• Hi Guest!

    The costs of running this forum are covered by Sea Lion Press. If you'd like to help support the company and the forum, visit patreon.com/sealionpress

Airships: Potential PoDs 1 - A Flying Start

Bonus points to anyone who comes up with a TL that starts with the Ancient Greek aeolipile, gets it developed, and somehow leverages that into the Roman Invasion of Britain using airships...

That's not hard if you're willing to accept having two or three more Archemides lying around. Goldbeater's skin balloons, arsenical bronze tube skeletons, and flying jibs to horse a current would get the job done. You don't even need aeropiles, just some inventive lads with braziers and a winch for bouyancy control.
 
I wonder if you could do something with the Austro-Prussian war narrowly going the other way.
 
Tempted to call a writing challenge for people to come up with these...
(Because I'd love to read them)
 
Oscar Wilde's comment on temptation springs to mind.
The only thing stopping me from trying it is that it would be bad form for me not to write one, and I suspect I won’t have much time in the next week or two - and after that, I’m off with the family for a fortnight.
 
I'm wondering if the use of observation balloons in the ACW could be tweaked to give rise to airships. Given the distances involved in the ACW, being able to relocate such balloons has obvious benefits.

It wouldn't be hard: a lot of the later powered flight and lighter than air guys cut their teeth in the Union's corps. I can think of a couple of French guys (of which I cannot pretend to spell the names of), a few Englishmen, and several Germans including the Big Z himself. The real trick is developing propulsion without a boiler in there somewhere, considering how cancerously bad their power/weight ratios are and how small your balloon size is.

I wonder if you could do something with the Austro-Prussian war narrowly going the other way.

I highly doubt it. The Prussians can get their men together faster, have better field weapons and tactics, nearly 85,000 men of advantage once the mobilization finishes, and have five field lines to the military frontier to the Austrian one. It's not quite a drag-out stop, but Konnigratz proved pretty soundly that weight of fire tends to concentrate the mind against shock tactics very well.
 
Back
Top