Chapter 331
Major General Sir Phillip Quelch (KCB, DSO and bar) was pacing back and forth below George Washington's statue on Trafalgar Square waiting for his latest appointment. The Commonwealth Technology Commission had become the go-to branch of the Government for persons with all sorts of crazy schemes. For example just this morning he had been forced to turn away a group of men that had advocated building a massive, island-sized Carrier out of Ice and Sawdust of all things. The very idea had been instantly dismissed as ridiculous.
The chap he was meeting now had been going hat in hand from nearly every branch of the Air Force to every Branch of the Navy and was now desperate enough to offer his contraption to the Army.
Quelch had been intrigued enough to agree to this meeting and to be frank, he enjoyed London at this time of the year even during wartime.
He looked around and was about to take off his cap and go for a cup of tea as he saw the man walking across the square from Nelson's column.
“General Quelch?”
“Mr. Sikorsky, a pleasure to meet you.” the General said and held out his hand.
Sikorsky took it and shook it.
“Sorry for this meeting, General, but I had to try and get the Admiralty to see reason.”
Quelch nodded and with his customary sarcasm he replied: “I trust they didn't.”
Sikorsky shook his head. “They did not. Why don't we go to my office?”
Once there Quelch noted that the walls were adorned with pictures and drawings of several strange flying machines and about half a dozen pictures of the flying boats Sikorsky had designed before the Civil War in America.
“So why are you approaching me, Mr. Sikorsky? Just of what use would your machine be for the Army?”
“Let me show you.”
Sikorsky stepped over to the window and pulled back the blinds. Outside the General saw the machine from the photographs. The two wing-like things overhead where wirling at an increasing speed before it eventually took to the air. Vertically.
"That is indeed impressive I must say."
“Problem is, there has been exactly no progress in this field since 1940. It's probably the Germans have a considerable advantage on us.”
“What makes you say that?” Quelch asked as he watched the machine fly a few circles and then come in towards landing.
Sikorsky handed him a wad of papers and photographs.
“They flew an Autogyro in the late '30s and when the war broke out I personally knew of at least several projects at the very least near the prototype stage.”
Quelch looked the various pictures and papers. He made a mental note that he would have a look into this. The papers sometimes dated back to before the war and he could see how Sikorsky had been left to wither on the vine.
“So what is it that you want of me?”
“Just enough funds to continue testing and maybe construct a prototype of my next version of that machine.”
“There still remains the basic question. Of what use would this machine be?”
“Artillery observation planes that need only a patch of open ground, or evacuation of emergency casualties, scouting... there are infinite possibilities.”
“Give me any papers and information you are comfortable to release and I will have a look at them. If I like what I see I will make a recommendation. That's all I can promise, Mr. Sikorsky.”
“I will ask for no more.”
But Quelch could see that Sikorsky was desperate. Not out of fear for his next meal, he was working working with Shorts as one of the Chief Engineers after all but it was clear that he was trying desperately to keep his ideas alive. That he had been forced to go that route hardly surprised the General. There were too many crackpot ideas out there for the severely taxed British Economy to support and a good number of those that received funding and support were dead-ends anyway.
Like for example that bomber that was supposed to fly in what was called a 'sub-orbital' path to bomb Siberia and Japan from Britain, or an idea to put rockets with various payloads into an empty submarine that was supposed to be towed by a second submarine to the enemy coast, abandoned and that would then fire it's rockets at the enemy or, and that was the first of it, a proposal for an automated tunnelling machine that would be used to build an invasion tunnel under the Channel through which the Army would invade France directly. Really. The very idea of a tunnel under the Channel!
But that said, Sikorsky's idea seemed to have some merit.
If it could be made to work that is.
“Can this be scaled up? And most importantly, how does this work.”
“I am very confident in that, General.”
Sikorsky successfully offered the General a seat.
“As to how it works,” a knock on the door interrupted him, “A cup of tea, General?”
Quelch nodded. At least the man hadn't offered him the plunk he called Coffee.
“As to how it works, it is in principle rather simple. As you know,” Sikorsky said, expecting the General to have some brains, “the rotating bits on top are wing-shaped. When they rotate they generate the lift. When this principle was first tested it was discovered that this creates a torque problem in that the engine-torque makes the body of the aircraft rotate against the direction of the rotors, making the whole thing useless.”
“But you did fix that, as I could see myself.”
“We did. The Germans ran into the same problem and by the looks of it they solved it by using two horizontal rotors going in opposite directions, whereas we simply used a gear to transmit engine power.”
“Why if I may ask?”
“Well, not only would this likely increase the strain on the engine but it would also massively increase the complication of the second major component, the transmission gear. Yes, the Focke-Wulf machine did break several records but we did not go down that route for the above reasons.
Sikorsky sipped from his tea.
“You see, with that configuration you have to design a transmission that goes to two horizontal rotors instead of only one and I have found the attachment of the vertical tail rotor to be easier to do with less moving parts.”[2]
Quelch nodded in agreement.
“More moving parts means more things that can break.” One of the other banes of his professional existence. Over-engineering.
“Indeed, General.”
“Well, let me have a look at those papers again...”
“There is also a film of a test if you want it.”
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Comments, questions, rotten Tomatoes?
I know, I know. I said I wasn't going to do this any more but when
I saw this and watched with with
some appropriate music. Bell Helicopter won't appear though. Pop culture is so radically different by the 60s I can't even begin to imagine what popular music looks like (though I do have some ideas) but there will likely be an appropriate replacement for “Fortunate Son”.
That being said, what made the UH-1 my favourite was a German TV series that had the Heeresflieger SAR version and it's crew as the protagonists. It's been released on DVD but I am too broke to get all 11 seasons....
[1] Yes, no Chunnel ITTL. Franco-British relations are...cool. Nowhere near enough to start sortieing the Channel Fleet to blockade Brest and Toulon, but enough to prevent such things as the Chunnel or Concorde. On the upside this means the Hoverferries survive, and Hovercraft are cool.
[2] There is of course a certain amount of posterior-pulling involved here but Sikorsky wants to sell his design, and admittedly the basic configuration did succeed for a reason. Admittedly I'm no engineer so I can't tell you if Sikorsky is correct but the way I see it you can, simplified, say that adding the transmission to the tail rotor is only a matter of a few cogs. Besides, there is also the space issue to consider, especially on ships. There is no way any of the WW2-German choppas could ever have fitted on a ship.