONE MODERATE DAMAGE – PLAN ACCORDINGLY – CONTINUE THE HUNT – TALLY HO.

MORE EARTH MOVEMENTS

The reports were coming in so fast and from so many locations our meteorological operations center could not keep track. Our world map in the command center which had been set aside in the small meteorological office in Lower-London was becoming filled with different colored pins.

We had set this area aside because it was felt some measure of attention should be paid to tracking potential geologic or atmospheric damage caused by the Martians. No one could have predicted the extent to which the Martians would go, nor the incredible response the world would have to such attacks. The small four man team in Lower-London as part of Department J – Geologic Studies and Resource Directorate would have their hands full.

It was clear after the initial attack on the Pacific area we could expect many more events related to it. Clarification did not take long. As the attacks continued reports came in of large earthquakes occurring along the coast of Chile, off of Ecuador, east of Guadalajara, east of San Francisco, Vancouver and Adak Alaska. Our Committee Secret Service Communications Center Com 7 at Vancouver was severely damaged but still operational. They were reporting nearly continues earthquakes in the general area. Eighty-five large events were recorded on this day alone. These quakes were all in the Thomas Scale of 7.8 to 8.7. After shocks of great strength were being felt along the entire western Pacific generating more destructive seismic sea waves.

South of Iceland, now occupied by Martian forces, felt strong underwater quakes along a 400 mile line south of the island into the Atlantic. There were dozens more around the world from 6.5 to 7; far too many to note. In several areas tunnels were beginning to show stress and more than a few had collapsed under these earthquake conditions. It seemed the planet was trying to readjust itself from the titanic blows it had absorbed in the Pacific. It was feared the adjusted Earth movements could go on for months – even years. Our badly wounded planet was trying to recover.

[END PART 63]

Copyright © R. Michael Gordon, 2020

[Next week: Part 64: The beginning of the ground war.]

[PART 62]

The First Wave – Martian Geologic Attacks

THE MARTIAN SUPER-BOMB ATTACK

“I think the bloody Martians just moved the whole god damn Pacific Ocean!”

Submarine VLW Radio Message

The Martian invasion plan called for the planet itself to be attacked first. At 05:27 a.m. GMT eighty-one Martian Flying Machines came out of polar orbit in twelve groups of six and seven spacecraft each dropping off along a lateral line heading south. Beginning their decent over the North Pole they were tracked by NPDL radars and were soon flying a pattern which would place all twelve Martian groups along a 4000 mile long line at the western edge of the Pacific Ocean. Committee and other world military forces were immediately notified that the machines were heading for the Western Pacific as several squadrons of national and Committee fighter aircraft from both land and carriers were scrambled to engage the enemy. The air war had begun.

Before the First Martian War mankind had yet to fly further than a few dozen yards. During the Great Earth War we had advanced to fight in the air but only at a very primitive level. Before this war humanity had developed craft which would for the first time bring the air war to the enemy and hopefully somewhat equal the odds over the skies of Earth.

Both Phoenix IIs (originally named Phoenix Alpha II) and Whitehead Thunder Jets were soon screaming towards the edge of the Pacific from several directions ready to face the first Martian attackers. Several old prop-driven fighters were also headed into the fight. Most of the Thunder Jets had been launched from Japanese aircraft carriers Kaga, Hiryu, Zubkaku, Shokaku, and Zuikaku, the British carrier HMS Resolution, the American carrier USS Enterprise, and Committee carriers CS Alliance, and CS Resolve as well as land based jets mostly stationed at Yokohama, and Manila as well as other bases. The first five Phoenix II attack craft to make contact were launched from CS Resolve. This would be the first full ocean war fought by mankind with extensive use of submarines and aircraft carriers and the learning curve would be very steep.

In total these Martians would face 495 Earth fighters. What we did not do was send up every fighter we could in the event this was a bluff to pull our resources away from other critical defense points. We knew that this was going to be a long hard slugfest and no one could predict where on Earth the Martians would attack next. We had to be ready for anything. As it turned out we were nowhere near as ready as we had hoped.

The first new development of this Martian invasion not seen before which had become clear as soon as the attacks began was that the Martians were now able to go into Earth orbit to prepare for their attacks rather than first landing on Earth, and they were not using the old cylinders of 1901. One large craft could launch several Martian Flying Machines from orbit. For the most part these new machines were fully prepared to do battle from the moment they left Mars. The Martians it seemed had indeed improved their equipment and methods of warfare. The time required to deploy their flying and walking machines of war had gone from hours to mere minutes. We would need to adapt to that new reality – and fast!

As the Martian Flying Machines dropped out of orbit and into the proper atmosphere they formed a huge fan pattern over the Western Pacific Ocean. Over much of that portion of the Pacific thunder storms had commanded the skies. Now they would be replaced by a much more destructive wind. The fan pattern seen on radar indicated these machines were pushing towards five separate points with nine each machines in the lead with six more flying machines trailing the first nine. These were thought to be the first and second waves of the attack force but what were the targets? We did not yet know where their targets could possibly be as none of the five fan lines pointed directly at any primary population or military centers. It was a much wider area. In fact they did not seem to be heading towards any heavily populated areas at all.

As the first and second waves flew on they formed a large double diamond formation still heading towards the Western Pacific. Behind the twin attack groups flew twelve trailing Martian flyer groups roughly spread out along the 4000 mile wide attack line. This was a very thin rear defense; typical of the Martian war methods and the Earth fighters were about to hit that group along several points with around 95 jet fighters each.

At the same time the first five Phoenix II attack craft made radar contact with the northern group of Martian Flying Machines in the first wave and were closing in fast. Well behind the Phoenix IIs were 36 Thunder Jets closing in as fast as they could. As the first Earth fighters came in six of the Martian machines peeled away from the formation and headed directly at the Phoenix II attack craft. The Phoenix IIs pulled left, right, top, and bottom in a precision movement which seemed to momentarily confuse the Martian flyers. This distraction allowed the fifth Phoenix II now flying at top speed “on the deck” to fly right past the Martian machines without being fired on. The pilot flew straight towards the lead Martian group. Pulling back to engage the Martian flyers the four remaining Phoenix IIs began to line up on the Martians sending in ten air-to-air missiles at the Martians now turning hard to face the four Earth built fighters. Clearly they had not expected to face such an aggressive attack by Earth forces in combat flying machines which closely resembled their own. It was to cost them, as no fewer than six of the air-to-air missiles were on target, four hitting the first and two hitting the second Martian Flying Machines. Both Martian craft trailed smoke but they still had a good deal of fight left in them as they opened up with their Heat-Rays. The powerful beams caught three of the Phoenix IIs instantly tearing into the closest two, both of which exploded as the third less affected jet began to trail smoke. However, this shot missed the fourth Phoenix II which dove hard to the deck. Pulling up hard and closing in fast the Phoenix II flew under two of the Martian Flying Machines pumping machinegun fire and four rockets into the first Martian and incredibly rammed the second!

Seeing the ongoing fight and closing fast the Thunder Jets now fanned out like a pack of wolves going after the remaining Martian Flying Machine. However, only half of the jets engaged as 18 of the fighters went through the local battle without firing in order to go after the waves of Martian Flying Machines still heading towards the Western Pacific. They would be joined by the single operational Phoenix II in the area.

It would not be long before this Earth fighter force as well as several others came into contact with several Martian craft. And although this group would eventually bring down four more of the Martians they could not stop any of the forward group of enemy machines from dropping their devastating payloads on their targets. In the end none of these Earth fighters in the first group returned to their bases as all were eventually lost in air-to-air combat. These results were generally repeated along the full line of air-combat over the Western Pacific as our losses continued to climb. Even though our air forces were taking out some of the enemies fighting machines it would not be enough.

The fusion rocket-bombs were launched by the forward Martian Flying Machines at the Marianas Trench, Aleutian Trench, Japan Trench, Kuril-Kamchatka Trench and the Kermadec-Tongo Trench. Radio burst and spot reports were soon coming in that strong ‘S’ and ‘P’ shockwaves had been registered across the entire Pacific emanating from the Western edge of the ocean. The floor of the Pacific Ocean, the largest area on Earth covering some 70 million square miles, had been attacked!

Two of the Super-bomb blasts from the Martian first strike attack on Earth

Somewhere near the Kuril Islands

Submarine 143 Radio Burst Report, Pacific: HIGH ENERGY FLASH… WEST OF POSITION 76A – 282 DEGREES FOLLOWED BY STRONG SHOCK WAVE… SECONDARY MOVEMENTS… (Transmission ends)

Five separate pulses closely timed together were registered on radio receivers indicating a massive release of some type of very high pulse energy. Initial reports coming in from the Cook Islands, Mariana Islands, Hiroshima, Japan, Kamchatka peninsula and Kodiak, Alaska, were all reporting massive mushroom-like clouds in the direction of the trenches preceded by a huge fireball reaching the surface which seemed to have exploded from deep underwater. Reports were starting to come in of massive volcanic eruptions around the entire western edge of the Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’. We did not need these reports to know a massive event had occurred as several monitoring stations were wiring reports that the enemy pulses had set up a line of earthquakes of historic magnitude – some as energetic as 10.6 on the Thomas Scale! The entire floor of the Western Pacific had come alive as a large section of the ocean floor simply dropped dozens of feet.

All communications with our base at Lower-Upola had been cut and had gone silent since we first began receiving these reports. The Central Pacific cable had also been cut and was no longer operational. North and south Pacific cables were still operational as were the backups.

Eruptions were soon ongoing at Aleutian Range, Kamchatka Russia, Kuril Islands, Sakota Japan, Ryukyu Islands, Baguio Philippines and the Mariana Islands. Seismic sea wave warnings were issued for the entire Pacific region. Casualties were expected to be extensive throughout the entire area.

Seismic sea waves were soon moving across the Pacific from several points traveling east and west at an incredible 400 miles per hour. Asia was hit first with great devastation on every facing shore line. When these waves hit Hawaii they impacted the islands at an estimated 140 miles per hour at a height of 80 feet! The last message out of Hawaii that day had come from our Kazumura Cave facility at Hilo shortly before the first waves hit the island. Scientists would later discover the whole Western Pacific Ocean Basin had moved both down and sideways! Incredible as it sounds that movement was so powerful it actually slowed the Earth’s rotation, adding an estimated 2-1/2 seconds to the year! They would later calculate that one of these super bombs equaled five times the amount of explosive energy mankind had used during our entire history on planet Earth and our world had just been hit by five of them! These were much more powerful than the super bomb we had built by a very large margin. If they had any more of these devices we were in deep trouble.

This opening Martian attack on the Pacific basin sank many islands including much of the underground command facility at Upola Island, Samoa. At the time we feared it was a complete loss which included the loss of one of our primary cities and most of its population numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Upola Island held one of our newer primary ‘Vaults for Mankind’ facilities as well as one of our Committee Secret Service Communications Centers (COM 4) and it had taken only minutes to destroy the entire facility. It was feared that several million people across the Pacific had been killed during this first Martian attack of the war.

The Pacific Ocean shift had dropped many island areas some 40 feet. It was the massive energy impacted on the area by the sea waves which did the rest of the damage. After the waves passed there was little recognizable remaining on the surface of any Samoan island. Other islands later confirmed to have been partly or fully destroyed were spread across the entire Pacific area, but these were only the tip of the iceberg which included most of the land masses comprising the Hawaiian Islands now showing only the top two-thirds of three shield volcanoes showing any type of vegetation which were then undergoing massive eruptive events. The islands would soon be mostly free of vegetation. Ancient natural tunnels were also greatly damaged.

We had lost contact with our Vaults for Mankind facility at Midway Island (a mixed facility code named Gray) which was also feared lost. However, despite major damage we later discovered that much of the facility had survived – barely.

Despite the massive destruction on land including much damage to port facilities most of the military ships in the Pacific were still in fighting condition which included all of our carriers and submarines.

Reports from the opposite side of the Earth soon told of strange and powerful earthquakes never before reported in several areas including Algeria, Libya, Niger, Mali, Southern Africa and the Belgium Congo. Landslides, debris flows, and new cracks in the Earth with mud flows from major thunder storms were also being reported. Thousands were killed as panicked populations scrambled away from the hardest hit areas. The planet had been given a devastating blow and it had seemingly come alive! The Martians had found a way to use our own world to kill across a wide expanse of the planet.

Hour’s later seismic sea waves generated by the bombs and the movement of the Pacific Basin slammed into the west coast of America with devastating results. Every major city along the coast from Alaska to the tip of Argentina was hit hard as wave after wave pushed on shore. Hundreds of thousands were killed and millions more were left homeless. Within days numerous earthquakes would begin to hit these areas once thought to be dormant as several fault lines and volcanoes came alive causing even more devastation. It was not long before the Pacific skies were clogged with debris heading east from dozens of volcanic eruptions.

The major port facilities at Tacoma, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Jose and Lima suffered major damage as did the Sea Cave Facility at Portland (code named Blue 5). Blue 5 was now out of action. The Pacific end of the Panama Canal was moderately damaged, but was not put out of action. Committee Secret Service Communication Center (Com 8) near Panama City was still operational. However, because of its protected location the major port facility at Vancouver suffered very little damage other than some minor flooding. It would continue to operate including, despite some damage, our Vancouver Committee Secret Service Communication Center (Com 7). Our Sea Cave Facility at Santiago, Chile (Blue 9) suffered only minor damage. The massive ‘sea doors’ had taken a good deal of punishment but held. The same type of protective doors also saved our Sea Cave Facility at San Diego, California (Blue 1). These communication centers would still be able to service our submarines and monitor Martian radio transmissions.

TARGET EARTH

Despite the vast amount of damage done to man-made facilities in and around the Pacific region it took a while for us to understand why the Martians would use such a powerful group of weapons to disrupt the planet rather than use such powerful weapons to destroy four or five of our largest cities or even some of our largest military facilities. We soon realized their strategic plan and whom or rather what they were at war with. They were not at war with human’s per-say; they were at war with Planet Earth! With that realization it became clear the Martians, with their very long view of most things, were never at war with mere humans. Humans in their minds were nothing more than a convenient food supply or at worse a secondary ‘infection’ of the planet they would eventually need to deal with before they could secure their new Mars. (For some reason they referred to their home world, in their language of course as “Mars Prime”.)

That was a clear indication of how little they regarded humanity and our ability to defend ourselves. It must be remembered from the Martian point of view they had not been defeated by humans – which was absolutely correct – they had been delivered a setback by a disease they had originally failed to take into account from which they had now fully recovered. It was now time to simply take what in their way of thinking was already theirs and that included the source of food, which was still plentiful and making at lot of noise walking around on two feet!

The planet itself would continue to be their primary target for a while longer as they built up their needed supplies to deal with the ‘human problem.’ Four hundred more Martian spacecraft dropped out of orbit near the end of the day split between both poles. These were thought to have been large cargo and troop ships, sent down to expand and re-enforce their two suspected main Earth battle command centers at the North and South Poles. That strategy at least had not changed since 1901.

With these next Martian craft came the final attack on that first day. Almost simultaneously Martian Flying Machines attacked the Deep Space Radio telescope network destroying the primary dishes at Goldstone California, Canberra, Australia, and Robledo de Charela, Spain. For the most part we had lost our ability to ‘listen in’ on Mars. That task now fell to several much smaller dishes. They would have a great deal of difficulty doing any work with all the lightning discharges and debris in the atmosphere.

DAY TWO: 3 September 1938

ATTACKS ON THE VOLCANOS

As large numbers of terrified people not unexpectedly continued to leave major population centers especially along coastal areas clogging up the roads, world-wide tracking radars were picking up more Martian Flying Machines dropping out of Earth orbit. Martian machines were once again being tracked and with the massive attack on the Pacific Ocean the day before most in Lower-New York City Command Headquarters speculated this would be another “super bomb” attack possibly on population centers or perhaps other earthquake prone areas. Thunder Jet interceptors and Phoenix II aircraft as well as thousands of National jet fighters on runways and aircraft carriers around the world were ready to counter-attack any of the Martian machines if they made a run at our major cities or military facilities. However, these did not seem to be the targets the Martians were interested in, at least not yet. Once again they were not de-orbiting near major cities. Even seeing this we were not about to pull our defense fighters away from our major population centers for hit-and-run missions. We soon had our answer as to their next target areas as the next wave made their low orbit run and on into the lower atmosphere.

The machines coming in high over the North Pole dropped down and flew directly towards the Caribbean area. Before long the first group came to a halt near Mount Pelee even as fighter jets, many from our carriers, closed in on the Martian craft. From this oversight position witnesses saw the first giant craft fire three bright blue rockets into the ground in a triangular pattern around the volcano. When the first radio reports came in we knew at once the Martians were going to set off volcanoes with their seismic devices just as they had in the past. It soon became clear that they were going to set off as many as possible in as short a time as they could.

The first machines continued their targeting runs flying over and rocketing seismic devices around Purace volcano in Colombia, Arenal volcano in Costa Rica, Izalco volcano in El Salvador, Fuego volcano in Guatemala, Cosequina volcano in Nicaragua and finally Popocatepell volcano in the Mexican Lawless Zone as our fighters did their best to engage the enemy craft with rockets and machine-gun fire. Radio reports were flashed to military units in all of these areas except the Mexican Lawless Zone. For the most part the Martians seemed to be playing a hit-and-run game. Unless necessary they did not openly engage our fighters. Even this earlier in the war it was becoming clear they had become concerned that even with our great losses in the air they could ill afford to lose too many of their flying machines. They had a long way to go with limited resources. It must also be noted the Martians had flown over thousands of our anti-aircraft guns in the process of these attacks which despite the massing of fires by our gun crews we had not done a great deal of damage. Nevertheless, our forces were able to shoot down a few of the Martian Flying Machines. In my view we had only gotten lucky and not skilled with this method considering the massive effort and low shoot down count. We had to do a hell of a lot better.

Volcano going off after Martian attack

Using eyewitness spotter reports relayed in by Ham Radio operators and last known position radar tracking, teams were sent out to find and if possible destroy as many of these seismic devices as they could before they could be set off. There would be very little time before it would be too late to disarm them. This was the new job for the seismic “Cobra Teams” as they were called. These small elite military units (283 teams spread around the world) had been originally tasked to locate Martian Flying Machines as they landed and destroy them as soon as possible prior to being assembled for war. With these war machines no longer requiring such work the Cobra Team’s original job had become obsolete. Now they would attempt to locate and destroy their seismic devices. There would be no effort to disarm or remove these devices. Destroy in place no matter where they were found was their only job.

The Second Martian group to drop out of orbit on this day was only 25 minutes behind the first. This group was clearly headed for Indonesia, a prime location for strato-volcanoes including some of the deadliest ones on Earth. It did not take long for the machines to drop their deadly seismic devices around Agung, Kelut, Krakatoa, Peak of Ternate and Tambora volcanoes in and around Indonesia. We knew with that many volcanoes being attacked in such a small geographic area we were in deep trouble in Indonesia. There were nowhere near enough military “Cobra” units in the area to cover all of those volcanoes and there were not nearly enough safe havens in the area, nor ships available to evacuate the population. The plain truth was hundreds of thousands more were going to die and there was not a damn thing anyone could do about it. Nevertheless, fourteen Cobra teams went in to do what they could. Most of them would not survive the job.

For days after these attacks unseasonably heavy rains poured down on a population already devastated. The planet itself was beginning to respond to these attacks! Weather patterns all over the world were scrambled as never before. Climate histories were becoming obsolete.

As more and more volcanic material entered the lower and mid levels of the atmosphere it was becoming difficult for our aircraft to stay up for extended periods of time. It would not take long for engines to begin to malfunction as this material was sucked into their air intakes. Lightning strikes were becoming common as eruptions continued to pump great amounts of extra energy into the atmosphere. Several of our jets were being hit by lightening each hour that passed and some with such heavy energy they became disabled sending them to the ground. The only aircraft which seemed to come through this electronic field were our Phoenix II s and naturally the Martian Flying Machines.

The atmosphere was also becoming cooler as the Sun’s rays continued to reflect off of the massive amount of volcanic ash now floating over much of the Earth. The Martian’s plans were succeeding all too well.

South of Tambora Indonesia

Secure cable report from Spot 245A (Cobra 16) on volcanic activity in the area: SEVERAL VOLCANOS SETTING OFF MASSIVE ERUPTIVE GASSES…MARTIAN FLYERS SPOTTED OVER ACTIVE AREAS… HEAVY LOCAL DAMAGE… HEAVY CASULTIES… TWO MARTIAN MACHINES SHOT DOWN… (Transmission ends)

One hour after the first machines dropped out of orbit two more groups of flying machines came down. One group flew north to the Icelandic rift zone near Laki Fissure and according to eyewitnesses delivered some 30 seismic devices along a 25 mile line. This was the first time we had seen these devices laid out in such a long series rather than in a cluster of three. We needed to take note of this. Within hours a 30 mile long fissure had opened up with at least 30 separate eruptive zones. The tremendous amount of gas and dust was lit up by huge electrical discharges as black ash fell over vast areas of the island. Strong winds pushed the debris towards Northern Europe. As the clouds moved across Europe torrential acid rains began to fall in a band of at least 500 miles wide. Darkness fell during mid-day over much of Europe. This one eruptive fissure would continue to pump material into the atmosphere for the next eight months. By then it would be clear that there would be no summer for the next year! It was far too cold. These Icelandic eruptions would cause the loss of 85% of the population of Iceland. In the end the entire island nation would need to be abandoned.

The next group headed for Japan and was soon spotted over Sakura-zima volcano. Thirty minutes later, their work done, they headed north following the other Martian machines, which had also deployed their devices. To counter this attack the Japanese were able to send up nearly 150 prop-driven fighters in an effort to swarm the Martian machines. Most never got close, hit by the deadly Heat-Rays, but two of the old fighters incredibly fought through and once again one of our pilots whose name we will never know rammed a Martian bringing it to the ground. The Martians were learning just how determined we humans were when it came to defending our planet even when the costs were very high.

We were soon receiving spot and wireless reports that Reventador in the Andes, Santorini in Greece, Volcano in Italy, Lamington in New Guinea and Bezymianny Volcano in Kamchatka were all erupting and at levels never before seen in historic times. Dozens of giant Martian machines had dropped out of orbit to deliver their deadly seismic devices in these areas before heading out towards the North and South Poles. With all of this volcanic activity it did not take long for the skies over much of the Earth to become clogged with volcanic debris from these eruptions which were now adding their material to the already massive amount of debris sent into the atmosphere by the initial attack on the Pacific Ocean basin (the Ring of Fire).

At our headquarters in Lower-London’s Mars War Room (as well as other command centers) staffs were co-coordinating dozens of air attacks by Committee and national forces over European skies. At the same time massed air engagements were occurring at hundreds of other locations around the world. And even though Earth forces were having an effect by shooting down dozens of these machines our losses were closing in on 30 percent. We were losing some 35 fighters for every Martian Flying Machine our forces were able to destroy. Their Heat-Rays were taking a terrible toll on our flyers even as our air forces continued to engage each and every enemy craft they could find. Throughout the war carrier and land based fighters would keep up the pressure on enemy forces on land, sea and over the embattled skies.

A reporter from the New-London Daily Mail assigned to the central west coast of Italy reported by shortwave before his broadcast went off the air.

What I see is an unbroken wall of fire, two miles long; against this curtain of fire, which blocks out the sky, are silhouetted the towers of the churches and the flat square roofs of the houses. The sea glows a deep copper- red, and worst of all from the densely packed mob of thousands of refugees huddled on the narrow quay, between the advancing fiery death behind and the deep waters in front, comes continuously such a frantic screaming of sheer terror as can be heard miles away…

Radio jamming devices beamed from low Earth orbit began to interfere with radio transmissions both civilian and military. The Martians had set up a series of small orbital craft over much of the Earth designed to eventually jam most but not all of our wireless radio transmissions. (We still had some local wireless in use.) They had planned well but if they had expected these jammers to completely cripple our communication networks they had miscalculated. Nevertheless, for the most part the only long range radio traffic getting through were the new burst transmissions and even those needed to be sent two or three times to insure they were properly received. Most cable systems were still in working order and had at this point not been attacked. (Since most were buried and some deeply the hope was they could not be found.) That old but reliable system soon became our best and most secure method of communication. The Central Pacific cable itself had not been the primary target when it was lost and of course we had no word out of Hawaii or most other Pacific islands including our primary city base at Upola since the initial attack. All had gone quiet. We were expecting a flash report or perhaps a long wave underwater radio report from one or more of our submarines in the general area before long. Submarine radio traffic was unaffected at the time so messages continued to come in from those sources.

At the same time radars tracked dozens more Martian machines de-orbiting on flight paths which eventually led to the North Pole where the Martians were thought to be assembling their northern ground attack forces. Simultaneously the South Polar Defense Line (SPDL) radars were tracking some 214 Martian Flying Machines heading out of orbit towards the South Pole in central Antarctica. Our spotty Antarctic weather stations were reporting high surface winds and much greater snow fall than normal – it was an estimated minus 90 degrees at the pole. We knew it would not be long before these machines began their deadly ground attacks. The Martians must have thought, knowing our history, they could not be attacked if they staged their invasion from or near the poles. We were planning to prove them wrong.

Off the western coast of central Italy

Committee Submarine 37 radio burst report, Med: MARTIAN FLYING MACHINE SHOT DOWN BY ROCKET SALVO FIRED FROM THIS BOAT… MUCH LOCAL VOLCANIC ACTIVITY… SKY COVERED WITH MUCH ASH… FIRES ALONG COAST FOR MILES… MUCH DEVASTATION… (Transmission ends)

Sub launched surface to air missile

By this time most major population centers above and below ground had been placed under local martial law and naturally all reserve forces had been called up. Our primary underground cities and military facilities were now, for the most part, completely closed off and heavily defended. Populations in large cities above ground were continuing the move to off-set areas prepared for just such a purpose. One of our primary goals in the Committee was to keep people out of the way of the Martians if it was at all possible. It was a task we damn well knew we could not accomplish but we had to do our best. By now of course all underground tunnels natural or man-made would be filled to capacity and more. This was high stakes “hide and seek’ from the Martians and no one knew if it would be successful.

As these events were occurring individual attacks had been made against several observatories which had been part of our Mars Watch Program. On that day we lost the Link Observatory, the Mount Wilson Observatory, as well as the Berlin and Osaka Observatories. The Martians seemed to understand these facilities were critical to our understanding of their home planet. It was at the Berlin Observatory we lost Dr. Tsiolkovsky who had stayed at the facility in order to co-ordinate some last minute observation data. The Committee had lost a very good friend.

Hours later we received a spot radio report indicating at least one and possibly two Martian Flying Machines had flown over Mars Radio Trap 4 in Phoenix, Arizona, and had been destroyed by ground launched rockets and anti-aircraft fire. The Martian craft had flown in close probably in response to their picking up the radio and radiation signals the trap was putting out. The first machine had been hit by ground fire and was seen flying north trailing smoke. The second had been destroyed when the explosives set into the trap itself detonated taking the Martian with it.

[END PART 62]

Copyright © R. Michael Gordon, 2020

[Next week: Part 63: Martian geologic attacks continue as the air attacks begin.]

[PART 61]

Chapter 10

September 1938

The Final Conflict for Supremacy on Earth

THE SECOND MARTIAN WAR

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have a grave announcement to make. Incredible as it may seem…

those strange beings who landed on Earth tonight are the vanguard of an

invading army from the planet Mars. Once again the Earth is at war with Mars.”

Orson Welles

DAY ONE: 2 September 1938

The Martian Invasion Fleet Flies Towards Earth

Time had expired. The Mars Watch Program teams had given Earth the news the Martians were on the way. The telegraph and wireless which had spread around the world since the First Martian War would now flash the news to all corners of the Earth the war we had hoped to avoid was on the way. Even with that reality it was no real surprise to me to discover mankind’s hopes for a peaceful solution generally continued on even as that last vestige of hope melted away. For even when we knew an attack was coming many still had hope war could be averted. That is probably one of the traits mankind does not share with our enemies from Mars. (In numerous cities protesters seemingly came out of the woodwork demanding immediate negotiations with the Martians.) Yet even with all of our history with the Martians some people simply refused to believe it was real. After the public were notified the Martians were on the way there were more than a few suicides. Their minds wanted nothing to do with this bit of reality and as such some simply went insane. This second major attack coming to Earth from Mars had completely drained them of any hope of a normal life. For many there was no reason to believe otherwise and therefore no reason to live. Nevertheless, it was time to focus on what many knew would be the most deadly event in human history. Despite all of our work in the Committee and the work of millions around the world I had no reason to believe otherwise.

The Martians had run out of options and out of time. They had convinced themselves they had no other choice but to attack. There would be no negotiations. In their minds they had no other option than taking Earth by force. Global war had come. Their survival depended on this massive all-out attack on our planet and our future depended on its failure! Their last hope became all the more poignant when a Martian document discovered in one of their vehicles during the war revealed the Martians viewed Earth as “too hot, too near the sun, too bright, too thick an atmosphere and too heavy of gravity.” They did not want to live on Earth! They much preferred the “soft pink sky and cool red hills of home”.

We had built a world-wide military force unprecedented in Earth’s history. As far as the leadership of the Committee was concerned we felt we had done all we could to prepare our world and our people for the onslaught we knew was coming, but we had no real way of knowing if it would be enough? We would soon find out. The warning went out to all Committee and national military forces stationed around the world that the first of the Martian machines had nearly arrived. The battle for the fate of mankind was about to begin. It would be as the Romans had said; bellum terra marique, igne gladioque (war by land and sea with fire and sword).

From his re-enforced underground bunker at New Washington Center American President and Committee Prince Roosevelt remarked, “We will need everything we have and everything our allies have to defeat the Martians on all fronts and across the vast areas of our planet.”

For a brief moment I wondered whether or not when the time came for humans to move beyond our world, if indeed we someday had the opportunity to do so, would we be peaceful ambassadors of our species or as warlike and brutal as the Martians? Our short history on Earth does not yet fall on the peaceful side of that question. That brief moment was soon over. Now it was time to kill as many of those Martian bastards as we could get our bloody hands on. It truly was kill or be killed across the entire face of the Earth.

Instructions sent by wireless, cable and flash message by Directorate C-World Military Forces ordered all Committee units to operational status and on full alert. National governments were likewise informed as their forces went on full alert.

ALPHA FLASH: TO ALL COMMANDS: –/…./. …/-.-/-.– ../… .-././-.. , –/…./. …/-.-/-.– ../… .-././-.. (THE SKY IS RED, THE SKY IS RED).

M-DAY

(Martian Invasion Day)

In this global conflict there would be no declaration of war.

As the Martian fleet approached near Earth space a steady stream of information was radioed into Committee and national monitoring stations from Mars observers around the world as well as from Defense 1. Earth’s only operational defense satellite had verified the size, trajectories and disposition of the Martian invasion fleet. The updated number now stood at 2168 approaching Martian spacecraft. After this vital information was delivered this man-made moon was re-positioned to perform its last critical duty.

Defense 1’s final operation was to send a powerful highly focused pulsed radio beam in the exact direction of the advancing Martians focusing on the spacecraft nearest the Earth. We were determined to strike the first blow even before the enemy was able to orbit our planet with their invading fleet. Tesla and his team had placed their most-secret device (which looked like a rectangular shaped open horn) on board which had been designed to blast the electronic communications equipment (and perhaps their main computers) onboard the advancing Martian spacecraft with a directed high energy radio beam aimed at the lead spacecraft. This was what Tesla and his teams had been working on and testing for years at Wardenclyffe. This device was the most powerful beam weapon the Tesla group could construct and needless to say it had never been tested in space. Ground based tests on 1901 era Martian communications equipment as well as man-made electronic devices could only demonstrate that the system worked in the atmosphere on Earth, not how well it could take on the Martians in space, and we only had one shot at it. If the Martians had upgraded their communications or computer systems and if they had taken the time to ‘harden’ those systems against such effects, it might not work at all.

Now would be its only real test. Southern Committee Headquarters in Lower-Sydney, in direct line of sight of Defense 1, fired off the radio command to activate the weapon and within minutes was able to verify that the powerful energy beam had indeed been fired at the advancing spacecraft. The system had worked – but did it hit the target and did it have any effect?

At first there were no indications it had any effect at all on the inbound spacecraft, however our deep space radars soon showed that several of the Martian spacecraft seemed to be going off course and would in fact miss Earth orbit entirely and swing back around the Earth being gravitationally deflected on an elliptical path back towards Mars. At least some of their controls had indeed been badly affected by the beam. It was soon verified that two of the lead spacecraft were most definitely in trouble and were heading directly for Earth’s upper atmosphere without slowing down. They were clearly out of control and were coming straight in without deviation. The tracking teams quickly reported seeing them on their radar screens breakup into multiple targets and disintegrate over the Pacific Ocean! Later we would be able to view movie footage of the spacecraft disintegrating as they came in. They apparently had no heat shields on the front of their spacecraft which allowed the frictional heat of entering Earth’s atmosphere to build up and devour the Martians. Defense 1 had successfully struck the first blow for our planet. To be honest I could not believe the damn thing had actually worked!

Much later we would learn those two lead spacecraft held the Martian A Prime commander of the invasion fleet and its entire first line headquarters group! We would also learn this lead Martian spacecraft was the only one they had built for this invasion that had the same powerfully destructive beam weapon we had seen tested in orbit around Mars. With this one shot Earth had unknowingly destroyed the most powerful weapon they ever developed for planetary warfare. Tesla’s team had fulfilled its promise of overcoming this powerful weapon even though they had no reason to know at the time they had succeeded. We had gotten damn lucky on this one. Even with our ‘victory’ their second and third most powerful weapons were quite prepared to wreak havoc over vast portions of our planet!

Despite these early losses the Martians did not skip a beat as they continued to press their invasion. By radar count the next 11 Martian spacecraft nearest Earth must have been at least partially damaged as they were the ones which missed Earth orbit. No fewer than three radar stations confirmed the results sending reports to all commands. Our celebration was short lived. The battle for Earth had begun.

At exactly 1:06 a.m. London time (GMT) we lost radio contact with Defense 1. We knew the Martians had destroyed Earth’s only man-made defense satellite even though it was out of our radar range when it was destroyed. It did not take long for contact to be lost with four other satellites (non-defense related) we had also placed into orbit. The Martians had most likely destroyed them as well.

Almost as a solar greeting the Aurora Borealis lit up the Arctic ice of the northern hemisphere as the Aurora Austrialis danced over the skies of the Antarctic as the last Martian ships arrived in orbit. I wondered if the Martians believed it to be an omen. Within a few hours the only spacecraft orbiting Planet Earth had been launched from Mars – 2155 of them. At least 1000 were large transportation craft loaded with flyers and Walkers, as well as tens of thousands of combat troops. Earth orbital space had become a Martian domain. The Martians’ first objective had been easily accomplished. The enemy had arrived in battle formation and was ready to begin the conquest of planet Earth! They had complete command and control of Earth orbital space. We would wait for their first attacks, but not for much longer. If anything the Martians could be counted on being prompt.

The Martians planned their invasion down to the smallest detail, yet even with their immense intelligence we knew they were fallible and as mortal as man. The Martians brought to Earth, machines of unimaginable destructive power and in considerable numbers the likes of which mankind had never seen before even considering the First Martian War. If it turned out we could not defeat the Martian machines then we would have to defeat the Martians themselves. History was not on our side for we had done neither in 1901.

On 2 September 1938 at 2:40 a.m. GMT the Martians began their movements into medium Earth orbit as a preliminary operation to position their spacecraft for their attacks on the planet. We detected their approach angles of course and we knew they were now orbiting the Earth along polar orbits. They could use these polar orbits to drop out of space and attack any point on the face of the Earth. They had not done that in 1901. This was partial verification to our leadership that the Martians were still planning to use both the North and South Poles as command centers. We had no real proof as yet but would need to know for certain and soon. When these polar command centers were verified by scouts we would hopefully be able to deploy a few military surprises of our own against the Martians that if our understanding was correct would soon be occupying the high ice of planet Earth.

ALPHA FLASH: TO ALL COMMANDS: ENEMY NOW IN POLAR ORBIT – ATTACK IMMINANT – ALL SECTIONS TO DELTA OPERATIONS – GOOD LUCK AND GOOD HUNTING.

Earth Executes Defense Plan

(“Red Skies”)

At the designated signal it seemed the entire planet was on the move. General civilian and military radio transmissions on Earth slowly went dark (except the pre-planned Psyop broadcasts from our primary and secondary Mars Radio Traps which came on line slowly and in no particular order). All privately owned commercial radio stations were now ‘temporarily’ handed over to Committee or national governments for emergency broadcast reports for the duration of the war. Underground cities closed up most of their entrances (90% as planned as Lower-London nearly doubled its underground population as did most major underground cities) having completed their storage of vital food and other supplies. Above ground cities went to blackout conditions lighting up their decoy lighting systems and activating radio transmitters imbedded within the decoy lighted areas. Surface populations were being moved to ‘safe areas’. Tesla beam weapons on the outer lying areas of the twenty-five cities which had been supplied with them were fully charged on the tops of their towers and manned mostly by remote control. Black Smoke burn areas were activated and gas began to flow into the pipes. Ignition systems were set to go off automatically on the small fields constructed at crossroads inside the cities. Massive 250 ton concrete “Martian Walker Traps”, based on the Korean model, built to explosively collapse on the Martians as they crossed under selected tunnel traps leading into cities around the world as well as the underground command cities were armed to go off when either wires were tripped or when they were set off by local military forces. Fire/oil & tar trenches constructed around several cities were filled and ready to be set on fire if and when the Martians or their Black Smoke came their way.

Long range Committee Whitehead B4 jet bombers began an around the clock 20% air operation as the remaining bomber fleets were held in readiness in their hardened bunkers at locations around the world. These resources were tasked to mass bomb any Martian ground force assembling to attack. However, in the beginning most of these assembly areas would prove to be in remote Polar Regions beyond our capability to hit with bombers at least during the first few days of the war when Martian machines controlled much of Earth’s skies. Fighter aircraft went on patrol at a rate of 25% airborne at all times. Long range attack, supply and command submarines went underwater to began monitoring all news and burst reports; prepared to attack any and all Martian targets which happened to come their way. Submarines designated to help defend critical coastal cities left their ports to deploy just off shore. In New York City dock workers finished loading “the gadget” (Tunguska atomic bomb) on board its transport submarine (none of them knew what it really was) as the team readied for the critical mission of delivering the weapon to its staging area not yet known to the crew. The submarine now had a new name “CS Tunguska.”

COMMITTEE COMMAND CENTERS ASSUME REGIONAL COMMAND

Aircraft carriers already deployed to their pre-designated positions (205 aircraft carriers world-wide were deployed; the majority from the Committee, the United States, Great Britain, Japan and Germany) launched 1/3^rd of their aircraft on patrol. The Airborne Magic Command Post (CP Magic) was launched with one Magic Director onboard, code named “Uranus”. (CP Magic was indeed a bit of man-made magic as it was the only aircraft of its kind designed to show as small a radar signature as possible as well as being coated with radar-absorbing metals and painted with black radar absorbing paint.) (A small number of special Phoenix IIAs were also similarly equipped.) “Uranus is in its element” was transmitted just after the airborne command post took off and went radio silent. The aircraft’s command position was a slow low altitude orbiting circle in the mid-Atlantic roughly between New London and New York City.

Each of the heavily armored command trains pre-positioned at Lower-New York City “Coffee Drinker”, Lower-London “Tea Drinker” and Lower-Sydney “Whisky Drinker” were manned and occupied by one each of the Magic Twelve and their immediate staffs ready to take command at a moment’s notice should the need arise. All three trains were on their way (“Drinkers are on a roll”) to camouflaged fortified train tunnels within a few miles of their Command Centers especially equipped with supplies and communication equipment to support the “Drinkers.” They would ‘plug in’ and draw power, communications and food from the equipment stored in the tunnels. Their primary tasks at this stage were to monitor all Martian activity, keep updated and stay in contact with the primary cities (Directors), and be prepared to take command in their designated areas if and when the need should arise. (In the event we lost the entire command group in the local primary command city this team would assume command.)

Stalin’s “Vodka Drinker” was standing by close to his bunker. It would not be going anywhere without him.

From this point on Directors would be addressed by their radio code names. In Lower-New York City the Prime Director became “Apollo’; my Lower-London code name became “Zeus”; in Lower-Sydney the Director became ‘Titan” with “Gemini” in command at Upola.

At sea CS Atlantic Ocean Director became “Poseidon”; the CS Pacific Ocean command was with “Triton” and the CS Indian Ocean Director was “Neptune”. Poseidon would command 110 submarines; Triton would command 143 with 104 under the command of Neptune.

Solid rocket missile batteries set to defend vital areas around the world locked into their short and long distance radar control systems and were fully manned. Surface to air missile batteries at Lower-London, Lower-New York City, Lower-Sydney and Lower-Upola were activated and ready to go. Backup cable and telephone communication systems were powered up and manned. All ground forces world-wide already deployed to pre-attack positions went on 50% alert status and radio silent monitoring. From this point on most radio communications with military air, sea and ground forces would be by burst message or by pre-positioned underground cables for ground forces. Ham Radio operators had already been instructed to transmit for no longer than 15 seconds at any one time and then shut down and go energy silent after vital information was sent. Thousands of private Ham Radio operators were now standing by and on the lookout for any local Martian activity. Their reports would be coordinated through one of our special Ham Radio listening stations set up to relay their information to Committee centers by secure cable.

Before the 1901 Martian War the world had been unaware that an enemy was even on the way and when war came there was very little mankind could do to defend themselves. This was not the case in 1938. Man could now fly and we felt we could match our flying skills with that of the Martian enemy at least in the atmosphere and make them pay dearly for every life taken, every inch of ground lost. We had taken what we could from Martian technology and made it our own and we would put every scrap of technology we could into this fight. We felt we had the means to defeat their deadly Black Smoke, and Red Weed and we had matched their walking machines with some of our own, including to some extent their deadly Heat-Rays. (Tesla had originally designated his weapon a death ray.) We had submarines the Martians were not expected to know how to defeat and we had rockets to bloody the Martians better than the simple cannon and machine-guns we had brought into the fight of 1901. We had broken the Martian language and military codes and we knew a great deal about what they had planned. And we had one more critical weapon in 1938 we did not possess in 1901 – the knowledge that we had a real fighting chance of defeating the Martians on our terms and we were determined to prove that conviction to every Martian we could lay our hands on. They would begin their invasion with 2155 of their deadly advanced flying machines of several designs and sizes and we would be keeping close track of how fast we could lower that count. In short, we had no idea what they were about to unleash on our planet. It soon became clear we would need to change our plans fast if we had any chance of survival. After the first shot was fired most of our war plans went out the window.

[END PART 61]

Copyright © R. Michael Gordon, 2020

[Next week: Part 62: The Martian first wave.]

[PART 60]

Earth’s Final Preparations

By 1938 there were 138 radio stations in America covering all 48 states and over 460 others spread around the rest of the world. There was in fact no sizable population center in the United States or for that matter most of Western Europe, East Asia or Central America which was not covered by some type of radio broadcast system. Using this resource many world leaders spoke directly to their people about the coming fight which would soon enjoin the entire planet.

In America recently elected President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Prince of F) spoke for and to his people during a joint session of Congress, while in Great Britain Prime Minister Winston Churchill addressed his people before the British Parliament on the coming crisis. With war in mind the American President and leader of the North American Committee Group addressed his people on the events unfolding for war with Mars. That morning before his address his friend Endicott Peabody, told Roosevelt, “Things in life will not always run smoothly. Sometimes we will be rising towards the heights – then all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great fact to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward, that a line drawn through the middle of the peaks and the valleys of the centuries always has an upward trend.”

UNITED STATES PRESIDENT’S RADIO BROADCAST

My fellow Americans this is pre-eminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our nation and world today. This great planet will endure as it has endured, will revive and will continue to prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with the understanding and support of the people themselves, which is again essential to our victory over the Martians. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days and weeks ahead. We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of world unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious moral values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from the stern performance of duty by old and young alike. Remember, that we are fighting to save our planet not just for ourselves but for the future of humanity. And in the end it will be the Martians who will taste the bitter dust of defeat.

Underground office of President of the United States of America and Committee Prince

WINSTON CHURCHILL ADDRESSES HIS PEOPLE BEFORE PARLIAMENT

I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our island home, and indeed our home world, to ride out the storm of interplanetary war coming our way, as we have in the past, and to outlive the menace, if necessary for years. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in all the lands, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air and we shall defend our planetary island in the vastness of space from the Martian horde, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the very streets above and below the ground, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. And in our battles, we shall teach the bloody Martians what it really means to be fully human and ready to do whatever it takes to defeat every last one of them and finally push them off our warrior planet for all time!

COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN ADDRESSES THE PEOPLE OF EARTH

Fellow citizens of Planet Earth: I speak to you this day not as a Director of a world-wide organization but as a simple mortal member of our human race. We face in the very near future a grave danger to all of us who call Earth our home. Whether you live in an underground city of massive complexity or on a small farm or village far from the crowded population centers of Earth we are now one in our danger faced from an interplanetary foe that will stop at nothing to end mankind’s mastery of our home planet. This enemy of which I speak calls Mars their home but in fact theirs is a planet on its last abilities to support their people. As such these Martians now look to Earth as their savior. This is why they come to Earth and why we must defend our planet and defeat this brutal foe at all costs.

It will now become our singular task to repel these invaders using every resource we can bring to bear. Let me assure all of you this is not the unprepared Earth of 1901. In the years since we last fought the Martians we have become a powerful planet capable of meeting the challenges ahead with great determination and formidable military might. We are prepared. Nevertheless, no one believes this will be an easy fight as we may well expect many losses, yet let all know in their hearts that we will defeat this enemy. There can be no other conclusion to these future events. For the past 37 years the Committee along with national governments around the world have rallied together in order to build and deploy the most powerful military forces the world has ever seen. With these massive military formations I can assure all that we will fight the Martians for every inch of soil, every drop of water, every level of our atmosphere until the Martians are fully and completely decimated and forever driven from every corner of our warrior planet. We shall endure. Good luck to all and good hunting.

35,000 AMATEUR SHORT WAVE OPERATORS STAND BY

With their Morse code keys ready the “Ham radio” operators around the world stood by to report any Martian developments which came their way. They had organized themselves into “radio cells” with call signs and areas of observation. These teams were so well organized they had placed themselves into a hierarchy of who transmitted first, how long and where before moving to other locations. Many had set-up both primary and secondary locations. If need be they would transmit vital military information as backups around the world. This work would be but one example of how humanity for the most part came together to defend our world. Because of their use of short wave radio we knew that more than a few would pay the ultimate price for their courage and determination to do whatever they could to defend this planet and keep vital information flowing to those who could use it best.

COMMAND SUBMARINES’ LAUNCHED

On 15 August 1938 the Committee took delivery of three brand new Command Submarines, the CS Atlantic, CS Pacific and the CS Indian Ocean. The crews had already been training on them for some time and were ready to go when the submarines were delivered. The Command Submarines were immediately dispatched to their bases on both sides of the Panama Canal Zone with the CS Indian Ocean at first held in reserve in New York City. Director A and ‘Prince’ would soon serve aboard the Atlantic (code name “Poseidon” when manned by a Director) with a mostly British, Canadian and American crew. The Pacific (code name “Triton” when manned by a Director) would be manned by Director D and ‘Prince’ and a crew mostly from Russia and Eastern Europe. The CS Indian Ocean (code name “Neptune” when manned by a Director) would stay in New York City Harbor for a month with her mostly Asian and British Commonwealth crew.

Originally the Command Submarines were to serve only as backups in the event the Command and Control centers in Lower-New York City, Lower-London, Lower-Sydney or Lower-Upola were captured or destroyed. However, with a growing fleet of submarines now numbering nearly 500 on active duty it was decided to have the Command Submarines serve an early active part in any war with the Martians by controlling the submarines assigned to their oceans while they stood-by to take full command if the need arose. Their secondary mission would be command and control of larger ground and air forces if necessary. With this new assignment in mind the CS Indian Ocean was soon dispatched to Madagascar to be deployed in the Indian Ocean for battle duty. Director H and ‘Prince’ would be on board in the event of war. The Committee wanted as many active battle elements available as possible to engage early Martian forces. Two-thirds of our planet is covered by water and we were determined to bring battle to any Martian who found itself on any body of water.

SUBMARINE FLEETS

The Pacific Ocean held 143 submarines on combat patrol, with 110 in the Atlantic Ocean and 104 in the Indian Ocean. 40 additional submarines would be assigned to Aircraft Carrier protection duty and another ten submarines had been converted as troop carriers to insert special military units undercover of water to targets otherwise difficult to reach. The rest of the fleet were scattered around the world with orders to attack any Martian targets they could find. Ten each were held in reserve in New York City, London, Sydney and Upola. These were to be used for city and harbor defense as well as for emergency transportation and communications under water if all other means had failed. These subs would submerge and wait for targets of opportunity if any Martians came by. Twenty five others would hold positions outside of 25 active ports stationed around the world. Five more were stationed on both sides of the Panama Canal.

Committee submarine pens

All of the submarines were equipped with very long wave radio equipment (10 Hz signals). Designed by Tesla Committee teams the submarines would trail a copper composite wire with neutral balance some six miles behind each boat. Radio messages could be sent and received through the ocean along this wire (extra-low frequency). No receiver on land or in the air on Earth, or Mars for that matter could pick up the signal if they were below the water. To link these submarines to Lower-New York City, Lower-London, Lower-Sydney or Lower-Upola the primary underground cities had already deployed identical copper radio wires and as such could communicate directly with these submarines. Each submarine also carried new updated standard radio equipment and antennas and with this equipment the crews were expected to monitor a good deal of radio traffic in order to be kept aware of the general situation. They could receive messages, but for the most part were expected to maintain radio silence in this mode. In effect the submarines were to fight as an independent force, attacking any targets of opportunity. Their primary attack mode would be ‘hit-and-run or rather dive!

The submarines also had new receivers, which had just come on line. The Committee teams had devised what they called “flash messages.” Radio traffic could be sent in 1 second, which contained upwards of ten minutes worth of voice data. To the unaided ear the message sounded like a high-pitched screech. To the new radio/recorder when the message was played back it came out as voice communications. These ‘flash message’ machines would soon be “in the field ready for battle” with ground units. The 28 underground production teams had been given 45 days to produce some 8000 receivers, and it was going to be close.

Generally speaking there were two types of submarines deployed. Standard attack submarines using mostly torpedoes constituted 344 of the boats. Above water they also displayed one each deck gun and two sets of quad 50 machine guns. The remaining boats were newly designed rocket attack submarines designed to attack aircraft from underwater. At shallow depths these new submarines could lock on to flying targets with radar and fire as many as ten solid rockets simultaneously at the target. Each submarine held 50 rockets ready to fire with another 50 in storage for replacement. There were even ten specially equipped submarines which held on their decks one each large (as big as a double-decker London bus) remote controlled ‘mini’ submarine bomb. These devices, developed by Tesla’s team held enough explosives to impact and sink any ship on the ocean with a single hit! If set off in any average harbor most of the harbor would have been at least greatly damaged. If one hit any dam in the world it would have been completely destroyed. If the Martians came with any surface ships they were in for one hell of a surprise with this little device. It was planned that with these devices coming at the Martians from underwater they would not see them until it was far too late.

The final pre-planned operational support for the submarine fleet had been put into place even before the Command Submarines had come on line. At over 300 locations world-wide, fuel and other supplies had been pre-positioned, mostly on remote coastlines and small remote islands, as well as in underwater caves for use by the submarine crews. The submarines were seen as a last line of defense for planet Earth and they would need to be as independent and self-sufficient as possible. They were expected to be on duty for as long as six months without outside support or even direct radio contact with other forces. This was to be part of our battle layering effort. The Martians, in order to defeat the Earth, would be required to defeat defense layer after layer with the limited resources they had brought to Earth. This was part of an overall plan to come at them from as many directions as we could and simply wear them down. We knew this would be a battle of attrition to say the very least.

HYBRIDS ROUNDED UP

It was not long after the general public was informed that the Martians were on the way that hybrid attacks began in earnest. In almost every city attacks by the Martian Brotherhood or other hybrids were increasing very rapidly. Police and local military forces began to enforce curfews while at the same time rounding up suspected disloyal hybrids. This was no time for niceties. If there was any doubt they were taken into custody.

The round ups had begun slowly some two months earlier as to not attract too much attention when it became clear that the Martians were ready to move forward with their invasion plans but now that we were certain that Martian war craft were on the way national and Committee forces put maximum effort by police and other security forces into rounding up as many hybrids as possible from pre-prepared custodial detention lists.

Since the mid-1920s both the Committee and several national governments had been keeping files and lists of possible ‘enemy aliens’ in the form of hybrids thought to have connections to the Martian Brotherhood or other pro-Martian organizations. Many had been arrested and interviewed several times over the years since these lists were begun with only a few finding themselves taken into custody for long periods of time. Nevertheless, even though many had not been convicted of criminal activity all were required to register in the cities they lived in and report regularly to the local ‘Alien Registration Office.’ To not do so would mean immediate arrest when located without the need for a trial followed by a term of at least one year in jail for the first offense along with a heavy fine. It was from these files that the Committee and national police forces began rounding up hybrids. After being taken into custody the ‘aliens’ were informed that they were to be held in camps for the duration of the war.

It was not long before the ‘Custodial Detention Lists’ in the United States topped 167,000. World-wide some 1.8 million hybrids soon found themselves in one of 346 ‘Custodial Detention Camps’ built specifically to house hybrids with many of these facilities located in isolated areas such as small islands and remote desert locations. One of the largest camps was situated in the Mohave Desert in the south western United States.

What many people were unaware of at the time was the fact that a second most-secret list of possible enemies had also been prepared by the Committee. This Committee list held the names of 269 full-humans suspected of “having loyalties outside of Earth.” The job of locating and arresting those individuals went to the Committee Security Service. No fewer than 6 of these individuals were at the time of their arrest working directly for the Committee. We had been feeding them false information since their discovery but now came the time to round them up. All of these individuals would be spending a good deal of time in Committee prison cells deep underground. More than a few would never again see the light of day.

SPECIAL FORCES TEAMS PLACED WORLD WIDE TO BLOW UP MACHINES

(Airborne Cobra Teams)

During the First Martian War the Martians had landed their cylinders on Earth before they were ready to attack. Generally it had taken several hours for the Martians to complete the assembly work on their walking machines and later flying machines before they could attack our cities. This was a major tactical error on the part of Earth defensive forces during the 1901 war. Had these creatures been attacked during the early hours of their invasion mankind may very well have destroyed enough of their machines to make a real difference. With this in mind nations around the world as well as Committee forces put together teams of military personnel specifically trained to locate these cylinders and destroy them in place before they could be deployed against us. These teams were code named “Airborne Cobra Teams.” Before the war these teams had been deployed in an attempt to locate as many Martian seismic devices as they could before they could be set off. In this work they had been less than fully successful. Now they would have an even more difficult mission to accomplish – destroy the Martian cylinders before they could be used against our people. Looking at possible first wave targets many of these teams we placed close enough to these areas to arrive in quick order. But would it be fast enough?

UNDERGROUND CITIES CLOSE UP AND PREPARE FOR WAR

Final supplies of fresh food and medicine were quickly being brought to underground facilities around the world and final pre-programmed lists of artifacts were soon being delivered to underground locations around the world. Documents for the most part, at least copies, had been constantly moving into underground filing cabinets for many months as were primary original documents such as the 1214 A.D. Magna Carta and the Constitution of the United States. I remember well my feelings when I saw the Mona Lisa being wheeled in on a pallet and being placed in one of the painting rooms of the vault in Lower-London. How lonely she seemed and how long would it be before we could view this fine work once again in a proper museum?

By this time Howard Florey’s team from Oxford University had finally isolated the compound Prontosil, and was now prepared to produce penicillin in what they called underground mini-factories. Producing medical supplies underground had long been part of the defense plans against Mars. Now was the time to put these plans into operation in all four underground cities and thousands of other facilities around the world.

Tango teams were now fully manned and in place at all four primary underground cities as well as special operation areas world-wide. Half of the members of Tango would be assigned to defend these vital underground facilities alongside conventional ground forces. Other members of Tango were now deployed in a number of other areas ready to attack any number of special operations targets. Teams had also been deployed onboard Command Submarines, attack submarines, aircraft carriers, and Committee underground military bases as well as near large above ground cities. Most of the Tango team members deployed to defend above ground facilities were assigned as snipers in two man teams with the task of killing as many Martian Walking Machine operators as possible. The fatal flaw found in the 1901 Martian design of these machines would allow a well-placed sniper bullet to “take out” the Martian using the device. As one surviving Tango member related after the war, “It was one shot, one dead Martian squid!” In general all ground forces around the world would have snipers ready to take advantage of this ‘flaw.’ However, Tango members were going to keep track of “the hunt.” They wanted to turn in the “best count!” The secondary focus of the Tango teams was to organize resistance (stay behind forces) behind the front lines after the main Martian forces fought past them. War planners had spotted a second deadly flaw in the Martian way of war – they did not re-enforce their rear forces which would allow gorilla forces to take advantage of this flaw. Tango operatives would be the ideal force to take on this mission.

In all of the underground factories which had not been operating on military programs civilian operations were halted. Each factory had a plan to convert to military production within 40 days of war warning. Now those plans went into effect. All efforts were now directed to supporting the coming war effort.

“What price are we to pay for the salvation of the human race? 

And what price must we extract from the Martians?” 

(Graffiti found on a wall in Sweden.)

OPERATION PRIMARY 1000

One of the most-secret pre-war plans designed to go into effect in the event of war with Mars was code named “Operation Primary 1000”. In over 500 locations around the world, which included all major underground cities and all off-set underground military bases, a group of highly intelligent and very well educated individuals along with their immediate families had been selected for special protection. These “selectees” reported to be some of the brightest people on the planet were pre-selected to be housed in some of the safest underground locations on Earth for the duration of the war and to be protected and defended at all costs. In several countries, the United States, Great Britain and others, ‘stand alone’ underground facilities had been specifically constructed away from any populated areas to insure security. Three of these installations had been constructed in large caves and ancient lava tubes.

Numbering around 1000 individuals per group the plan was simple. In the event of total destruction these approximately 500,000 people with expertise in mixed backgrounds and critical areas had accepted the task of re-building Earth’s shattered society after the war. They would be supplied with just about every tool one could think of in order for them to begin the work of recovery. In order to protect this classified operation only the primary selectees knew of the plan. Their families would be informed only when war was imminent. It is historically interesting to note that none of the Magic Twelve placed their names on the list but they did place two “Princes” on the New Washington Center list including the President of the United States and his immediate family.

Captured Martian image of a Prime Command spacecraft heading towards Earth

On 22 August 1938 the Committee issued an Executive Briefing Paper EBP 1938-42 (see Appendix I) titled Expected Losses – War with Mars. This grim assessment showed that we could expect to lose up to half of the Earth’s population and at least 75% of our natural resources during the war. This would be the true “war to end all wars” and surrender was not an option!

EXECUTIVE TOP-SECRET/MAGIC CoT

EBP 1938-47

August 22, 1938

EXECUTIVE BRIEFING PAPER

EXPECTED LOSSES – WAR WITH MARS

EXECUTIVE TOP-SECRET/MAGIC CoT 

That evening the remaining Magic Twelve and their wives held their last pre-war dinner in the underground dining hall just off of the Mars War Room in Lower-New York City. It was lavish as the meal served was to say the least – fit for a king. Many in the room suspected that this would be the last time most of them would ever see each other. When it was over after midnight the men who had spent a good deal of their lives in preparation for war with Mars gave a toast to planet Earth and to victory. The next day the Twelve went to their designated command positions (my place would be in Lower-London) and for the foreseeable future they would have only one job – engage the enemy at all points and kill as many Martians as possible as fast as they could possibly kill them! Surrender would mean slavery for humanity and that was simply not an option.

“[War] is a highly planned and co-operative form of theft.”

Dr. Jacob Bronowski

[END PART 60]

Copyright © R. Michael Gordon, 2020

[Next week: Part 61: Chapter 10: The Final Conflict Begins.]

A WORK OF NON-FICTION

If you are enjoying this R. Michael Gordon fictional story you may be interesting in reading his non-fiction work on the American Space Shuttle titled The Space Shuttle Program: How NASA Lost its Way.

The Space Shuttle Program: How NASA Lost Its Way

Details the twin Shuttle disasters of Challenger and Columbia,

Photos, charts, case documents and illustrations; 425 pages.

McFarland Publishing Company, Trade paperback 2009

This critical study of NASA’s space shuttle program provides an in-depth examination of the events, decisions, and policies that may have contributed to the horrific destruction of the shuttles Challenger and Columbia. It first traces the early development of NASA’s shuttle program, specifically examining the problems associated with the designs of shuttles OV-099 Challenger and OV-102 Columbia. The reader is then taken through a detailed look at the first successful flights made by Challenger and Columbia and the postponement of top-secret Shuttle flight 51-C Discovery, which did not launch under milder weather conditions as the ill-fated Challenger because the weather was too cold! An in-depth assessment of the shuttles’ disastrous final launches follows, including detailed accounts of the post-flight search and rescue operations, the official investigations into each accident, and the impact of each disaster on the future of NASA’s manned space program. This is a critical investigation into the history and loss of Space Shuttles’ Challenger and Columbia and their crews, revealing the men, in and out of government, ultimately responsible for its destruction.

Review: “Though this is a factual text, working around an event which is familiar to present generations, the prose unfolds with some of the dramatic immediacy of fiction. Whilst it is a piece of reportage, it has an urgency and momentum not often found in the non-fiction mode. [Gordon] writes to identify and expose the origins and consequences of a catastrophic event, approaching it from an analytical rather than a sensationalist angle. Certainly there is an authorial will to uncover the facts and to allocate responsibility, but it is articulated in a voice which is both fair and balanced.” Minerva Press reader report.

[PART 59]

Deceptive War – Psychological Operations

Under the direction of Directorate L (CM 33-1), world military forces had developed a full program of deception operations directed at camouflaging, misdirecting, covering up, and generally attempting to confuse the Martians at every possible turn. The plan was simply to do everything we could think of to mislead the Martians at every turn. We were to look strong where we were weak, to look weak where we were strong, to build fake facilities open to attacks, to build underground facilities (already well along) not recognizable from the air or ground, to hide as much as we could above and below ground, to broadcast false and misleading radio traffic from as many areas as possible. In short, they were to cloud every issue they could in order to help defeat the Martians by forcing them to waste their limited resources on attacks where no threat lay and to hit them when and where they least expected. Commissioned were three Psyop Groups with both military and civilian personnel assigned with overlapping areas of responsibility. The civilians would be led by members from the Martian Research Center. They were tasked with the largest propaganda effect ever conceived by mankind and they had been working on it for years. Now it was time to put their plans into full operation.

PSYOP GROUP ONE

LOWER-NEW YORK CITY – RADIO OPERATIONS

Radio misdirection with a full range of broadcasts from fake news reports, pre-recorded phone calls, civilian radio reports as well as fake military radio operations were planned across the entire Earth in the likely event of a new Martian War. There would be by final count some 14,400 local low power broadcast radio centers broadcasting false radio messages mostly on false military matters around the world expecting to be picked up by Martian forces. Part of this plan also included radio broadcasts from outlying areas which were built up to resemble small towns. The Martians would be expected to focus on many of these ‘radio active’ sites which were designed to broadcast at a slightly higher power to attract attention with the expectation that the Martians would expend their limited military resources on attacking these false targets.

THE MARS RADIO TRAPS

Knowing full well that the enemy was listening to everything we were broadcasting at all levels, 14 primary high power Radio Operation Areas (ROAs) were set up in areas where there was nothing but fake buildings, false equipment and a radio transmitter putting out a stream of calls none of which were real. These deception operations, designed to draw in the Martians, were surrounded by as many as 100 anti-aircraft weapons designed to engage ground targets as well as airborne threats. These deception areas soon became known as “Mars Radio Traps” for obvious reasons. Their locations were a closely held Committee secret before the war, but all now know where the remains of the most famous ROAs may be found today. The three most famous were MRT4 in the Arizona desert of America, MRT9 at Kotlas in the windswept steppes of Russia and MRT14 on Necker Island in the northern Pacific Ocean. All three would see close in ground combat service during the Second Martian War, and all of the remaining “Mars Radio Traps” would be attacked by the Martians and they would pay a price for the privilege.

Mars Radio Traps were located at MRT1 (Mandal Gobi, Mongolia), MRT2 (Peixe, Brazil), MRT3 (Marzuq, Libya), MRT4 (Phoenix North, Arizona), MRT5 (Flores Island, Atlantic North), MRT6 (Gibson Desert, Australia), MRT7 (Amsterdam Island, Indian Ocean), MRT8 (Bikini Atoll, Pacific Central), MRT9 (Kotlas, Russia), MRT10 (Suntar, Russia), MRT11 (Adak, Alaska), MRT12 (Prince Edward Island, Atlantic South), MRT13 (Easter Island, Pacific South), MRT14 (Necker Island, Pacific North).

The design of these Mars Radio Traps was simple enough. A radio transmitter was placed in the center of the trap area, which was used to transmit short timed radio traffic or burst as if it were an actual command and control center. The transmitter, radars and defensive weapons were the only real pieces of equipment in the area other than the batteries to support the unit and a new device known as a solar panel, which used the Sun’s rays to produce electric energy. The solar energy panel had been developed using back engineered Martian technology as part of the cover story for the Tunguska Bomb Project. Now we would put it to use against the Martians. The radio was wired directly to the operator’s control unit manned by a radio team who sat in a command bunker at least five miles away or as far away as possible for the one on Midway. The radio operations team was able to view the site via a set of ‘TV’ cameras and track any incoming enemy aircraft with twin Doppler radar sets in support.

The ring of anti-aircraft batteries were fully camouflaged and unmanned until the time came for them to be placed into war footing. (By mid-38 all traps were fully manned and operational.) Thanks to Tesla’s labs they could also be operated by hard-wired remote control. The final conventional feature of the Mars Radio Traps was the explosives pit usually dug out of the ground to a depth of 40 feet in the center of the transmission area. The pits were filled with high explosives pre-wired which could be set off from the radio bunker by way of three separate hard wire links or one radio link should the Martians actually land in the trap. As we all remember two of the traps were set off in this manner. We humans had learned a thing or two since the Martians first came to do battle. Finally, the teams had set up old Heat-Rays on a high piece of ground on two of the Mars Radio Traps shielded and if the Martians got close camouflaged so as not to look menacing. Given the opportunity we would turn their own weapons on them. Each of the Mars Radio Trap Heat-Rays had been removed from one of their own walking machines, rebuilt, and set up for “human use.” In battling the Mars Radio Traps it would be the Martians who would dance to the tune of their own weapons.

Adding to this deception plan the Committee had ‘wired’ dozens of old transport vessels (74 of them) with radio transmitters and filled their holds with high explosives. These old ‘ships’ were then towed to locations in oceans as well as large lakes as a few even made their way to the mouths of major rivers. These sea-going Mars Radio Traps would prove their worth as several Martian Flying Machines as well as at least three Martian walkers were unlucky enough to get close enough to one of them to set off the explosives on board. Committee experts had set them to go off whenever any aircraft flew within 200 feet or sailed within 100 feet from any direction. Needless to say, these positions were mapped out and placed on charts and distinctly painted so that Earth forces did not come too close. They were also placed in locations where our submarines were not stationed. But just in case these traps were also designed not be set off by underwater approach. No one expected the Martians to field any submarines.

PHONY RADIO MESSAGES

As with the other ‘radio active’ areas the Mars Radio Traps had a secondary purpose of giving the Martians the impression that many more military forces existed than were available to engage them in combat. That was part of the deception planning by the Committee Psyop group. The radio messages, call signs and data transmitted was mostly pre-recorded. However, some pre-scripted radio traffic would be sent back and forth by operators in the Mars Radio Traps to other Mars Radio Traps. This would give the impression of a world-wide network of command centers controlling military operations. They were to direct phantom armies to locations for attack when none of them existed. Many of these phantom armies were reported to be located in remote areas underground or near Mars Traps. It was hoped the Martians would expend valuable time and resources attacking these phantom bases, or would perhaps hold back on attacking any one area in full strength in order to hold some of their forces in reserve based upon our phantom armies.

PSYOP GROUP TWO

LOWER-LONDON – PHYSICAL DECEPTION OPERATIONS

Psyop group two had the job of producing other false armies with radios and fake facilities around the world. Their job was to misdirect Martian attacks away from actual built-up areas to areas that looked to any airborne enemy as military operations areas when in fact they were all fake. They also had the job of camouflaging literally thousands of above ground facilities around the world, working of course with local military units. Aiding in their work were thousands of blow-up rubber fake tanks, planes and other fake military equipment set out in areas which would help direct lethal Martian attacks into areas not occupied by military forces. These efforts included building up what looked from the air as whole towns which in fact did not exist set well enough away from actual occupied areas. These efforts were also expected to make our forces appear much larger and stronger than they really were.

Working with the Lower-Sydney Psyop group Tesla’s teams had also put out hundreds of miles of small lights which from the air at night gave the look of an occupied town or small city. With these in place it was once again hoped that the Martians would use their limited resources on targets which did not exist. It would not be long before many above ground cities had “off-site” lighting displays in place and away from their exposed positions. How effective they might prove to be was a matter of speculation but there was no real way to find out until they were actually tested in time of war.

PSYOP GROUP THREE

LOWER-SYDNEY – DIRECT PSYOP OPERATIONS

This group had the primary task of directing radio messages, loud speaker broadcasts, and leaflet drops to any Martian hybrid or Martian B forces before during or after an attack to hopefully provoke them into ending hostilities against Earth. They were also tasked to target full-human groups who were possibly in league with the Martians to surrender. Rewards would be offered to anyone who turned in any human or hybrid working for or with the Martians. This included offers of gold to any of these individuals who would surrender Martian weapons to the Committee or national forces. It was also the team’s responsibility to inform any humans or hybrids working for the Martians that if they did not surrender themselves and were instead captured they would be executed on the spot by firing squads.

Tunguska Project Nears Completion

“We have the bomb.” At least that’s what I wrote in my notes. But no one knew for certain that it would work, certainly I didn’t. All of our years of study and effort indicated that the device would work. The Tunguska West team had assembled “the gadget” and reported to the Committee that they were ready for the big test. Everyone was confident, but without a test all we really had was a large heavy piece of round complicated metal and a strange theory that few people really understood. (I for one certainly could not fully wrap my mind around all of the physics.) We also had a strategic problem. We only had one bomb. But if we tested it we would not have one to use in case of sudden Martian attack, at least not right away. We knew when we expected them to launch their next major attack, but that was little more than a guess and with the Martians we could never really be sure of anything. If we didn’t test it we would not know if it really worked. With this twin problem in mind it was decided not to test the weapon until a second one could be built. There was the fact that if we tested the bomb on Earth the Martians would realize that we had such a powerful weapon. Even if we tested the gadget on the side of the Earth facing away from Mars during the test we had no way of knowing whether or not the Martians were watching from Earth orbit. Our radars only covered so far when it came to detecting orbital craft and this would be a flash that would be hard to miss.

In the meantime, we did have “the gadget” and if the Martians paid a visit we could always test it on them under field conditions. No one felt comfortable under these circumstances, but if we had no other choice we would put that back-up plan into operation. The teams at Los Alamos, New Mexico, went back to work building the second ‘gadget’ not knowing if they had enough time to get the job done. One thing they did know was that they certainly had plenty of “weapons grade” (90%+) uranium-235 to put at least four bombs together, but only enough bomb parts to make one more bomb – for now! Naturally we were building the very complicated devices as fast as we could. One thing we did know – we were running out of time. Knakto had told us that. It did take long for a team of experts to arrive at ‘West’ to transport the ‘gadget’ to its staging area in Lower-New York City. From New York City it would be carried to anywhere we decided to use this very powerful weapon. As of that time no target had been selected. That decision would be made at the highest levels of the Committee when the need arrived.

Mass Migrations to the Hinterland

Now that we pretty much knew they were coming many large cities began moving segments of their populations to pre-planned, and now prepared outlying hinterland areas as well as cave and other underground locations. These were mostly women and children and older people who were not expected to fight. Many of these areas then under operational control of the International Red Cross were wooded and had been pre-planned to hold tens of thousands of people. Red Cross teams world-wide were now on standby ready to react after any Martian attack as best they could. Tents were stored, food and medical supplies had been pre-positioned as had other supplies needed to care for the people expected to remain in these outlying areas for up to four months. We were determined to literally hide as many ‘humans’ from the Martians and their machines as we could and we were going to do it in as many ways as we could devise both above and below the ground.

These “camp grounds” as they were called, became cities unto themselves. The only real difference was that at night there were to be absolutely no lights other than very small red ones and no radio transmitters. Personal radios were of course allowed and in fact were encouraged as to allow the people to keep up on news reports. We needed to broadcast news reports as accurate and as often as possible. And even though most of the new “camp grounds” were patrolled by reserve forces for the most part they were civilian run organizations more often than not overseen by members of the Red Cross.

The first thing they did was register everyone and set up teams of skilled individuals who could be put on call during an emergency and with the Martians expected soon that could mean just about anything. As for our underground efforts of the past 37 years we were justifiably proud our work even though we always knew it was only a partial solution. In total the people of Earth had built some 156,000 underground facilities of all shapes and sizes around the world. These would not be nearly enough but it was a hell of a lot better than 1901 when we had only a hand full of underground places to hide and none of them had been intentionally built with interplanetary war in mind.

MAGIC – MOST SECRET CoT

Magic Order MO-503

MAGIC – MOST SECRET CoT

4 July 1938

Because of the Martian radio message, which had rejected Earth’s peace treaty, and the Knakto warning, forces around the world, had been placed on heightened alert. Naturally, all Mars Watch Program stations had been keeping a close eye and ear on Mars. On 4 July 1938, we got our answer. Starting at 3 p.m. local time at Greenwich Observatory the Mars Watch team saw the first reddish/green flash near the launch facility at Nix Olympia. Minutes later a second flash was seen and then another and another. Dr. James McDonald knew the invasion launches from Mars had begun. It did not take long before he phoned the Committee at Lower-London and sending several Mars Flash Telegrams (MTF). Lower-New York City, Lower-Sydney and Lower-Upolu were immediately informed as were all major military commands and national governments. News reports went around the world as every nation on Earth was informed that the event had begun.

FLASH: MARS WATCH REPORTS SEVERAL LAUNCHES FROM THE SURFACE OF MARS. LAUNCHES CONTINUING. ALERT ALL FORCES TO BLUE.

Before long other observatories were reporting and counting the number of launch “explosions” in order to estimate of how large the Martian invasion force would be. Over the next 36 hours teams around the world counted an average 60 launches per hour. When all of the counting was done we knew that the Martians had launched a staggering 2146 spacecraft all apparently headed for Earth. (These were necessarily estimated counts as the Martians continued to launch as the Mars launch site rotated out of Earth view for a few hours each day.) This was four times as many spacecraft as they had hurled at Earth during the 1901 attack. Clearly they had used every resource they had to build and launch an all out effort to once again invade and perhaps conquer the Earth. In retrospect the 1901 invasion had been nothing more than a large raiding party compared with this massive attack and that ‘raid’ had nearly whipped us out! Earth was in for one hell of a fight.

For over 36 years the people of Earth had been preparing for an interplanetary war we all hoped would never come. Now the time had come to discover if we had done enough to save ourselves and keep possession of a small blue world, which had spent the past 4-1/2 billion years orbiting a local star we called the Sun. The warring inhabitants of the red planet named for the god of war had embarked on yet another attempt to conquer the fourth planet from the Sun (planet Vulcan had been verified by this time) and with it dominance of our small solar space. Having lived through the Martian War of 1901 it all seemed as if a bad dream had come once again. Would we win? In July of 1938 no one on Planet Earth knew the answer to that question. All we could do was make our final preparations, put our plans into operation, and count the days. We had some 60 days or less before the Martians would arrive.

[END PART 59]

Copyright © R. Michael Gordon, 2020

[Next week: Part 60: Earth’s final preparations for war with the Martians and briefing papers.]

[PART 58]

Hybrid Attack on the Empire State Building

UPPER-NEW YORK CITY

The Americans had built the Empire State Building about as strong as any building ever built above ground on Earth. Whatever engineering requirements for strength and durability science told us the builders more or less doubled the standards for the world’s tallest building. We did not fool ourselves into thinking it was bomb proof, but we did feel that it could take quite a beating before any critical structural failure occurred. We were however, perhaps a bit optimistic in our estimates of its strength, or rather we may have understated the effectiveness of Martian Brotherhood and their Martian allies’ explosive devices.

Radar systems had tracked Martian spacecraft before so that was nothing new; however, this particular event seemed strange even from the start. The Martians had simply not acted that way before. Our newly upgraded radars had shown a vehicle coming into the atmosphere north of New York City (75 miles), not unusual however this vehicle was lost from radar as it came within two miles of the Earth’s surface. The operators felt at the time that this was all there would be to it as it may have crashed, but within fifteen minutes the Martian vehicle was spotted taking off and simply going back into outer space, at least as far as we could tell. (Our tracking even though we were improving the system constantly was still limited to near Earth orbital areas.)

The Martian craft showed no signs of distress and our experts felt that it had not been on the ground long enough to abduct anyone or take any type of sample. We immediately concluded that the Martians had ‘delivered something’ or perhaps ‘someone’ to Earth. The Committee was quickly informed ordering both Cobra and Tango teams to the area to find out exactly what the Martians were up to – and fast!

Cobra had boots on the ground first as a team had been stationed in the nearby town of Monticello, New York. They were able to get to the “landing zone” within 85 minutes of the event and there were no lack of witnesses. Several local residents had seen the ‘unidentified craft’ crossing their farms and fields as it headed for “a stop-off in the nearby woods.” Three field workers very close to the landing had seen the craft slow down behind the trees and stated that it had stayed on or near the ground for less than two minutes. Their first thoughts were that the craft had “dropped off someone.” The men were soon running as fast as they could towards the spot they had identified as the landing site – carrying their farm tools with them. They later reported that each felt they were the “well-armed welcoming committee ready to do-in any Martian they found.”

In the darkness of a cool star-speckled evening the men found a “roughed out area where grass had been crushed down with three distinctive circular markings” they thought must have been some type of landing gear. This was the spot the men showed our Cobra team.

The final information they entrusted to the team was the fact that as they approached the site two of the men stated that they clearly saw three “men of tall stature running south from the area at a very fast pace.” They were moving faster than the three men could follow with their “farm tools.” After further investigation the Cobra team, concluded that a Martian Flying Machine of unknown configuration had delivered at least three individuals – probably hybrids – to the remote location to conduct some type of military operation. At the time we had no idea what their target might be. It would not be long before we had our answer.

As it turned out the hybrids which had landed at Neversink Reservoir did indeed have a specific target in mind. They were to attack a well known symbol of how well the people of Earth had recovered from the First Martian War. They would attack the tallest building on Earth – the Empire State Building. And they would attack using the most modern fully Earth designed aircraft yet developed – the new Whitehead B4 jet bomber. They would find what they needed at the Reserve Flight Center at Fort Delaware.

THE ATTACK

Security on the base at Fort Delaware should have been much better than it was. The four Whitehead B4 jet bombers were not expected to be at the base. They had recently flown in for refueling after patrols along the NPDL which allowed the crews to get some breakfast and a bit of rest after a long flight.

We would later understand that the hybrids had expected to hijack another type of aircraft most probably a loaded cargo aircraft, in their efforts to attack the Empire State Building. The Whitehead B4s had simply been at the wrong place at the wrong time. After climbing the outer fence the hybrids quickly killed the five guards on flight line duty allowing them to board three of the bombers. It was not long before one of our new bombers was taking off with a decidedly hostile crew heading directly for the heart of Upper-New York City. These were followed by two other B4s but they would be sporting dozens of holes placed there by security teams who had attempted to shoot them down as they took off.

The fact that they could fly with such damage was a testimony to the effort that the team had put into their design and construction. Later, Whitehead would bemuse the fact that it was going to be very difficult to bring one of his new bombers down. In this case it would be a two-edged sword.

At the time the B4s had been taken there were two Phoenix II fighters on the base and if they had been operational at the time they would have been immediately sent up to intercept and if necessary shoot down the bombers. As it was both were “in the shop” for repairs and it would have taken at least 30 minutes to prepare them for take-off. There was simply not enough time to react from the base. It would be up to the locals in New York to take on the bombers.

As soon as the New York City base was alerted six fighters were scrambled on an intercept course with the three bombers now speeding towards the center of the city. Within minutes the bombers were spotted and the encounter began. It soon became apparent to the interceptor pilots that the hybrids who had taken the bombers were very well trained. It also became quite clear that they had no intention of being forced to land as two of the bombers headed directly at the fighters. These hybrids in the bombers were on a suicide mission!

As the bombers pushed hard towards the city of New York the fighters called in to report the situation. The orders came back – shoot them down. With all three bombers heading towards the ground to fly as low as possible the fighters lined up for the attack. Two of the bombers began to swing wildly in flight once again attempting to fly into the fighters. As they did two of the lead interceptors opened up pouring machinegun fire on the trailing bomber which was soon going down in flames. Two to go but the New York City skyline was now plainly in view. Whatever the target was, and no one knew what it was at the time, the fighters knew they did not have much time to stop the attack.

As the bombers rose to 500 feet it was now clear what the target was, the tallest man-made structure on Earth – the Empire State Building, but that building had prepared a little surprise of its own. Alerted by military authorities the team with the responsibility for point defense of the building had run to their posts. Tesla’s Heat-Rays which had been built into the top of the building were about to be tested in close combat with two bombers now heading directly at the building. The new radar tracking system designed to track targets and control the weapon was not yet operational. This would be a defense depending entirely on the skill of the weapon operator – Lt. Weston Mathews.

From Lt. Mathews’ view as he swung the weapon around he could see both bombers heading directly at the building even as they continued to sway back and forth attempting to move away from the four fighters hammering away at them from behind and below. At 5,000 feet distance Mathews engaged the Heat-Ray intentionally firing high and to the right in order to miss the pursuing fighters pressing their attacks. He could see that both remaining bombers must have been badly damaged as smoke poured out of each even as they continued to fly towards the building.

At around 3000 feet all but one of the fighters pulled away as the single lead fighter seemed unwilling to break off his relentless attack even as Mathews lowered the Heat-Ray directly on the first bomber. Mathews had no choice but to engage the bomber. Within seconds the new Whitehead B4 bomber exploded in a red/green ball of flame. Unfortunately the Heat-Ray also took out the fighter who would not stop his attack for any reason. That left one bomber to stop before it could complete its deadly mission.

Redirecting the weapon and firing as he moved Mathews could see two of the fighters making hard turns in an attempt to reengage the bomber from both sides at the same time. They were attempting to cross their fires at the bomber’s exposed sides. But they were out of time.

Only seconds after the second bomber and fighter exploded Mathews found his second target setting the final bomber completely on fire but it was not enough. The enemy controlled bomber flew under Mathews’ field of fire plunging into the Empire State Building with a force so strong the bomber’s engines literally ripped off the wings as the explosion rocked the building with two of the four passing all the way through the building – ‘flying’ out the other side followed closely by a tongue of flame. The blast shock the whole structure as the entire 73^rd floor erupted into flame.

The new Heat-Ray had proved its worth, but it was clear that if it were to be of real value in defense of the building or for that matter New York City the device needed to be able to not only track multiple targets, it needed to be able to engage targets at a much greater distance and with much better speed.

For the next eight hours fire teams battled to keep the raging gasoline fed fire under some type of control. In the end three floors would receive major damage with 57 people killed during the attack. As for the tallest manmade structure on Earth – it continued to stand firm! The Martians had failed to bring down the tallest man-made building on Earth. Many in the Committee expected that this would not be the last attempt to bring down the building.

Earth Launches Defense 1

19 July 1937

After many years of testing and not a few rather spectacular failures we were finally ready on 19 July to place into low Earth orbit our first ‘active’ defense satellite (or space platform as Dr. Goddard liked to call it) built specifically to engage any Martian craft that happened to come along. This was also the first satellite launched from Earth to be placed into polar orbit. This meant that the satellite would fly over every area on Earth as the Earth rotated below its orbital path. It also meant that it would be in the same general orbital zone we now knew was most favored by our enemies from Mars.

Defense 1

The new satellite was some five times heavier than Earth 1 and as such required our largest and most powerful rocket to place it into orbit. We had only minimal luck with Goddard’s new four-stage booster so all of our fingers were crossed. It was also the most complicated device we had ever built.

Rocket assembly facility and launch of Defense 1 satellite

Defense 1 was built with hardware not only developed by Committee labs including work being done in England, the United States and Germany, it also had more than a few built in capabilities taken directly from work being done on back-engineered Martian devices. When all was said and done this spacecraft was as much a hybrid as anything else. Not that anyone would ever refer to it as such when Dr. Tesla was around or for that matter when Dr. Goddard was in the room.

The satellite would have three primary missions. First – it was to use its powerful new radars to look for and report back on any spacecraft flying towards the Earth from any direction or already in Earth orbit within its field of view as it flew its polar orbital mission. Any radar sightings would be radioed back to one of several ground stations specifically set up to communicate with the satellite. Second – it was to turn and focus on Mars during a portion of each orbit in order to locate and track any enemy craft heading towards Earth from that general area of space. Early warning would include spotting the number of enemy craft closing in on Earth and once again relaying that information to ground stations.

Finally, if possible and if the satellite was in a position to do so it was to turn towards any leading Martian craft closing in on Earth and send out a powerful electromagnetic beam of energy designed by Dr. Tesla’s team at the Martian craft in an attempt to disable the electronic equipment onboard. Even Dr. Tesla knew we had no more than a ten-percent chance of this device being in the right place at the right time. But a chance is better than nothing at all. I felt that even if we disabled a single Martian craft it would give the Martians pause and wonder what else we humans had up our sleeves since we last ‘danced’ in 1901!

Advanced Committee underground satellite assembly facility

Underground Missile Launch Facilities

As our ability to launch both solid and liquid fuel rockets continued to improve, plans were made to develop a system of ground launched rocket defense based on our new technology both man-made and back-engineered from Martian development. With the development of new high speed gyros and sensors from the Tesla labs, sensors and electrical devices from Edison’s programs as well as new so-called composite materials and new small computing devices we were now prepared to match all of these new areas to setting up several areas as missile defense platforms which would be built mostly near major population centers. These rocket defense centers would be prepared to launch ground-based rockets each carrying an explosive warhead towards low and medium altitude aircraft attacking these population centers. Each one would have onboard a heat sensor which would scan the sky for a target focused on the heat given off by the Martian craft.

When completed these stationary launch centers, which had been undergoing design and construction since early 1930, would be able to launch four salvos of two-stage solid rockets, 40 feet long, known as flying telephone poles, in sets of 25. (Liquid fuel rockets would have been too time consuming to be launched in a fast attack situation.) From the air they would show a cross pattern thought to be the best pattern to attack Martian Flying Machines. With the push of a button the operation’s officer could fire all 25 missiles of a salvo each carrying a 1000 pound explosive payload at any target – or targets that flew within four miles of the center. It was therefore critical in our planning to place these underground missile stations in areas which were thought to be prime targets for attack by airborne Martian forces. They would also need to be completely camouflaged so as to hopefully be unrecognizable from the air as anything other than what they really are.

The rockets began arriving for installation into their silos in January of 1938. In total the Committee would construct 42 of these facilities; ten each around New London, New York City, and Sydney as well as single facilities near other major Committee centers. National governments around the world had contracted to construct another 87 of these facilities in and around capital cities such as New Washington Center which had twelve of these facilities, Paris with four and Berlin with eight. Most had no more than one or two. The rocket facilities were not expected to be the final definitive defense of any of these cities. They were however, expected to reduce the number of attacking Martian craft available to rain terror on any of these facilities. Attrition was the primary objective of these rocket forces.

Crystal Word

WE BREAK THE MARTIAN CODE

To hear them report it the breakthrough came in a flash of inspiration. I had the feeling that this so-called “flash of insight” would not have surfaced without many hard years of sweat and toll before the breakthrough came. Nevertheless, a great breakthrough had been made and it came by the mind of man (or rather a large group of women working in complete secrecy over many years) greatly aided by the computers back-engineered from Martian technology and man’s engineering skills. The code breaking technology would be code named “Crystal Word” and without a doubt it was Most-Secret CoT.

The team of language and code experts had been laboring at Brentwater for many years in the hopes that they would be able to eventually learn how to read and speak the Martian language. Slowly and painfully they had deciphered word after word until nearly 97% of the primary Martian A language was understood. They had even produced language tapes and books so that other individuals working on the Martian problem could understand much of what was found in Martian Electronic Documents. What we never really expected to accomplish was a breakthrough that would allow our team to break the Martian code. That was not even a goal during the earlier work. However, with this event, for the first time, humans would have the capability to intercept and read coded Martian messages to their military forces on and in orbit about planet Earth. Many of them used radio waves, as far as we could tell about half the time.

Now we needed to design and build a machine that could be used in the field which would allow our forces the opportunity to have on hand up to date information on enemy forces from Mars. That work would put the ball back into the engineering team’s court at Committee Headquarters in Lower-New York. Before long Tesla’s team had constructed a crude model which looked more like a foot locker with dials on it but it did seem to work. It was however, much too large for proper field work. It would take several more months and a good deal of engineering skill to finally produce a model about the size of a bread box. Limited production line work was now on going in a secret underground production area north of New York City. Very few at the facility knew what they were making and most simply called it the ‘Bread Box’.

MAGIC – MOST SECRET CoT

Magic Order MO-464

Immediate: Highly trusted “fully human” operatives are to be placed into high levels of the Earth’s top ten governments in order to monitor possible anti-Magic or anti-Committee operations. Top governmental officials are not to be informed in these nations. Operatives are to report only and directly to the Magic Twelve in person. No written reports are to be made. Cover operations are mandatory.

MAGIC TWO-NEW YORK

MAGIC – MOST SECRET CoT

1937 FLASH ON MARS

On 18 September 1937, a Japanese astronomer named Dr. Hiroshima Nagato working as part of the Mars Watch Program spotted a very interesting light on the Martian surface. (To be honest ANY light on the surface of Mars at the time would have been of great interest.) In an area quite a bit away from the primary Martian launch site, canals or any of the above ground cities Dr. Nagato spotted a brilliant flash of white light, which was followed by a ring of material moving away from the flash point. Within minutes a large circular cloud seemed to cover the entire expanding area. Dr. Nagato immediately sent out a Mars Flash Telegraph to all stations. His report, filed at the Committee suggested that a new, as before unknown, volcano had gone off or perhaps another much smaller meteoroid impact had occurred. It did seem to be a very long shot that a second impact on the Martian surface was possible in such a short time as we had recently seen the great damage incurred by the cometary body impacting in 1920. Dr. Nagato left it to the Committee to possibly follow up on his observation.

Nothing else of interest was to be seen in that area and for the most part after a few weeks of intensified observation the interest waned. That is not how the people working on the Tunguska Bomb Project viewed the report. To them this sounded exactly like a test of an atomic weapon. Needless to say, the possibly that the Martians had finally developed an atomic weapon could have devastating consequences for Earth. If the Martian’s deployed atomic weapons in enough numbers on Earth any invasion they waged upon Earth would succeed and there would be little we could do about it. Two photos of the cloud taken by Dr. Clyde Tombaugh from the Lowell Observatory suggested a level of energy much greater than that expected from such a compact area. It was also around ten times larger than scientists had estimated to come from our gadget! My thoughts immediately went to the 1908 event at Tunguska. We could be in deep trouble. It could also be that the Martians had had a rather large accidental explosion, not unlike the Tunguska blast but there was no way we could possibly know. All we could do for now was to continue our close watch on our troubled neighbor.

On 21 December 1937, the central group issued Executive Briefing Paper EBP 1937-14A (see Appendix I) which focused on Antarctica in the event the Martians ever accepted the offer to allow all of Planet Mars to ‘immigrate’ to our southern pole. Despite our limited abilities to explore that vast area what we did know showed that the area could easily support any large population of Martians without too many difficulties. There would be a period of support needed by the Martians while they built their facilities, but after that they would be able to self support.

TOP-SECRET

EBP 1937-14A

December 21, 1937

EXECUTIVE BRIEFING PAPER

‘MARTIAN’ ANTARCTICA

(U) Antarctica, with an overall surface area of 5,400,000 square miles, is the fifth largest continent on Earth – larger than Europe by 30%. Ice free areas amount to only 100,000 square miles or approximately four times larger than the surface areas presently known to be inhabited on the surface of Mars by the Martians. Approximately 98% of Antarctica is covered by ice at an average thickness of some 5200 feet (1 mile) in depth. It is the coldest, windiest and driest continent on Earth. On average 4 inches of precipitation per year may be expected, but only along most coastal areas. There is very little precipitation at the South Pole. RMG

(TS) Average non-captive human population, centered around Little America forward Earth base camp is 500. Captured human population estimated to be no fewer than 300. Martian A and B combined population is estimated to be at least 400. Population levels on Mars estimated to be less than 10 million would easily populate the ice-free areas of Antarctica with a potential population growth to 25 million in these same coastal areas without any problems related to population or resources. Natural resources locally could support such expanded population numbers. WC

(U) The natural residents are cold-adapted animals and plants, which include many types of algae, tundra style vegetation, mosses, seals, penguins, nematodes, tardigrades and small mites. Off the coast are found blue whales, colossal squids and Orcas and a variety of fish. Most of these species survive along coastal areas not internal ice sheets that support very little biology. Antarctica’s coastline measures 11,165 miles fronted mainly by floating ice fronts, ice walls or glacial outlets. 5% of the coast fronts a rock face. A generally continuous food supply would be available without any additional support from human sources to the Martians along the coastal areas. If needed human supplied resources could be put into place with very little difficulty. RMG

(S) Committee members have also tested the possibility of growing hybrid Martian Red Weed on Antarctica. Samples held by the Committee in the lab were taken to Antarctica and planted in tightly controlled areas by biologists with surprising results. The red weed readily took to the conditions and thrived. This Martian food source could easily supply the Martians all they could possibly need in the cold environment found in Antarctica. TG

(U) Antarctica contains 90% of this planet’s ice at this time. This ice represents around 70% of the Earth’s fresh water. This presents no problem for humans on this planet due to the great abundance of water resources on Earth. This is a non-issue for both sides. TG

(U) The highest peak in Antarctica is Vinson Massif at 16,050, which is located in the Ellaworth Mountains (see attached map). NG

(C) Ross Island is the home of Mount Erebus, which is the world’s southern most active volcano, which can be used as a local energy source. Geothermal and magmatic energy are both generated by the volcano. Major oil and coal deposits are to be found in the Trans-Antarctic Mountains. Acquiring these energy resources would not pose any problems for the Martians who could easily drill for the oil or mine the coal. The Prince Edward Mountains would also be a natural resource for the Martians as they contain large deposits of iron ore. Off shore there are large oil and natural gas fields in the Ross Sea another resource easily obtainable by the Martians and a potential future trading commodity for them. RMG

(C) As stated above Antarctica is the coldest place on Earth. The coldest temperature so far recorded is –128.6 degrees F. At that temperature dry ice (CO²) freezes, not unlike the temporary polar caps on Mars. Minimum temperature average during the Antarctica winter in the interior range from –112 degrees F to –128 degrees F. Average high temperatures along the coastal areas in summer range from 41 degrees F to 59 degrees F. These would represent a warm day indeed over most of Mars on an average day. The Martians would feel right at home. RMG

TOP-SECRET

EBP 1937-14A

Radio Dishes Ready

BUILD LARGE RADIO DISHES TO ‘HEAR’ MARS

It had taken decades to design and build, but on 23 November 1937, we were ready to listen in on Mars, and I mean ‘really’ listen in. Three large radio dishes were finally completed in Goldstone, California on the United States Army’s Fort Irwin Military Base, in Australia some 25 miles south of Canberra near the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve and 37 miles west of Madrid Spain at Robledo de Chavela. Due to the Earth’s rotation these stations roughly spaced equally around the Earth would allow for nearly constant monitoring of Mars. Smaller dishes had already been built to transmit messages to Mars and were also ready to add their resources to hear any radio noise from the planet. These three new dishes however, were built to hear radio transmissions that were not meant to be intercepted by Earth. These were our three new big spy ears and they worked well beyond what we could ever have hoped for (if everything worked as designed). We expected to be able to pick up radio traffic between Martian spacecraft as well as messages transmitted (in radio only) to their forces in and around Earth as well as in the general area around Mars itself.

New Radar/Radio dishes listening for Martian transmissions

One of the most unexpected radio transmissions ever intercepted by the new Mars Watch Radio Stations was heard and recorded on 12 June 1938. This of course was the now famous Knakto message, which warned the Earth of the second wave of Martians then preparing to launch their attack on Earth. This was the Mars warning about the start of the Second Martian War. Transmitted by a Martian with a name thought to be something like Knakto, it was at first thought to be a false message sent to confuse or misdirect Earth’s defenses. Only later would we understand that for some unknown reason one Martian had decided to warn the Earth of the attack and betray his own species. His warning gave Earth a three month led time to prepare for interplanetary war.

Knakto, we would later learn from a boasting Martian who had been captured during the Second Martian War, was himself captured and executed by his fellow Martians. The captured Martian was very pleased to tell his Earth interrogators that Knakto was first beaten then almost suffocated to death, then completely stripped of his flesh while being kept alive and only then was he allowed to slowly die while he was “consumed” by what could only be described as the Martian version of ants! As the captured Martian related this tale of Knakto’s gruesome and prolonged death the Martian almost appeared to be smiling! It was a facial expression that I had never seen before or indeed ever since. Needless to say, the small Knakto memorial at what remains of Goldstone is visited by the people of Earth as we remember a Martian whose face we shall never know, but whose sacrifice we shall never forget.

This message also brought up a very interesting question. Why have we been picking up so little in the way of radio or general microwave energy from Mars? From such a technologically advanced civilization we should have been able to easily pick up all kinds of general radio noise yet for the most part the radio spectrum around Mars was almost silent. What have we missed? Are they really that advanced in all areas or have they advanced in some areas and lagged way behind in others?

The Martians appeared to have been rather careless when it came to radio transmissions (as we had earlier been) probably not believing that we had developed the capability to do such work. Even with that line of thought we needed to be careful not to believe all that we heard. Messages sent by the Martians may very well have been for propaganda purposes. A careful review was always the word to the wise.

These new radio dishes also had a much more critical part to play during any war with Mars. Tesla and his team were now ready to test out his new “radio engine disruption device” on aircraft flying near these large dishes. His team felt that they could impede and possibly cause a Martian Flying Machine to crash by hitting it with a powerful radio wave.

[END PART 58]

Copyright © R. Michael Gordon, 2020

[Next week: Part 59: Psychological Operations Forces, Radio Traps, and the Tunguska Project.]

[PART 57]

Large Eruption on Mars

The first reports came in at 5 a.m. GMT on 4 January 1937. There was a large volcanic eruption going on at Mars and it was very near their primary launch site. The Mars Watch Teams had seen the eruption begin. Mars opposition occurred on 19 May that year which placed Mars only 48 million miles distance from Earth. It was not the closest that Mars’ orbit had come to Earth but nevertheless the seeing was excellent. Our new telescopes using back-engineered Martian technology were giving our Mars Watch Teams one hell of look at the surface of Mars and to be sure the Martians were experiencing one very large eruption on the surface in and around what must have been a very critical area.

By our estimates it had taken four years for the Martians to build their Great Launch Facility located on the high plateau of the Tharsis Montes. Here their three massive rail launching tubes had been constructed to take advantage of the high slope of Nix Olympia the largest known volcano in our solar system. It was twice as high as Mount Everest and its slopes were wide enough to easily hold the launching ramps with a great deal of room to spare.

The eruption had begun in an area just north-west of the central caldera of Nix Olympia opposite to the rails. However, it did not take long for fissures to open on the western side very near the business end of two of the rails. Within days the flood of magma had begun to cover the center section of the closest rail easily covering 80 to 100 miles on the surface as well as at least 40 miles worth of the second rail.

From what we could make out, which was not much by then due to the vast amounts of gas and dust obscuring much of the area, along with a bit of guess work, our observers deduced that the Martians must have begun work to stay the flow using at least two methods. First, bright reddish beams of intense light could be seen near the flows which seemed to indicate that the Martians were franticly digging trenches with Heat-Rays in order to re-direct the widening surface flow of magma away from the rails. Secondly, our telescopes were picking up massive clouds of steaming gas not only from the eruption fissure but from the flow fronts themselves. The Martians were using vast quantities of their precious supplies of water to cool down and possibly stop the flow! This must have been a desperate effort using limited supplies of water. The effort showed that they would do anything they needed to do to protect as much of this launch facility as possible even if it meant using a great deal of water they could ill afford to waste.

The Mars Watch teams kept an especially close eye for the next eight weeks and their final report indicated that at least 40% of the two rails were covered and had been put out of action. How long repairs would take was anyone’s guess. Best thoughts indicated that no more than 20 months would pass before the rails would once again be fully operational. The gods of Mars had given mankind a little more time to prepare.

Earth Offers Peace

‘Martian Antarctica’

In light of the massive destruction brought to Earth by the Martians a plan was developed which was nothing less than amazing. We had been working on the project for a while now and it was time to test it out. Directorate H proposed to the Executive Committee of Twelve an audacious plan to allow the Martians to come to Earth – in mass – and occupy almost all of Antarctica. We would in effect attempt to appease the Martians by giving them Antarctica. After years of preparation for war and full planetary defense this plan was going to be a very hard sell especially to the military. Needless to say, this plan would need to be submitted to all of the world’s active governments for it would need to be a proposal sent to Mars from the entire Earth. It had to represent all of humanity including the Lawless Zones. (Bringing in the Lawless Zones did cause a good deal of later debate.) It would be a hard sell to the people of Earth, but the realities of the situation would eventually win grudging support from a majority of world governments. The plan itself was a simple one. It was called “Martian Antarctica” at staff (code named “Red Cold”). Considering the recent volcanic destruction on Mars we felt the time could not have been better to approach the Martians.

For many years explorers across our southern oceans had dreamed of a southern continent said to be populated by tropical forests and where it was said the beaches washed up diamonds and emeralds. The explorers called this continent Terra australis incognita the Unknown Southern Land. This dream of utopia came to an end in 1775 when Captain James Cook sailed around the South Pole keeping a watchful eye always open for large floating icebergs. If there were a southern continent it had to be as cold as the ice so plentiful in the Antarctic Ocean.

As a land mass Antarctica is larger than Europe by some 30% and in fact the area is a landmass, which represents an area ten times larger than that presently occupied by the Martians on Mars itself (that we knew of). There would be plenty of room for all of them. We were offering the Martians an opportunity to simply fly to Earth without being interfered with (as if we could do anything about it at the time) and take over an area on Earth which was certainly much more favorable to their needs than any place on the surface of their home planet. It was felt that this offer was a plan that any Martian thinking logically (by human standards perhaps) could not over look. We were by this offer letting the Martians know that as far as we would understand they had found a way to live in Earth’s atmosphere without falling to its pathogens. This we thought would also tell the Martians that we were capable of keeping track of them as well.

Without so much as a thank you the entire Martian civilization could move in mass to a new world and they would not have to fight for a single square inch. It would become sovereign Martian territory requiring Earth passports with Martian visas stamped on them for any human to go to “Martian Antarctica” except for a thin slice of the continent reserved for human scientific research and a political staff.

This of course was not a purely humanitarian solution. Earth could greatly benefit from such an agreement, as we would be hosts to an advanced civilization, albeit a brutal one so far, within easy reach. Certainly it would be much easier than going to Mars to make peaceful day-to-day contact. The possibilities for advanced knowledge and cultural exchange were practically endless. Certainly mankind’s science and technology would continue to advance by leaps and bounds if such an agreement/treaty could be arranged with our enemies on Mars.

There were other aspects of this offer we needed to study. After word got to the Martians that we were offering a large land mass why not simply take it and use it for a military base of operations. In other words agree to the offer and then stab the Earth in the back as soon as they had enough military force on Earth to do the job. The conclusion we came to was simple. The Martians must know that we are weaker than they are, but we are many millions more and being in one place they must have known we would be ready to fight. Perhaps, most grudgingly they were learning to not necessarily respect humans as an intelligent species, just our ability to fight.

We decided, that is to say that Dr. Tesla convinced the Twelve, that we should also send along instructions to the Martians on a method developed by Tesla to produce great fogs on Earth. He had discovered this method accidentally while working with instruments which created antenna current pulses of 1100 amperes. He felt that with this technology the Martians could literally pull great amounts of moisture out of their atmosphere and thus perhaps delay any attacks on Earth. He also felt it would do very well on Earth in desert environments. “I am positive in my conviction that we can erect a plant of proper design in an arid region, work it according to certain observations and rules, and by its means draw from the ocean of air unlimited amounts of water for irrigation and power purposes.” Dr. Tesla was always one to think “out of the box.”

As gracious an idea as this sounded I had other ideas, and they did not involve surrendering territory to the Martians without a military backup plan. The Martian Antarctica plan would still be a tough sell to the military until they understood what we had in mind. I remember when it was first presented to the Magic Twelve.

“…so gentlemen, what I am about to propose to the Committee may seem, at least on the surface, to be a radical idea. I am fully aware of that. However, if you will bear with me I can assure this Magic Group that it is no such thing. Simply stated, I propose to send the Martians a peace treaty in which planet Earth will give to the Martians almost the entire continent of Antarctica.”

I paused as I let that one sink in. Not unexpectedly there were several gasps in the room, as others simply shook their heads in disbelief. The commanding general of Department C could not believe his ears.

“What? Director, I’m sorry, but with all due respect, are you bloody insane? You expect us to just step aside and invite then in?”

“Hear me out general. I assure you that I am quite sane. I think you will find this proposal to be quite interesting and I might add that I would expect world military leaders such as yourself to be the ones who will most support such a plan.”

“Really? I can’t wait for this one. Please, carry on Director.”

“Thank you Sir. Gentlemen, as it stands today we have lost hundreds of millions of lives in a war with the Martians, and a great deal of material resources.”

“We all know that. That’s why we are all here.”

“Indeed so general, indeed so. And we also know, to a man, that another bloody war is right around the corner unless we do everything we can to prevent it. I am certain that no one in this room has any doubts about that. Millions more, perhaps hundreds of millions are going to die and there is no power on Earth which will allow us to make a preemptive strike on Mars to prevent these expected upcoming attacks. We don’t have the means, by which I mean the rockets, the spacecraft, the technology, or the bombs to do the job. However, if we as a planet offer Antarctica to the Martians, and they accept, they will at first bring their advanced forces to the South Pole, which they presently do now in a limited manner as we are all well aware of, and in the case of war will do so at any rate.”

“So we simply stand down and just invite these murderous squids to drop by, is that it?”

“In a manner of speaking, that is exactly what I am proposing. But, with all Earth forces on full alert and pre-positioned to fight if the need arises. In other words general, on our time schedule and not theirs, and if they accept it may also give us more time to prepare an even stronger defense.”

The general was still not impressed.

“We are already prepared even without this plan, as we have Mars Watch and set units ready at all times. Underground work in most areas is damn near complete and new weapons that we expect to kick the crap out of those slimy little pod bastards are nearing production.”

“Quite correct, sir, but, if they come and we do not attack and the Martians do not attack us they will gain confidence in the sincerity of the proposal, which would allow the Martians the opportunity to bring their entire population to Earth; at least as many as they are prepared to re-locate. If it works we will have effectively ended a bloody war before it can begin.”

“That’s a mighty big if, sir. And what exactly do we do then Mr. Director, invite them over for dinner?”

There was some, but not a lot of laughter at that comment, as it hit far too close to home.

“At that point Director F we help them set up a Martian nation in Antarctica. And general know this, it will also mean that 100% of the Martian population re-populated on Earth will be well within range of your bombers, your fighters and your missile forces and all in one place!”

The silence in the room was dramatic. That had gotten the attention of everyone in the room, especially the general. The general then leaned forward to speak and he was smiling – deeply.

“Now I like the sound of that. I could ring Antarctica with a steel net so tight a flea could not get out. With new highly explosive weapons expected to come into our inventory relatively soon it is not beyond the possibility that Earth forces could in fact wipe out the entire Earth based Martian population in one massive attack! Taking care of the squids in one shot would suit me just fine.”

It was at that point that the Prime Director spoke up after he cleared his throat.

“If I may gentlemen, before we all get too excited about all of this, let me remind all of those in this room that we are looking for a peaceful solution here if we can, even though we must be fully prepared for war. If we can have any hope of this working I think we need to take a close look at all options, peaceful as well as full on war. We must be on 100% alert and fully prepared with our military forces before we try anything like this.”

“That is correct of course sir. But this presentation to the Martians will put the ball very much in their court, but on our terms. We may have a great deal to gain from this. It may also give us a few more months to prepare for the worst case scenario we are trying to avoid.”

After a long debate in which the pros and cons were discussed it was decided that Earth really had nothing to lose. Diplomacy might actually work and if it did not we still had the military option on the table, and so did the Martians. Orders soon went out to speed up preparations for any possible military action. We needed to be ready if the Martians agreed, and even more so if they did not.

Knowing that a simple agreement might not be enough for the Martians, Directorate H had put together a comprehensive package of aid, transportation, building programs, food, energy development and trading possibilities. We wanted to make the proposal as attractive as we possibly could. There was even a most-secret portion of the agreement known as “sub-clause 15,” which was never released to the general public. This sub-clause included Earth supplying the Martians with live humans for food; those who had been convicted of murder or other brutal crimes, and sentenced to death. It was an old idea, but this time it was put on a Committee document. In effect, we would use the Martians to dispose of Earth’s most brutal criminals. Certainly this would be a plus for humanity in general and end once and for all the need to hold on to such unneeded individuals. They would become a “resource” for both sides of this interplanetary equation.

A system would be set up where a convicted criminal would be strapped to a chair in a gas chamber. The gas would render the man (usually a man) unconscious and a Committee doctor would go through the act of checking that he was ‘dead’ just for public consumption. Having been certified the ‘corpse’ would be taken away for disposal. At which time the ‘corpse’ would be woken, taken in chains to Antarctica and “released” to the Martians. There was one other section of the plan. The convicted individual would be sterilized before being sent to the Martians in the event the human was not eaten. Needless to say, the Martians would not die from lack of human nourishment. There are still plenty of brutal criminals wondering around our planet to insure the ‘success’ of this most-secret program.

We were even preparing to turn over all members of the Martian Brotherhood not yet executed to the Martians, as well as the last four surviving POs, PO19, PO24, PO39 and PO64. Included in the proposal was a full briefing of the known conditions on Antarctica to be sent to the Martians, which were also summarized in an executive briefing paper for the Magic Twelve.

We sent the proposal and waited. We did not have to wait long for an answer.

A radio message sent several times from Mars came in broken English, but the message was crystal clear, demanding that our military forces disarm and step down. This of course, no matter what the result, was the one option the Earth was not about to consider.

There was now no doubt that the Martians would return for another attempt to take the whole of our planet. The next message we sent by radio to Mars was also crystal clear. It was sent every hour for two days. “The people of the Earth are as one in the call for peaceful relations with all of the inhabitants of the planet Mars. With this our offer of Antarctica for the inhabitants of Mars continues. However, should the need arise, and if we are attacked by Mars, Earth fighting and weapons holders are fully prepared to defend our warier planet with all the destructive means at our disposal and will do so at any and all costs. Any attacker from any planet must be prepared to pay a fearful price for such unprovoked and provocative actions on Earth as well as on Mars! We will fight if need be to completely destroy any invader. Earth is still prepared to talk peace at any time. Earth now stands fully prepared for peace on both our planets or war on Mars.”

There were no further messages from the Martians, at least there were none in response to our rather timid threat, but we were quite certain that our second message was received and understood as we sent it in five primary Earth languages, English, French, German, Russian and Mandarin Chinese, as well as what we felt was a pretty good version of Martian.

The Hindenburg ‘Accident’

It had been an average albeit rainy day at the airfield and for all that could be gathered from the survivors the flight across the Atlantic had been a rather uneventful passage. The passengers and crew had enjoyed a smooth crossing even though the giant craft had run into a strong storm as the airship crossed over Upper-New York City. It was always a grand sight. All that remained was for the last drinks to be enjoyed and the already packed luggage to be unloaded once the great ship of the air was firmly attached to its mooring mast at the airstrip at Lakehurst, New Jersey.

As had become custom for all airship passengers and crew only “full-humans” were allowed to fly these majestic craft (the exception being hybrids working directly for the Committee). Needless to say since the loss of the Roma in February of 1922 all who boarded were checked and re-checked for any possible Martian connections. Contacts with hybrids did not necessarily disqualify one for service or travel on one of these airships but special permission was required. Once an individual was on the approved fly list travel could be obtained relatively easily. This security protocol had worked well for better than fifteen years. We knew we had to be perfect 100 percent of the time. The Martian terrorists had to be successful only once. Their time came in May of 1937.

Despite the increasingly rough weather from the ground the ship did not appear to have a real problem as it majestically floated towards the mooring mast with the ground crew dutifully standing by to stable the craft. Also standing by was a young radio reporter on his first assignment from WLS Upper-Chicago. Herb Morrison was about to become known as the man on the spot when humanity lost its greatest airship of all time.

It was 7:20 p.m. as the great airship slid in level to the ground at 200 feet. Only 700 feet to go to the most. As lines dropped the ground crew ran to seize the lines.

At 7:25 the ship was stationary at 75 feet and seemed to fill the sky with its shining silver surface. There was an almost imperceptible shutter as two crew-members stationed to see the Number 4 after gas cell around 50 feet above them saw the ‘event’. A bright red flash of light suddenly appeared inside the cell; this was quickly followed by a huge yellow ball of fire as the men found themselves surrounded by flame. The ship would be nearly totally consumed by fire in less than 30 seconds! One crewman screamed: “The ship’s burning!”

Within seconds as the rear of the airship exploded with flame, a 100 foot tongue of yellow flame pushed out of the noise. If they had understood before what was happening in the rear of the craft all now the great airship was doomed as passengers and crew began jumping out of windows. One of the survivors would report “a scene from a medieval picture of hell.”

Terrified ground crew began to run yet Chief Boatswain Fred Tobin would have none of it. “Navy men, stand fast! We’ve got to get those people out of there.” With the Navy’s courageous efforts 62 people would survive this disaster with only 36 losing their lives. Dr. Eckener would later write, “It appeared to me the hopeless end of a great dream, a kind of end of the world.”

It was not the end of the world but it did spell the end of airship travel, at least as far as Earth was concerned. These great ships of the air were far too susceptible to sabotage and Martian intrigues. Investigators would discover that this was no accident but a carefully planned attack by Martian hybrids. And, once again, the general public was dutifully informed that despite the dramatic loss of the Hindenburg it was only a tragic accident most likely caused by static discharge from the local violent weather compounded by the poor use of a gas which made the Hindenburg a magnificent floating death-trap.

Los Angeles Times – 7 May 1937

ZEPPELIN BLAST KILLS THIRTY-FIVE

Giant Dirigible Blazing Wreak

Airship Blows Up on Its Arrival at Lakehurst Airport From Germany

LAKEHURST (N.J.) May 6. (AP) – Germany’s great silver Hindenburg, the world’s largest dirigible, was ripped apart by an explosion tonight that sent her crumbling to the naval landing field a flaming wreck with horrible death to about a third of those aboard her.

Exactly how many died was still in dispute as the flames licked clean the twisted, telescoped skeleton of the airship that put out from Germany seventy-six hours before on its opening trip of the 1937 passenger season.

What caused the fearful blast, just at the moment the great craft was being moored, no one knew. The explosion occurred at the rear and some observers believed a spark of static electricity following a mooring rope from the ground set off the highly inflammable hydrogen. Other reports indicated a backfiring motor might have sent a flash of flame into a minute gas leak.

Then came the terrible explosion and a brilliant red flames suddenly splashed out toward the stern and the rudder. The detonation tore the ship as if it were made of paper. The tail dropped earthward. The blunt nose bobbed up, hung a moment in the air and then crumpled toward the field, flames running along its sides and its fabric flaking off in big chunks.

The explosion occurred in the No. 2 gas cell toward the stern of the ship, according to State Aviation Commissioner Gill Robb Wilson, who called the blast strange.

As with the Roma attack in 1922 the Committee was soon “working the problem.” Teams were sent to insure that the event was “properly reported.” Other teams were soon tracing leads to which group of hybrids had been responsible for the attack. No one at the Committee believed it could have been an accident or an attack by anyone other than a group of hybrid terrorists. Within weeks some 83 hybrids had been captured and interrogated. By the end of Committee work to uncover the ‘truth’ some 219 hybrids were “lost to intense interrogation,” before we had enough information to identify those who had bombed the airship. All of those involved soon found their way to one of our ‘hotels’ and before long to our underground firing squads. Trials for suspected terrorist hybrids had gone the way of the dinosaur.

We were still taking matters into own hands with no public oversight. (For the record the Committee had organized an internal review group but it was tasked to make recommendations with no actual power to change policy. That was still firmly held in the hands of the Magic Twelve.) I could only wonder how long the Committee could hold on to this much power and control. And what would be the end result when and if the general public understood the price humanity had paid for its recovery from the First Martian War. We were beginning to lose our way but no one at the highest levels seemed to notice. And if they did no one, including myself, voiced a single word of decent.

Since the Hindenburg disaster had been published as a very unfortunate ‘accident’ there was no reason to inform the public of the latest hybrid roundup. No connection was to be made in the public mind. For the public it was to stay a terrible accident – case closed.

[END PART 57]

Copyright © R. Michael Gordon, 2020

[Next week: Part 58: Upper-New York, Defense 1 in orbit and briefing papers.]

[PART 56]

Radio Interview with Mr. H. G. Wells

(October 1936)

As the thirty-fifth anniversary of the war with Mars came around radio stations in several countries put on special programs in line with the anniversary. The Committee encouraged these programs in order to keep the public aware of the Martian danger. By now we were all but certain that a new and very deadly full-scale war with Mars could literally come at any moment therefore we needed a relatively informed public, but not one alarmed at the possibility. We were walking on a very thin rope.

By this time it was estimated that nearly 39 million people nightly tuned into radio broadcasts in the United States alone, with another 21 million in Europe and many would be tuning in to one or more of the anniversary shows. One of the best was broadcast from Upper-New York City from Blue Network radio station WXNY. Their “Remembering the Martian War” interview program featured author and war reporter Mr. H. G. Wells. Recruited to conduct this memorable interview with the well known author was upcoming 21-year-old producer and director Orson Welles who was himself at the time preparing a radio show of his own based upon Mr. Wells’ popular book The War of the Worlds.

What most people were never told was that Orson Welles had been instructed not to ask H. G. any questions about the Executive Committee of Twelve, his general personal life after the war or inquire about any of the Committee’s activities. If he had crossed that particular line the interview program would have been immediately cut off and Orson Wells would have found himself in a very small underground room for a very long time!

The show began at 7 p.m. Eastern time on 16 October 1936, and would become one of the best listened to radio shows of all time. Copies of the show were later packaged up by the Committee for distribution world-wide to many other radio stations as part of their public information program.

“REMEMBERING THE MARTIAN WAR”

INTRODUCTION: “No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.”

ORSON WELLES: “Good evening ladies and gentlemen. This is Orson Welles speaking to you from the studios of WXNY in Upper-New York. As we all know this week commemorates, if that is the proper term, the 35^th anniversary of the war with the inhabitants of planet Mars. After that most titanic struggle in human history was finished mankind recovered and rebuilt much of what we had lost, save the millions who had lost their lives during the war. The work of course is not nearly complete. Yet there is a whole generation who have grown up in this brave new world forged from the blackened planetary destruction that have no real memory of those events of 35 years past other than what they read in the history books. With that in mind we at WXNY present to you our remembrance show with our one-on-one interview with the man whose prose have so touched millions of readers and whose work has so firmly placed his name synonymous with those terrible days some 35 years ago. He has authored such memorable works as The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The First Men in the Moon, The War in the Air and of course The War of the Worlds.

The New Times of London would report, “Suppose yourself at home with them, in Mars, and you will not find them good company. We might live a more interesting life with Victor Hugo’s pieuvre, comparatively a domestic animal. It is unnecessary, and, indeed, without the limits of space, impossible to give an idea of Martians as understood by Mr. Wells, but a very large, round, ruthless cuttlefish, with a genius for scientific inventions and applied mechanics, comes, perhaps, as near a Martian as a brief phrase will allow. Their ravages permit free contrast of the commonplace with the gruesome, and of these contrasts the book is made.”

And with that modest introduction we welcome to our humble studios Mr. H. G. Wells. Welcome Mr. Wells to Upper-New York and WXNY radio.”

H. G. WELLS: “Thank you Orson, it’s a pleasure to be here.”

ORSON WELLES: “It is indeed wonderful to have you here sir. Mr. Wells, I know that your time is short so let’s quickly go back to that time some 35 years ago when our planet was under attack by the Martians. My first question is: Why did it not cross many of our minds that intelligent life could possibly be found on Mars?”

H. G. WELLS: “Orson, so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer, up to the very end of the nineteenth century, expressed any idea that intelligent life might have developed there far, or indeed at all, beyond its earthly level. Nor was it generally understood that since Mars is older than our Earth, with scarcely a quarter of the superficial area and remoter from the Sun, it necessarily follows that it is not only more distant from life’s beginning, but nearer its end.”

ORSON WELLES: “Sir, after years of reflection what is your impression of how these ancient Martians view us today?”

H. G. WELLS: “We men, the creatures who inhabit this Earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as the monkeys and lemurs in Madagascar to us. The intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief of the minds upon Mars.”

“And let me add, looking across space with instruments and intelligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of, they [still] see, at its nearest distance only 35,000,000 of miles sunward of them, a morning star of hope, our own warmer planet, green with vegetation and gray with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow, navy-crowded seas.”

ORSON WELLES: “In the end form then, sir, is mankind, when looked upon with an open mind, truly any different than the Martians?”

H. G. WELLS: “I should think not. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Perhaps we judge of them too harshly. The Martians seem to have calculated their descent with amazing subtlety – their mathematical learning is evidently far in excess of ours – and to have carried out their preparation with a well-nigh perfect unanimity. We would do as much.”

ORSON WELLES: “In hindsight then, could we have observed anything on Mars at the time just before the war that would have given us any warning of their eventual attack on Earth?”

H. G. WELLS: “Had our instruments permitted it, we might have seen the gathering trouble far back in the nineteenth century. Men like Schiaparelli watched the red planet – it is odd, by the bye that for countless centuries Mars has been the star of war – but failed to interpret the fluctuating appearances of the markings they mapped so well. All the time the Martians must have been getting ready.”

ORSON WELLES: “What was our first indication that events on Mars were coming our way?”

H. G. WELLS: “The storm burst upon us 35 years ago now. As Mars approached opposition, Lavelle of Java set the wires of the astronomical exchange palpitating with the amazing intelligence of a huge outbreak of incandescent gas upon the planet. It had occurred towards midnight of the twelfth of August and the spectroscope, to which he had at once resorted, indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with an enormous velocity towards this Earth.”

ORSON WELLES: “You observed the Martian Heat-Ray up close, sir. Tell us about that if you would.”

H. G. WELLS: “This intense heat they project in a parallel beam against any object they choose, by means of a polished parabolic mirror which is still of unknown composition, much as the parabolic mirror of a lighthouse projects a beam of light. Lead runs like water, it softens iron, cracks and melts glass, and when it falls upon water, incontinently that explodes into steam. It is indeed a terrible and most formidable weapon.”

ORSON WELLES: “Martians collected humans in a sort of basket, correct?”

H. G. WELLS: “Yes, at times they used no Heat-Ray to destroy them, but picked them up one by one. Apparently they tossed them into the great metallic carrier, which projected behind them, much as a workman’s basket hangs over his shoulder. It was the first time I realized that the Martians might have any other purpose than destruction with defeated humanity. We were food for the Martians.”

ORSON WELLES: “Mr. Wells thanks to yours and other reports we were all made aware that the Martians used mankind for food as if by a vampire, but there were other sources, were there not?”

H. G. WELLS: “Indeed. Their undeniable preference for men as their source of nourishment is partly explained by the nature of the remains of the victims they had brought with them as provisions from Mars. These creatures, to judge from the shriveled remains that have fallen into human hands, are bipeds with flimsy, siliceous skeletons and feeble musculature, standing about six feet high and having round, erect heads, and large eyes in flinty sockets. Two or three of these seem to have been brought in each cylinder, and all were killed before Earth was reached.”

ORSON WELLES: “Speaking of food stuffs, what have we learned about Martian vegetation since those early days?”

H. G. WELLS: “Apparently the vegetable kingdom in Mars, instead of having green for a dominant color, is of a vivid blood-red tint. At any rate, the seeds, which the Martians brought with them, gave rise in all cases to red-colored growths. Only that known popularly as the red weed, however, gained any footing in competition with terrestrial forms.”

ORSON WELLES: “Is it possible in your mind that the Martians had once been not too unlike humans?” “Could we, in some future date, be the Martians or related to them today?”

H. G. WELLS: “To me it is quite credible that the Martians may have descended from beings not unlike ourselves by gradual development of brain and hands at the expense of the rest of the body. Without the body the brain would, of course, because a mere selfish intelligence, without any of the emotional substratum of the human being.”

ORSON WELLES: “Mr. Wells, can you clarify a point for our audience? A listener has phoned in a question of Martian’s never sleeping. Could you address this point?”

H. G. WELLS: “Indeed, their organisms did not sleep, any more than the heart of man sleeps. Since they had no extensive muscular mechanism to recuperate, that periodical extinction was unknown to them. They had little or no sense of fatigue, it would seem. In twenty-four hours they did twenty-four hours of work, as even on Earth is the case with the ants.”

ORSON WELLES: “As you moved about during the fighting in and around old London, always keeping the position of the Martians in perspective, was there any point during the Martian war when you felt utterly alone?”

H. G. WELLS: “Yes. For a time I believed that mankind had been swept out of existence.”

ORSON WELLES: “And this was as you came into the outskirts of London?”

H. G. WELLS: “Yes, I stood there alone, the last man left alive. Hard by the top of Putney Hill I came upon another skeleton, with the arms dislocated and removed several yards from the rest of the body. As I proceeded I became more and more convinced that the extermination of mankind was, save for such stragglers as myself, already accomplished in this part of the world. The Martians, I thought, had gone on and left the country desolated, seeking food elsewhere. Perhaps even destroying Berlin or Paris, or it might be they had gone northward.”

ORSON WELLES: “There has been some controversy as to how much the Martians flew and to what extent they used these craft.”

H. G. WELLS: “It has often been asked why the Martians did not fly immediately after their arrival. They certainly did use a flying apparatus for several days, but only for brief flights of a score or so of miles, in order to reconnoiter and spread their black powder.”

ORSON WELLES: “Would you expect a greater use of such technology in any possible future Martian encounters.?

H. G. WELLS: “I would, but the fact remains that during the London portion of the war they did not fly fifty miles from London. Perhaps they are not fully comfortable in the air.”

ORSON WELLES: “Had they flown more would there have been a different outcome during the war?”

H. G. WELLS: “Had they done so, then the destruction they would have caused would have been infinitely greater than it was, though it could not have averted the end, of course, even by a day.”

ORSON WELLES: “You of course refer to their deaths from Earth’s bacteria?”

H. G. WELLS: “Indeed so. They were doomed the moment they began their deadly attacks.”

ORSON WELLES: “What were you able to see of the deadly gas they used?”

H. G. WELLS: “It was heavy, this vapor, heavier than the densest smoke, so that, after the first tumultuous up rush and outflow of its impact, it sank down through the air and poured over the ground in a manner rather liquid than gaseous, abandoning the hills, and streaming into the valleys and ditches and watercourses even as I have heard the carbonic-acid gas that pours from volcanic clefts is wont to do. The vapor did not diffuse as a true gas would do. It hung together in banks, flowing sluggishly down the slope of the land driving reluctantly before the wind.”

ORSON WELLES: “This of course proved to be quite a deadly weapon used by the Martians. Speaking of these creatures, which now haunt many of our nightmares, the first time anyone comes face to face with a Martian must be very traumatic. Could you relate to our listeners what your first close contact was like?”

H. G. WELLS: “When I first saw one a sudden chill came over me. A big grayish rounded bulk, the size, perhaps, of a bear, was rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder. As it bulged up and caught the light, it glistened like wet leather. Two large dark-colored eyes were regarding me steadfastly. The mass that framed them, the head of the thing, was rounded, and had, one might say, a face. There was a mouth under the eyes, the lipless brim of which quivered and panted, and dropped saliva. The whole creature heaved and pulsated convulsively. A lank tenticular appendage gripped the edge of the cylinder, another swayed in the air. Those who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely imagine the strange horror of its appearance. The peculiar V-shaped mouth with its pointed upper lip, the absence of brow ridges, the absence of a chin beneath the wedge like lower lip, the incessant quivering of this mouth, the Gorgon groups of tentacles, the tumultuous breathing of the lungs in a strange atmosphere, the evident heaviness and painfulness of movement due to the greater gravitational energy of the earth—above all, the extraordinary intensity of the immense eyes—were at once vital, intense, inhuman, crippled and monstrous. There was something fungoid in the oily brown skin, something in the clumsy deliberation of the tedious movements unspeakably nasty. Even at this first encounter, this first glimpse, I was overcome with disgust and dread.”

ORSON WELLES: “A nightmare encounter to be sure Sir. I want to thank Mr. Wells for dropping by our studios at WXNY as I knew he has limited time and needs to go off to a meeting in town this evening. I’m sure our radio audience has been given much to think about as we on planet Earth continue to rebuild and prepare for what may yet come from planet Mars.”

H. G. WELLS: “It was my pleasure Orson. And a very good evening to your radio audience.”

ORSON WELLES: “Thank you Sir. Our guest this evening has been author and Martian War historian H. G. Wells who was kind enough to discuss his memories from the Martian War and his work The War of the Worlds. And we will be right back with the rest of our remembrance program with some call in questions from you the radio audience after these few messages from the producers and distributors of Blue Coal, the world’s finest Pennsylvanian anthracite. Remember folks that’s Blue Coal for all of your heating needs. We will be right back so please dear friends do stay tuned. This is Orson Welles coming to you from our WXNY studios in Upper-New York.”

Before he left the studio H. G. gave permission for young Orson to produce an adaptation of his The War of the Worlds book for his radio audience. Orson would schedule the show for the night of Halloween two years from today on what would have been the 37^th anniversary of the Martian War. However, he was never able to broadcast that show as his subjects, the Martians, decided to preempt his show with one of their own.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Committee Report (C) 36-134 – Palenque Stone Relief, 8 November 1936, 8:40 a.m.

A stone relief not unlike the god Kukumatz in the Yucatan has been uncovered in Palenque. The relief shows a ‘human’ bent forward as if it is riding a motorcycle with what appears to be a rocket jet out of the back end. His foot is on what appears to be a pedal. The clothing worn has a rubber suit look to it and the rider wears a helmet with a pair of antenna coming out of it. Martian markings are clearly cut into the relief.

_________________________________________________________________________________

[END PART 56]

Copyright © R. Michael Gordon, 2020

[Next week: Part 57: Eruption on Mars as Earth offers peace.]