I’m speaking in the presence of my betters, here, but: would it be possible for your flying battleships to be refueled in the air? Drop-down chutes, or packages dropped down via rigging, or something of the sort? And supplies carried by ships built specifically for that purpose.
It might make hovering around your enemies and making them jumpy be more of a long-term possibility.
I would say that flying ship would work on “shut up it’s magic” engines and fly on wings of scenarium. (now slowly crawling back into the dark corners of the forum he shouldn’t have left.)
It could work but given the vast amounts of fuel needed it would only be by exception for operational requirements. We can refuel and airplan in the air now forinstance but doing it on the ground is still cheaper and safer so it is the preferred method.
Using gantries as an aerodome is another option but one that comes with its own risk.
From a setting perspective we need an explanation for why they are designed like naval vessels and the only practical on is that it has to land on water for some reason.
I figure since these things will be expensive and huge there are going to be relatively few of them meaning their main use will be firing at the ground. For that reason I would go for a more zeppeliny look with turrets and bomb bays on the bottom kind of like the Goliath from Castle In The Sky minus all the helicopter blades.
Figure if you’re making a warship (airwarship? Warairship? Warship of the Air?) it’d be huge. Why not attempt to make it sustainable? If not through fuel replenishment or recycling then for material manufacturing or crew replenishment, it would probably much more cost effective as well as better than having a vast compound/port to facilitate to all its needs.
I was thinking leaving strategic bombing of land based targets (or at least ones far away enough from the coast) to the cheaper armoured zeppelins and flying gunboats. No need to waste your more valuable vessels in strategic bombing (or at least before they defeat their opposite number. They may actually need to do that to clear the way for the strategic bombers).
One additional advantage of these ships over heavier-than-air craft would be the ability to stay on or near the target for much longer periods of time.
Scribbles notes furiously
Needless to say, the designers of these ships will try to find ways to make the next generations more aerodynamic. The first designs were made by designers operating under faulty assumptions (how’s that in the way of justification 
). Since naval hulled airships aren’t aerodynamic, they would less fuel efficient and slower than they would be otherwise. These are the prices one pays for aesthetics.
Mind you, ships in real life (especially capital ships) have some underwater protection for mines and torpedoes so I don’t think you can shot one down with just small arm fire. A lot of these defenses seem to be just compartmentalization though. Quite a few of the pairelite ballast tanks will be inside an armoured citadel which just may be enough to keep the ship still floating.
If these objections keep piling up and if I can’t find a way around them, I may have to reduce the capabilities, armour, and armament of these ships to make them more plausible, but this may make them not worth building at all. The alternative is to throw even the tiniest bit of plausibility outside the window, if it isn’t already. Since I like flying battleships too much, the latter may end up happening.
Keep up with the ideas. Almost nothing in my story is written in stone, after all.
That was the idea.
Service ceiling for most airships is around 1-3km. This is subject to change.
Interesting idea with the reverse submarine. That goes into the idea box.
As for accurate fire, yes that will be a huge problem. This will encourage closer range engagements which will also mean that plunging fire will be less of a threat for ships in fighting in the same altitude. The turret vs broadside guns and the all big guns vs mixed calibre debates will still rage on. The tracer idea is one I like.
As for the collateral damage, I don’t think there is any way around that. It does give more of an incentive to engage in a slugging match away from populated areas no matter the cost which some navies could exploit to bring decisive battle.
I just thought about one way to fend of some of these airships: a flying (or more accurately floating like a barrage balloon) Novgorod class defense ship .
True enough. Igniting massive amounts of coal would probably just leave a big fire instead of causing an explosion. Unless it causes dust explosion instead.
If an airship is going to catastrophically explode, it is going to look less like the Hindenburg and more the like the British battlecruisers in Jutland.
Tests in real life concluded that coal refueling was not feasible. Oil refueling in more practical but still dangerous as they do those by hoses.
Not sure what exactly you are suggesting. I think I’m going to need either clarification or some sleep.
@Herrington
That depends on how armoured those zeppelins are. After all, airship-bombing in our world was brought to an end by a combination of aircraft mounting weapons capable of bringing bombing zeppelins down, and the zeppelins themselves simply not carrying enough ordinance to make it worth the risk.
Have been following the thread with some intrest and thought how I would approach it. More then likely not going to fit in your world just throwing it out any way lol.
Think the shape of a donut split in half the long ways. Now add in a ring that will fill the gap of the two halfs. Around this ring are ports with heavy guns that can fired in 180 degrees up or down, left or right. The bottom half is a hanger that can lower planes to laumch. From the bottom view looking up in the center of the ship draws mass of air in that is push through a steam run turbine. Top view is a long narrow tube that can sviel. The air sucked by the turbine is forced out through the tube on top creating thrust. Since the tube can move it offesr some move ability. Top half of ship would be storage of fuel, water, and munitions. And since you have guns equally spaced around the ship you can have the gun on the opposite side fire at the same time keeping the ship some what stable. Not a great flyer but strong and a great flying mobile base. Of course I have a really cool concept in my head but not an artist so hope you get the idea.
Admittingly, it is rather hard to visualize. But I do like donuts.
Interesting concept (it is a literal flying fortress after all), but there are some problems with the proposal if you factor in the approximate time period (mish-mash of 1870-1925 tech, I’m undecided which ones to use).
Firstly, the turrets/guns. I would imagine that it would be difficult to make the mechanism to move them up and down to such a degree (a random search yielded a maximum elevation of 32 degrees for battleship main armaments). It would be vastly easier if were to be a light or medium dual purpose gun (my definition of a medium gun is 5-8 inches). I also have a hunch that efficient reloading would be limited to certain flatter angles due to the technology level, and thus rate of fire will also be hampered. There is no issue with left right movement. Recoil will be a problem; to what extent and how to fix it is something which I am still finding answers for.
Secondly, the propulsion though my point here seems more of a nitpick than an actual problem. As far as I am aware, propulsion systems using steam turbines are closed systems (they heat water into steam which passes through a turbine in a closed system to move it, the steam cools into water and the process repeats). The only system I know that uses an external air source are jets. I think what you are proposing is a jet engine, which in this case you don’t actually need the steam turbine (I would assume that the air is sucked in by a fan; that would be a huge ass fan and combustion chamber 
). I would recommend that there be two tubes (which I will refer to as exhausts) instead of one to counteract forces moving down or up. I’m just not sure if I want to introduce jets just yet in the game. I might leave it to prototypes instead (the Interwar period (1919-1939) did see successful jet engine tests).
As an aside, I have not typed any words for my competition entry yet. 
I think I may have been playing Rule the Waves a little too much.
Probably way too late for any imput here- but there’s an excellent physics-based game you can use to research how a flying battleship -would- work (and check out those built by the community). It’s called From the Depths. Basically… voxel based sandbox war-sim game. However, considering the game is physics-based and incredibly detailed on components (weapons, engines, fuel and ammo storage, controls, armoring, and many more aspects) and that you CAN build flying battleships… it would be my recommendation for research material. You’d even be able to compare different designs and have a model to use for their description.
Heh, I actually have From the Depths. It is indeed a very fun physics-based game with lots of explosions (that’s why I got it). I haven’t thought about using it to confirm some of my questions; that’s a good suggestion.
No input is too late in this thread. I’ve only got very early concepts and ideas (many which came from this thread) of the story or just about flying ships. Almost nothing in it is set in stone, though the parameters mentioned in the opening post do give an idea of what I want.
Thank you. : ) May I also then point to an anime called ‘Last Exile’ which has a very well-portrayed aerial-based world? (And features some flying battleships)
I’ve had a hard time playing From the Depths sinse the major update with the engines a while back. I can’t seem to figure out a good design I like, now. Same for Robocraft when they did away with variant block-weight.
Anyway- glad to be of service. : )
You were beaten to the punch with that anime suggestion a month ago.
I’m mostly just messing around in sandbox mode in the game. My latest project is a fairly compact ship with 2 centerline turrets (A and Y turrets; fore and aft basically) and an F and a K turret for cross-deck firing (both are wing turrets; see SMS Seydiltz but reverse the wing turrets). No superstructures though so it’s not a pretty ship and I’m still experimenting with compartmentalization. I’m not even considering messing around with the AI yet.
