Breakout (Kirov Series Book 38)

by Schettler, John

  Chapter 36

  They were up over King Christian Land, closing on the Gunnbjorn Fjeld, the highest mountain in Greenland at 3694 meters, the jagged rock piercing up through the surrounding ice field of a great glacier. It was so isolated that the first humans to ever climb it waited until 1935. The place was named after Gunnbjorn Ulfsson, an Icelander who was believed to be the first European to ever sight Greenland after being blown off course in the Denmark Strait. The mountain was also called Hvitserk, or “White Shirt,” which was the name of one of the many sons of the famous Viking raider Ragnar Lothbrok.

  Now they were planning a little raid of their own, though it would be more dangerous than Karpov’s inherent self-confidence may have realized. They would be outnumbered three to one, but Karpov was counting on the enemy not being assembled into one close formation. In that he was correct.

  The Oko Panel radar set was very accurate, and it clearly showed the three enemy airships in line formation. One was well ahead, perhaps ten kilometers in the van, most likely a radar picket, as Karpov reasoned things. The central ship was more closely attended by the trailing contact, which was about 5000 meters behind and a thousand meters below.

  “That will be a defensive gunship,” said Karpov. “The central contact will have the bomb. What is its altitude?”

  “Sir, I have it presently at 12,500 meters, about 41,000 feet.”

  “And the lead ship?”

  “Slightly lower, sir. I make it 11,000 meters, about 36,000 feet

  “So they can still climb if need be. Fedorov, can we get ahead of them on this course?”

  “Yes, but then you’ll likely be in the radar cone of that picket ship.”

  “Possibly. I’m willing to bet they have it angled to scan below. They aren’t expecting a threat from higher elevation. They’re just wary of fighters. So we might come in above them.”

  Karpov was thinking, arms folded, considering his options. “However,” he decided. “I think we will come up behind them. Bogrov, match the elevation of the central airship. Bring us to 42000 feet, and maneuver to a position behind and above that trailing gunship.”

  “Aye sir. Can you give me a good heading, Comrade Fedorov?”

  “Hold this course for five minutes, then come ten points to starboard. You’ll need to make at least 80KPH. We have their present speed at 75.”

  “Very well. Elevatorman, bring us to 12,800 meters, engines ahead full, and steady on.”

  They had been cruising at 13,500 meters, so the minor elevation change would not be a problem. The crews had been at battle stations for the last hour, all except the top flak gun crews, which were huddled up on the number five deck beneath the top outer canvas of the ship. They would only deploy when the ship was threatened from above, and Karpov wasn’t going to let the enemy get an elevation advantage on him.

  “Assuming that trailing ship also has radar, when might we be in detection range?”

  “They’d have us in a few minutes,” said Fedorov. “Range to trailing contact is only 12,000 meters now.”

  “Then we’ll soon see if that gunship can look over its shoulder.”

  Karpov knew this approach was risky. He wasn’t worried about the gunship, as he had a good elevation advantage of at least 6,000 feet. They would not have anything that could bother him mounted on the top of the ship, though a tail gun might be able to elevate enough to engage. Coming up directly behind the enemy restricted their fire to just what they had mounted in the tail, while he could use every gondola mounted gun, and his nose guns, to shoot down on the target. He would have them badly outgunned, but if they were smart, their response would be to go all ahead flank and try to outrun Tunguska . The German airships were faster, capable of speeds up to 130KPH, while Tunguska would struggle to reach 100KPH, and could only go faster with a good tail wind. He knew his principle target here was that central flagship, surely the bomber in this group, assuming Fedorov’s hunch was even correct. He did not want that ship to go all out the moment he attacked, and slip away.

  “Gunners,” he said. “Stand ready.”

  “Helm,” said Bogrov, looking at his watch. “Ten points to starboard.” It was time to make the turn Fedorov had plotted. The skies were streaked with gossamer veils of high white Cirrus clouds. Sundogs and halos played among the ice crystals up here, but in high cirrus, they would likely have visibility out to 1000 meters.”

  “Radioman, monitor all bands and report.” The communications gear from Kirov could rotate through all typical bands to monitor any traffic. Karpov wanted to hear anything that the enemy might say at this crucial moment.

  “Aye sir, all quiet.”

  “Then they don’t have us.” Karpov smiled. “If they made us on radar, they’d be squawking about us already. Bogrov, all ahead flank. Gunners, look for targets ahead and below.”

  Tunguska was only gaining a little over 80 meters per minute on the trailing gunship at 80KPH. Now Karpov went to his top flank speed, the engines revving up to maximum. At 100KPH, he would gain a little over 400 meters per minute, and the range was closing. In another five minutes, he would be coming up behind and well above the trailing enemy gunship, with all his big 105mm gondola mounted guns in range. It would be like spearing a big fish in a barrel.

  “Kornet team,” said Karpov. “Make ready to fire as instructed.”

  Once the radar verified the enemy was in line formation, he had met personally with Troyak and the Marines before making this approach. “You will be targeting the central airship, and with the thermobaric warhead, but do not use laser beam riding. Instead, set the weapon to use its technical vision mode. I want a fire and forget attack, on my command.”

  That thermobaric warhead had been designed to use against bunkers, and it would release a fine spray of fuel before detonating, essentially a small air-fuel bomb. That made it a perfect airship killer, as its own momentum would easily penetrate to the interior of the ship, and the detonation would occur when the nose of the missile struck the duralumin frame. That explosion would be powerful enough to do great harm, using both shock and fire as its means of destruction.

  The missile was deployed easily by first setting up a simple metal tripod, and then mounting the missile tube on top for firing. Troyak still had two tubes, more than enough punch for the fight ahead. Those missiles would have a range out to the extreme outer circle of the enemy radar detection, 10,000 meters, so just as the enemy detected the threat, it would already be too late to avoid the attack by running at high speed.

  Yet Hajo Herrmann, now Captain of the flagship Fafnir , had no idea he was being stalked by an enemy ship. Karpov’s assumption that the enemy were using downward pointing directional radars was correct. They were nose mounted, and so the great bulk and mass of the ship created a big blind spot behind and above, and Karpov was maneuvering Tunguska into that radar shadow, ready to attack. His approach would not be detected, and with visibility at little more than 1000 meters, his gunners could open fire at what would be considered near point blank range for the recoilless rifles. Angatyr would be the first to feel his wrath.

  “We’re closing through 3000 meters,” said Fedorov, tracking the enemy ship with the Oko radars.”

  “Steady,” said Karpov. “Gunners, look for your target at twelve o’clock low.”

  The seconds ticked off, seeming like minutes. The gun crews had removed their heavy mittens to use thinner gloves as they manned their gondola mounted weapons. The Gunnery Officer was peering through field glasses, looking for the telltale shadow in the misty cloud, then the gleam of pale light on the enemy’s outer shell. There it was.

  “Target acquired!” he shouted, pointing for his gunners.

  “Steady,” said Karpov, waiting another agonizing ten seconds. “Fire!”

  The 105mm rifles blasted away, the huge target easy to hit. Soon the air around the great ship blossomed with exploding rounds, and three had already pierced the outer shell, exploding within. The Bag Busters were doing t
heir job.

  Aboard Fafnir , Hajo was on the bridge in the “Führergondel ,” the command gondola mounted forward on the chin of the airship. That space also included his navigation and communications room, and a cell for the radar operators receiving data from the nose mounted aerials. Nothing had been seen or reported, and it had been a cold, dull voyage up until that moment. Then he heard what sounded like a roll of thunder in the distance, not knowing that those were eight of Karpov’s twelve 105mm Bag Busters opening fire on his trailing gunship. He was too far ahead to see that action, and that sound, while it caught his attention, did not immediately paint a clear picture of what was actually happening. Finally, the radio man suddenly shouted that Angatyr was under attack!

  “What? By enemy fighters? Up here? Why didn’t we see them coming?”

  “No sir! It’s an enemy airship. Angatyr is taking heavy gunfire!”

  This was, of course, entirely unexpected. Hajo ran aft, into the rear portion of the gondola to use his field glasses. In these crucial seconds he needed to run, put on all the speed he had, but the human mind first looked for information before it could assess what to do. The shock of the sudden attack had rattled everyone. It was another 30 seconds, as he peered through his field glasses, before he even had the presence of mind to order battle stations. Then his orders came fast and furious.

  “Rig for high altitude run. Engines ahead flank, and climb! Climb to maximum altitude. Radio man! Order Fenrir to come about and climb. Prepare to engage enemy airship.”

  Fafnir was too lightly armed now to get into a fight with another dreadnought. But who was out there? Was it a damn Soviet airship? He knew the British weren’t flying much anything bigger than the small ASW blimps they used in the North Atlantic. The thought that it was a Siberian ship never entered his mind. They were 5000 kilometers from the nearest Siberian airship base at Omsk.

  Captain Herrmann was running one possible scenario after another through his mind, finally settling on the Soviets as the culprits. They had airships, and they might have operated from Murmansk, which was only 2500 kilometers away. If that were true, then they must have been out over the Norwegian Sea. Perhaps we were spotted sometime after we left Nordstern, and secretly followed us.

  It was fruitless to speculate. They were under attack, and he was relatively toothless. All his 88mm anti-ship guns had been removed to take on the secret heavy ordnance he was carrying, which weighed just over 4500 kilograms—five tons. It was a bomb with the power to destroy New York City in one blow. If he was hit… If a bad fire started….

  The crew had scrambled to life, racing to their action stations, and the next bit of information Hajo Herrmann would get came from the tail watchman station. He reported a large explosion behind and below them, and fire in the sky lighting up the veil of cloud to rosy red hues.

  Aboard Tunguska , Karpov watched with satisfaction as his gunners raked Angatyr from above. The enemy had feebly tried to get a top mounted 75mm gun into action, but it got off only three rounds before his 105’s gutted that airship. Explosions shook the great beast from nose to rudder, and it immediately began to lose altitude, with one gas bag after another fatally punctured. That fight was over before most of her crew could even get to their battle stations. Karpov had ridden the radar shadow in to achieve complete surprise, both strategically and tactically.

  Now he walked slowly to the ship’s intercom wired to the forward platform on the brow. “Comrade Troyak,” he said. “Your target is dead ahead, about 5000 meters out. Commence your attack.”

  “Aye Sir,” came Troyak’s response, and seconds later they could hear the missile firing, and see its hot tail fire as it raced out ahead of the ship. The target ahead was masked in the high cirrus clouds, but the missile needed no help from human eyes. It was perhaps the most lethal ATGM weapon fielded by any of the great powers in 2021, even capable of piercing the armor of an Abrams main battle tank, where several kills had been recorded by the resistance fighters in Iraq. Now it had a massive target ahead, easily spotted by its technical vision target tracker. The weapon also had a backup proximity target sensor to guarantee reliable engagement of aerial targets anywhere inside its 10 kilometer range.

  Captain Hajo Herrmann had realized his mistake, but he would be too late to correct it. He had instinctively ordered Fafnir to climb for the safety of high altitude, a place where the enemy could not easily get above him to use the bulk of their gondola mounted rifles. He had ordered his tail flak gunners to be ready, inwardly knowing that was futile. It was either altitude or speed that would save him now, and he chose the former, when he might have done better turning off his present course, and running for all he was worth.

  Even that may not have helped his ship survive. Fafnir was longer than the Titanic , a massive presence in the sky, and that Kornet missile was not going to miss. It could accelerate to 3000 meters per second, but would not need that speed to spear this fish. Just seconds after firing, the missile penetrated the aft quarter of the great Zeppelin , and then exploded with terrible force. The Duralumin frame was twisted and blown apart, the tail section sagging. Searing fire and heat erupted behind that shock wave. Most every crewman in the aft segment of the ship was either dead or knocked senseless. Reserve oxygen and fuel canisters exploded, and fire began to devour the tail.

  The helmsman immediately lost all rudder control, the elevator wheel completely unresponsive as well. The ship’s engines, all side mounted amidships, were still droning on, but Hajo knew his ship had taken a fatal blow. Those fires would move forward, and it would soon be every man for himself. His first thought was to give the order to abandon ship, so that he might save as many crewmen as possible. Then he remembered the lethal weapon he was carrying, this time mounted amidships in the lower bomb rack.

  If he could have carried it to his assigned target, the fireball would have been 200 meters wide above Manhattan, and the air blast radius to 20 psi would have had a radius of about 750 meters, and farther out, to a radius of about two kilometers, the shock wave would be felt at a 5 psi level. That was still strong enough to collapse buildings, particularly wood frame construction, and cause serious injury to anyone exposed, with a high likelihood of a fatality.

  The wind from such a blast pressure would race at nearly 165 MPH, the raging force of a category 5 hurricane. Five kilometers out, that shock wave would still shatter glass. Most everyone in lower Manhattan would have been fried with a 500 rem dose of radiation, and those not killed by the blast itself would still receive third degree burns over two kilometers from the epicenter. 200,000 people might have died in that blast near Ground Zero, with another half million injured. Lower Manhattan would have been completely destroyed, with most every building sustaining heavy damage. The fires would then burn north into midtown, and soon the city district labeled “Hell’s Kitchen” would have found itself most aptly named. It would have certainly avenged the destruction of Hamburg, and then some.

  But Fafnir was dying. The ship and its bomb would never get anywhere near the eastern coast of the Americas. Aft gas bags erupted, and the tail of the ship sagged, the duralumin frame bent and broken. The flames began licking up the sides of the great Zeppelin, immolating everything before them. Alarms blared throughout the ship, and crews amidships foolishly ran with fire extinguishers, thinking to quash the blaze. Acrid black smoke began to fill the great interior mass of the ship, and then, one by one, the huge gas bags began to burst.

  With the Führergondel forward, just beneath the nose, the bridge crew had a frantic few minutes to get into their emergency parachutes when Hajo gave that order. Then the Captain stood by the special command box where a battery operated button would send signals to that thing in the central bomb bay. One would release the bomb, the other would detonate it.

  The fires drew ever closer, burning amidships. His ship lost, and doomed to die, Captain Hajo Herrmann thought that death by immolation, burning alive as his ship was incinerated, would be a horrible way to go.
There were only seconds left, and he knew he would never get into a parachute harness and reach the escape hatch to save himself.

  He could think of only one last thing to do….

  The Saga Continues….

  Kirov Series, Volume 39

  Starfall

  Operation Comet was first devised in the real history to look for bridges over the Rhine between Arnhem and Wesel, and it eventually became the more well-known Market-Garden operation. Now the plan is dramatically revised to seize a more compelling objective. The small breakout near Poppering in the Pas-de-Calais had presented an opportunity for the Allies to try and push through to the vital port of Antwerp. Yet to prevent the Germans from demolishing it before they get there, Boy Browning now leads the 1st Airborne Army into Belgium and Holland to seize the port, along with the two great islands that command the Scheldt estuary, Walcheren and South Beveland.

  After over twenty fruitless proposals for airborne operations, Eisenhower finally has a plan he can believe in, for the Allies desperately need that great deep-water port, the largest in all of Europe at that time. Now the operation that once went “a bridge too far” in the old history will be aimed at the greatest strategic prize of the war.

  As the skies fill with parachutes, Karpov and Fedorov meet with something quite unexpected in the heat and fire of their airship duel with the Germans over the frozen ice fields of Greenland.

  Reading the Kirov Series

  The Kirov Series is a long chain of linked novels by John Schettler in the Military Alternate History / Time Travel Genre. Like the popular movie “The Final Countdown” which saw the US Carrier Nimitz sent back in time to the eve of Pearl Harbor in 1941, in the opening volume, the powerful Russian battlecruiser Kirov is sent back to the 1940s in the Norwegian Sea where it subsequently becomes embroiled in the war.

  Similar to episodes in the never-ending Star Trek series, the saga continues through one episode after another as the ship’s position in time remains unstable. It culminates in Book 8 Armageddon , then continues the saga in Altered States , which begins the second “Season” in the series, extending through Volume 16. The series is presently in Season 5, covering the Allied offensive into Southern France in late 1943.