Boeingboeing 73737

So the question naturally arises – in the Parallel Universe, how would a relatively minor nation like Australia get an equivalent to US Air Force One without shelling out big money for a new 747? Simple: you start with a couple of second hand 737s, do a bit of cutting and shutting – and voila!

Same universe, 10 years later.

By the mid-1950s, British military thinking was that the manned fighter had become obsolete, and the future defence of the British Isles could be handled by surface-to-air missiles. There were several reasons for this line of thought, but the main idea was that Britain would only be attacked by Russian bombers, and that only missiles would be fast enough to intercept them.

As a stopgap, the English Electric P.1 was developed; the fabled “Last Manned Fighter” to be used before the nation’s fate would be entrusted to a new generation of missiles. The P.1 would be a “point defence” interceptor, with outstanding performance, limited warload and very short range, and with very demanding maintenance needs. This of course limited its export potential to approximately zero.

Midway through the assembly of the first P.1, designer W E Petter chanced to meet Avro Vulcan designer Roy Chadwick. Over lunch, Chadwick convinced Petter to design a tailless delta version of the P.1, in case the tailed “notched delta” original failed to work as hoped. English Electric soon began work on a delta P.1, to be known as the P.2. There was apparently a suggestion that the type should be named “Fulgur”, after the lightning bolts forged by Vulcan. The project was a semi-private venture, with some government funding provided in the belief that the aircraft was intended for research to help the Bristol 198 SST project. NASA, who were worried by the failure of the Convair XF-92A Delta, also provided a large but undisclosed sum in return for flight data.

The P.2 was first flown in late 1955, test pilot Roland Beamont commenting that it was “the only aeroplane in the world which can compete with the P.1b”. Designed from the outset as a fighter, the P.2 had provision for AI radar, missile hardpoints and drop tank mounts under the wings, and 2 x 30mm ADEN cannon. Its Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire engines were fitted with reheat, and its internal fuel load was double that of the P.1.

With the arrival of a British fighter that could outclimb and outfight anything except a Lightning, and with double the Lightning’s radius of action and plenty of growth potential, foreign governments were ecstatic. Purchase enquiries were received from Australia, Canada, West Germany, South Africa and at least six other nations, promising initial foreign sales of 500 to 600 aircraft.

What were the British government to do? Their own last manned fighter was well under way, but here was a supposed research aircraft with enormous export potential, that was guaranteed to generate millions of pounds in foreign revenue, and which had cost the taxpayer comparatively little. The Parliamentary debate lasted a little over an hour, with both sides in complete agreement. Since the aircraft’s production did not agree with current domestic policy, the prototype was immediately grounded and scrapped, and all spares and tooling ordered destroyed.

Which, I suppose, just goes to show that even in a parallel universe, politicians will still be politicians.

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe…

By the start of 1944 the Royal Air Force was faced with unacceptably high losses in Bomber Command. De Havilland’s answer to the problem was the DH98/II Deerfly, built by De Havilland Canada and powered by four Packard Merlin engines.

Using technology perfected in building the pre-war DH91 Albatross transport and using local Canadian timbers, the Deerfly was rushed into production. The aircraft carried a crew of two or three in an enlarged fuselage, and could carry the same bomb load as a Lancaster over the same radius of action, but 60 mph faster and at a higher altitude. The Deerfly needed no defensive armament, being fast, with an excellent rate of climb, and being very difficult to see with radar due to its wooden airframe.

(This image has been extensively modified from an original classic photo of a Mosquito bomber taken by the great Charles E Brown. I wish I had the chance to take a Mossie photo of my own, but alas! The breed is almost extinct in Australia. Ah, De Havilland!)

Ruminations.

For the moment I’m pretty much Steampunked out. I originally made these images back about 2004, before I had even heard of Steampunk. I always thought I was the only nutcase who felt that the world had lost something grand when steam power was replaced by the infernal combustion engine. Very happy to have been proven wrong.

Unfortunately, images created on a 10gb IBM with bugger all RAM and a teensy CRT screen sometimes don’t hold up all that well on a modern computer; so they all needed more or less re-editing. Especially the last image, which came from a pretty crappy photo taken on a camera I picked up at a junk sale, combined with a 1970s-era Agfa colour print of a traction engine. The only way to salvage the image was to remove the background – a bunch of decaying sheds – and replace it with a decent digital image; then fix the rest  up, bit by bit. In the process I learned things I hadn’t needed to know before about using Paint Shop Pro, so that was a plus.

Anyway, having finished the job for the moment, I thought I’d put together some guidelines that I use for creating digital artwork by photo-editing. In fact they’re just as important for photography in general:-

1 – Take the damn photo. Don’t wait until the weather’s better, or until you feel “inspired”, or until you buy a better camera. If you miss the image, chances are it’s gone forever. And while it may take a lot of work to fix up a dud photo, it’s a hell of a lot better than no photo at all.

2 – Keep the image. Unless it’s totally garbage, almost any image is worth keeping, if only for reference. That means photos, negatives, transparencies or jpgs. And right now would be a good time to start scanning those old photos into digital format. Monochrome or sepia prints may last a hundred years, but some colour dyes are only good for a few decades, and the longer you leave them, the harder they are to digitally restore.

3 – Backup everything. Multiple copies in multiple formats (ie hard drive, CD, USB drive, hard copy…whatever) for finished art, saved progressive “states” for work in progress. And make sure you identify each state, so you know which is the latest working copy out of the two dozen plus in your folder. Otherwise it’s “What the hell was I working on yesterday?” LFMF.

4 – Don’t steal. It’s ok to use other people’s art for ideas or reference, but it’s not ok to steal their images. If you don’t have good enough photos of your own, take more. If you don’t have the skills to make an image, tough luck. Start to learn, or do the economy a favour and pay an artist. Exceptions – if the photographer is happy to agree, or if the image is way out of copyright, and if you make it obvious that you’ve altered somebody else’s original image and are not claiming it’s yours… well, at least you’ll be more honest than lots of others on the internet!

5 – Don’t get frustrated. There are some brilliant freeware image editors on the ‘net, including the GIMP, Image Analyzer, Picasa, Irfanview etc. There are also heaps of specialist free programs and plugins for effects that you can’t figure out by yourself. Neat Image, Sqirlz, Novamatic… just Google the effects you want and start looking.

6 – I found it very helpful to do a basic art and photography course at the local college of  Technical and Further Education. One disadvantage of being self-taught is that you don’t know what you don’t know. A professional teacher will help you far more than you realise.

7 – Probably the hardest lesson I haven’t quite managed to learn is the need to actually get started. Once I’ve worked out the details of a picture or story in my head, I have a tendency to consider the job done. But the job isn’t done until it’s inside somebody else’s head, put there by viewing the completed work.  The biggest obstacle to creativity, at least in my case, is plain old procrastination. But I won’t let it beat me. I’m going to something about it. Real soon now…