What kind of altitude will the plane have in the future, it can be said that in this world, no one knows better than Yang Yuanzhao that the future air is the world of aircraft.

In this era, the balloon, which has been developed for more than 100 years, under the deliberate guidance of the Northwest, uses a more mature body, concentrates some weapons such as bombing and machine guns, and replaces hydrogen with helium, the safety has been greatly improved, and the attack power has also been greatly improved, and it has a comprehensive role in the battlefield.

This kind of airship with higher safety performance has extended the service life of the airship, since Germany began to use the airship to enter the time of the war, the research of the airship is deepening, and all countries have invariably entered the era of the airship, even if it is a million cost, the airships of various countries have been concentrated, and 1500 have been built, which is a huge suffocating number.

In this feast, the Northwest did not get involved, tightly guarded its own insistence, and made money at most by making finished products, and one-third of the world's airships were made in the Northwest. The reason for this is because Yang Yuanzhao knows that this airship is just a flash in the pan, and the aircraft in the northwest can already easily kill the airship.

In this era, most airplanes are just toys, and it is good to be able to take the pilot to the sky, and the speed is also more than 100 kilometers, and the slower, even only a few tens of kilometers, is slower than the fastest train. As long as the threshold of power is crossed, even if the aircraft in the northwest are not exposed, after the power and technology are gradually improved, at least 5 years, at most 10 years, when the engine of more than 300 or even 500 horsepower appears, the high-speed aircraft and the weapons carried will make the airship completely disappear from the sky.

An airplane with only a few hundred thousand can easily shoot down a million, or even more, airship. The era of airships will be directly ended by airplanes, which is not the result of Northwest research, but a person who really understands warfare understands, and as a weapon, airplanes have everything that airships do not have, even when the power reaches a certain level. Even the huge load capacity of the airship will be replaced by an airplane.

Because of the relationship between gas and structure, the airship cannot be expanded endlessly, and the semi-hardening has increased the load capacity of the airship to a certain extent, and no matter how large its own strength is, it is not enough to make it a metal material, which is the biggest problem restricting the expansion of the airship.

But airplanes don't exist. When the power and buoyancy are reached under the impetus of speed, they can rise into space, and under the continuous expansion of power, the load capacity can also be improved, and there are even huge aircraft with a take-off weight of more than 200 tons in later generations.

These are fantastical for this era, like science fiction-like planes, and people in this era can't understand them. With the exception of the Northwest, no one recognizes the important role of aircraft. There is no factory specializing in the development of aircraft, airplanes are just toys among enthusiasts, most of the aircraft engines, or ordinary car engines, in this car has only appeared for a short time, his engine horsepower can not be very large. Tens of horsepower are normal, early airplanes, basically made of the lightest materials, wood or other skins, these toys have little military use. At most, it is used as a reconnaissance outlet.

Northwest has perfected the power of ordinary engines and star engines, which has gradually moved from a single 1200 horsepower to 1800, and has been close to the aircraft engine during World War II in terms of performance, and on this basis, Northwest has opened the research on turboprop engines.

Yang Yuanzhao is a power engineer, aircraft engine project, he knows only a theory, but as a speed enthusiast, modified cars and motorcycles are his hobbies, in order to pursue the ultimate speed, he has studied rocket-jet motorcycles and cars, for the basic theory of turboprops still know, this concentration of countless giants of the inspiration of the fire structure, in this era, has an incomparable advantage, jet is much higher than this era, in the absence of missiles and radar, the practicality is not strong, And the next turboprop came into his field of vision.

The main difference of the piston propeller machine is that the propeller of the turboprop engine usually runs at a constant rate, while the piston power propeller will change according to the speed of the engine.

Piston engines have pistons, which rotate by the piston repeatedly reciprocating in the cylinder to drive the crankshaft. A turboprop engine is like a fan (compressor) that pumps in air, injects fuel into the combustion chamber, ignitions it, and drives (blows) a turbine (like the usual steam turbine blades) when a large amount of hot gas is discharged. A large part of the power output drives the main shaft of the propeller to rotate to generate aircraft power: a small part drives the aforementioned compressor to deliver air to the combustion chamber

It's not that no one has discovered the advantages of turboprop engines, the prototype was actually proposed before World War II, but the real use was made in 1942, just as a variant of a new engine, the performance was not very stable, and after World War II, there was a big development.

For turboprops, a key constraint is the combustion chamber, which requires higher temperatures and pressures for ignition, which is very demanding for materials science, and before World War II, because of the difference in technology and processing level, it was almost impossible for lightweight materials resistant to high temperature and high pressure to reach the limit of power.

But the northwest is different, on the one hand, with the help of an all-in-one machine, thousands of different materials every day, from the middle to select enough excellent materials, many are only formulas, but can not be manufactured, but can be manufactured, has been beyond this era, including suitable high temperature and high pressure materials, high temperature resistance even more than 1000 degrees.

These materials, the advantage of turbine engines, temperatures above 800 degrees, which are more suitable for the recovery of turbocaps, it is these heat-resistant materials that allow Northwest to cross the piston engine and run directly to the more advanced turboprops.

In later generations, there is only one powerful and fuel-efficient two advantages, some turbine engines with more outstanding performance will be applied to large passenger aircraft, mostly placed in civilian use, military use is rare, large turboprop aircraft, not only radar can be found, huge noise so that sonar can be easily found, at most is made into a refueling aircraft, can only be used as a helicopter refueling, or large transport aircraft, the advantage of fuel saving, so that he can fly farther, the carrying capacity is stronger.

In this era when propeller aircraft have not been thoroughly developed, on the point of fuel saving, production, there is a huge advantage, under the same power conditions, at least nearly half of the oil is saved than the piston engine, as for the speed of the turboprop engine is slow, it is relative to the jet engine that exceeds the speed of sound, unique characteristics, so that the turboprop engine can not exceed the speed of sound, relative to later generations, often 2 times, 3 times the speed of sound, relative to the beginning of the twentieth century, and even to the Second World War period, the maximum speed of the aircraft speed of hundreds of kilometers, Not much lower than them.

The most important thing is that compared with the piston engine, the turboprop is easy to increase in power, and its emergence makes it possible for the Northwest to have a larger strategic bomber in addition to commercial aircraft.

As early as the development of high-power aero engines, the northwest set up a project, but before the aero engine did not have a big development, the development of this project is minimal, but Yang Yuanzhao attaches great importance to it, and even personally leads the power project, under his unremitting efforts, under the development of all aspects of technology in the northwest, after accumulating enough experience, the prototype of the turboprop engine has also been developed through concentrated research.

Yang Yuanzhao understands very well that power is the basis of all mobile tools, and the problem of power is not solved, and the prototype is very difficult, at most it is only a model, but once the power problem is solved, then the next step is much faster, therefore, in the study of military weapons, the project of large commercial aircraft is especially included in it, and it has successfully passed the review of the First Five-Year Plan, becoming one of more than 1,600 large-scale projects.

For reasons of secrecy, it is impossible to let this commercial aircraft go abroad, but in China, it is still possible to use it exclusively for a certain level of people, the huge Chinese territory, the many business and government trips, not to mention anything else, take Yang Yuanzhao as an example, Qingdao, Shanghai, Xinjiang, there are many things that he needs to deal with personally, the special train of the train, the average speed of 150 kilometers per hour, can no longer meet the requirements, in the intensive time of the trip, Yang Yuanzhao even did not hesitate to divide a body into three or four to use, Probably a month or two, most of the time was spent on the railway.

With commercial aircraft, most of the problems can be solved, even if the longest range of 5000 kilometers, it only takes 10 hours, which saves a lot of time, and there are factories and research institutes all over China, the things produced, some seasonal food and important intelligence originals, can be used for transshipment, air superiority, ignoring most of the direct effects of the geographical environment, in the transportation of some important materials, very critical, some important areas, speed can solve a lot of problems.

The huge role of commercial aircraft, compared with the huge role of strategic bombers, when the equivalent of the B29, or even higher level of strategic bombers appeared, carpet bombing became possible, when the time came, the intensive defense of the reinforcements, in the face of endless aerial bombardment, is really crying without tears, the air force will really have a decisive role, air supremacy has become the first prerequisite right beyond the right of way and sea power, lost air supremacy, strategically will fall into absolute passivity. (To be continued......)