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Saturday, March 19, 2011

Short Story Project: Unpowered flight

Julius Mayweather parked his car outside hangar 22, at the far end of Offutt AFB, Omaha, USA. It was a compound within a compound, protected by 2 chain link fences and a 3 metre high concrete barrier within an Air Force Base which already featured tight security. When he stopped flying sorties protecting B-29s en route to Japan, Julius thought the war was over. Now, he wondered if the war truly ended.

It was the spring of 1948, perfect weather for flying. The skies were usually blue and cloudless and even spring showers hardly made their way this far inland. The only issues Julius had to factor in were the thermals rising up from the wide open tracts of bare land surrounding the airfield. While most of his friends from flight school and the 129th Air Combat Wing re-integrated themselves into society, working in factories and offices and schools to ramp up the productivity of a country that has spent too much in the last war, Julius still couldn't get flying out of his blood. Taking aircraft out on test flights didn't have the thrill of sitting behind a Merlin V12 engine, or the sheer adrenaline of having 6 Browning machine guns rattle the rivets off the airframe, but it still offered him the peace and freedom of being up in the air that no other job could afford him.

"You're late, Major Julius." Colonel Winters said, with arms crossed over his chest. Julius took off his cap now that he was indoors and grinned at his superior, "Well, sir, it's 830 and I'm on time. You are characteristically early." Beside Winters was a wiry man, just slightly older than the officer. Julius recognized him from the prototype development engineers department, but there were so many projects being developed, so many new technologies and so many people behind these projects that he didn't bother keeping social contacts with most of them. He recalled one engineer who had been so enthusiastic leading a project that involved launching aircraft vertically from rails. It was meant as a defence measure against high-altitude bombers, an attempt to get interceptors to altitude in as short a time as possible. It didn't work out because most test pilots blacked out from the sheer acceleration and couldn't recover the aircraft as momentum wore out and the aircraft struggled with its own power. He had lost 2 colleagues with that silly project. These scientists only care about their ideas and claim that they work on paper. It's test pilots like us who put our lives on the line refining the ideas.

"Julius, I'd like you to meet Marcus Finlay, lead designer for the prototype you're going to fly today." Julius extended his hand to greet Mr Finlay, who readily took it and pumped enthusiastically. "It's always a pleasure to meet pilots, Mr Mayweather. Especially after news of the Berlin Blockade and the air drops, amazing stuff. There's no doubt aircraft will pave the way for future warfare and we need good pilots to be at the heart of these machines." Julius kept his smile plastered on his face as he replied, "Well, sir, I was in the States while the Berlin Airlift was in progress, but it's a pleasure to meet you too."

Mr Finlay began on his brief even before Colonel Winters could start on it. "Gentlemen, since the war ended, Strategic Air Command has issued new directives for delivery systems for nuclear payloads. I'm sure both of you will have seen the B-36 go out for its training sorties. That's a magnificent aircraft, really huge! I don't think any other aircraft in history will get any larger than that. Most recently, a new aircraft powered by 6 turbojets went for its first test flight. Our aircraft are meant to go high up in the atmosphere to drop their nuclear arsenal.

"However, do you see a problem with going higher in the air? Oxygen! The B-36 needs oxygen in its piston engines while even the new jet powered XB-47 still uses oxygen to produce thrust. I have developed a solution to allow us to go even higher in the air!"

Julius brought his hand up and cleared his throat, "Excuse me, sir, but the benefits of higher cruising speed or increased range from being higher in the atmosphere are minimal. Why do we need an aircraft to go even higher or faster?"

Colonel Winters piped in with his take, "Julius, the communists are developing surface to air missiles that can reach altitudes of thirty thousand feet from the ground. Our recon aircraft have spotted such missiles reaching the aircraft's service ceilings before. Now, the moment they work out the kinks in the targeting system, we'll have a credible threat to our bombers. We have to be one step ahead!"

Julius reeled inside from the thought. He had been brought up and trained in the school of thought that only an aircraft will have the speed and performance to shoot down another aircraft. In fact, his whole role in the war was to protect B-29s as they flew into Japan and to shoot down any interceptors that came up against the lumbering bombers.The thought that an unmanned canister rocketing up from the ground could make fighter planes (and pilots) obsolete repulsed him. To him, air combat was the most glorious bastion for a pilot, a swan song of the old gladiatorial days when each man worked within the limitations of his equipment to outsmart and outplay the opponent. Then, remembering the limitations of the radar systems that helped win the Battle of Britain, he asked, "Such missiles will need radar systems to spot aircraft. Why can't we have aircraft that go under the effective cover of radar instead?"

Finlay laughed and said, "If you go low, you'll be shredded by the AA guns! Aircraft are much less efficient close to the ground so you'll need more powerful engines and more fuel capacity. The future of bombing lies in the highest reaches of the sky, not nap of the earth flying!"

Julius sulked inside. He hated it when his pride was hurt. Just a few years ago, his squadron commander was given a medal for supporting bomber operations in Japan. Fighter pilots were celebrated everywhere. Today, he was mocked by a scientist. He silently followed the two other men as they walked over to the new prototype aircraft.

While still displaying a visibly unhappy expression, Julius' heart leapt inside when he saw the clean lines of the new aircraft. It was very sleek and featured clean lines, with long, slender wings that had twice the span compared to the length of the aircraft. There were no propellers, no engine intakes and no exhaust ports.

"This is a proof of concept aircraft, so it wasn't designed with a large bomb bay. However, we needed to make it large enough to install a pressurised canopy. In true high-altitude flight, pressurised oxygen canisters will be used to sustain the flight crew, but the powerplant itself does not require any air."

Walking over to the tip of the drooping wing, Mr Finlay pointed out to a small protuberance on the top of the wing, near the leading edge. "Gentlemen, over here is a tiny Brownian Field Generator, the secret to this aircraft." It was the size of a matchbox and no thicker than a coin lying on its side. "I'm sure you've heard of the phenomenon of Brownian motion?"

"The erratic movement of particles in the air due to the high energy collisions between these particles?" Julius attempted to answer, desperately dusting the cobwebs around such information in his brain. He didn't want to look any more unintelligent next to this scientist. Mr Finlay smiled and clapped sharply once. "YES! Except instead of energising the particles randomly, we are creating a field of them to be propelled backwards to provide both thrust and lift. This is the very latest development of quantum mechanics."

Colonel Winters once again crossed his arms over his chest and asked, "How exactly do you excite the particles to move backwards? What's the power source?"

"We create wave-forms with the air particles that then travel over the top of the wing, thus generating lift. Also, because of the mass of air that is pushed back, the aircraft is naturally pushed forward. It's like a propulsive wing!"

"What? Wave-form of air? Air is just made of different particles!" Julius was quite sure this scientist was distorting his reality of physics as taught by his secondary school teachers. No matter how he wrapped his mind around it, air will always be particles to him.

Mr Finlay had a grim smile on his face. "Gentlemen, have you heard of the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment? In it, Dr Schrodinger attempts to explain how a subject can be in two states at the same time. Sealed in a closed box with a vial of poison that can be triggered by a random event, the cat can be alive and dead at the same time to outside observers, until the box is opened and his state is revealed. Similarly, light can exist as waves, which is the form we're familiar with, and also as photons, little light particles. Normally, they exhibit the properties of the wave form, but when you observe a single particle, it exists only in its particle form. The wave-form of air particles is cutting-edge quantum theory put into practice."

Julius already had enough of Mr Finlay's lecture, so he asked, "Sir, just explain how differently it handles from a normal aircraft."

"Quite simply, because airflow is continually energised over the top of the wing, the aircraft has a ridiculously low stall speed for its wing loading. We're talking about 20 knots, something even your speed indicator can't show. Also, the wave-forms will build up when more air compacts against the leading edge of the wing. In essence, the faster you go, the faster you accelerate. Do not expect the throttle response of the P-51 Mustangs you flew in the war."

Julius detected slight sarcasm from the scientist, but he brushed it off and moved on, "I'm a test pilot, I've moved past flying just Mustangs. Alright, let's get cracking."