So the Hindenburg did not reach its berth there, and was forced to turn about and withdraw to Gibraltar. There the divers set to work on that damaged hull. It would take much longer, yet slowly but surely, that great dragon of the sea was getting new scales.
Frustrated and grumbling, Hitler would soon turn his attention to another dragon, one he never thought he would see in the skies over Germany again. It was Karpov’s brazen overflight of the Reich that had put the idea in his mind, and now he would see the fruits of the orders he had given after that raid over Berlin. As for the Great Raid, he was so upset when he learned about it that he declared such operations illegal acts of war, and gave explicit orders that any enemy commando captured in another such raid was to be summarily executed on the spot.
He fretted and paced, unhappy with the latest reports that also indicated the Allies were planning some kind of new front in the West against him. Canaris seemed to downplay the rumors, but Himmler was a little more insistent.
As always, when things in the war did not go just as he liked, the Führer looked for solutions in the development of new weapons. Now he would go to the marshalling yards to see one, a most unusual development, or so he came to think, but one that could prove very useful.
Chapter 8
Hitler stood in the assembly yard, staring at the vast shape before him. On his left was Hermann Goering, with a staff adjutant, and on his right a technical advisor, there to explain the features and design breakthroughs that would make this weapon so formidable.
“And so you see, my Führer, the applied force resulting from firing the weapon must be balanced by the resulting static and inertial reactions that occur, and these forces must be equal and opposite. We have achieved this with the use of muzzle brakes to deflect the explosive gas when the gun fires, a highly lubricated recoil chamber, and precision hydraulics. The result is astounding. We have reduced the recoil effect to a point where it is barely noticeable, and far beneath the threshold where it might impact stability, pitch, or yaw of the firing platform where the gun is mounted. This will have immediate applications for this new project before you here, as well as naval guns. It will also allow us to mount this technology on vehicles as well, where stability is always a factor in overall performance and accuracy. Soon your tanks will not have to stop to have a good chance of hitting their targets. They will be able to fire on the move, and with much greater accuracy when we combine this with our new gyroscopic gun mounts.”
Hitler listened, nodding his approval, hands clasped behind his back as his eyes played over the gun before him. Yet always they were drawn back to the thing in the assembly yard, massive, looming, extending up the height of many men. This was but a single gun that would soon be mounted on it, a proven design, one of Germany’s tried and true weapons of war. It had so many applications that had been well tested on the battlefield, a flak gun, a tank killer, and now it would be something more, the fearsome 88. This gun had been retooled with lightweight aluminum in every part possible. Stronger than steel, aluminum was much lighter, reducing the overall weight of the weapon from 7400 kilograms to just under 2000. This was important, for the hulking shape in the yard that commanded Hitler’s attention was an airship, where every kilogram mattered when considering the lifting gas had to carry the dead weight of the structural frame, engines, fuel, oil, all weapons and ammunition, ballast, supplies, fixtures, and the crew itself.
“How many can be mounted?” asked the Führer.
“At the moment, we are considering four guns, one forward, one aft in the tail section, one in a rotating turret beneath the main gondola, and one on the top gun platform. This will give the ship a 360 degree engagement bubble, on both the vertical and horizontal axis. Even this was difficult to achieve, so we developed a lighter weight shell, sacrificing a little range and hitting power, but still giving us a weapon that can vastly outrange any gun presently mounted on an enemy airship.”
“Excellent. How far?”
“About 12,000 meters effective firing range. That is twice the maximum firing range of the best 105mm recoilless rifle.”
“But wont this shell simply pass right through the target? There is little armor on an enemy airship.”
“That is correct, but we have special HE rounds with fragmentation airburst effects. This entire system was tailor made for this project.”
“And the other guns?
“The ship will mount sixteen Rheinmetall 7.5cm LG 40 recoilless rifles, with an effective firing range of 6,800 meters. That is the secondary battery. Then we add another eight Krupp 10.5cm LG 40s, with a range of 7,950 meters. The 88mm guns are the main battery for long range engagement of targets on the ground, sea or air.”
“They will not do much good against a battleship.”
“No. my Führer, not to the flotation of the ship, but considering that they have a fast rate of fire, 15 rounds per minute, they can cause considerable damage to the superstructure. That said, the airship was never designed to be a sea control weapon. It can serve ably as a high altitude naval reconnaissance platform, but its main virtue is in controlling the airspace over land.”
Now Goering took over, gesturing to the airship before them with his baton. “There will also be eight twin 20mm flak guns, and sixteen more MG-42 machineguns for defense against enemy aircraft—and all the guns have special lightweight alloys for the bulk of their structure and carriage. The trick is to minimize weight wherever possible. Notice the grilled racks at the lower portion of the gondolas,” he said. “Those are for mounting bombs, and the lighter we get the structure and weapons, the more this ship will carry. Look at it, my Führer. It will be the terror of the skies, a real height climber too, capable of reaching the dizzying heights of up to 50,000 feet. Our own Bf-109 cannot even reach such altitudes, and it is the finest fighter in the world.”
“Good,” said Hitler, a light kindling in his eyes. “How big is it? How fast?”
“325meters long nose to tail, and with Six Daimler-Benz DB 800 engines that will produce speeds of up to 140kph; faster with a good tailwind. It will have 300,000 cubic meter capacity, three times that of the old Graf Zeppelin, and a third bigger than the old Hindenburg. It will be the largest airship in the world, bigger than anything the Siberians have built, or anything presently operated by the Orenburg Federation—a real dragon, this one. There will be nothing that could match it. And now we must christen it with a suitable name.”
Hitler thought for a moment. “Why, you have just said it yourself,” he remarked. “Fáfnir, the old Norse sky dragon. Call the ship Fáfnir, and the next in this class will be Fraenir, his brother. When will this one be ready?”
“Very soon,” said Goring, a pleased smile on his face.
“Bomb Berlin with an airship will they?” Hitler looked at his corpulent Luftwaffe Chief. “Well, this is what they get in return. Can it cross the Atlantic and get back safely?”
“My Führer, it could circumnavigate the entire earth without refueling if we desired. Of course, the fuel to payload ratio must always be considered. The more fuel, the smaller the payload.”
“Well can it carry enough bombs to make the trip worthwhile?”
“We will be able to configure such a ship as a dedicated high altitude bomber. It will have fewer weapon mounts, but many more bombs. For example, the Heinkel-111 can carry 2000 kilograms. But here, if we forego these new 88 gun mounts, we can add 8000kilos of additional bomb ordnance. Nor will we need the many recoilless rifles I have described earlier on the bomber variant, which saves even more weight. A single Zeppelin can therefore carry as many bombs as an entire squadron of Heinkels.”
“Excellent. Then we have here our Amerika Bomber. Continue with the other aircraft designs as well. I want to see the prototypes as soon as they are ready.”
“We will show you the JU-300 soon, and the Focke-Wulf Ta-400 and Heinkel He-277. Once we determine which is the best, production will begin full throttle.”
“How many of these
new airships will there be?”
“Fáfnir is ready this month. His brother ship in thirty days. Once proven, we can ramp up production very quickly. We have all the old factories and facilities from the first war available.”
“Build at least ten,” said Hitler, and Goring nodded, only too happy to comply. “Can we get the helium for that many?”
“Orenburg should be able to accommodate us. They have production sites at Dobycha near Orenburg itself, another at Astrakhan, and a third location called Karachaganakskoye.” He stumbled with that. “Forgive me, but it is often impossible to pronounce these long Russian names.”
“Why not simply extract it from the atmosphere?”
“My Führer, I am told it is extremely rare, only a little over five parts per million in the atmosphere. However, it can be found in natural gas deposits and extracted there. Some sites have as much as 5% helium. After inquiries, we have learned they are in the Caspian region, Algeria, the Persian Gulf, and Iran, and perhaps even in eastern Siberia, which may be why they have been building up their airship fleet so quickly.”
“I see….” That set Hitler’s mind to thinking. Perhaps there was more to Raeder’s Plan Orient than first met the eye and ear. Then the Führer turned to his Luftwaffe Chief, a different question in his eyes.
“Herr Reichsminister,” he said. “I want you to organize a reconnaissance mission over Siberian territory for the maiden voyage of these airships.”
“Of course,” said Goring. “We must ascertain where they are relocating their factories and tank production sites—and the oil. They must be getting it somewhere. My information indicates several sites in Siberia are now involved with oil production.”
“Find them all,” said Hitler, with that tone in his voice that might have been the growl of Fáfnir himself, low and threatening. “Yes, find them all, and I want you to add one more site to your list. It is a small railway depot, about 20 kilometers east of Kansk. The same place our transport planes landed in that stupid operation Volkov planned. That man has had an obsession with that location for the last year. Find out why. He keeps claiming it is a weapons development site, but for all his raids, the only thing he has ever found were plans. The name of this site is Ilanskiy, and I want a full report as soon as possible. Don’t forget this.”
The renowned German Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz had once scoffed at the Zeppelin fleet, and of its strongest advocate, Kapitanleutnant Peter Strasser he once said: “Strasser is slightly mad, and carried away with the idea that airships are more important than battleships.”
Hitler smiled inwardly at that, realizing that this massive airship before him could easily bomb London from heights that would leave it immune to enemy defenses. It could do this to any city in England, while his battleships could not think to come anywhere near the British homeland. Yes, he thought. I will build a fleet of these airships. The only problem will be finding adequate supplies of Helium. We once ruled the skies over England with such ships, but the fact that we were forced to use Hydrogen put an end to the Zeppelin terror during the first great war, and in fact, it put an end to Peter Strasser himself, the man who flew the last raid over England. Live by the sword; die by the sword. We will not repeat that mistake again. I know someone who can give us all the Helium we might need, and all the oil as well.
Kaiser Wilhelm was very squeamish about bombing England in the first war, but I have no such scruples. They will bomb Germany, and I will bomb England. What a marvelous launch platform these airships would be for our new rocket weapons when they are developed. In fact, not even the Americans will be safe any longer. My Luftschiff fleet can cross the Atlantic, hover off the coast of New York above their fighter cover, and we can launch our Vergeltungswaffe 1, the new V1. I am told Project Cherry Stone is coming along nicely. I have not yet decided what to call them. The Maikafer is a good name, the little May Bug that rules the summer nights, but that is not so threatening. Perhaps I will simply call them my Schwarzkrähe, the Black Crows.
Yes, our Zeppelin fleet can do a good many things! What has the mighty Hindenburg done for me in this war? It is more trouble than it is worth, guzzling valuable fuel, foiled by torpedoes and these damnable naval rockets. I still cannot believe they were developed by the Soviets as Volkov tells me. Why didn’t they use them to defend Moscow? Volkov says they are not much good against land targets. Their warheads are not much bigger than our own heavy artillery. But against ships, they have proved very effective. Might they also pose a threat to my airships? I must consider that possibility, as I am told these rockets also shoot down aircraft.
Raeder never finishes anything, does he. The one thing he had right was the importance of seizing Gibraltar, and then Malta, but after that, his plan to leap into Syria came to naught. Even though we bullied Turkey into allowing us to use their railroads, the system was in such bad shape that we would have to spend a year upgrading it to make it worthy of any sustained military use.
I am beginning to see what Halder argues at OKW. Logistics! It was a lack of adequate supplies that stopped us in Russia last winter—that and the damn weather. It was a lack of supplies and material that limited our intervention in Syria, and the same problem now plagues Rommel—that and this new British tank. Hopefully our new shipments of Lions and Panthers will redress that shortcoming, and I am particularly fond of the latest new model, the Tiger.
For now, look at that magnificent airship out there. Soon the British will find out about it, and they will probably roll their eyes, thinking we are fools to waste our time building such things. Once we had Zeppelin bases all over Germany, at Towdern, Hage, Seddin, and Nordholz. The assembly plant buildings at Friedrichshafen and Potsdam still remain, and they are now being completely renovated. Soon our new Luftschiff fleet will be second to none, and I can have these airships fairly quickly. The entire fleet of ten I have ordered now could be built for the cost of a single battleship, and ten times faster. We were launching two every month during the last war, and that will be the case here again—very soon.
I must speak to Admiral Raeder on this. We will want to reestablish the Naval Airship Division—not with these massive dreadnoughts like Fafnir, but with leaner, faster and smaller airships to be used for fleet reconnaissance. I am sure he will warm to the idea, and they will give the British fits! We can use them to scour the seas and find the Royal Navy, and better yet, to spot the convoys for Döenitz and his wolfpacks, or even attack them. What a marvelous base Iceland would make for our airships. I was a fool not to seize that island in 1940. Now the Americans are there, and the navy tells me there is no way they can keep our troops supplied if we did invade. That may be true, but these airships could have done that job.
Perhaps the Army could use these airships in a similar role in Russia. Yes, they are perfect for scouting out the vast hinterlands of Asia. That is why Volkov built so many, though his fleet has been outmaneuvered and badly beaten by this upstart Siberian. When I send Fafnir and his brother to find out what he has in his pockets over there, we will see how bold he is.
Yet I foresee one potential problem—the airship sheds. It was Churchill who ordered preemptive attacks against our sheds and hangers in the first war. They are massive structures, and easy to spot from the air. They will certainly become prime targets for the RAF, and Volkov has warned me about the Allied bombers on more than one occasion. I could always have them built in occupied Russia, well out of reach of the Allied Bombers. Volkov uses small mooring towers with specialized crews for refueling and maintenance. Those could be built anywhere.
I am told the British Wellingtons have a service ceiling of only 18,000 feet. The Lancasters and American B-17s fly much higher, but our airships can go higher yet, so we could hover over our cities, and shoot down at the bombers with this new 88mm gun I am shown here. That will be a nasty little surprise for the RAF, because they have no fighters that can reach Germany, and even if they did, they could not climb high enough to bother our new Zeppelins.
>
Why didn’t I see all of this before? Volkov is very clever, and he certainly saw the usefulness of Zeppelins long ago. Very well, I will order the designers to produce the Naval scout model, but first I’ll want this first lot of dreadnaughts. Fafnir’s maiden voyage will prove their worth. I have already given orders that any Zeppelin Master from the first war that still lives is to begin the training programs for the air crews and service personnel required. That will all be left in Goring’s hands, and though he is a bungler when it comes to strategy, the one thing he does get right is logistics.
So then, Raeder has his new ships, and now Goring will have a nice new Zeppelin fleet to darken the skies of our enemies. And I have one very special mission in mind for a ship like Fafnir. Our Uranprojekt will be the weapon that will shake the world to its foundations. Yes... I will give Fafnir the fire of death and destruction, and he will be the dragon that comsumes our enemies—everywhere. Not even America will escape our retribution. In fact, New York may be a much better target than London....
Chapter 9
Captain Putchkin was very tired that day. He took his post on the bridge of the Angara as always, but with little enthusiasm. He had drawn overwatch duty again for Ilanskiy. It was his duty to stand the watch with his Topaz Radar, covering all the taiga north of the city, the direction most enemy raids had come from. One of the bigger ships, the Sevastopol, would be moored at Ilanskiy itself, and Abakan had the south watch.
That nice fat Soviet ship gets the mooring tower this morning. Which means they’ll likely haul up fresh eggs, bread and sausage for breakfast, and perhaps even a few nice girls for the officers. For us, there’s only this endless taiga. How far does it go? One day I must take my airship way up north to the Arctic Sea. Few men have ever seen that territory. But for now, patrol duty, endless, routine, mind numbing patrol duty.
He was a man in his mid 40s, grey at his temples just beginning, a little belly as well, but his father and mother had both been heavy, and he was likely to turn out the same way.
Second Front (Kirov Series Book 24) Page 7