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[tryrar]

It's a tradeoff really. Sure, near our original borders with the unescorted bombers, the turret just hurts it since 2 patriotisms aren't gonna make much of a difference to a bomber, but against those long range escorts the Morovians have a turret might help if the interceptor gets jumped while hammering a bomber formation with twin 25mm cannons

[Brood]

Point, I much prefer the lightning. Might be worth just mass producing the lightning and designing a new higher powered gun for it on top of the new engine to get it out ahead of the enemy.

I might look into rotary guns, they've existed for a long time we'd just need to invent a system to cycle the bullets that doesn't require hand operation.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

IMO, that will not work

1) It may very well be slower then bombers, and surely slower than our lightnings and Morovian escort fighters.

2) nose mounted 25mm guns are nice, but too centered for dogfighting + IRL those can't fire through propeller

3) Turret will help our interceptors no more than turrets help enemy bombers. They will be outmaneuvered and killed

4) Escort role is dubious as aircrafts are unsuited for attacking enemy fighters, those will just avoid escorts if they chose to.

I see no interceptor here, that's a ground attack aircraft planned to be used against bomber formations. I'd rather redesign shark for that. Simpler and cheaper solution

[tryrar]

I'd point out there WERE several experimental projects around this timeframe of externally powering a rotary cannon, though it wasn't until the 60s that anyone really got serious about it(due to the vastly increased speed and engagement ranges of current jets); that was when General Electric came up with the M61 Vulcan. So yeah, if you can come up with a good design, it wouldn't be TOO a-historical for anyone to be experimenting with it at least

Also, you raise a good point UR, but I don't wanna do any more proposals so if you come up with a good counter-design we'll see

[Parsely]

nose mounted 25mm guns are nice, but too centered for dogfighting + IRL those can't fire through propeller

Erm, I'm pretty sure thats not true.

*5 minutes and a google search later*

Yeah, it isn't.

EDIT: NVM. Gun's too big. ....right?

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Interruption gear is good for machineguns but it never worked with auto-cannons that operate in a very different way

More detailed: We made a gun that uses Advanced Primer Ignition blowback and that's very different to machineguns and proper cannons that can be synchronized quite easily

[Parsely]

Interruption gear is good for machineguns but it never worked with auto-cannons that operate in a very different way

More detailed: We made a gun that uses Advanced Primer Ignition blowback and that's very different to machineguns and proper cannons that can be synchronized quite easily

Makes sense. I wouldn't use a 25mm for dogfighting anyhow, but I think you've already said that.

[RAM]

Posting these here for commentary before bringing them to the main thread...

13: Universal Pod Mount. Design a mounting point for various removable pods so that a vehicle can quickly change its specifications by mounting a suitable pod. It should have a redundant release mechanism, the capacity to feed at least 5 different signals to an attached pod, and the ability for a pod to feed fuel to the vehicle. Design versions for pods of 20kg, 50kg, 200kg, and 500kg. Build a 50kg rocket pod designed to provide 2 minutes of additional propulsion to an aeroplane to test the system.

14: People's Beacon Carrier. Base it on Radar Airship but dedicated to aircraft docking. Attempt to integrate a pair of underside rails for receiving aircraft at higher speeds, a crane system for rapidly retrieving aircraft from the rails, a maintenance bay for aircraft, an aeroplane mounting system that would allow pilots to get from quarters to cockpits in under 2 minutes with no appreciable risk of plummeting to their untimely doom. It should also be possible to load bombs and such onto aircraft without transferring them to the maintenance bay. The rails should be reinforced around the regions most likely to be damaged and have a guide kite dragging behind it to better illustrate its position to approaching aeroplanes. The rail should also possess a slight incline to slow docking craft and one-way notches to prevent craft from sliding backwards. The airship itself should possess additional engines to better match the flight of relatively high-speed aircraft.

15: Plummet fighter. An aeroplane designed to operate with the P.B.C. Airship above. It should have a retractable over-head sled for docking with rails and a skid-plate for ground landings. Ideally it should possess great manoeuvrability, a high operational ceiling, low minimum speed, and special attention should be given to insuring that it can recover from stalls, as it will be launched by being dropped... Ideally its weight will be under 2000 kg though it should be armed with at least a pair of Patriotisms, ideally GVS-14s. It should also have two mounts for pods.

16: Descent bomber. As the Plummet above, but with a single forward Patriotism and a single rear gunner position with a Patriotism, the ability to carry a single torpedo or a similar weight of depth-charges or conventional bombs, and no need for manoeuvrability.

[Brood]

I'm staying out of anything airship related, the enemy aircraft already have a high enough operational ceiling to get within attack range of the airships and no airship will beat a fighter.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

+1 to brood here

Radar Airship is useful, dedicated airship aircarrier and specialized aircrafts for it is a waste  of resources

[RAM]

The airship is protected by fighters, I myself have thought of this and considered removing the guns, and still might... But the point is that these fighters would be coming from the airship, it is pretty much impossible to imagine a scenario where the airship could be attacked without someone going through the fighters first. As it stands the Radar airships are going to go down in droves because they have no reliable escorts. Our current craft are ground-based and take a long time to get to altitude. These aeroplanes would be in the air permanently and not have to pay much of a price for it, except in the limits imposed by being able to operate from an airship. This would cause us to lose fewer airships, not more, and the naval capacities would be great...

[Brood]

And they'd make lovely big targets and why go through them?

All you have to do is have 1 fighter ignore the defensive fighters for 2 seconds to fire a couple of rounds into the airship and then it's done.

The airship idea is out dated compared to the level of tech were using, we're already ahead of ww2 level.

[3_14159]

In respect to the Airship based fighters:
I can see two applications for the airships; Land and Sea.

Over Land I'm pretty sure that we can simply station several fighters (of which a few are always in the air) near it. While this requires a higher number of fighters, it doesn't require new designs and a separate airship plus it should provide better performance as they wouldn't have to compromise due to minimum airspeed requirement and mount.

Over sea, the airship looks better. Here, it is not possible to actually permanently station fighters nearby. A naval carrier would provide this, though.

So, to sum up: Definitely not worth it over land, maybe worth it over sea and - in my opinion - not worth the cost.

@Brood: Nearly, except that the air battle shouldn't actually happen directly near the carrier but a dozen km away. Still, a few fighters can ignore the defensive fighters. Losses would be pretty high, but it would most definitely be worth it.

[Brood]

Yup so to sum up, airships bad.

We have over looked an obvious way to reduce the damage our enemies bombers are doing.

[10ebbor10]

Just a question, but I have a feeling that several voted designs were not constructed.

Was the voting limit increased or something?