Chapter 100 : Empress-class Twin-wing Fighter
Chapter 100: Empress-class Twin-wing Fighter
In the blink of an eye another year was about to pass, and at year’s end Mitia inspected the aircraft laboratory accompanied by several scientists, while Prime Minister Golitsyn kept reporting the year’s major achievements at her side.
“Your Majesty the Empress, our army was advancing like a wedge through the enemy. I assure you, at most three more months and we could completely liberate the kingdom. By then the warriors would be able to return for the Goddess’s Birth Festival!” he said.
Mitia, whose expression was rather lax and languid, halted where she stood when she heard this, then turned and looked at Golitsyn with a peculiar gaze.
Everyone had thought the old fellow was finished after Mitia had criticized him at the assembly.
But the internal affairs investigation found that apart from some appetite for food and drink he had not taken bribes; if giving gifts of food counted, then yes, but Mitia did not mind that.
She had realized she might clash with Golitsyn — every time he spoke he could precisely step on one of her pressure points, especially when it came to his talent for making bold declarations...
When it came to corrupt officials, her view differed from most people’s.
She allowed a certain degree of corruption, on the condition that one did one’s duties well and did not substitute shoddy work for real tasks.
For state projects and large government works, if both sides’ capabilities were not far apart, as long as the project requirements were met and the tax authorities’ document checks and account audits passed within the rules, she would turn a blind eye.
You could not stop it entirely.
When a person controlled a certain power, he would absolutely want to monetize it; otherwise he would be gnawed by it, unable to bear it.
Either he did not take anything, or he took enough for eight lifetimes at once.
So she could open a small gap to let them vent that impulse, so long as they did not reach into places they should not.
Why did she deliberately set up some large state-owned enterprises to monopolize the luxury goods market?
Besides bringing profit to the state, those iron rice bowls with guaranteed income provided security and an exit for the offspring of those people.
If later they could not make it in the outside world, working at these enterprises would be enough to let them settle down and live securely.
You could talk ideals and dreams with the first batch who followed you, but for that generation alone it was not enough — people also needed to live, tangible benefits must be offered.
At that moment a twin-wing propeller aircraft carrying a pilot rocked and shuddered as it rushed along the ground runway; its fuselage side was painted with the designation 【MS-01-3】.
The plane ran along the runway, occasionally lifting slightly off the ground and then touching down again, and finally slowed and came to a steady stop.
This test flight had not taken off; it mainly tested whether the overall fuselage structure was solid, the durability of the fuselage skin, the operating conditions of the inline engine, and a series of other ground tests.
Previous glider wind-tunnel experiments had already verified the feasibility of flying into the blue and had measured the optimal coefficients for lift and other forces, after which they had produced a prototype with sustained propulsion.
With continuous experimental improvements, batch-manufactured prototypes were being tested at the airport for various data to complete the first trial production and deployment as quickly as possible.
This was one of those aircraft; another was flying in the sky to verify whether the aerodynamic shape was reasonable and to test approximate flight speeds.
In fact, this plane’s completion rate was already very high — as long as the tests met the requirements they could start placing orders with factories for trial production.
They would also begin rebuilding a brand-new specialized aircraft manufacturing plant.
The fuselage frame had been made entirely of aluminum alloy — light yet relatively strong — and through various welds and the arrangement of steel wires and aluminum tubes the fuselage skeleton had been made as rigid as possible.
As for the wings, they used wood for the spars with special cords woven through for fixation; most of the interior was hollow to reduce weight, the outer layer was light plywood, and the outermost layer was the fuselage skin.
The upper and lower wings were fastened to each other and served together as a load-bearing whole, while also providing a large wing area so that enough lift could be generated at low speeds to take off smoothly.
The originally manufactured heterogenous four-stroke engine had shown many problems in the prototype, so they switched to a more mature and reliable inline six-cylinder engine rated at 180 horsepower, with peak power at 1,500 rpm — completely sufficient.
The engine’s exhaust port was on top, the intake was at the front, the crankshaft linked directly to the wooden propeller, and the fuel tank was located just behind the engine, supporting about an hour of continuous flight time.
Most important was the flight control system: a vertical control stick at the pilot’s seat.
Pushing it forward and back adjusted the elevator on the tail and changed the aircraft’s pitch.
Moving it left and right adjusted the ailerons on the upper wing to control roll, while the pedals controlled the rudder responsible for horizontal turning.
Mounting weapons on an aircraft was also difficult: installation was simple enough, but how to prevent the machine-gun fire from striking the propeller blades when firing had occupied the federal scientists for a long time without result.
The water-cooled Maxim heavy machine gun was unsuitable for flight, so they redesigned and manufactured an air-cooled heavy machine gun that used a mechanical feeding system; the magazine box was located beneath the gun, and a forward box collected the discarded shells.
In the end Mitia provided them with the inspiration: because the engine crankshaft was directly linked to the propeller rotation, they could design a small gear transmission system to install behind the engine.
The engine’s work determined how many times the propeller turned, so if each stroke engaged the reserved gear and drove the gun’s trigger to fire, then naturally the bullets would not hit the propeller blades.
The firing trigger at the pilot’s seat functioned merely to advance the gear into the reserved notch to activate this working process.
Besides progress in aircraft manufacturing, reverse engineering of Mechanical Bodies had also seen some headway, namely the standard-issue Mechanical Bodies of Church soldiers captured during the Lalor War.
These three-meter-tall Mechanical Bodies were basically similar products to the kind of concept she had previously devised.
Simply put, these three-meter Mechanical Bodies were self-propelled platforms carrying a power-supply pack; the soldier inside used magic to raise shields and cast spells, then ran away after firing — that was all.
If one wanted to operate a Mechanical Body for close combat, one could not recklessly unleash long-range magic; one could only maintain the shield and keep the machine functioning.
She realized that assembling this onto tanks, armored cars, or even warships could achieve a similar effect while consuming less energy.
After all, if it was just a self-propelled platform, she had previously proposed internal-combustion engines, and even earlier attempted magical-potion engines had been promising; such a power pack could serve as a shield generator.
In terms of offensive power she believed that industrialized weapons were already not weak; it was defense that was lacking — being hit by magic essentially spelled GG.
Her prior reluctance to deploy heavily armored units stemmed from this: no matter how thick the steel plates were, they were hard-pressed to resist the damage brought by high-level magic.
The various attributes accompanying magic alone — like ultra-high-temperature melting, ultra-low-temperature freezing, and so on — demanded absurd resistance from the outer armor materials.
If heavy tanks and armored cars would die the same way under such magic, then why build more expensive tanks that took longer to produce?
Her earlier plan had been not to build heavy equipment until armor steel capable of resisting magical attributes was developed,
but now with the Goblins’ magical power pack, that was no longer an issue.
Attach a magical power pack to generate a magic shield to block damage, and the heavier the war machine, the larger its internal space to install a better power pack.
Provide stronger resistance and thus enable fiercer firepower — perfect.