Aircraft Design Company- Matsura's Planes Are Always Fastest!

The technology you are talking about is really speculative for 1912, y'all. Also, Ohara currently has 0 electrical engineers.

Anyway, it's time to close submissions and do the vote.

Options are...

[ ] The Dart
[ ] The Dove
[ ] The Deluxe

Nice little set of options here. We can reconfigure them as needed with the next vote.

So, vote now on your phones!

"Suzuki, dear, ahh, oh dear, I mean Mrs Tanaka now," greets a little old lady with a chuckle as you walk up to her shopfront. "I'm still not used to you being all grown up now." An old family friend, the little old lady rented apartments above her shop building, and was possibly the most unassuming wealthy woman in Tokei. Clad in simple classic Akitsukuni robes, she looks for all the world like another simple shop owner, selling odds and ends. Woodcuts, newspapers, gewgaws, music instruments, sake; there doesn't seem to be all that much in common, and you never really understood where she sourced them all. All you knew is that few scruffy but unfailingly polite young men will come by and sell her boxes at odd hours.

Finding a home for his new family had been a huge stress for you and Tama when he was preparing to deploy to Joseon. Even with the number of widows abandoning their lodgings to move back with parents, the sheer number of country bumpkins swanning into the city in search of factory jobs puts space at a premium. But when old granny Yamamoto hears of your plight, she simply admonishes your parents for not thinking of her and sets you up above her shop at generous terms. Indomitable to a fault, the old woman has always been a valuable source of guidance to you.

"Hello granny Yamamoto," you greet in return.

"Goodness me, my dear, look at all those papers," notes Yamamoto as you draw near. "Those don't like textbooks. Are you borrowing homework?"

"Haha, no, granny," you reply. "I'm getting to put my business studies into practice. Tama and Shoichi are trying to figure out what to do now, and we've got an idea, but I'm trying to see if I can make the numbers work."

"Oh-ho, nothing too silly I hope, that boy is an odd one," replies Yamamoto, hiding her mouth behind her hand as she laughs.

"Well ... I haven't quite decided, really," you say a bit slowly. "We want to do an air service. The army and navy have a number of, uh, I think they were called 'Dolphin'. Transport planes that they don't have much use for anymore. Tama thinks we can buy one and make a Tokei-to-Osaka courier service. Or even to some of the inland lakes. Faster than even the trains! If you need something delivered fast, we're your ticket. Say you are a wealthy man from inland areas, and you come to Uogashi and buy the first bluefin tuna in the New Years Auction. You don't want to freeze it, or let it spoil on a train-ride, right? So you can use a service like ours and get it home to your guests faster than ever possible before."

A change comes over Yamamoto. A flinty, speculative look comes over her suddenly shrewd features. "Well, a courier with wings. I have seen many new and strange things in my life, but it sounds like I have a few more yet to witness."

"Assuming we can make the business case, at least," admits Naoko. "This will need a bunch of capital to get going, because we'll need to make our own buildings at both end for cargo handling, we'll need to put the word out. We'll need to buy the plane which is a big ticket all on its own, plus a lot of spares and a workshop to maintain it in. Even with me learning to be Tama's copilot, and Shoichi being in charge of the cargo, we'll still need to hire more people and-"

"You're rambling, Naoko, dear," says Yamamoto.

"Sorry, it's just a lot for me to take in," says Naoko. "Tama, my silly dear, still hasn't really had it click that he's married into a family like the Suzuki. Between being a Suzuki, and marrying an air corps officer, I can get a bank to take a risk, but I don't want them to just take a gamble on my father's name."

Granny Yamamoto smiles indulgently. "Of course, of course, I know what you mean. Those bankers are the most ruthless criminals of the modern era, after all."

"Granny...," admonishes Naoko. "This is my first real business plan, and doing it wrong or right is the difference between easy repayments and crushing ones."

"Don't you worry about those banks, Naoko. You come see your old granny Yamamoto, she knows people," dismisses the old woman. "In fact, I may have an interesting little wrinkle for you. I know a lot of very nice boys in the neighbourhood the Ohara factory is in, and I hear they are working on a new project that might be just your speed. Now, where is that boy of yours?"

You laugh at that. "Oh, poor Tama is off having to take part in Diet hearings about planes."

-

"All rise," announces an officious, reedy voice. A gabble slams into a bench. With a rolling wave of noise from grumbling old bones and pocket watches, the assembled clamber to their feet. "The National Diet of Akitsukuni Commission Into The Conduct and Lessons of the Air War in Joseon is now in session for Day Seven of hearings."

You settle back into your seat next to your old squadron leader, Captain Mori Touma. Most of the old salts of the 1st and 2nd Air Groups (Bombing) are here, particularly squadron and flight leaders and a few of the staff and maintenance officers. You are all seated together in a dock on the left hand side of the chamber, facing a bench where committee assistants and recorders are seated. In a lofty bench across the back wall of the room, diet members are seated.

"I didn't expect to see you again so soon, Captain," you mutter.

"And I expected it would involve a lot more booze," muttered back Touma.

From the centre of the bench, a flinty-eyed old man, a veteran of the Diet who cut his teeth at the tail end of the restoration, clears his throat and begins to address the chamber. "Our schedule for today will take us over testimony from officers involved in the bombing effort, artillery observation officers who conducted post-war reviews into the captured staging yards, and, time permitting, we will hear testimony from representatives of Akibara Industries aircraft divisions. Testimony from Ohara Airworks, plus the aviation powerplant division of Kobayashi, plus civil servants from the Ministry of Industry will occur tomorrow."

"Don't let me snore," whispers Touma.

"We'll cover each other," you whisper back. "It'll be just like old times."

"That bad, huh?"

You need not have worried, however. The testimony covers familiar topics. Your air group commander is the first to give testimony, and he goes over the steep losses that were incurred early, and the steady drumbeat that followed. The various threats that develop through the war are all threats you have faced yourself, of course. You've been dived on by Cossacks, flown through the anti-aircraft fire of each envelope, the heavy shell-fire of the three and four inchers, the quick-fire cannons with their frightening tracers, and the machine guns. He speaks of the heavy shellfire being the only important one for Ducks when crossing the lines, as the other two can only come into play on the terminal runs, and you are very difficult targets.

Soon enough his testimony ended, and those of the people who actually flew the planes began. To your surprise, as your fellow pilots spoke, you notice the Diet members and the audience each start to go ... a little pale? It's odd to you, because you had to be hear in the audience when the Dragonfly pilots were talking yesterday, in case you could be brought in early. That day, everyone had stars in their eyes. Today, it was more green in the gills.

When your turn comes, you stand on a small dais positioned before the Diet member's bench. After observing the forms and procedures, one of the junior parliamentarians shuffles some papers and hitches forward.

"Flight Lieutenant Tanaka, I understand from your service record here that you and your bombardier completed twenty-three missions."

You nod your head after a moment of thought. "That is correct, Mr Representative."

"I am informed by General Ito that this is the fifth most of all Duck pilots, and the second most of surviving pilots," continues the Diet member. "Is this correct?"

"I...," you begin before pausing and frowning. "I hadn't heard that, sir, but I of course presume the General is correct." That seemed safe enough.

"Flight Lieutenant, what would you owe your longevity to?"

"Maintenance, luck, experience," you say immediately. "The mechanics hated me and Bombardier Watanabe because we were always inspecting every spar of the plane."

"Are you suggesting the mechanics were substandard?"

"The mechanics were great for most planes - but if a spar breaks on a Dragonfly in a tight turn you still have a good chance of breaking contact and getting home. And you don't know in any given patrol if you will have to pull acrobatics, but us Duck pilots knew that every time we went up we would have to dive, and if a spar breaks on a Duck on a bomb dive, well, that's it. You pancake."

"Pancake?" asks the chairman in a sudden interruption.

"Ah, you hit the ground," you answer, using your hands with one hand flying down into the other to mime the splat. "All that weight and speed behind you means you have about the consistency and thickness of pancake batter at the end of it." The committee men recoil with green gills. It makes you scratch your head. "Just part of the occupational hazards, Mr Representative."

"Let's talk about some of the other occupational hazards... What else do you chalk up the loss rates of Ducks to?"

"Sure. Well, from what I've seen, Ducks are more subject to forces outside their pilots control. We go into the teeth of air defences as part of the job, we're prime targets for Cossack fighters, and our only defensive armament apparently assumes we'll be in a chase position on a faster, nimbler plane that isn't carrying a full bomb load. We taught the rookies ways to mitigate the risks, but you aren't a pursuit pilot trying to weigh your skills against an opponent. In a Duck, you have a mission and you gotta go do it.

"Still," you continue on, "There's a lot of things that can happen to help the loss rate. We never had enough planes coming in. A rebuilt Duck was always a problem, because it always changed the flight characteristics. The way one ride is always different to another is a huge problem, especially because dive characteristics are hard to test. Even the day I left Joseon there was still a Duck embedded in the upper story of the Caspian railhead terminal because repairs left it too low after the dive to pull up over the station. We need to find a way to make the planes fly the same as each other, and repair the same."

"Alright. Does anyone else have any more questions? No? Thank you for your testimony, Flight Lieutenant."

You return to your seat next to Mori who gives you a respectful nod. "Not so fun up there in the spotlight, is it?" he asks as you grimace and shake your head.

The rest of the testimonies goes by in a blur for you, bar one comment from the commander of the first bombing group who arrived and spoke just before the lunch recess.

"What I'm saying, Mr Representative, is that bomber forces may take losses, or have their impact degraded by good tactics. But what we did not experience was the Caspians meaningfully stopping an attack cold. Whenever we were determined to press the attack, we hit the target we aimed at."

"What are you trying to imply, Colonel?"

"I'm saying that in future wars, the bombing role will be crucial. You cannot stop an artillery shell in flight, after all. Well, in coming decades, the range and carry weight of bombers will skyrocket. Imagine, in the distant wars of the 1930s and '40s, with the product of more development, you will see huge bombers carrying bomb loads now imagined only for Zeppelins, on ranges of hundreds of kilometers, flying too high for fighters to intercept.

"What I'm saying is that in the future we need to understand that the Bomber will always get through."