Hi everyone. I'm a writer. I'm currently working on a novel set in a fantasy world with WWI/WWII technology. The genre is dieselpunk, which in a nutshell is retrofuturistic with some odd stuff thrown in. The first Captain America movie was dieselpunk, for instance. I have been basing a lot of the technology on real planes etc. from our history, but I am also including some weirder stuff (robots and some fantasy airplanes). The story takes place during a civil war, so the ruling faction has later WWII technology, while the rebels tend to have tech ranging from WWI era to early WWII.
Anyway, I'm at a point in my story where a rebel character, let's call him Sam, is trying to create a new (fantasy) airplane. The ruling faction just came out with new devastating bombers called Eagles, loosely based on Flying Fortresses, which have thick wings and use radar and have far greater range and speed due to the addition of tetraethyl lead in their fuel. The rebels managed to steal the notes of the engineer who created the Eagles, and Sam is using them to try to create a fighter to counter them. His concept is to build what he'll call Hummingbirds: small, extremely maneuverable crafts, using the new fuel additive and the radar, but probably not the thick wings.
So what I need help with is to properly describe the process by which he realizes that various things aren't working, so that he can have breakthroughs and ultimately engineer a new, far more advanced craft. For instance, the Eagles have four turboprop engines powering propellers, so he's going to use the same tech for the Hummingbirds' propellers. But I was reading up on sound barrier issues and I'm going to have the propellers behaving like Stearman propellers, meaning they spin fast enough to reach supersonic speeds and that causes problems with turbulence. This will lead Sam to ultimately engineer either turbojet or turbofan engines. This is one spot where I'm murky. What makes more sense, that an engineer would develop turbojet engines from turboprop engines, or that he'd develop turbofan engines? I gather turbojet engines predate turbofan engines, but in this novel it doesn't have to progress as it did in the real world. It just has to lead to the creation of this fantasy fighter plane, which can be really advanced, even beyond WWII tech (they have robots already, you know).
Another issue is going to be what material the plane is made of. My concept is for the Hummingbirds to be light and beautiful in contrast to the Eagles which are dark and grim. So the idea I had before I started doing research was that the Eagles would be made of iron while the Hummingbirds would be made of bronze. Well, a few hours of reading later and obviously that isn't going to work. So I haven't really dealt with what the Eagles are made of, other than to say that they are painted black and have chrome fittings. Ultimately it's not something any of the characters would need to know about them, except maybe if Sam is trying to copy their construction, which he really isn't overall because he's not making a bomber. But I do need to have a better sense for the Hummingbirds, as I would like to have another breakthrough happen wrt to what materials he uses to construct them. I have him building the prototype using wood, fabric, and aluminum, but that won't hold up at the speeds the Hummingbird will go. There's going to be a spectacular failure of one of the test flights. So then he needs to figure out what alloy will work better, and I'd like to do something with copper and aluminum, so I can justify describing the Hummingbirds as golden or bronze colored. I've also been reading about anodized aluminum, and that might work, though I don't understand why it sometimes has color and sometimes doesn't. Is it just something people do to make it pretty? Or does color happen as a chemical reaction to some types of anodization? Any advice there is very much appreciated.
Another problem he's going to run into is wing twist and control reversal. Am I understanding the process of wing twist correctly: air flow is so powerful over the wing due to high speeds that although the intention was for the wing to push down, instead it snaps up, like a reversed umbrella? And then everything else to do with the wing is somehow reversed? Not sure I'm totally getting this.
Someone I spoke to about this suggested that the solution to wing twist in the Hummingbirds would be a pivoting wing that sweeps back to a predetermined angle at high speed like the Grumman F-14 Tomcat. Any advice here would also be very, very appreciated.
Essentially the end result would ideally be an airplane that really calls a hummingbird to mind, in that it would be small, beautiful, extremely fast, and maneuverable. I envision a scene where the Hummingbirds would swarm the Eagles, bringing them down.
Oh, and if anyone thinks of a cool new weapon they could use, I'd love to hear your ideas, too. They really can end up being pretty fantastic, in the sense of straying from reality, as long as their tech makes sense.
I will, of course, credit anyone who wants credit in the acknowledgements of the book. And free copies to anyone who wants them. I'm an independent writer so this is stuff I do in my free time and I really appreciate any expert advice I can get.