Hitler thought for a moment. “Why, you have just said it yourself,” he remarked. “Fáfnir, the old Norse sky dragon. Call the ship Fáfnir, and the next in this class will be Fraenir, his brother. When will this one be ready?”
“Very soon,” said Goring, a pleased smile on his face.
“Bomb Berlin with an airship will they?” Hitler looked at his corpulent Luftwaffe Chief. “Well, this is what they get in return. Can it cross the Atlantic and get back safely?”
“My Führer, it could circumnavigate the entire earth without refueling if we desired. Of course, the fuel to payload ratio must always be considered. The more fuel, the smaller the payload.”
“Well can it carry enough bombs to make the trip worthwhile?”
“We will be able to configure such a ship as a dedicated high altitude bomber. It will have fewer weapon mounts, but many more bombs. For example, the Heinkel-111 can carry 2000 kilograms. But here, if we forego these new 88 gun mounts, we can add 8000kilos of additional bomb ordnance. Nor will we need the many recoilless rifles I have described earlier on the bomber variant, which saves even more weight. A single Zeppelin can therefore carry as many bombs as an entire squadron of Heinkels.”
“Excellent. Then we have here our Amerika Bomber. Continue with the other aircraft designs as well. I want to see the prototypes as soon as they are ready.”
“We will show you the JU-300 soon, and the Focke-Wulf Ta-400 and Heinkel He-277. Once we determine which is the best, production will begin full throttle.”
“How many of these new airships will there be?”
“Fáfnir is ready this month. His brother ship in thirty days. Once proven, we can ramp up production very quickly. We have all the old factories and facilities from the first war available.”
“Build at least ten,” said Hitler, and Goring nodded, only too happy to comply. “Can we get the helium for that many?”
“Orenburg should be able to accommodate us. They have production sites at Dobycha near Orenburg itself, another at Astrakhan, and a third location called Karachaganakskoye.” He stumbled with that. “Forgive me, but it is often impossible to pronounce these long Russian names.”
“Why not simply extract it from the atmosphere?”
“My Führer, I am told it is extremely rare, only a little over five parts per million in the atmosphere. However, it can be found in natural gas deposits and extracted there. Some sites have as much as 5% helium. After inquiries, we have learned they are in the Caspian region, Algeria, the Persian Gulf, and Iran, and perhaps even in eastern Siberia, which may be why they have been building up their airship fleet so quickly.”
“I see….” That set Hitler’s mind to thinking. Perhaps there was more to Raeder’s Plan Orient than first met the eye and ear. Then the Führer turned to his Luftwaffe Chief, a different question in his eyes.
“Herr Reichsminister,” he said. “I want you to organize a reconnaissance mission over Siberian territory for the maiden voyage of these airships.”
“Of course,” said Goring. “We must ascertain where they are relocating their factories and tank production sites—and the oil. They must be getting it somewhere. My information indicates several sites in Siberia are now involved with oil production.”
“Find them all,” said Hitler, with that tone in his voice that might have been the growl of Fáfnir himself, low and threatening. “Yes, find them all, and I want you to add one more site to your list. It is a small railway depot, about 20 kilometers east of Kansk. The same place our transport planes landed in that stupid operation Volkov planned. That man has had an obsession with that location for the last year. Find out why. He keeps claiming it is a weapons development site, but for all his raids, the only thing he has ever found were plans. The name of this site is Ilanskiy, and I want a full report as soon as possible. Don’t forget this.”
The renowned German Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz had once scoffed at the Zeppelin fleet, and of its strongest advocate, Kapitanleutnant Peter Strasser he once said: “Strasser is slightly mad, and carried away with the idea that airships are more important than battleships.”
Hitler smiled inwardly at that, realizing that this massive airship before him could easily bomb London from heights that would leave it immune to enemy defenses. It could do this to any city in England, while his battleships could not think to come anywhere near the British homeland. Yes, he thought. I will build a fleet of these airships. The only problem will be finding adequate supplies of Helium. We once ruled the skies over England with such ships, but the fact that we were forced to use Hydrogen put an end to the Zeppelin terror during the first great war, and in fact, it put an end to Peter Strasser himself, the man who flew the last raid over England. Live by the sword; die by the sword. We will not repeat that mistake again. I know someone who can give us all the Helium we might need, and all the oil as well.
Kaiser Wilhelm was very squeamish about bombing England in the first war, but I have no such scruples. They will bomb Germany, and I will bomb England. What a marvelous launch platform these airships would be for our new rocket weapons when they are developed. In fact, not even the Americans will be safe any longer. My Luftschiff fleet can cross the Atlantic, hover off the coast of New York above their fighter cover, and we can launch our Vergeltungswaffe 1, the new V1. I am told Project Cherry Stone is coming along nicely. I have not yet decided what to call them. The Maikafer is a good name, the little May Bug that rules the summer nights, but that is not so threatening. Perhaps I will simply call them my Schwarzkrähe, the Black Crows.
Yes, our Zeppelin fleet can do a good many things! What has the mighty Hindenburg done for me in this war? It is more trouble than it is worth, guzzling valuable fuel, foiled by torpedoes and these damnable naval rockets. I still cannot believe they were developed by the Soviets as Volkov tells me. Why didn’t they use them to defend Moscow? Volkov says they are not much good against land targets. Their warheads are not much bigger than our own heavy artillery. But against ships, they have proved very effective. Might they also pose a threat to my airships? I must consider that possibility, as I am told these rockets also shoot down aircraft.
Raeder never finishes anything, does he. The one thing he had right was the importance of seizing Gibraltar, and then Malta, but after that, his plan to leap into Syria came to naught. Even though we bullied Turkey into allowing us to use their railroads, the system was in such bad shape that we would have to spend a year upgrading it to make it worthy of any sustained military use.
I am beginning to see what Halder argues at OKW. Logistics! It was a lack of adequate supplies that stopped us in Russia last winter—that and the damn weather. It was a lack of supplies and material that limited our intervention in Syria, and the same problem now plagues Rommel—that and this new British tank. Hopefully our new shipments of Lions and Panthers will redress that shortcoming, and I am particularly fond of the latest new model, the Tiger.
For now, look at that magnificent airship out there. Soon the British will find out about it, and they will probably roll their eyes, thinking we are fools to waste our time building such things. Once we had Zeppelin bases all over Germany, at Towdern, Hage, Seddin, and Nordholz. The assembly plant buildings at Friedrichshafen and Potsdam still remain, and they are now being completely renovated. Soon our new Luftschiff fleet will be second to none, and I can have these airships fairly quickly. The entire fleet of ten I have ordered now could be built for the cost of a single battleship, and ten times faster. We were launching two every month during the last war, and that will be the case here again—very soon.