"unsporting," and also a menace to sea power, and tried
to have their use banned by international convention.
Small pressure blimps became a curiosity in many parts
of the world, but the high accident rate—particularly on
landing—prevented any widespread civilian use. The
early models were small, few being over 50-80 meters,
and had very limited range and cargo-carrying capacity.
The Domination's researchers were galvanized by the
news from France. They quickly realized that the
problems of range, speed, and ability to stand adverse
weather could only be solved by a vehicle much larger
than the blimps or semirigids; a hull whose shape was
dependent on internal pressures had sharp limits of
size and weight-bearing capacity, and was also very
vulnerable to bending stresses in the thunderstorms of
the continental interiors. The solution they developed
was an internal frame, covered with a cloth outer
coating and with the gasbags within. The elongated
teardrop shape of the new craft "airships" was based on
that of whales and birds, a bit of inspired empiricism
that later aerodynamic analysis proved right. The basic
frame was made from two spirals of light, strong
laminated tropical woods running in opposite
directions from the nose of the dirigible to the tail; the
spirals were glued together every time they crossed,
with a reinforcing circle of wood on the joint; four to six
internal circular braces and a keel strengthened the
whole. The lower section of the interior was sealed off
to form engine rooms, crew quarters, and cargo holds,
while the interior of the hull was divided into cells for
the gasbags, which were contained by a network of steel
wire.
Power was provided by a steam turbine, a radical
high-pressure design mostly manufactured from the
new, and as yet very costly, aluminum alloys. This was
coupled to a compressor, which supplied high-pressure
air for six external pneumatic turbine pods driving
large wooden propellors. The fuel was hydrogen from
the gasbags, mixed with petroleum distillate, balanced
so as to have a neutral effect on buoyancy. The
compressor also powered pumps for compressing the
gas into cylinders, and an electrical generator, which
could, at need, crack extra hydrogen from the water in
the ballast tanks along the keel. Steering was via large
cruciform control fins at the rear of the vessel, and
longitudinal control could also be achieved by pumping
ballast water between different tanks. The gondola was
entirely enclosed in the hull, and the bridge was a
glassed-in section of the dirigible's lower nose section.
The nose itself had extra bracing and a large metal
eyebolt for fastening the craft to a mooring tower;
permanant stowage and repair was done in huge
hangars, and the deflated craft was hung from the
rooftree of the hangar while undergoing construction
or maintenance work.
The first craft were quite small, 200-400 feet in
length, and served mainly for experiment and training;
several were lost, in storms or to fire. Hydrogen proved
inherently risky, but not impossibly so provided careful
precautions were taken to prevent the buildup of an
explosive air-hydrogen mixture inside the envelope of
the dirigible. Maintaining a slight overpressure within
the gondola, and keeping the outer fabric envelope
permeable (so that any escaped hydrogen would
quickly rise and diffuse into the atmosphere) sufficed
to bring safety to acceptable levels. By the time of the
Anglo-Russian War of 1879-1882, the Alexandria
Institute's craft had reached the point where voyages of
some hundreds of miles, carrying payloads of several
tonnes, were routine.
The Northern War (as the Draka called the conflict)
broke out in the spring of 1879; its basic cause was
Russian pressure on Turkey, and the Czar's desire to
push his frontiers farther south in Central Asia at the
expense of Afghanistan, which was the last of the
Muslim khanates between his dominions and British
India. The Draka were involved first as members of the
British Empire, and secondly because their possessions
in the Mediterranean (Cyprus, Crete, Rhodes, the
Ionian Islands, and ultimately Egypt) would be
menaced if the Russian Empire took Constantinople
and the Straits.
The war went badly for the British in the first year,
with Russian armies laying Constantinople under siege
and advancing as far as Kabul in Afghanistan; the
Russians were embarrassingly ahead of the hidebound
British armed forces in their application of
autosteamer transport to logistics. The Draka entered
the war only when they were given ironclad assurance
of overall command, whereupon 750,000 Janissary and
Citizen troops were poured into the conflict. The war on
land is outside the scope of this paper, but it was the
conflict in the air that captured the imagination of the
world.
The first massed attack was launched from Draka
bases on Crete; ten 600-foot Lammermeyer-class
dirigibles bombarded the Russian siege lines around
Constantinople, in conjunction with the landings at
Thessalonika. The Russians had balloons, and a few
French-style semirigids, but nothing like these
purpose-built aerial warships. Subsequent raids on
both military and civilian targets disorganized the
Russian rear echelon and played a substantial part in
the eventual Draka victory. They also brought the
dirigible well and truly into the public eye, and in the
postwar period every major power rushed into dirigible
research, often with catastrophic results.
The next major steps in dirigible design were the
substitution of aluminum alloys for wood in the frame
and of internal-combustion engines for steam turbines
as the motive power. Both occurred in the mid-1880s,
as the Alexandria Institute's research program pressed
relentlessly for improved efficiency. The first
transatlantic flight (1882) was made in a Northern
War-style craft, crossing between Apollonaris and
Recife, Brazil, where the South Atlantic is narrowest.
This was a spectacular success, but not of much
practical importance, as the fuel and ballast
requirements left little cargo capacity.
Aluminum had been available for specialty use since
the 1840s, refined by an offshoot of the cyanide-process
gold-refining methods developed for the refractory ores
of the Whiteridge. The early 1880s saw the electrolytic
process perfected, and the Domination proved very rich
both in bauxite and hydropower. Prices fell
continuously, and a wide variety of aluminum alloys
were developed. The first metal-frame dirigibles had
duralumin skeletons and cloth coverings, with internal
gasbags. By 1900, a new type with gas-tight
aluminum-alloy shells, reinforced within by spiral
bracing, had become predominant. With multiple
turbo-compound engines, airships were capable of
speeds in excess of 120 kph, and unrefueled flights of
several thousand kilometers.
Excerpts from:
"A History of Weapons and Warfare"
by Colonel Carlos Fuete, U.S. Army (Ret,)
Defense Institute Press, Mexico City
Small Arms Development: The Draka Experience
[Note on terminology: until roughly the 1820s, the
inhabitants of the Crown Colony of Drakia were
commonly referred to as "Drakians"; after that, as
"Draka." This article follows that usage. ]
The initial migrants to the Crown Colony of Drakia in
1781-1785 included a number of Loyalist and Hessian
regiments; most of these were stood down when their
members took up the land grants issued by the Crown,
but they remained active in the Militia reserve forces.
The original armament of the newcomers was a
mixture of breech-loading Ferguson rifles (25%),
muzzle-loading rifles of both the "Kentucky" and
"German/Jaeger" varieties (10%), and ordinary Brown
Bess smoothbores (65%). All of these weapons were
flintlocks, but their performance differed widely, as
follows:
Brown Bess
Caliber: .75 inch c.
Weight: 11 lb.
Range: 75 yards effective, 150 maximum
Rate of Fire: 2-4 rounds per minute
Operation: Muzzle-loading
Kentucky Rifle
Caliber: .50 inch
Weight: 9 lb.
Range: 150-200 yards effective, 400 maximum
Rate of Fire: 1—2 rounds per minute
Operation: Muzzle-loading
Ferguson Rifle (with round ball)
Caliber: .45
Weight: 10 lb.
Range: 200-250 yards effective, 400 maximum
Rate of Fire: 6-8 rounds per minute
Operation: Lever-operated screw plug
The Ferguson rifle, invented by General Patrick
Ferguson (b. 1741, Pitfours, Aberdeenshire, d. 1807,
Cape Town, Crown Colony of Drakia), was obviously for
and away the more efficient weapon. The breech was
blocked by a vertical plug, coarsely threaded like a giant
bolt. The lower end was attached to the front of the
movable trigger guard of the weapon, which had a
wooden handle affixed to the rear behind the hand-grip.
A complete 360-degree turn lowered the plug and
exposed the chamber of the rifle; a ball and paper
cartridge of black powder were then loaded, the
flintlock primed, and the action reversed to seal the
breech. The weapon was then ready to fire.
The Ferguson rifle—"the gun that broke the
tribes"—had all the advantages of Brown Bess and the
Kentucky rifle, with features uniquely its own. Unlike
the Kentucky rifle, it could carry a bayonet, a factor of
some importance in the 18th century, and unlike Brown
Bess the "sticker" did not interfere with loading. Not
only was its rate of fire substantially better than the
smoothbore, but it could be loaded comfortably while in
the saddle or lying down behind cover. The threaded
plug gave excellent gas sealage, and the lighter bullet
meant that more ammunition could be carried. Unlike
muzzle-loaders, it could not be multiply loaded by
mistake in the confusion and noise of battle. Best of all,
it could be manufactured with the rather primitive
gunsmithing technology of the period; the plug had to
be turned on a lathe, but this was the only unorthodox
part.
In Europe and America, military conservatism kept
the Ferguson rifle confined to specialist units; the
British army was satisfied with its volley-and-bayonet
tactics, the French enemies never showed any sign of
initiating an arms race, and the Americans preferred
smoothbores and the vastly inferior Hall breechloader
for reasons of national pride and lack of competition.
The Drakians could not afford such luxuries. Faced
by native opponents capable of fielding armies of tens
of thousands of fanatically brave spearmen, they
needed a weapon that could hit hard, fast, and far.
Armories were established, using skilled gunsmiths
from among the Loyalist population and later European
immigrants, and enough breech-loaders were produced
to reequip the entire militia. Drawing on the experience
of the Dutch colonists before them, the new masters of
the Cape rapidly formed units of mounted riflemen,
supplemented by light fast-moving horse artillery. With
Fergusons, a few dozen colonists were a match for
regiments of black spearmen. Fighting from mobile
wagon-forts, a few hundred could shoot down
thousands without loss to themselves. By the mid
1780s, the Drakian soldier of the early conquest had
taken on the characteristics that were to last for most of
the next fifty years: mounted on a small hardy pony and
leading a string of remounts, equipped with a
Ferguson, two double-barreled pistols, knife, and saber.
Regiments of black slave-soldiers filled garrison and
infantry roles.
The Ferguson was a weapon of revolutionary
importance, but it was not perfect; for example, the hot
gases eventually eroded the seal between the threads of
the plug and the drilled breech, requiring a new plug
and remachining. It required careful maintenance to
prevent a buildup of fouling in the chamber and barrel,
and the plug had to be wiped and oiled after every use
to prevent corrosion, which could ruin the gas seal.
Prolonged heavy firing could heat the chamber and
cause disastrous "cook off" detonation of the loose
powder during loading. Like all flintlocks, it had a
tendency to misfire, which required a lengthy and
frustrating drill to clear the touchhole, and it was
vulnerable to damp. Furthermore, the round ball used
was very inefficient aerodynamically, limiting range
and accuracy.