It's airship time

[Davesax1965]

11 hours ago, LukeFF said:

Guys, let's please stay away from promoting competing flight sims here, thanks. 

I agree. The others aren't very good. 😉

 

Edited January 10 by Dick_Scratcher

[Davesax1965]

Always loved this paint job. Doesn't have to be boring old beige with a cross on it. 

This is someone's (very impressive) attempt at Classic Airships 1:350 model of a Schutte Lanz, the SL11. 
There are a few model kits out there, including ones from Takom. I'm vaguely tempted to have a Zeppelin hanging from the ceiling here. 😉

[JG4_Moltke1871]

A lot of discussions here about the pro‘s and con‘s about the Zeppelins and what else need for Flying Circus like early two seaters…

And everything is understandable. However, finally we have to deal with that what we get and surly I will not say „no“ to the Zepp‘s 😉

 

I hope they will work well, not too easy to destroy and also I hope for good long range career missions like bombing their bases… let’s see what finally will be offered there..

 

 I think there is still a lot of work for Flying Circus, like mentioned the map isn’t finished, some bugs are still there and some mission types currently being overworked and don’t to forget the important revisions of the flight models.

 

I hope for the best possible result once the work on this jewel is done without forgetting any mistake then.

 

So let’s hope for a good effort with the finishing touches of this great Flying Circus module 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

[Davesax1965]

Yep, really, anything is more than welcome. There's a lot which could be added and we're all aware it's a commercial world out there. 
Let's see what happens. As if I won't be buying it. 😉

[BladeMeister]

On 1/10/2025 at 5:41 AM, Davesax1965 said:

I agree. The others aren't very good. 😉

 

Each one has its character and brings something to the table. I am thankful for each WWI CFS and what it provides me in entertainment.

 

S!Blade<><

[Trooper117]

3 hours ago, BladeMeister said:

I am thankful for each WWI CFS and what it provides me in entertainment.

 

Couldn't agree more mate... I've really enjoyed all of my WWI flight sims, plus they all have given me many hours of enjoyment, and each one brings something to the table.

Are they all perfect?, certainly not, but that doesn't mean they aren't any good... 

[BladeMeister]

I am looking forward to Zepplins over Paris at night. I had a nasty little encounter in another sim last night that is getting me excited for Zepplins in FC!

 

S!Blade<><

 

Spoiler

 

 

Edited January 14 by BladeMeister

[Flashy]

@LukeFF is there any loose estimate for when they are planning on releasing the Zeppelin? Before July, or later?

[LukeFF]

8 hours ago, Flashy said:

@LukeFF is there any loose estimate for when they are planning on releasing the Zeppelin? Before July, or later?

 

Not right now, no. 

[Aapje]

It takes quite some time to blow up a Zeppelin:

 

[Trooper117]

2 hours ago, Aapje said:

t takes quite some time to blow up a Zeppelin:

 

I reckon 20 women could soon inflate a Zeppelin... think of all that hot air!

[Charlo-VR]

Oh, the irony!

[Davesax1965]

Here's a "semi interesting thing", if you're that way inclined. 

Bristol Scout - two (47 round) Lewis guns. One either side of the cockpit. Now, we all know that Lanoe Hawker had one Lewis gun on the left side of his cockpit (and pioneered the use of 97 round drums) but ! Some enterprising gentleman here has taken the idea a bit further.

Now, this'd be a good Zep opponent. As well as a BE2c, of course. 🙂

[AndyJWest]

Presumably the idea is that you down the Zepp in a single pass, and then glide back down to get your prop replaced?

[Davesax1965]

3 hours ago, AndyJWest said:

Presumably the idea is that you down the Zepp in a single pass, and then glide back down to get your prop replaced?

That's one to consider. 😉

I was thinking you could have a Lewis gun in each hand and steer with the stick between your knees. 😉

[Avimimus]

5 minutes ago, AndyJWest said:

Presumably the idea is that you down the Zepp in a single pass, and then glide back down to get your prop replaced?

 

(1) The context

 

This choice has to be interpreted in the context of the alternative. The alternative in that era would have been firing a hand-held carbine - so it would take four minutes to fire the same number of rounds as you could fire off from a single Lewis drum. So firing off a single magazine (or two magazines) provides a huge increase in density of effective fire.

 

(2) The probability of impacting your propeller

 

The machine guns at this point in the war had a rate of fire of a bit over 500 rpm, while engines were going at a bit under 1500 rpm. With a two bladed propeller, that works out to six propeller blade passes though the line-of-sight of the gun per bullet launched. If the Lewis gun is firing at about 750 m/s and the propeller blade is about 5 centimetres deep, that works out to 26 milliseconds of potential collision. Firing off all 47 rounds leads to about 280 chances of intersection, each chance taking 26 milliseconds.

 

Combining the two I get about 7.3 seconds of firing per impact. The time to fire off 47 rounds at 550 rpm is 11.7 seconds. Which works out to a 40% chance of not clipping the propeller and a 60% of clipping the propeller (for every magazine fired). Somebody should really check my math on that.

 

(3) The impact of impacting your propeller

 

There were cases with aircraft making it back which had at least two or three bullet holes through their propeller blades - so loss of the prop, even if hit, wasn't inevitable.

 

In fact, the Austro-Hungarians had trouble developing a reliable gun synchroniser if the RPM of the engine was outside of a certain range. They were thus equipped large tachometers underneath the gunsights to help pilots keep the engine in an appropriate speed range when firing and they had a special section of propeller that was wound with wire and connected to a cockpit light - if the light changed it meant they'd holed their propeller and should consider ceasing to fire before they put additional holes in their prop.

 

You'll also notice that this Bristol Scout appears to have a reinforcement attached to the propeller at the location where a hit is likely. It isn't clear that is is as heavy duty as the armoured bullet deflectors equipped to the props of some other early war aircraft - but it is there and would have increased the likelihood of the prop surviving multiple bullet strikes.

 

(4) The Bristol Scout vs. Zeppelins

 

The Bristol Scouts sent against airships in this era would have preferred to use Ranken darts (a kind of incendiary grapnel flechette). Aircraft with Ranken darts often didn't carry guns, as it was already hard to climb enough to get above and ahead of an airship in 1915-1916 and carrying a gun would have made it harder to get into a position to release these small bombs.

 

Aircraft that did intercept airships usually had their guns aimed to fire at an angle outside of the propeller arc (usually upwards). I suspect that the Scout in the picture was intending to hunt two-seaters. They weren't that good at this either. I suspect a Morane-Saulnier N or even a B.E.12 would make more sense as an early Entente fighter. The Morane-Saulnier N also used bullet deflectors instead of synchronisers btw! For airship interceptors the Sopwith Baby might also be attractive (especially as it had a secondary ASW role that the Bristol Scout didn't have).

[Avimimus]

One final note - the Bristol Scout depicted appears to have had the ability to swivel the guns outwards. So it looks like this particular example was configured to both fire through the prop and fire obliquely at an aircraft flying at approximately the same altitude (a theoretically safer option if a non-manoeuvring two seater was found).

[AndyJWest]

I'm not sure about your math. I think that the width of the prop blade at the radius the bullet passes, rather than the depth, is what matters, and beyond that, neither the rate of fire nor the engine RPM really comes into it - just treat each round as random, and figure out what percentage of the prop blade disc arc is actually occupied by blades - this gives you your chance of a hit per round, near enough, since the forward velocity of the round is so much faster than the rotational velocity of the prop.

 

I'd have thought that having the guns swivel upwards rather than sideways was more sensible, if they were moveable. It's hard to tell from the photo what they could do.

 

 

[Avimimus]

2 hours ago, AndyJWest said:

I'm not sure about your math. I think that the width of the prop blade at the radius the bullet passes, rather than the depth, is what matters, and beyond that, neither the rate of fire nor the engine RPM really comes into it - just treat each round as random, and figure out what percentage of the prop blade disc arc is actually occupied by blades - this gives you your chance of a hit per round, near enough, since the forward velocity of the round is so much faster than the rotational velocity of the prop.

 

Ah, yes - I'd thought about that: It is really the volume swept by the prop (so both depth and width). One would also need to consider that the bullet itself is not infinite in length. One could definitely get more accurate.

 

As for the area occupied by the props - I think you might be on to something. I was thinking that the RPM of the propeller means that each propeller blade is occupying the same area of space several times per second - so its probability of being present when a bullet is passing through that space is higher than the area the probability would appear to be if the propeller only travelled through that space once. However, at the time of each bullet firing, the propeller only occupies the space it occupies during the time the bullet is travelling (relative to the space it doesn't occupy)...

 

For the most accurate results it would still make sense to take into account the velocity and width of the propeller at the radius that the bullet is passing through, and also to treat the bullet as having a length (in this case 22mm)... anyone have that data for a 1915 prop?

 

2 hours ago, AndyJWest said:

I'd have thought that having the guns swivel upwards rather than sideways was more sensible, if they were moveable. It's hard to tell from the photo what they could do.

 

It probably would be. There might be some vertical movement - but it can't be very large in that configuration. They eventually settled on fixed angled guns (Zeppelin interceptors) or fixed overwing guns firing at an angle, or movable rail mountings (e.g. foster) which allowed selecting a number of angles and reloading more easily... so vertical oblique firing was discovered to be a much better solution. However, in 1915 and even early 1916 it is quite common to see oblique sideways firing guns (sometimes fixed in position to fire like that).

 

There were also a lot of cases where pilots had fully flexible gun mountings (e.g. B.E.2 when flown as a single seater or some B.E.12 had a flexibly mounted Lewis that the pilot was supposed to use to defend himself while flying the plane.

[Davesax1965]

From what I've read, about 5% of all rounds fired from open bolt LMGs such as a Lewis tended to hit the prop. 

"Open bolt" and "closed bolt". In a machinegun such as Vickers or Spandau, a cartridge is fed into the chamber of the weapon. Behind the cartridge is the bolt, which is used to feed the cartridge in: the bolt is then locked in place behind the cartridge. The action of the gun then is triggered - via the synchronisation gear. The cartridge fires, out comes the bullet, the breech locking is then overcome, another cartridge is chambered. It's all very predictable and lends itself to accurate timing.

 

Which is what we're looking for here, so we know where the propellor is relative to the bullet. 

Open bolt weapons. The bolt of the weapon is locked backwards, pulling the trigger releases it, bolt is powered forwards by a spring - it chambers a cartridge which is then fired. Here's the problem. Due to variations in ammunition, especially true during wartime, the weapon won't fire at a predictable cadence. One round comes out 50 feet a second slower or faster, or the action becomes dirty from powder fouling, or heat expansion means the barrel dimensions change by even a slight fraction, and you no longer have a system which works like clockwork. 

Even with closed bolt systems, you'll still get variations in bullet velocity, of course, as it's not foolproof. But it's more foolproof than open bolt.  

[Aapje]

The big advantage of open bolt is that the round only goes into the hot chamber when you want to fire it. In closed bolt guns, a round can 'cook off' if the chamber is hot and that ignites the powder, without pulling the trigger.

 

So you need either sufficient cooling to keep the gun cool (although all the air rushing past helps a lot) or trigger discipline, to not fire too much in a short time.

[ACG_Bussard]

From the Movie "Zeppelin", 1971

 

Found a great resource about WW1 Zeppelins which I would like to share with you:

 

Zeppelin info

 

Edited February 9 by ACG_Bussard

[TempestV]

If you have Zeppelin fever...this movie is HIGHLY recommended. Got a Zeppelin, GeeBee Racer, Autogyro ...and...Jennifer Connolly 👀

 

 

 

👀

Edited February 9 by TempestV

[Trooper117]

I have visited the graves of 4 Zeppelin crews who were shot down over England... SL-11, L-31, L-32, and L-48.

All are buried in the German war cemetery on Cannock Chase.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ST_Catchov]

Say, it's been months since the zep announcement! And that's a very long time. It seems like fo'evah! How long does we have to wait until we get them updates with regards to wot the zep's progress is? Wot about some pics and words and stuff like that. Peeps wot ain't necessarily into artillery reloading animation and wotnot would be grates.

[PatrickAWlson]

@Avimimus That Bristol Scout pic looked like it had deflector plates on the prop.  

 

@Davesax1965 I would much rather see a Be12 as that would get us much closer to a Be2.

[ST_Catchov]

3 hours ago, PatrickAWlson said:

I would much rather see a Be12 as that would get us much closer to a Be2.

 

Yes Pat, we badly need these beautiful birds for did they not play a role in Zeppelin defence? But then we'd need a Channel/SE England/London map. And then of course the Italian map just for kicks. And flying boats. But alas, I think not. Anyway, should these wonderful additions actually come to fruition, I think I'd drop down dead. So they'd be totally wasted.

[Flashy]

On 1/16/2025 at 6:44 PM, LukeFF said:

 

Not right now, no. 

 

How about now? 😛

[LukeFF]

Nope 🙂

[BraveSirRobin]

 

[JG4_Moltke1871]

 

 

[JG4_Moltke1871]

 

this image makes me dream of looong long range missions 😊😊😊😊

[ST_Catchov]

I want the infamous 'walking' zeppelin designed by Arnold Kohlberger of Chigago and built by Perambulation Industries Inc of Little Rock, Arkansas. Unfortunately, it never took off, the business went broke, and Arnold committed that which cannot be mentioned.

 

But any zeppelin would do when I think about it.

 

[JG4_Moltke1871]

… and I still hope for a WW1 Tank Crew 🙏🏻

 

[ST_Catchov]

On 6/5/2025 at 1:27 PM, JG4_Moltke1871 said:

… and I still hope for a WW1 Tank Crew 🙏🏻

 

When I see that emoji I always think of something rude. I still don't know what it really represents. But that's beside the point.

 

Great idea Moltke! I think the British WW1 tanks had a little kitchen to make a nice cup of tea to soothe the nerves. Maybe with a little rum. For the Germans probably schnapps. The French .... well, who knows? Anyone? 

[JG4_Moltke1871]

22 minutes ago, ST_Catchov said:

 

When I see that emoji I always think of something rude. I still don't know what it really represents. But that's beside the point.

 

Great idea Moltke! I think the British WW1 tanks had a little kitchen to make a nice cup of tea to soothe the nerves. Maybe with a little rum. For the Germans probably schnapps. The French .... well, who knows? Anyone? 

What for some is rude for others is just fun but enough about that….

 

A St. Chamond was that long because it includes a Baguette bakery???

 

 

 

 

A A7V was crowded like a London Metro while rush hour 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 6 by JG4_Moltke1871

[Aapje]

9 hours ago, ST_Catchov said:

 

When I see that emoji I always think of something rude. I still don't know what it really represents.

 

🙏 =

[Trooper117]

Ah, ''pat a cake, pat a cake bakers man, bake me a cake as fast as you can''... I get it now, it's intimating this is kid's stuff!

[JD007]

Definitely looking forward to having a Zeppelin in the sim! Would it be AI only or playable with different views on board? A Zeppelin would be an exciting and interesting unit to have which would allow for Zeppelin raids on London and on the topic of crossing the channel, seaplanes would be a great addition!

And RE: WW1 playable tanks - would love to have a few of those too!

Edited June 7 by JD007

[AndyJWest]

15 minutes ago, JD007 said:

Definitely looking forward to having a Zeppelin in the sim! Would it be AI only or playable with different views on board? A Zeppelin would be an exciting and interesting unit to have which would allow for Zeppelin raids on London and on the topic of crossing the channel, seaplanes would be a great addition!

And RE: WW1 playable tanks - would love to have a few of those too!

 

The Zeppelin will be AI only.