Kirov Saga:
Breakout
By
John Schettler
A publication of: The Writing Shop Press
Breakout, Copyright©2018, John A. Schettler
The Kirov Saga: Season One
Kirov - Volume 1
Cauldron of Fire - Volume 2
Pacific Storm - Volume 3
Men of War - Volume 4
Nine Days Falling - Volume 5
Fallen Angels - Volume 6
Devil’s Garden - Volume 7
Armageddon –Volume 8
The Kirov Saga: Season Two ~ 1940-1941
Altered States –Volume 9
Darkest Hour –Volume 10
Hinge of Fate –Volume 11
Three Kings –Volume 12
Grand Alliance –Volume 13
Hammer of God –Volume 14
Crescendo of Doom –Volume 15
Paradox Hour –Volume 16
The Kirov Saga: Season Three ~1942
Doppelganger –Volume 17
Nemesis –Volume 18
Winter Storm –Volume 19
Tide of Fortune –Volume 20
Knight’s Move –Volume 21
Turning Point –Volume 22
Steel Reign –Volume 23
Second Front –Volume 24
The Kirov Saga: Season Four ~1943
Tigers East – Volume 25
Thor’s Anvil – Volume 26
1943 – Volume 27
Lions at Dawn – Volume 28
Stormtide Rising – Volume 29
Ironfall – Volume 30
Nexus Deep – Volume 31
Field of Glory – Volume 32
The Kirov Saga: Season Five ~1944
Prime Meridian – Volume 33
Event Horizon – Volume 34
Dragonfall – Volume 35
1944 – Volume 36
The Tempest – Volume 37
Breakout – Volume 38
Starfall – Volume 39
Kirov Saga:
Breakout
By
John Schettler
Kirov Saga: 38
Breakout
By
John Schettler
Part I – Aldersturm
Part II – Operation Thunder
Part III – Hercules
Part IV – The Second Labor
Part V – Resurrection
Part VI – Relentless
Part VII – Robbing Peter
Part VIII– Breakthroughs
Part IX – Soldier On
Part X – History’s Shadow
Part XI – Chance Encounters
Part XII – Flies in the Ointment
Author’s Note:
Dear Readers,
God bless the readers, those who soldier on in this world where reality is served up in sound bites, talking points, and tweets. You are still out there, and I hold you all in my mind with every word I type in this long saga. You hold to a different way of taking in the world, thinking about it, reflecting on it, for knowing history is also the surest way to know the road ahead. There is at once a comfort in reading history, for it is all set in stone, unchangeable, like a movie you have seen seven times but still enjoy.
In this tale, we have seen that the stony works and ramparts of history are all too fragile, and can come tumbling down to create something entirely new. Even a small and seemingly inconsequential act can become a lever on the history that sets dramatic new events in motion. One thing I have tried to show in these ‘altered states’ is that, even though the tides of history can exert a strong pull on events, as Karl Marx once wrote: “ History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.”
The men shaping these events are not just those that served aboard Kirov , but also those who have fought so long and hard through this retelling of their great war. Through the series, I have come to see men like Erwin Rommel, Eric Manstein, and even Adolf Hitler as major characters in that part of the story. And on the other side, we have spent much time with Admiral Tovey, Wavell, Montgomery, O’Connor, Patton and Bradley.
The struggle they are all involved with will be told to its bitter end, but with it, a thread of the story involving all the major characters serving on Kirov will now begin to gather momentum. For yes, ‘it is men, real, living, who do all this.’ They brought us here to the cauldron of WWII, and it is they who will become the pathfinders for a way back to 2021, to a time not to distant from this moment as I write, where we are all those living men and women who do all the things that future generations will one day call “history.”
That was at the heart of the attitude taken often by one Vladimir Karpov. While his confederate, Anton Fedorov, had been obsessed with the righting of his many perceived wrongs, it was always Karpov that argued the history yet to unfold from the intervention of Kirov and crew would be something written by living men, and he wanted to be in the forefront of all that.
Our heroes have thrown themselves into this war on many fronts before their hope of salvation sent them off to 1908. They went there for many reasons, to find some great lever that might restore things to the way they once were, to save the Prime Meridian they have so badly shattered, to expunge their sins. That was Fedorov’s hope, though for Karpov, there was certainly a more present and real desire to avenge what he saw as a dastardly betrayal. He would get Tyrenkov, Ivan Volkov, and also solve the Orlov problem all in one throw of the dice, but as we have seen, Time had another lesson to teach about the way she weaves her tapestry on the loom of fate.
Now they have come to the realization that the fulcrum that might move the ponderous weight of this long and deadly history does not lie in the distant past, but in the future they themselves came from. Soon they will launch themselves on a venture that will most likely become their final mission of this great saga. When I take you there along with them, we will see this tale return to its roots, on the heaving decks of the battlecruiser Kirov where I will tell that entire story from the perspective of the ship and crew, and two strange doppelgangers in an airship. They are men we have walked and struggled with through these many volumes, and on this last mission, all the many disparate threads of this tale will be gathered up in one fist, and brandished in the face of Time.
I thank you all for coming this far, and I hope you will all stay with the story long enough to go there with me to the end.
- John Schettler
Part I
Aldersturm
“ From his brimstone bed, at the break of day
A walking the Devil has gone,
To look at his little snug farm of the world
And see how his stock went on.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Chapter 1
On the morning of the 12th of May, the air was crisp and cold, weather low, with grey clouds over Nordstern, the new German naval base in Norway near Trondheim. Above the harbor, the greatest fleet of airships ever assembled in one location hovered just below the cloud deck, like a massive school of whales.
Admiral Voloshyn was in command, aboard the new fleet flagship Orenburg , with Omsk and Baku riding close to port and starboard. He looked to his first officer, Captain Zelenko, who had just informed him that the last airship had been loaded and was now ascending to join the formation.
“Kungur reports they will be at fleet altitude in five minutes, sir.”
“Very well,” signal the fleet to make ready for departure. We will be ascending to 5000 meters for the initial leg of the approach over Norway. As we near the coast of the North Sea, all ships should be ready to climb to maximum service ceilings.�
�
“Aye sir.”
There were 20 airships in all—15 sent from Ivan Volkov, the bulk of his entire fleet. Orenburg, Omsk, and Baku were the biggest three airships in the Orenburg fleet, the dreadnoughts, all at 180,000 cubic meter capacity or better, with the Orenburg at 195,000 cubic meters. There were then four “A-Class” airships, designated battlecruisers, five S-Class ships and three K-Class, all at 120,000 cubic meters. The remaining five were German built ships, led by the first design that had caught the Führer’s eye years ago, Fafnir . The others were all named for the figures in Norse mythology, Baldr, Heimdall, Angatyr, Fenrir . Each of these matched the Orenburg in size, all massive airships with a 200,000 cubic meter capacity, exceeded only by the Siberian Tunguska class.
All were high climbers, a prerequisite for this mission, as they would be carrying a dangerous cargo into well defended enemy airspace. Yet their service ceilings were not all the same. Orenburg , and all five of the big German airships, could reach 50,000 feet. Omsk and Baku could reach 45,000 and 40,000 feet respectively, and most all the others would struggle to reach 35,000 feet. Even that was a tribute to all the new technology that had been developed for this otherwise archaic weapon in WWII.
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. Up at high altitude, an airship could out-fly most fighters, but getting there was dangerous work.
High climbers had to constantly watch the linings of the interior lifting gas bags when at pressure height, the maximum altitude those bags could hold the expanding helium in place. To get there, the ballonets had to be slowly deflated, removing heavier air from the ship, and then the lifting gas would naturally expand with altitude gained to occupy that space. But there was a limit to how far that could go on before the physical structure of the gas bags was compromised to the point of bursting.
So at high altitude, the “Bag Men” were always busy, checking pressure gauges mounted on the lifting bags, inspecting seams and patches, and occasionally sending in a “Squealer” dangling from a rope to get a look at the interior linings. Rupture was always a risk with those high pressures inside the bag, and a Squealer, called that because some men would inhale a little helium and then squeal in a high-pitched voice, would only be able to endure an interior suspension for a very few minutes, and that was with an oxygen mask in place.
There they sat, aloft in the grey, bristling with AA machineguns, racks of incendiary and high explosive bombs amidships, makeshift rockets in the nose, and on the aft bomb racks, a deadly new weapon, the thermobaric bomb. Most of the heavier recoilless rifles had been removed to free up weight to carry that cargo. After Volkov had his secret meeting with Himmler, it was agreed that the Germans would sent all they had from their Hexenkessel program, along with scientists and engineers, to their base at Nordstern. There, the great airship fleet was armed and serviced for the daring mission it would now undertake.
That massive fleet of 25 airships would depart that day, riding up above the thick cloud cover over the Norwegian Sea, all bound for London. Himmler and Goring had first thought to choose a smaller city, but the invasion by the allies in the Pas-de-Calais had forced a more urgent course. A few of the V-1 sites near the coast there had already been overrun, though most were still behind German lines. They had all been ordered to prepare for a massive barrage, and London was the prime target for those launch sites. So the airships would follow suit.
The fleet would make the first strike, delivering their thermal and incendiary bombs from high altitude. Then, as they withdrew, the V-1 “Storm Crows” would launch. That was what Hitler had called them, but Goring wanted something a little more majestic, and so he designated the operation as Adlersturm , (Eagle Storm) after his new name for the V-1’s, the “Storm Eagles.”
It was the last thing the British would expect, or so the Germans believed, as only one airship attack had ever been made over British soil during the war. Now, as the Allied heavy bombers were pounding Germany day and night, it was finally time for retribution. Admiral Voloshyn knew the mission would be very risky. All the lighter class airships would be very vulnerable with their lower flight ceilings being well within range of the British Spitfires.
Most variants of that fighter were comfortable as high as 32,000 feet. The Spitfire Mark X and higher could reach 44,000 feet if it had to in an emergency, but the pilots could nor stay there long in the unpressurised cabins. A few did have a pressurized cabin, and one had reached 50,000 feet on a meteorological survey mission, but it was never thought that the fighters would have to actually enter combat at such heights.
Admiral Voloshyn was a short man, his balding grey hair always covered by his service cap. He had come up through the ranks in Volkov’s fleet, first commanding the S-Class airship Sarkhand before testing and certifying the new fleet addition Astrakhan . That work saw him transfer to Baku, a larger but older airship that had been built to the Soviet N-Class standard. Now he had the honor of commanding the reincarnation of the Orenburg , designed after the old fleet flagship that Vladimir Karpov had engaged and destroyed in combat over Ilanskiy.
He knew his fleet would certainly be spotted by British radars, but did not expect they would make contact for some time, not until his ships were well out over the North Sea… but he was wrong. The same man that had killed the first Orenburg was also up that day, and in the largest airship on earth, Tunguska .
* * *
Karpov and Fedorov had wasted no time after finding themselves back in 1944 on the 7th of May. After refueling, Tunguska set out immediately to make the long journey to the Norwegian Sea, taking a flight path that would see them flying well north, over the White Sea and Murmansk, which was the only time they had to radio in to obtain permission to use Soviet airspace. They then overflew Sweden, when the Oko panel radar operator indicated he had a strange, and very large contact to the southwest.
Karpov went to the forward gondola to have a look, and was equally surprised. “Is it moving?”
“Yes sir, about 60kph as I estimate it. But it’s a group of multiple contacts, all with strong radar returns.”
“Airships,” said Karpov with a nod of his head. “No planes would make such a return, or fly at such a slow speed. But how many would you say is in that group?”
“At least fifteen, sir. Possibly twenty.”
“Good lord, they would have to be airships from Orenburg. The Germans have no more than five in service now. What would Volkov be up to with so many of his airships this far north?”
“Sir, they appear to be gaining altitude, and I make their course on a heading to overfly London, unless they divert somewhere else.”
Now everything suddenly made sense to Karpov.
“Thank you, Comrade Kamkov. Keep an eye on them. If there is any course change, notify me on the bridge.”
Karpov climbed up the ladder from the forward gondola, and now headed down the long main corridor to the central gondola, home to the main bridge. He found Fedorov there, pouring over his navigation charts, with a cup of hot tea in one hand, and a pair of calipers in the other.
“Fedorov,” he said. “We have a problem.”
“What kind of a problem?”
“Kamkov just filled me in on the details of that Oko radar sighting. It’s a very large, slow moving group of airborne contacts, presently at 60kph.”
“Airships?” Fedorov came to the same immediate conclusion that Karpov had surmised.
“Airships,” said Karpov, “and as many as twenty of them. That would mean Volkov has the lion’s share of his entire fleet up here, and they are headed
for London.”
“I see… A bombing raid? With airships?”
“They have a lot of throw weight,” said Karpov. “I think we had better notify the British. They won’t likely see those contacts on their radar for some time now. We can tip them off, and they might be able to get some fighters up to intercept.”
Fedorov nodded, thinking. “Why would Volkov risk all those airships up here, and in a raid over London? British fighter strength is very heavy there.”
“Yes,” said Karpov, at elevations around 30,000 feet or lower. But if this is what we think it is, Volkov knows damn well he has to get up much higher than that—above the comfort altitude of a typical British fighter.”
“Most everything they have likes it under 35,000 feet,” said Fedorov. “Hurricane, Tempest, Typhoon, even the Mosquito tops out at about 37,000 feet.”
“That’s about the service ceiling for most of Volkov’s smaller airships. He’s only got a few ships that can climb like Tunguska .”
“Yes, but even at only 35,000 feet, those British fighters will not perform well. A few Spitfires could get up higher, but they were mostly rigged out for recon operations. So, Volkov is planning a high altitude bombing raid on London. But even twenty airships won’t do all that much harm… unless… Could they be carrying anything exotic?”
“He’s been working round the clock on his own little brood of wonder weapons,” said Karpov. “Look what he just did to Leningrad.”
“My God—you think he might have another atomic warhead on one of those airships?”
“I would not underestimate the man. We’ve got to notify Fighter Command immediately!” Karpov turned, rushing to the radio room.
* * *
Fighter Command, ADGB Branch
Breakout (Kirov Series Book 38) Page 1