Building an Airforce from scratch

[racedo]

More of a challenge of the wealth of experience on here.

Couple of weeks ago visited the Science Museum and sheer volume of aircraft production you could see in some of the picture got me thinking.

Challenge is to build from exisiting UK resources and that includes everything that drives, an Air Force of Fighters and Bombers (Minimum WW2 Spec), no computers available, to defend UK and project force when required.

Constraint is you have electricity but no computers but you can use anything and everything in the UK.

Is the capability still there and what would be required to get there ?

[pitotheat]

An interesting concept but why not start with what is available now. Given a budget of say £10 billion pa what structure, roles and size could the country have. You could use all modern management techniques to have a lean command structure, an efficient training machine and flexible support to your front line assets. An ability to support a Division strength deployment worldwide, blue water maritime forces and the defence of the UK(let's assume that will still include Scotland). I am sure this has been debated at various Staff College courses regularly. Has anyone got any thoughts?

[t43562]

Can you use computers to design them - even if you can't use computers in them?

I ask because I think it would be hard to find any company in the UK now that doesn't use computers to design engines or computer controlled machine tools to make parts accurately.

The ability to design and build pretty useful computers still exists in the UK now and electronics of some form were available even in WW2. It would make sense if you didn't have computers to build some.

The Bloodhound SSC project is possibly something you might look to to see what the UK is capable of with its spare capacity.

[N2erk]

I'm surprised that no wag has suggested a government firmly committed to, and supportive of, said plan.

[racedo]

NO COMPUTERS, EMT burst has fried everything.

Reason for this is to see how far we can get without them.

I have said WW2 spec at a minimum so quantity more appropriate.

Work on basis that electronics as we know for last 60 years are no longer available.

Its to use peoples minds rather than electronics in corner.

As for engines I said use what is available............i.e. How many engines are available in UK already in cars / trucks etc that could be used.

Think Scrapyard Challenge Air Force

[Maxibon]

Hawker Hunter!

[sycamore]

Good job I`ve still got a sliderule..

[ian16th]

Good job I`ve still got a sliderule..

But can you remember how to use it? :O

I remember with great joy when the TSTS guys at Yatesbury 1st allowed us to use our 'guessing sticks' in trade tests.

They promptly put 'correct' answers with the decimal point shifted in the multiple choice options.:eek:

[Legalapproach]

Racedo, are you Alex Salmond?

[Hangarshuffle]

I wish. Without the plummy Sergeant killers.

[racedo]

Racedo, are you Alex Salmond?

Them fighting words.....

What I am seeking is what is ability here from scratch to get a "rag tag" airforce up and running using what is available.

Figure ability is there and offers a challenge.

[Deaf]

No Computers=
No Electricity so hand tools only
No Fuel so no food in shops so no one to operate the hand tools

Getting a airforce would be the least of the problems

[Hempy]

Deaf is right, it's a ridiculous scenario because unless you made it a national effort it's impossible. The drafting, design and hand building techniques you are mentioning just don't exist anymore...they've been replaced by machines that do it cheaper, better and to tighter tolerances. Why keep skills that are redundant?

[gr4techie]

hand building techniques you are mentioning just don't exist anymore

Interesting true story... The biggest reason why UK aircraft were made out of wood (and not metal) at the start of WW2 was because we were a nation of carpenters. We had a lot of wood working skills but very little metal work experience. You could get a cabinet maker to produce a wooden aircraft but not a metal one.

[t43562]

I don't think you can uninvent things. If we had no computers due to an EMP burst we'd start by building some.

A friend of mine at university spent time thinking about this and printed out the source code for a C compiler because he thought that if we ever had to bootstrap ourselves back into operation we'd need some emp-insensitive copies of our most useful software. He and I reckoned at that time that there would likely be some Motorola 68,000 chips that would survive somewhere because so many were made., By now it might be ARM chips, which are of course designed in Britain. Even if none survived we'd be well served to start by building some./we woudn't need to go theough all the endless debates about the best way to do things to the same degree as in the past - we'd have a pretty good plan to start with.

It would be a bloody great innovation in itself to reinvent all that stuff from scratch but it would help the entire rebuilding effort including, incidentally, an airforce.

If you think about it, everyone would be needed whatever their skills - not just the aerospace engineers and barring some long term continuing problem/danger we'd get back to high tech quite fast if we were away from it for less than a generation.

[racedo]

No Computers=
No Electricity so hand tools only
No Fuel so no food in shops so no one to operate the hand tools

Don't need computers to generate electricity, useful in managing it.

Play along with the theoretical question.

Interesting in responses so far are indicative of well we will manage and it won't happen rather than seeing it as opportunity to see what we could do.

Given what is around cars, trucks, engines, metal could an Air Force be put together or has everybody quit ?

[Willard Whyte]

Work on basis that electronics as we know for last 60 years are no longer available

...

As for engines I said use what is available............i.e. How many engines are available in UK already in cars / trucks etc that could be used.


No engines then.

Dificult to imagine an offensive glider force that has no means of getting airborne in the first place.

[Roadster280]

Let alone the problem of making anything, you would have an issue designing the aircraft.

If computers don't exist, do you design for missile defence? Chaff? What about radar? ECM? ECCM? What kind of offensive weapons?

Would the "computer" in the V bombers be OK? It was analog. If it would be OK, then use analog computers to design the aircraft first. Or just design a digital computer from scratch. Mr Sinclair did it.

Do you go for some kind of turbine engine, or a piston engine? I imagine it might be quicker to design a turbine than a piston engine from scratch.

As said, you can't "unlearn" something.

Interesting conundrum though!

[Exnomad]

Those of use that used to design aircraft equipment using slide rules and log tables have probably lost all those skills. I can just remember out to divide and multiply using a slide rule.
It did take a long time. I once had to repeat some design calcs that had taken me a week using log table maths, and carried out a similar set in half a day using an early programmable calculator.
I would think aircraft of the Hunter era were the last designed on paper.

[TomJoad]

Why would you want to? If such a countrywide emp hit us then it hit elsewhere - who is attacking? Better, more pressing things to concentrate on.

Wasn't there some kind of TV series on this theme in the 70s - told the story of a group of people trying to rebuild civilisation following a viral attack that killed most of humanity. Funny enough their first thoughts turned to food, shelter, warmth.

[t43562]

You'd have to scour through all the design drawings you had for existing aircraft for ones you could adapt. You wouldn't try to design new ones because of the risk of failure.

No electricity means no aluminium, I presume. That might be simplistic because there's recycled aluminium out there but your casting process might not be able to produce good enough quality and you'd have less of an ability to inspect the stuff you had. At the very best I'd assume that its use would be minimal.

You'd need rooms of people doing calculations, checking and rechecking them.

A lot would depend on the materials available. Could you make fibreglass for instance? It needs plastics which an electrically and electronically operated factory might not be able to make.

Fabric over wood might be a better bit although many textiles factories are no longer in the UK or are electronically operated you still might have enough in storage to kit out an airforce. This obviously also applies to aluminium too - perhaps there is enough piping in the UK to enable one to construct ultralights.

You would most likely restart your airforce with all the aircraft that you can still find that are in a flyable condition. Perhaps this ragtag of old planes would actually be enough for the start.

While you are playing out this fantasy old aeroplane game, the rest of us would be rushing to get the infrastructure back online and unless there was a continuous problem that prevented us, we'd have the most critical parts of it back soon enough - most importantly the communications systems which are quite critical to anyone including the military. We might start with ladybird-book crystal radios using a lump of coke and a lemon battery but we'd be progressing out of that state as fast as we possibly could.

So it would be imperative to return to the electronic age and we would do it bloody quickly and as a matter of probably much more importance than an airforce. We would not be able to get to where we are now in terms of quantity but probably would be able to reach the quality level mostly.

Again this is also dependent on how many people got wiped out. The first problem would probably be food and the sudden inability to move it around because of not having electricity for trains, trains with electronics onboard, trucks with any kind of electronic engine control and so on.

If most people survived then most would be engaged in restarting the entire engine of the economy and whether you want electronics or not the rest of us would want them and would work towards getting them back.