Brandon replied to me: > I'm assuming you're mainly thinking of the Soviet flying sub project from > WWII, a twin-engined torpedo bomber. There was also a oneman American > attempt in the early 1860's which did work (in a fashion; on it's only test > run, > it flew a few feet above the ground and dove a few feet below the surface)
Hello Brandon, I was actually thinking of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. But if we're talking about the same Soviet project, wasn't it three-engined? > G:WWII (and this might also have been from one of the two Vehicle > Expansions) had a rule that a seaplane only had to reach a speed of 61 or 71% > of > stall to get airborne (if taking off from water), If such a rule was in the Expansions, I'd expect it on VXii30, but I couldn't find it there. > although this still > required a 5-15 mph headwind in most cases. That's historical, I think. And Rupert wrote: > Which is odd, because one reason they were popular was because it was > easier to put adequate streamlining on them than one an aeroplane with > conventional landing gear (and retractable gear was heavy and complex). Hello Rupert, in Vehicles, stall speed is all or nothing. If you get that fast, you take off. For real world seaplanes, moving at a few dozen mph produces some lift, especially considering the ground effect, which gets the plane partly out of the water and reduces the hydrodynamic drag, which increases speed, which gives more lift, etc. Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
