Dark Earth: From Sea to Shining Sea

When the US has over 36,000 nuclear weapons, not so much.

The Americans aren't too concerned, but Steve is right that they are trying to balance out the interests and perspectives of their other allies. The French and Benelux countries aren't very keen on a strong German Army that isn't pointed eastwards and a Luftwaffe with strike capacity amplifies this. The British have decided that twice in half a century was enough, but are more worried about a large German oceangoing fleet and long range bombers and rockets.

You are on the mark regarding Thompson's analysis of British (and American) arms sales policies regarding Germany.

The Red Baron has answered the question about Snoopy many, many times.

From Sea to Shining Sea Part 6

Coming into Los Angeles always made Roger Thompson highly aware of the vast and disparate nature of California itself in particular and the wider United States in general. First the looming mountains, fertile fields and verdant fruit groves spoke of a people and a country still from the land and of the land, even though the frontier was being pushed back, day by day and yard by yard. Then the tendrils of the outlying suburbs showed the changing face of modern America, one of sweeping highways, neat houses and thriving shops, alongside the old vestiges of California in the last century, that curious mixture of palatial Spanish ranches and stately English mansions and gardens that had arisen from the confluence of Mexico and New Avalon. This soon gave way to the city proper, with more vast stretches of concrete suburbs and factories, as befitted one of the great modern industrial hubs of the world. At its centre stood a hub of soaring skyscrapers reaching up far above the streets like a jagged paen to man’s progress set against the backdrop of the bustling business of everyday life.


It went beyond a simple matter of outward appearance, though. California’s people were a diverse lot, drawn from all over the country and the wider world beyond by its thriving industrial boom, which had been one of the marvels of the postwar age. Vast factories turning out aircraft, cars, steel, machinery and electronic goods had a voracious appetite for labour and it had come, in its millions. Where once the state had been a combination of the older Spanish and Mexican natives and the English up from New Avalon, the 49ers from out east who had poured in during the first Gold Rush – English, Irish, French, Germans, Italians, Austrians and above all, Americans – had changed that, along with the industrious Chinamen who streamed in their thousands to the fabled Gum Shan, or Gold Mountain. They had been followed by Poles and Greeks, drawn by the mines that drew forth fabulous wealth from the land, the proud Japanese who toiled in the orchards and on the fishing boats and the indefatigable Indians, coming up across the border to build the railways and dams that would propel California into the new century. After both World Wars, new waves of migrants both foreign and American had streamed out west to find a new life. Culturally, there was little of the old California left, save its architecture and place names. Only the old elaborate haciendas, ranchos and missions remained of the century long period of Spanish and Mexican rule, the epoch of Zorro and the Inquisition. The melting pot state had drawn in multitudinous influences from its waves of migrants, all of them subsumed in the greater American whole.

Change. Everywhere there was change.

Thompson looked back from the window and stretched back in his seat as Air Force One began its descent into Los Angeles International Airport. His flying morning visit to Seattle had been nominally successful, with the German meeting going as best as it could and the public exhibition of the quite impressive XF-111 prototype at least providing something for the history books in his favour. Then they had taken to the air once again for the 100 minute flight down to Los Angeles, where he would arrive just in time for lunch with a gathering of California’s Republican grandees, business tycoons and various donors. If only the rest of the world could be as ordered and dependable.

It seemed no matter how hard he tried to tie up loose ends and bequeath something of a stable international situation to his successor, something new would crop up. The C-130s were on their way to Ethiopia and both CIA and the Joint Chiefs considered that Haile Selassie’s loyalists should be able to handle the situation, hopefully without the need for the British to send in their Gurkhas, but the remainder of the morning had seen one disturbing piece of news after another emanating from Africa. It had begun with confused and unconfirmed reports of hundreds of civilian deaths from Portuguese air strikes in Angola, riots in Swedish Congo of all places and garbled interceptions indicating some sort of massacre in Spanish Mauritania, both of them shocking pieces of news if true. They had barely been received when an emergency telex came in reporting a massed attack on the palace of the Governor-General of the Belgian Congo in Leopoldville.

This had sent the American intelligence services into overdrive, with an initial interpretation that this was simply the first stage of a coordinated rising across Central Africa against the colonial powers, aided and abetted by the Soviet Union. Several of his more aggressive advisors had argued for sending in the Marines in the initial heat of the moment, but the nearest American forces were several thousand miles away on the Canary Islands and their purpose would be decidedly unclear at this early stage. Eden had counselled caution in his telex, stating that the Brits had enough in Rhodesia and Kenya to step in if Stockholm, Lisbon or Madrid requested assistance. That would be simply more fuel for the fire, though, in the President’s view.

Thompson had just finished a very tense conversation with Premier Stalin over the hotline, but his gut feeling had been that the man was telling the truth when he had denied any direct involvement or knowledge of the events. They had come to a very secret agreement back in May regarding any overt action or intervention in the other’s sphere of influence after they had been pushed so close to the brink by that madman and, whilst Africa lay beyond the scope of that deal, the Soviets simply had nothing to gain from such a precipitous yet doomed gesture. That type of game was neither effective enough nor subtle enough for their tastes and goals and didn’t affect their interests. This was either a terrible series of coincidences or Peking was dabbling in distant affairs and Thompson leaned towards the former, based on the course of the last five years.

Then there was Brazil. Always darn Brazil. If China was hard to read, then Brazil was nigh on indecipherable. There was an eccentric Emperor and his dazzling young Empress, a populist nationalist President who had dabbled in fascism at various points during his thirty-year term in office and of course Trotsky, for good measure. There were enough factions in Brazil to make the Republican Party look simple and unified, all of them playing off against one another and their neighbouring states. Both Vargas and Leopoldo had expansive visions of their state as not only the dominant power in South America, but a bona fide superpower in the making and one part of that had been direct and indirect support of various nationalist parties in Portuguese Africa and beyond. Just a little ambitious to the point of being beyond the scope of reality, but he’d always thought the Latin types had a tendency towards the grandiose and the caudillo. They were trying to get a hold of modern jet bombers and rockets and weren’t far off their own atom bomb, which would shift them from a potential problem to an actual one. All of the Big Three South American states were warming up for a new arms race, this time not only limited to the sea, and it looked like Argentina was edging towards an extremely radical nationalist regime, if the forecasts of Langley were anything to go by.

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The reception with the local Republican heavyweights went characteristically well. California had always been one of his personal strongholds of political support, building on solidly consistent Republican dominance there over the last quarter of a century. Senators William Knowland and Crocker Jarmon would ensure that it would be continued for the foreseeable future, even with a Democrat in the White House. He had made a point of lauding their contribution in his speech, as well as that of former Governor Knight, who had done so much to deliver him the state back in 1956, bringing the West Coast with it. Afterwards, as he did the rounds of the room over the sadly light trays of canapés, he came across another old acquaintance.

“Mr. President! Another fine speech.”

“Colonel Reagan! How’s the family?”

“Going great, Mr. President.”

“Wonderful. Quite a surprise to see you here. I’d have thought that you’d have enough on your plate what with the television show and that little film you were telling me about back in July.”

Reagan gave a broad, sunny grin. “Just wrapped the movie last week. Are you still coming to see it?”

“Definitely. It will be quite different to see someone else playing me, even if you don’t quite bear close resemblance. Shame that I couldn’t take a leaf out of General Eisenhower’s book and appear as myself, but it ‘simply couldn’t be done’, as our British cousins are want to say.”

“Quite right, Mr. President. As it is, the production owes you enough for the use of the Navy.”

“We had the ships over there, Ron, albeit for a different reason. I look forward to seeing the fleet arrive from the view on the other side of the fence.”

“It’ll be swell, sir.”

“Well, Ron, I’ll have to make a point of coming by to see you when I’m next in town.”

Thompson was exceptionally glad to eventually make his escape after lunch, which hadn’t been all that bad; he was quite partial to Dungeness crab and being a solid meat and potatoes man, the broiled prime rib of bison was particularly agreeable. The recovery of the American bison herds to some semblance of their former glory had been one of the pleasant little features of the last few years, amid all the sound and fury of a world seemingly coming apart.



One of the more significant questions that buzzed around the room, although it had never quite been broached to him directly, given the delicate dance of protocol, was that of the 1964 Republican nomination. Now that he had made it eminently clear in no uncertain terms that he would not seek to emulate Teddy Roosevelt and seek re-election in four years, the field had been thrown wide open. Harold might have a go to see if he could break through, but he had always struggled to put together a truly national support base. Rockefeller would probably have the liberal vote squared away and the conservatives would coalesce behind Knowland or one of the other leading lights, such as Barry Goldwater, what with McCarthy being a shadow of his former self. That left open the opportunity for someone to run down the centre and win the nomination with a vigorous campaign, as Jack Kennedy had managed to do for the other side, but there were no clear options that came to mind, particularly now that he had put Dick Nixon on the Supreme Court.

Whoever it was would have an uphill battle ahead of them.

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There were few better sights to behold on a glorious San Francisco afternoon in Roger Thompson’s view than that of the mighty ships of the United States Navy sitting in the glittering azure waters of the bay. Dozens of destroyers and cruisers stood off the shore, their silent grey profiles reassuring as they stretched off into the distance, whilst at the pier side, the atomic supercarrier Princeton and the battleship Pennsylvania were tied up for review, attracting great crowds to marvel at their sheer size. They were the true might and beating heart of the 1st Fleet, as the other CVN, USS Langley was currently cruising somewhere off Iwo Jima on a rather special mission. Both represented the largest and most modern of their kind in the world at this time, a fact which caused more than a few American breasts to swell with rightful pride at their nation’s achievements. The Soviets were yet to launch a nuclear vessel of either sort, although CIA were quite positive that the huge vessels being built undercover at Severodvinsk would change that very soon. The Brits had their Ark Royals, certainly, and they were very good vessels, but in his rather partial view, the Enterprise class had their measure.

Alongside across from the Princeton and Pennsylvania was the brand new guided missile battlecruiser USS President and Thompson could not help but look fondly at the last ship his wife had launched. The sparkling ship flew every flag it possessed and provided a very visible sign of American military might and technological prowess. Huge Talos missile launchers loomed up from their armoured domes from either end of the super structure, jutting out above the massive gun turrets. It was neither of these weapon systems that comprised the real capability of the vessel, though, as Thompson knew, nor was it the four dedicated Tartar launchers, the supersonic Regulus cruise missiles in their boxes or even the dozen Polaris strategic missiles that lay in their silos amidships; instead, the large square phased array radars and the advanced computing engines that powered them were the true ace in the hole for this particular President.

The crowd today was much larger than any of the officials had predicted and, as always, that tended to make his Secret Service detail rather edgy, but President Thompson was relaxed and in his element. With a roar of jet engines being pushed to the limit, the six F4H Phantoms of the Blue Angels hurtled overhead, ready to begin their aerial display to thrill and delight the onlookers. For the moment, he could forget all of the worries and concerns of his august office, put aside the insoluble questions of France, Germany, Africa and China, of alliances, the Bomb and the delicate egos of leaders and governments and simply enjoy the spectacle.

They are very large vessels, displacing over 150,000t at full load. The main part of the extra displacement comes in the form of stores, ammunition and support facilities rather than great leaps in the number of aircraft carried.