41 Working Toward Flight

Roland was working on his latest project, the airplane. It was something that he had been planning on building for a long time. It would finally give humanity a way to contend with the demons in the air. While the new technology has allowed their forces to defeat the demons on the ground, the only air forces the humans have are the occasional witch that can fly like Lightning or Maggie. Needless to say, it would not be viable to rely on them for significant operations where they would face actual opposition.

With planes, not only would they be able to kill the flying Devilbeasts - Roland was already imagining the exciting dogfighting maneuvers that appeared during World War 1 - the planes would also be able to provide intelligence on enemy movements. Lastly, they would be able to drop bombs on the enemy. If they had planes, then they wouldn't even have needed to send an expedition to destroy the outpost, they could have just sent some planes loaded with bombs.

However, making this revolutionary device wasn't going to be easy. The most difficult to produce component of the aircraft is actually the pilot. Yes, the pilot is the most irreplaceable part of the air force. Other parts come out of the factory by the hundreds but training a pilot takes a long time. There was a reason that the Japanese used Kamikaze bombers at the end of the war - they had no time to train pilots how to land.

Roland had already begun recruiting for the air force. There were many applicants because lots of people saw this as a way to get into the army after being rebuffed from the regular army which was swamped with an excess of applicants. It seemed that the propaganda was working too well. Though there were many applicants, only a small fraction of them showed the aptitude to be a pilot. At the moment they were still in training. It would probably be a long time before they would be ready to actually fly a plane. Such a process could not be rushed after all, especially since it was the first time that planes would be used.

Designing the plane was definitely no easy task either. Roland had to do careful calculations for the aerodynamics of the plane. He had to figure out the right size and shape to make everything. In fact, Roland expected that he would have to build multiple planes to compare.

The plane would resemble one of the earliest planes back on Earth. The frame of the plane would mostly be made of wood, with some metal. Steel was heavy and if he made the entire plane out of steel it would make it difficult to allow the plane to take off. He also didn't have enough aluminum to make planes entirely out of aluminum. So he will use wood. However, the wings would not be composed of wood. Instead, he would have Soraya repeatedly add on layers to make wings. The wings made would be much more durable and they would also not suffer from rot or rust like wooden or metal wings might.

The most difficult part of the plane was the engine. Up until now, Neverwinter had operated entirely off of steam engines. This was alright for factories, but steam engines were too heavy for planes to use. So, Roland had to make a new type of engine from scratch - the internal combustion engine.

That is what Roland had been focusing the majority of his time on. The internal combustion engine was a much more complicated design than the steam engine. Roland had to spend quite a long time drawing up blueprints from memory and making sure all the parts would actually work together in the way they should. And that was only on paper. Actually manufacturing the parts to the correct precision was yet another struggle. The parts had to fit together right, otherwise the gaps would cause the oil to leak or the engine to lose efficiency.

Roland didn't think he would be able to do it all alone. Fortunately, he didn't have to. Anna was quite skilled in engineering and Roland was often amazed out how quickly she picked things up. Anna was involved in the construction from the very beginning and helped Roland make blueprints and manufacture parts. They often spent hours in the designing sessions… which often turned into other "activities".

Eventually, they were able to make a working engine. Roland had a small sample of kerosene produced from the stored oil and used it to test the engine. It was able to work, and the last part needed for the plane was complete.

Now the only issue was, there was no one to use the plane. There wasn't really much point in doing more with planes until the pilots were ready. So, Roland had started wondering what to do next. At this time of idleness Roland decided to have a conversation with Steven over the telegraph. He wished that they could use a telephone, but it was too difficult to transfer the signal such a long distance to Hermes. So, they had to make do with a telegraph. They could only use text and the amount of text that could be sent was limited as well. So naturally, they decided to use a modern innovation - internet speak.

Roland: yo I made plane. but no one to use it lol

Steven: wut kind of plane? old biplane?

Roland: yes it is bit slow tho

Steven: actly it very gud. more manuvrble. and too fast bad

Roland: y fst bad?

Steven: in wwii german planes too fst vs ussr. min spd faster thn max spd of soviet plane. german planes cant tail thm. legit too slow to hit

Roland: …

Steven: Those devilbeasts r slow

Roland: i c. wut i do now? no pilots for plane

Steven: u got engine now rght? make tanks

Roland: gud idea. gonna build tanks

Steven: i also want to c the tanks whn u dun

Roland: kk

And so, Roland got his new idea for what to build next.