Airships and their weapons.

They will have to have at least fins for basic accuracy and stable flight. Wings will come later when they basically become the first cruise missiles ie they get wings and would end up resembling V-1's and other early guided weapons.

edited 25th Mar '15 6:51:28 PM by TuefelHundenIV

right, by the way are you making a book or posting it online some were, cuz i WILL read this story right now if i could.

No real work has been done. Pvtnum11 tried his hand with a brief short story it worked out pretty well if you ask me. Mostly the idea was to try and hash out gist of how the airships work something that is frequently forgotten in a lot of media.

edited 25th Mar '15 6:52:27 PM by TuefelHundenIV

well i for one can't wait to check out the end result if your going to all the trouble of this braining storming/stemming.

If anything gets written I will gladly share it.

Might be reviving a long-dead thread, but I saw the bit towards the end about prototypical cruise missiles...

Depending on how much you want it to resemble a modern Tomahawk, or more accurately how much you don't mind if it doesn't, "Aerial Torpedos" existed as a work-in-progress as early as World War One (the Sperry Aerial Torpedo and the Kettering Bug, basically airplanes mounting an autopilot and a large warhead). They never got the wrinkles ironed out and the concept got shelved until WWII, which saw worn-out bombers loaded up to the gills with bombs and guided in via radio control.

Also of note, one of the first anti-shipping missiles, The GT-1, basically a Mark 13 torpedo slung under a glider equipped with an autopilot, slung under a bomber. Get to within 10-20 miles of your target, release the glider, the autopilot keeps it in a wings-level glide towards the target, and when it gets within a desired low altitude above the water, the torpedo is released and allowed to do its thing. Scratch the torpedo release mechanism, and you have what might be considered a reasonably effective anti-airship munition (then again, it might be easier just to pelt the thing with rocketfire, depending on how much armor you can get aloft on an airship).

I know of some of those early drone planes. What was it. Project Aurora? That packed a craft with explosives and guided it remotely to a target?

There are even earlier remotely operated craft then that. There was a traditional definition airship that was remotely operated and demonstrated.

Remember the glide torpedo weapon. Can't forget weapons like the Fritz X though.

Glide bombs are an interesting option. Rockets were one of the options as well. It would also depend on how effective your rockets are on armor. I could see them good fro denuding observations ports, stripping of anything mounted outside.

Or combine the two concepts. Put a rocket motor on a glide bomb, to let it get to its target faster (and be less likely to miss, natch). Not sure what kind of range a magnetic guidance system would need, but if it works at a reasonable distance, you could even design the missile to correct its course for terminal guidance to the target, depending on how substantial the metalic parts of the airship are (you were talking in one of the other threads about using phlebotinum to basically have floating ironclads, yes?)

They could use the early method of tail flare guided by radio by a gunner.

^ Or a manned suicide missile. There's a lot of Navy folk who probably wish such a thing as the Ohka never existed.

I saw that. Freaking crazy bastards.

That was sort of a unique thing though. A lot of the visual refrence for bombadiers/gunners were flares embedded in the tail of the weapons. The further away they could see the flare the better they could guide it to the target.

Self guiding projectiles though existed as well. Imagine a radio guided rocket that guided a buzz bomb at a ship. That would be a scary weapon.