Grand Alliance (Kirov Series)

by John Schettler

  Ilanskiy had been his real trump card, he knew. Kirov knows that there is no way he can get his hands on the place now, not after I have discovered what was going on there. I have no doubts that he was complicit in that little plan by Volsky and Fedorov to destroy the place, but no one suspected I would find a way to reverse that outcome. Of course not. They don’t see all the angles like I do. They don’t see the big picture. As soon as Kirov realized I had the power to walk those stairs again, he came around in good order.

  He smiled, thinking about his next planned move. It was daring, even rash, but with Tunguska he had every confidence he could pull it off. If I’m ever to be taken seriously in this world, he thought, then I will have to also establish a relationship with Great Britain. As distasteful as that seems to me, if I have chosen to take sides with Sergie Kirov, then he is allied with Britain. So I will have to reach some understanding with the British, and they will soon have to learn to respect the name Vladimir Karpov as well. But what can a minor power, with eleven airships and no navy, locked in the heartland of the Asian continent, possibly offer Great Britain? I can’t send them materials or supplies, or even troops. My forces are too far away to be able to support anything they are involved with. At present my only usefulness in their eyes might be the fact that I set myself in opposition to Ivan Volkov. But there is one other thing I can give them that they might find very useful. First, the journey. I will show them that backward Siberia has some tricks up its sleeve.

  The car reached the great open field north of the Kremlin where Tunguska was docked to a high mooring tower, and Karpov took heart when he saw the enormous mass of the airship again. With negotiations concluded here, he had checked his party out of the Moscow Hotel, his motorcade escorted by Kirov’s “honor guard” all the way to the field at the Central Moscow Hippodrome, the largest horse racing track in Russia. Now the field was hugely overshadowed by the largest airship or aircraft ever to fly on the earth.

  They look at it with a mixture of awe and derision, thought Karpov. Kirov himself called it an overinflated balloon, but they will soon see that Tunguska is not an anachronism or throwback from a bygone era. I will do something that none of their airplanes would ever attempt, at least not if they wanted to survive the experience. I will go to England, and not by a circuitous, roundabout way. I will fly directly over Hitler’s precious Third Reich, taking photographs the whole way to prove it. Tunguska can fly higher than any aircraft of this day. They have no fighters that can bother me up there, but I could bother them a great deal, couldn’t I?

  In Tunguska, Karpov found a bit of the same old feeling he had in the Captain’s chair aboard Kirov. He knew it was not the same. He had no SAMs or Moskit-II missiles, and he certainly had no nuclear warheads, his air fuel bomb components being a pale shadow of the power that he once had at his fingertips.

  But I have the ability to go places Kirov could never venture, and to go there with a modest force at my disposal that can achieve the ends I have in mind. This time it will not be force that I demonstrate, but merely a capability that is beyond the means of anyone else on this earth. I can fly higher, and farther, than anyone else, and up there I can see things that can make me a very useful man.

  The thought that he was flying to England now rankled him a bit, but the British were at war with the greatest enemy Russia had ever faced. Hitler’s troops would devastate the homeland, and soon, unless he could do something to prevent that. It may not be possible, he realized, but there is no question which side I must take in this conflict now, particularly after what Volkov did. Yet I must demonstrate that I can do more for the Allies than simply tie down a few divisions in a humdrum backwater frontier east of Kazakhstan. So off we go.

  “Captain Bogrov,” he said as he exited the car. “See that the baggage is loaded immediately, and be ready to cast off within twenty minutes.”

  “Very good, sir. Will we be returning to Novosibirsk by the same route?”

  “I will speak to you on the bridge,” said Karpov. “Is there anything we need here by way of supplies? We may have some high altitude flying to do.”

  “No sir. The ship has already refueled, courtesy of the Soviets, and they even sent over a case of good vodka, with sausages, cheese, and some good black bread.”

  “Excellent. We’ll discuss the route over dinner in the Officer’s Wardroom.”

  That was one thing about Karpov, thought Bogrov. He doesn’t hold to protocols. Every Captain and navy man worth his salt knew that you never discussed ship’s business in the Wardroom. It was a sanctuary, reserved for good food and recreation, and a break from the otherwise onerous duties of the ship. But he said nothing of this, knowing Karpov well enough now. He could see that the man was scheming on something, and he had pulled more than a few surprises out of his hat in recent months. That little escapade to the mines for coal dust became something quite more than he ever expected. It was terrifying, but effective, and he saw how the weapon had helped to turn the tide against Volkov’s Grey Legion. What was it this time, he wondered?

  “I’ll look forward to it, sir,” he said.

  Tunguska cast off on the 10th of February, 1941, rising into the crisp, cold air of Moscow. Thankfully, Karpov had built some creature comforts into this ship, with pressurized, heated cabins that made the cold altitudes much more bearable, unless you were a man unlucky enough to pull duty on the inner rigging or upper deck exposed to the open sky on top of the ship, but those positions were normally manned only when the ship was at battle stations under threat of enemy air attack. Karpov had improved the Topaz radar sets forward, aft, and on both the top and bottom of the ship, and he had rigged out a radar room, Kirov style, where he appointed his Chief of Signals, Yuri Kamkov. He had four men sitting there watching the dull returns on the rudimentary screens of the radar sets, which were fixed antennae covering only their designated arc around the ship.

  As Tunguska slowly climbed, Karpov looked out over the sprawling city, wreathed in a blanket of white snow, and realized it may be enjoying the last peace in the silent cold of winter for the next four years. The Germans had launched Operation Barbarossa on June 22, of this year, just months away. He knew the action and timing of that event would likely be very different in this history, but war was coming, as sure as the seasons turned. Would Moscow stand this time? The Battle for Moscow had been fought in October of 1941, even as the Germans were pounding at the gates to the Caucasus at Rostov and the Crimea. His Siberian divisions had been the reserve that had helped to save the city, and he wondered if he would be leading his men back to this city next year to fight for Sergie Kirov. We shall see, he thought.

  They would head due west for the next thousand kilometers, until he reached the Baltic Sea around midnight. Somewhere north of Kaliningrad, they would turn southwest and overfly Gdansk en route to Berlin. Karpov would seal his fame as the man who boldly overflew the heart of the German Reich. At midnight he ordered the course change and altered speed ahead two thirds. It was another 500 kilometers to Berlin, and he wanted to approach the city in darkness, but time his arrival there at dawn. He retired for a good night’s rest, leaving orders that the ship was to be alert and ready to man air defense stations at sunrise.

  The sun rose on a clear morning at a little after 08:30 that day, and the airship was approaching the city as planned, cruising at an altitude of 12,000 meters, which Karpov deemed safe enough. It was a dizzying height for that day, but he was soon to find that the Germans were not pleased to have his airship over their city.

  A flight of three Bf-109s had been scrambled to investigate the unusual sighting. The first German Zeppelins had a service ceiling of about 6,000 feet, and this was soon doubled to 13,000 feet by 1916. They had also produced a rigid airship design known as the Höhe Bergsteiger, or “Height Climbers,” to operate above 20,000 feet, but even at that height conditions were so harsh that they saw little service. Oil lines could clog up, windows would crack with the bitter cold, radiators would
freeze, and the crew would battle dizziness, oxygen deprivation and bone chilling temperatures.

  Karpov knew all this when he inserted himself into the design process for Tunguska, using the knowledge he had access to in his service jacket computer to correct all these deficiencies. Now he was able to achieve altitudes twice that of the best German Height Climbers, and so he knew he could not be opposed by any remaining German airships here either. But three Bf-109s were rising that morning, intent on investigating this impudent intruder that had been spotted by a flight of German bombers just after dawn.

  Karpov had mounted the best cameras he could find for high altitude photography, and he had his camera crews busy with that job in a lower gondola pod when the fighters were first seen.

  “Enemy aircraft reported by the Topaz crews, sir. Number four operator has what looks to be three contacts climbing on our position.”

  “Action stations,” said Karpov calmly. “We are a neutral country, and our insignia is plainly visible. Let’s see what they do here.”

  Bogrov had some misgivings about that, and this whole operation seemed very risky to him. His eye strayed to his altitude gauge, noting they were level at 12,000 meters. He doubted the planes would get this high, but he was wrong. The Bf-109 was one of Germany’s highest flying fighters at that time, and the German planes were straining to get near the intruding airship, which loomed ever larger as they climbed.

  The planes were among the fastest and best of the early fighting, with more aerial kills logged than any other fighter during the war. But this was a tall order. As Willy Beyer led his flight higher, he could feel his engine straining to make the altitude. As they approached he could see the insignia on the tail of the massive airship, though he did not know what it was. His only thought was that it looked to be Russian, and he reported as much on radio. The orders soon came back to fire warning shots across the bow of the airship. Still a couple thousand feet below his target, he nonetheless maneuvered his plane and fired a burst from his twin 13mm MG 131 machine guns, and this was followed by warning in German on the radio.

  Karpov was not happy. These planes had climbed higher than he expected, and so he immediately gave Bogrov an order to gain another thousand meters in altitude. Even as he did so he stood his air defense crews up on the three lower gondolas, and soon they were training their twin machineguns and tracking the swift fighters as best they could. He found a German speaker and sent out a message that they were from the Free Siberian State, warning the Germans that any further hostility would be answered.

  Willy Beyer had a good laugh at that. He reported that the Zeppelins were Siberians, and seemed to be intent on overflying the city. His ground control was adamant, order the Zeppelin off, or drive it off if it failed to comply. This was a war zone. He swung around, his plane a bit listless at the altitude, and saw that he could no longer climb. Amazingly, the Zeppelin was receding above him, slowly rising through a thin, wispy cloud. He had never heard of a Zeppelin that could fly at such altitudes.

  Following his orders he decided to issue one further demand to turn north at once, and was able to point his nose upward to fire yet another warning shot, which streaked in hot yellow tracers well below the main gondola.

  “They order us to turn north away from the city at once, sir.” The radioman gave Karpov a wide eyed look, the thought of those rounds riddling the pressurized cabin none too welcome in his mind.

  “They order us to do nothing,” said Karpov. “If they cannot fly up here and look at me eye to eye, then we are outside the boundaries of their controllable airspace.” Then Karpov heard the rattle of the fighter’s guns and saw the tracers streak by.

  “Forward gunners!” Karpov shouted an order over the voice tube. “Give them the Fedorovs!” He was referring to the Fyodorov-Ivanov Model 1924 twin barrel machineguns mounted on his gondolas. It had been designed as an experimental main machinegun for the old T-18 tank, but Karpov got his hands on several for the airship, and was fond of calling it the ‘Fedorov Gun,’ after the navigator he knew by that same name.

  When the planes came around again, Willy Beyer got a nasty surprise this time. Tunguska had two twin MGs on its forward gondola, four of the gun mounts on the main gondola, and two more aft. There were also guns on top of the ship in open air platforms, but Karpov had not ordered them crewed, as he did not expect any attack from above his current position. The two mounts forward opened fire, sending streams of rounds at the fighter as it swept by below the ship, and one gunner had led his target well and scored a hit!

  Beyer felt the rounds bite into his wing, big enough to do some serious damage, and he immediately called out for his wing mates to engage. This time the Germans would use the bigger 20mm cannon, but Tunguska had been slowly climbing and was now another thousand meters higher, well above the service ceiling of the planes. They swooped and then tried to pull their noses up to engage, but the firing was misaligned with the sluggish performance of the aircraft at this extreme altitude. One burst of fire pierced the nose of the airship, but the new double thick Vulcan self-sealing gas bags took the hit and resealed. The rounds passed completely through the nose, just barely missing interior duralumin beams, but did no damage beyond tearing holes in the outer canvass.

  This time all the twin MG mounts on the airship replied, and the fighters soon realized they were badly outgunned. Willy Beyer’s plane was already losing altitude and streaming a thin white smoke, and amazingly, the airship was still climbing. They reported as much and were ordered home, but the Germans were not happy and decided to send up another plane, the JU-86 bomber, which could fly higher than any other aircraft in the service at that time. It could reach 13,000 meters, or 42,650 feet, and half an hour later the Topaz system caught a flight of three more planes climbing on their position.

  “The fools,” said Karpov. “What is our present altitude?”

  “13,200 meters,” said Bogrov. “We’re getting bad frost on all the windows. It won’t be easy to spot those planes if they can reach us.”

  “Climb higher. Take us above 14,000 meters. The Gunners will engage any plane that gets close enough to fire.”

  The bombers had only three 7.62mm machineguns, but it was soon clear that not even these planes could climb to an altitude where they could pose any real threat. One got close enough to fire, but it was answered by blistering return fire from the Zeppelin and easily driven off. Karpov was invulnerable in the high thin air, and the dizzy altitude of power that he felt now prompted him to do something that would have dramatic repercussions.

  “That was an act of war,” he said. “The Germans think they can do whatever they please. Well they cannot touch me here, can they? But the inverse is not true. Let us leave a little calling card for the Berliners this morning, and let them know who they are dealing with.” He called down to the main ordnance deck of the command gondola.

  He was going to bomb Berlin!

  Chapter 35

  The bombs fell, with no particular target in mind, but Tunguska was right over the heart of the city and they tumbled down in a fateful place. The tributary of the Spree wound its way through the heart of the city, and the first of the small 100 pound bombs fell there, doing little more than to crack the ice floes, sending a spray of white water up and startling a few birds. But the next bombs fell on the Admiralspalast Theater and nearby rail yard, blasting across the splayed out tracks in a string of three explosions. Others fell in Tiergarten Park, behind the famous landmark of the Brandenburg Gate, and very near the Neo-Renaissance parliament building of the Reichstag, though they did no damage beyond rattling the central cupola.

  It was pure chance, random fate, that saw the bombs fall so close to those symbolic targets, and while Karpov was gloating with his unanswerable power from above, the news of the attack spread swiftly. Berlin had already been visited by British bombers in August of 1940, embarrassing Goering who had boasted the city could never be harmed by enemy aircraft. This embarrassment would have sim
ilar results, enraging Hitler who was in the city at that time and even went to a nearby window to look up and see what was happening. When he later got the news that these were not British planes, but a high flying Russian Zeppelin, he was outraged. He summoned the Soviet Ambassador and gave him a tirade about the violation of their neutrality pact.

  “You claim to be neutral, and yet it is well known that you have been scheming and negotiating with the British for many months now. In fact you have signed an accord with them, but do not have the backbone to declare war on their enemies. So be it! Now you have the temerity to overfly Berlin like this, shoot down planes and even bomb the city! Do you think the German Reich will sit idly by and allow this insult? The German people are already demanding reprisals, and be damn well aware that I have the means to deliver them!” The German people had said nothing whatsoever about it, as most knew nothing of the incident, but that was a detail that didn’t matter at the moment.

  The Soviet Ambassador said that he also knew nothing of the attack, and a few telephone calls assured him that all the known Zeppelins still operating in the air service were nowhere near Germany, and certainly had not violated German airspace in any way.

  “Then what was that thing over the city this morning? Another phantom airship?” Hitler was referring to the many incidents of airship sightings that had been reported in England and Europe in 1909, 1912 and later years before WWI. Much of it was written off to pre-war jitters and hysteria born of the fear of flying objects, as aircraft and powered flight were still a novelty at that time, and a subject that fired the human imagination. Hitler wagged his finger at the ambassador, his cheeks reddening as he promised the ‘atrocious act’ would not go unpunished.