“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!
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.
