Ring of Fire III(41)
The third factor working in her favor was just blind luck. The first item Brick brought to her to try out as an additive to the gasoline was a tub of soap. It turned out that Regensburg had a soap manufacturer—the German term was “Seifensieder”; literally, soap-boiler—and he had plenty of his product available.
The standard soap of the time in the Germanies was a lye soap. You could also find some scented olive oil bar soaps from Italy, but they were an expensive luxury item. The lye soap came in the form of a semi-liquid soft soap, rather than being hardened into bars. In other words, absolutely perfect for Bonnie’s purposes.
The first batch of napalm she mixed up worked like a charm. Being a firm believer in the principle if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, Bonnie saw no point in going any further—to the great disappointment of the commercial factor in Regensburg who controlled the town’s sugar supply and had briefly imagined great riches were in store for him.
It was just as well. She found out later from people in Grantville who’d done the experiments back in the early days that sugar was a poor cousin to soap, in the “hey, guys, let’s make some napalm!” department.
The bomb cases were easy. The city’s cooper could provide her with barrels, but those were too big for the actual bombs. On the other hand, they made great containers to mix the batches. The result, which had the consistency of fresh-made pudding, could then be easily poured into jugs that held about three gallons. There were plenty of such jugs available in a town the size of Regensburg.
The end result was a bomb that didn’t weigh more than twenty-five pounds, something that even one man could handle easily enough.
That left the fuses. Bonnie dithered back and forth between using gunpowder fuses and the even simpler device of rags soaked in gasoline. Both methods worked—but which would work best when the bomb was dropped from a height of several hundred yards? She had no way of testing that short of the time-consuming method of taking them up in one of the airships.
In the end, Heinz solved the quandary for her, in his inimitable fashion. For a man whose great ambition was to become an historian, perhaps the world’s most impractical profession, he had a surprisingly wide pragmatic streak.
“There is no danger of an explosion, from either type of fuse?” he asked. “If you light it too soon, I mean, and it burns down into the bomb before you want it to.”
She shook her head. “No. These things aren’t really bombs. They’re basically great big Molotov cocktails. They don’t blow up, they just shatter when they hit the ground. The napalm goes flying everywhere and sticks to everything—and the lit fuse sets it on fire.”
“Then use both,” he said. “Stick one kind of fuse on one side of the sealed lid, and the other across from it. Light them both, drop the bomb. One of them has to work.”
She gave him a quick hug and set about giving the orders. So she didn’t see the look of surprise that came to Böcler’s face, followed by a look of pleasure, followed by a look of consternation.
* * *
By early afternoon, she had enough bombs to load up both the Pelican and the Albatross. The Petrel had arrived in the area also, by now, but it was flying over the Danube at the moment keeping an eye on the movements of the Bavarian troops below.
Given how easy the whole process had turned out to be, Bonnie decided it made more sense to transfer the final stages of the bomb-making from Regensburg to the field. Tom Simpson and his people were now within ten miles of Regensburg. The airships had found a suitable landing area about three miles farther down the Danube. It was on the north bank, fortunately, since the south bank was in Bavarian territory. She’d bring enough napalm there in barrels to provide the Petrel with a full load of bombs. And there’d be enough left over to fill quite a few more jugs. She figured at least one of the airships could carry out a second bombing run, if Major Simpson decided to do so.
So, off they went. By now, Bonnie was starting to take flying by dirigible almost for granted. She was even enjoying it.
Except for the incredible racket. Having four un-muffled lawnmower engines yammering at close range was enough to drive you crazy after a while. The noise was so bad that whenever they needed to use the radio or the walkie-talkie they had to shut off the engines and just let the ship drift for a while.
But Heinz had thought of that, too. He’d found linen and had it soaked in some kind of wax. Little strips of it rolled up and stuffed in your ears made pretty decent ear plugs.
The airship crews clapped him on the back. Bonnie gave him another hug. Not a quick one, either.
* * *