John Schettler - Grand Alliance

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!

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 similar 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.

That night German artillery opened a five minute barrage across the tense polish frontier, firing one shell for each and every bomb reported. Telephones jangled all the way to the Kremlin, but when the details of the report came in, Sergie Kirov ordered no reprisal. But the level of tension ticked up yet another notch, and Karpov was only just beginning his aerial reconnaissance of Germany. From Berlin he flew another 800 kilometers northwest to overfly the German harbor at Kiel that evening, lingering there all night until cloud conditions were favorable for good photographs the following morning. There he documented the presence of the German battleship Tirpitz, and something else in the slipways that he thought the British would take particular interest in. On the 12th of February he was looking through a high powered telescope at what appeared to be construction of a new aircraft carrier.

“This will get the attention of the Royal Navy, and I will soon prove my usefulness. Now we will see what they have in their trouser pockets at Bremerhaven before we cross the North Sea.”

“You aim to overfly England next sir?”

“How else can I visit London, Captain Bogrov?”

“But if you mean to land there we’ll have to radio ahead and make arrangements.”

“In due course.”

“But the blitz, sir. I realize the Germans have been winding down their air campaign over England to transfer planes to the Mediterranean, but it could be very dangerous if we get caught in the midst of a big air duel. Suppose the Germans are bombing tomorrow.”

“You worry too much,” said Karpov. “I will radio ahead after lunch and obtain the necessary clearance. I wanted to see what intelligence we could gather first, and we’ve seen a good deal. I have photographed the German troop dispositions on the Polish frontier, Berlin’s airfields, their two biggest harbors. All of this will now be my ticket to an audience with the British.”

“You mean to say they don’t know about this trip already?”

“They will learn everything they need to know this afternoon, Captain. Concern yourself with the operations of the ship. I gave Tyrenkov instructions and he will handle the initial negotiations.”

Bogrov was silent, and a bit sullen for a time. He had been watching the barometer and altimeter closely, and wished they could get the airship down to a lower altitude. Thus far Tunguska had performed flawlessly. Her fluids had remained sound and the engines were running smoothly. And they had only used about 20 % of their fuel to cover all this distance, so he had no worries there. But something about this unexpected jaunt, about the quickness in Karpov’s step again, the glint in the man’s eye, made him feel very uneasy. He looked at the weather report again, noting the front that was slowly building over the North Sea. They might have thunderheads building and rising well above 50,000 feet, which was the maximum safe ceiling for Tunguska.

“We may run into some bad weather if we move west,” he said, making one last veiled protest in the weather report. Karpov paid him no mind.