'Aerial Carriers'...

[TsrJoe]

oops typo, tut tut,

http://s3.photobucket.com/albums/y52/RP1/A...ial%20Carriers/

hmm...wheres that old airship model..lol  

[ysi_maniac]

Quite imaginative

[Archibald]

Remind me of this Captain sky thing... hey, why not catamaran Zepelin with a flight deck between the two baloons ?    

[ysi_maniac]

Remind me of this Captain sky thing... hey, why not catamaran Zepelin with a flight deck between the two baloons ?  

Like your idea    

[Archibald]

could be cool building this thing from two balloons, then adding a 1/400 th scale carrier between the two... wow, too much cafein today!    

Would a flying carrier been doable ? Hinderburg was 250 m long, this is nearly as long as Charles de Gaulles carrier. Even better, it could go quicker (say, 100 to 200 kph) which mean that a fighter would have reduce landing speed...

Ideas are coming!  

[B777LR]

The Zveno TB-3 could carry 5 fighters  An airship is much larger, and doesnt require a runway every 5 hours

[Radish]

           :ar:  

[jcf]

The USN airships Akron and Macon each carried a complement of Curtiss F9C-2 fighters.

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/ac-usn2...-types/zrs4.htm

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/ac-usn2...-types/zrs5.htm



As to a landing deck between two hulls, that is an awful lot of weight and the whole construction would have to be huge but the fixed wing aircraft still small and lightweight. Physics rules airship design.

Cheers, Jon

[Madoc]

Folks,

I'd favor a bit of "high tech magic" here to make this a going concern.

True airships have the nasty combination of very small propulsion force combined with absolutely huge surface area.  That makes them woefully underpowered and largely at the mercy of even the mildest breezes.

A good way to "solve" this is to come up with some sort of super-high-tech lifting device which thereby eliminates the need for the big gasbags and their equally as large surface area.  Let's say some sorta "anti-grav" device is the McGuffin here.  And to keep this sporting, the AG device is a large and bulky thing - to large, in fact, to be mounted on anything smaller than a cruiser sized vessel.  Thus, there'd still be a need and a use for the conventionally powered aircraft which could then use this sky carrier as their base.

So, you'd have a mega-big sky carrier vessel and a swarm of carrier type aircraft.  The Sky carrier, depending on the era you set this in, could simply use oil fired boilers to make the steam to make the electricity to run the anti-grav dohicky.  Later, it'd be nukes all that way baby!

I'd envision a whole bunch of trapeze set ups to launch and retrieve aircraft.  Landing on the upper surface of the machine would present some problems and no small amount of risk.  Better to fly up underneath or alongside, match velocity, and then engage the trapeze mechanism to be hauled aboard.  Afterall, in this case you're dealing with a carrier vessel which is already moving along at a very fast clip and you could design your carrier aircraft to be able to match that lower speed while still being controllable enough to maneuver onto the trapeze.

As we're talking "anti-grav" power here for the carrier, this thing could be big enough to haul aboard B-29 sized birds!  Now how about a depiction of that!

September, 1944, somewhere over the Pacific hours east of Japan, the USS Akron II prepares to launch its first mission of the day against Imperial Japan.

The big sky carriers Combat Air Patrol of Corsairs has already launched and taken up station above the carrier.  Next to launch are the Akron's fifty Martin Maulers - each being deployed from the carrier's ten attack trapeze launch bays...

Yeah, this could be fun!

Madoc

[Rafael]

I don't want to even think in a "bolter" with mountains underneath the ship
But I definately go with Madoc's idea!!!
Let's go anti-grav!!!

Rafa

Edit - Since the thing is so technologically advanced as to be taken for magic, why not go to the flattop version with a gravity well-device, something like a tractor-beam to capture the planes on deck. No "meatball", no arresting wires, and only consumption of energy from the main drive.
Wow. I've been drinking too much coffee too.

[RP1]

I'd forgotten I put those on-line.

Glad you like them.  I have a set of sketches for British, French, Russian, Chinese, German and American carriers and aircraft.

These were supposed to be aerostat type machines.  I know they wouldn't work, but some handwavium was invoked.

I also have another set of sketches for an electro-gravities universe with triple expansion engines driving spinning gravity resistors.   I even started to consider what to-days ships might look like, with missiles and radar...

Things I thought worth considering include fire control (no splashes at 5000ft), structures (no buoyancy spread along the ship), how the anti-grav works (resist applied weight, generate propulsion, or cancel gravity?) Pus the big issue of HEAT.  Any steam powered flyer will need to dump 60%+ of the energy produced into the air.  This takes a lot of air.  Fan cooled condensers are possible (some static steam engines use them) but are noisy (I've felt them through my FEET) and not as effective as water, so limiting the power / volume ratios of vessels.

Must go, or clowns will eat me.

RP1

[Martin H]

good to see that lot again, ive been mulling over hacking up a Gladiator to lash up a Gadfly some day

[Brian da Basher]

Any What-Ifs involving airships are ultra-cool and any mention of the R-100, R-101, Shenandoah, Los Angeles, Akron or Macon makes me smile whistfully.

Thank you.

Brian da Basher

P.S. The U.S.S. Shenandoah crashed only a couple of hour's drive southwest of me very close to where I-70 & I-77 meet near Ada, Ohio.

[Son of Damian]

I actually found those works (not the night one though) on some CGI art web site back in late 2005. I posted them in a thread about a/c carrying zeppelins in the alternate history section back in March 2006 IIRC. Never did find my way back to that site so I forgot who's works they were, until now.

Glad you like them. I have a set of sketches for British, French, Russian, Chinese, German and American carriers and aircraft.

Could you please post these  

[Andrew Gorman]

Remind me of this Captain sky thing... hey, why not catamaran Zepelin with a flight deck between the two baloons ?  

Something like this?  A very nice fate for a couple of Hindenburgs....

http://www.starshipmodeler.com/other/ms_al.htm