Would definitely be a busy site, I'm thinking .... so your bandwidth fee would probably be prohibitive ... unless you're independently wealthy .... :D
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What a great idea! A website - civilwarplanes.org - dedicated to reviving the lost and forgotten history of Civil War Airplanes.
It's obvious by the complete lack of details in history books on this subject, that both governments did a first rate job at keeping their greatest military technology secrets under wraps, and out of the hands of enemy spies. (Why, it's probably just a lucky accident of someone getting drunk and spilling the beans, that we ever even heard of the Monitor & Merrimac ironclad's duel, or about the existence of Confederate U-boats 50 years before WWI!)
But this doesn't necessarily mean that the job of unearthing tech details, paint colors, decals, etc for the Union and Confederate heavier-than-air craft must be left in the hands of mediums, channelers and similar types of professionals.
Original artwork should be solicited for this project from photoshoppers, as well as creative ideas from engineers for technological details that reflect mid 1860s state-of-the-art science.
For instance, in the matter of propulsion, I was imagining perhaps paddle wheels (riverboat-style) hanging from the wings. Naturally, to fix the problem inherent in *fixed* paddle wheel blades whereby the return rotation of each blade would move against the direction of travel, they might have instead used *hinged* paddle blades that got in a good strong "dig" against the air when they were moving towards the plane's rear, but then shifted on their hinges on the return rotation so that they wouldn't be paddling any air in the opposite direction. (Sorry if the ultra high tech jargon is confusing).
I would LOVE to see a website dedicated to this!
I think the concept of “propellers” was known in those days;but paddlewheels are better for shallow water,like that in American rivers before the dams and locks of the 20th century.
Do you suppose some historically challenged person read a reference to the “soldiers of the air” and didn’t know both sidea had BALLOONS in the Civil War?
Would definitely be a busy site, I'm thinking .... so your bandwidth fee would probably be prohibitive ... unless you're independently wealthy .... :D
It's about