Zeppelins to South Africa & Siberia.

[Black Sword]

Hello all, a bit of a wild idea that I admit has technical feasibility issues, but what the heck, here it is.

Zeppelins to South Africa & Siberia

Germany continues building Zeppelins in the 30's with biplanes underneath with a mind to long range targets. 1st t Rommel in Libya, framework in sections across the Mediterranean to Libya in a ship, prepared there & sent to attack the diamond mines to damage the British economy. The biplanes detach & carry a motorcycle with explosives & 2 men to perform the mission-s, they return to the biplane, take off & catch up with the Zeppelin. They then send these from north Finland to Ob river in Siberia & follow it to Omsk tank factory, release plane with 2 commandos with a small motorcycle & plant explosives with timers at the tank factory, race back to the plane, fly up & re-attach. Zeppelin also perhaps bombs factory, the heads to Mongolia to hook up with Japanese, or to a U-boat base, ( which did apparently exist ), at the top of Siberia. U-boat base in eastern Arctic, page 1 (abovetopsecret.com)


Russians likely wouldn't have fighters bases that far behind the Urals. Alternative route would be across Black Sea & north Iran to bomb Trans Siberian railroad bridges & other targets of interest, dams-hydroelectric plants etc.

Only technical question-issue is the building of a hangar in south Libya, occasional dust storms do brew up in North Africa.

ad451743d0b98dcc2cd416158593bf66.png (926×926) (pinimg.com)

 

[The Tai-Pan]

to a U-boat base, ( which did apparently exist ), at the top of Siberia. U-boat base in eastern Arctic, page 1 (abovetopsecret.com)

A random forum post is not evidence. I've never heard of a German U-Boat base in Siberia of all places. Big claim needs big evidence.

 

[Post]

A random forum post is not evidence. I've never heard of a German U-Boat base in Siberia of all places. Big claim needs big evidence.

Indeed. It doesn't make a lot of sense to build a base there, and it's unlikely the Germans could.

A search for the name of the helicopterpilot Peter Statsyukom who is named in the forum post, only revealed a few hits, all to forum posts. In one of them the unlikelyness is discussed:

What was the Lena River Delta U-boat base in the Arctic used for?

In 1963 the body of a German navy NCO was found in Neelova Gulf with the remnants of his uniform and rifle ammunition. In 1985 Soviet helicopter pilot Peter Statsyukom discovered a small complex o...

history.stackexchange.com

 

[YYJ]

A mine is very hard to blow up. A mine is basically a hole in the ground that workers are setting dynamite charges in every day of the week. A factory at least you can light on fire, which will do most of the work.

The premise sounds far-fetched, but if you write such a timeline, I would read it.

 

[Black Sword]

Thanks YYJ. Allies used the Arctic route as a shipping lane also., ( across the top of Russia ), & this would explain why a U-boat base would exist there. https://lend-lease.net/articles-en/the-unknown-world-war-ii-in-the-northern-pacific/ Raider Komet also used this route...................................................With assistance from the Soviet icebreaker Lenin, she passed through the several Arctic Ocean passages in August.[7] the Soviets agreed to provide Germany with access to the Northern Sea Route through which Germany could access the Pacific ocean.[3]........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................There is commentary here about Lena, but it's a bit off the thread-story direction, just answering the replies........................................ Russian commentators talk of six lone voyages through the Arctic by U-362. Russian commentators claim that when U-534 was raised from the Kattegat seabed between Denmark and Sweden papers were recovered by the eccentric millionaire who funded raising her. It was known to have been stripped of all arms and loaded with eleven special bronze containers. They claim that when her papers were dried out they revealed her final orders were to sail to the Lena Delta, https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/war...ubmarine-trade-russia-s-northern--t24861.html

 

[Black Sword]

AS to U-boat travel to Japan for supplies, one can only speculate that this route would be safer than the Atlantic-Indian ocean route. & if this were done, a U-boat base would make sense along the top of Siberia........................................................................................ Soviet submarine Shch-423 made a similar trip from Murmansk to Vladivostok from 5 August to 17 October.[16]

 

[jlckansas]

Finally a mission that the Boulton Paul Defiant would be successful at. Fly parallel to the Zep and let loose with the turret firing 1 to 1 incendiary to ball ammo. Even the limited Soviet air defense in 39 will be salivating at the thought of a Zep flying over to make the kill easy.

 

[Black Sword]

Um, perhaps you missed the "flying nowhere near Soviet air bases part" of the story. I don't imagine they had too many fighter bases on the arctic coast. As to Africa, here's some stuff.................https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/AirFerryRoutesOfWWII.png

Operation “China Show” – The Top Secret Mission of Germany's Zeppelin L 59 - MilitaryHistoryNow.com

“The mission would be a risky one – no airship had ever flown such a distance.” TO DESCRIBE Germany’s Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck as a thorn in the side of the British Empire would be something of...

militaryhistorynow.com

 

[jlckansas]

Um, perhaps you missed the "flying nowhere near Soviet air bases part" of the story. I don't imagine they had too many fighter bases on the arctic coast.You

You do realize that the factories and such were no where near the arctic coast and were far inland and had airfields dotted across the country. There were also numerous camps in the Gulag in the areas you are thinking of that were linked by telephone and radio, also you care not going to far in a motorcycle in the Soviet Union without being stopped somewhere close to the factories and bases. Even the NKVD were stopped by other NKVD and checked. Zeppelins are not something you are going to exactly going to hide in the air. Following a river like the Ob is not exactly a stealth attack.

 

[Black Sword]

Yes, I am aware of where the factories are, thanks so much. Are you aware of where Trans Siberian rail bridges are? Dams? & other important targets of opportunity? & one wouldn't land at a check point, rather a biplane can land near anywhere, ( hence not near roads ). The motorcycles also are capable of travel not on roads. Find a field near a factory, get in and do the job, ( perhaps at night ), use your imagination. Factories behind the Urals were pretty safe, hence Russian security wouldn't be that large.

 

[Black Sword]

Paint it sky blue, & it would sail right past most skyward eyes, peasants who might see it would likely think it was Russian..............................................................................The Graf Zeppelin had to rely on aerodynamic lift to make it over some mountains in eastern Russia during its round-the-world trip,...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................R 100 went from England to Canada in 1930........................... The total flight time was 78 hours 49 minutes, and the distance covered was 3,364 nautical miles - (6,230 km, 78 hours is a little more than 3 days. http://horseformer.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-story-of-r100-and-r101-iv-big-day.html

 

[YYJ]

This could be a fun Clive Cussler type story if you write it that way. If you set it up like :"What if all the premises in my Original Post are true but unknown in our timeline?" So you are stating in a world that is slightly different from ours.

As you write, you may or may not want feedback. If you do, from the feel I get so far, you may want to host the story on the Writer's Forum, rather than the After 1900 Discussion page. Writer's Forum takes your starting point as a given, and is not concerned about "realism". The After 1900 forum is hella concerned with realism and you will be interrogated for every litre of fuel in the zeppelin's tanks and every telegraph line in Siberia.

If you post in the After 1900 forum, you may find it to be a drag when people tell you stuff like...

The only record of this Nazi base comes from a single post and there are no pictures
U-362 made 1 trip to the Arctic and it was sunk in the Kara Sea, which is more than 1000km west (closer to Germany) than the Lena River delta.
U-534 has all the spooky stuff you attribute to it only as a rumour, and there are no pictures or reproductions of what those secret orders were.
Shch-423 and Komet made their passages through the Arctic with the help of multiple Soviet icebreakers. Barbarossa had not happened yet. The Komet's use of stealth was to prevent attacks by the British, and so that Russia would not be caught acting in an un-neutral way towards Germany.
In some of the supporting posts they talk about German long range flying boats as operating in the Barents Sea, as if that is almost to the Pacific. It is not. it is just off Norway.
So the armature of "all this stuff happened, so my story is just one step farther" collapses, and you are left with an adventure story with a historyish flavour.

I can see all kinds of fun filmic possibilities, motorcycle racing ahead of the fireball, weathering the terrible arctic storm, being chased by polar bears in Siberia and Lions in South Africa.

What you are talking about to me sounds like Soft Alternate History on the Scale of Plausibility posted below. Which is fine.

Sliding Scale of Alternate History Plausibility - TV Tropes

Like other forms of Speculative Fiction, Alternate History varies in its inherent "hardness" with AH Fandom generally grading it by how "plausible" the AH is based on historical realism and verisimilitude. At the "hard" end of plausibility are …

tvtropes.org

 

[The Tai-Pan]

Paint it sky blue, & it would sail right past most skyward eyes, peasants who might see it would likely think it was Russian..............................................................................The Graf Zeppelin had to rely on aerodynamic lift to make it over some mountains in eastern Russia during its round-the-world trip,

The Russian air force, while often kicked around by the Luftwaffe, is perfectly capable of finding and destroying an airship. Airships are slow and fragile, not the combination you want for commando raids.

 

[jlckansas]

Yes, I am aware of where the factories are, thanks so much. Are you aware of where Trans Siberian rail bridges are? Dams? & other important targets of opportunity? & one wouldn't land at a check point, rather a biplane can land near anywhere, ( hence not near roads ). The motorcycles also are capable of travel not on roads. Find a field near a factory, get in and do the job, ( perhaps at night ), use your imagination. Factories behind the Urals were pretty safe, hence Russian security wouldn't be that large.

Yes I am fully aware of where all these are. I also know that the MVD and NKVD after the war started had all kinds of units guarding these places. The people here were fully aware of how important it was to be on the ball, they were not put in the gulag they were sent to the front to serve in the penal bn. to lead the troops on in such mundane jobs as mine clearance using the good ol M1 combat boot.

These are not peasants around the cities, you have plenty of people in the Gulag who know what a zep is, and also who know any airplane in the area is not supposed to be in the area.

A biplane cannot land anywhere in that part of Russia, let alone a motorcycle go through the woods known as the Taiga. You have too many places around these areas that have too many paranoid people out to save their own hides at the expense of others.

Taiga - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Black Sword]

YYJ it's fiction, doesn't matter if the base exists or not. A biplane can land in millions of places in Russia without being seen, especially Siberia & you mostly avoid the cities jlckanas. And if the peasants do not see the Zeppelin, they wouldn't report it............................................read As Far as my Feet Will Carry me if you like, the main character in the story was parachuted behind the Urals, he & his men to do explosives-sabotage missions. He also made it home 8.500 miles on foot.

 

[The Tai-Pan]

YYJ it's fiction, doesn't matter if the base exists or not. A biplane can land in millions of places in Russia without being seen, especially Siberia & you mostly avoid the cities jlckanas. And if the peasants do not see the Zeppelin, they wouldn't report it.

Red Air Force planes on patrol will see it.

 

[Black Sword]

100's of miles away from any Russian air base? How?

 

[The Tai-Pan]

100's of miles away from any Russian air base? How?

If you sail an airship from Germany to Siberia, you'll be going through loads of places full of air patrols. They were on guard against German bombers and fighters , you have to remember. German air attacks were a common thing, something they had procedures and plans in place to deal with. Granted, this was against planes but an airship would be even easier to spot and shoot down.

That said, two guys and a motorcycle is not much of a raid anyway.

 

[Black Sword]

Avoid the areas of air patrols, easy Siberia & Russia is too large to think they had air patrols covering all that airspace is not realistic to be polite .............................As to guarded bridges, the Brandenbergers were masters
of it...................................... http://horseformer.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-story-of-r100-and-r101-iv-big-day.html

 

[Black Sword]

At midnight on May 9 a dozen Brandenburgers dressed as Dutch military policemen crossed the Meuse two kilometres upstream of the bridge and made their way to the river bank. No one challenged them. At 1 am they were in concealed positions, and remained there until dawn, when they heard the steam trains making their way towards the bridge. As the Germans approached the bridge, the Dutch sentries on duty ran to intercept them, raising their rifles ready to shoot. But the sentries stopped when they realised the six men facing them on the other side of the bridge were wearing the uniform of the Dutch military police. Within seconds the sentries had been grabbed from behind by the Brandenburgers, who slit their throats. The Germans now controlled the eastern side of the bridge..................................On the Dutch side of the bridge, other sentries then heard the train approaching from Germany, and they were under orders to blow up the bridge if any trains approached. On duty in the middle of the bridge – from where the explosives could be detonated – was a lone elderly sentry. He watched spellbound as the train approached and before he realised that he should detonate the charge six men had leapt from the slowly passing train. He was killed and the detonator defused. The invasion of the Netherlands had begun without a single German soldier being killed or wounded. The operation, the first major mission carried out by Germany’s Special Forces, had been a complete success.