Most Realistic Diesel Punk Aircraft Carrier

[oneofmanynameless]

Alright. I'm looking for vehicle stats for a diesel punk aircraft carrier and wondering what the most realistic designs would be (i.e. designs that are the closest to working practically with technology that actually existed and was widely used in the late 1930s and early 1940s.) So if something seems diesel punk but would have been physically impossible the question becomes how much wonderflonium would be necessary and what would the wonderflonium need to do? Or if it was physically possible what would have been the impractical downsides?

EDIT: I mean flying aircraft carriers. Like the helecarriers in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, or maybe Zeppelin based aircraft carriers. Sorry for the miscommunication.

[Apollonian]

What, like the Hosho? Built 1922.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japa...ōshō

[oneofmanynameless]

I realize I forgot to include the most important note: A flying diesel punk aircraft carrier. Obviously all WWII aircraft carriers could exist in a diesel punk setting and are also realistic.

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by oneofmanynameless

if it was physically possible what would have been the impractical downsides?

EDIT: I mean flying aircraft carriers. Like the helecarriers in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, or maybe Zeppelin based aircraft carriers. Sorry for the miscommunication.

In real life, the biggest downsides to zeppelin aircraft carriers were susceptibility to weather and limited complement of parasite aircraft. Both of these could be solved by a better lifting gas. It has to be a lot better, though, and there aren't any gases like that. But if some kind of negative mass thing could be synthesized or acquired by some means, you're in business. Helicarriers and other heavier-than-air sorts of things are more atompunk than dieselpunk; it was never built, but there were plans for a giant nuclear plane that would, in one configuration, act as a carrier for smaller planes. I'm not aware of any reason it couldn't have been built, although I'm also not an aeronautics engineer.

[Phantasm]

Well, some time ago I came up with stats for the SHIELD Helicarrier from Marvel's The Avengers.

A "realistic" dieselpunk helicarrier would probably be a lot smaller; however, the maximum size listed in Spaceships 7 for helicopter rotors without superscience is SM +7, which might be large enough to support a squadron of SM +4 fighters. On the other paw, dieselpunk kind of implies a kind of divergent superscience....

[ericthered]

If I had to build such a thing in real life, I'd immediately go for lighter than air design. This places limitations on the armor, but its the only way I'm going to get around those fuel costs. That changes the speed as well.

A flying air craft carrier is interesting because a lot of targets are on the ground rather than in the air, so gliding home often won't be an option. On the other hand, you only need a space to land, not to take off, if you can design a plane you just push off the edge.

[johndallman]

Lighter than air is far more practical than a rotor-suspended one, but putting a runway on top of an airship is horrendous. It's heavy, and it's on top. You need to keep the centre of gravity low, or the airship just turns over.

I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation, and a runway of quarter-inch steel plate (which isn't strong enough) 400' x 30', weighs 60 tons. With enough ballast to keep the thing reasonably stable, it's 200 tons, which was about the usable lift of the biggest zeppelins in history. Just for the runway.

A different way of doing it is hooking on underneath, as was done historically, but that requires the aeroplane to be capable of flying at the same speed as the airship. When I worked this out for a WWII setting, a Hawker Hurricane has a stall speed of 75mph, and the Graft Zeppelin II had a top speed of 84mph. It's a bit tricky, but I just thought of a way of making it easier.

You have a catapult, a bit like the ones on modern aircraft carriers, although you need a different way to power it. You mount it underneath, on the centreline. use this for launching aircraft, in the obvious way, but you can also use it for hooking them on.

As the aircraft approaches the airship from behind, the catapult starts moving, so that the aircraft can hook on at low relative speed. Then the catapult is braked, to slow the aircraft until it isn't moving relative to the airship. You'll need an automatic triggering system for the catapult, with "electric eye" photocells being a good method.

Now, I wouldn't try this in a realistic campaign, but if you want a flying aircraft carrier and can accept some rule-of-cool, this might suit.

[exalted]

The amount of superscience needed really depends on the amount of aircrafts you need to get on the "aircraft carrier" if the US Navy could get five crafts on a real airship in 1931 something slightly larger is probably feasable with real world tech. Still airships suck as aircraft carriers unless they got power to survive bad weather, this is likely where you get into super science if you can't live with flimsy aircraft carriers with short range.

A true aircraft carrier of the air needs better lift and better engines to not be ruled by weather and simply to be able to lift all the stuff a real aircraft carrier needs as it really is more of a floating airbase.

My steampunk attempts at the same stuff usually end up with negative weight gas or something similiar simply for such craft not to be even more absurdly huge.

You also likely want decent communication without line of sight since one of the great problems with the flying aircraft carrier is that once you loose line of sight your not going to find it easily again on a day with some weather. A very bad thing for a carrier aircraft especially when the carrier moves a lot faster then any ship.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Dalillama

I'm not aware of any reason it couldn't have been built, although I'm also not an aeronautics engineer.

Basically Kennedy pulled funding because it was a fantastic money pit, with completely schizophrenic leadership, that had it been allowed to continue would have at best produced the preconditions for a truly epic nuclear disaster. Also we had ICBMs.

[Ulzgoroth]

The most realistic designs would probably be the Acron and Macon, which actually existed. They carried small numbers of biplanes, launched and recovered using a 'trapeze' that dangled from the bottom of the airship.

They didn't work particularly well and both crashed, in reality, but they did function.