Delaying the development of aircraft

Question

In my world, I want two primary things: Battleships to maintain their prominence much longer (Story takes place in roughly 1950s era tech), and as part of that, aircraft to initially develop much later. I'm mostly not worried about how fast aircraft would develop once they arrive, for the sake of this particular question. I want to focus on what factors would slow down the development of aircraft.

If we put the story in 1950, I'd want aircraft that are maybe 15 years along the development cycle - So, late WWI. If aircraft develop at the same pace, this would put first flight at around 1935, a little over 30 years later than what happened in history.

I've identified a handful of factors that could slow and inconvenience aircraft development, but I'm not certain it is enough:

• Higher surface gravity, about 30% higher. Combined with:
• Lower atmospheric density, by about 15% lower. These two mean larger wings and/or more powerful engines are required to get a plane of the same weight off the ground.
• Delay in easy Aluminium production. If I don't want other things to be affected, this would have to be minimal, and the effects on aircraft would similarly be minimal.
• Lack of need. The world is largely on a single continent. Rail travel is common and easy. There ARE other continents, but they're significantly less populated, and ships are also relatively common. I'm considering shorter distances between continents and islands as well.
• Military Disdain. A significant driver of early aircraft was their use by the military, which was resisted by many "Old-school" leaders. If these old-school leaders "Won" their arguments, the military money may not exist. A factor to their "Winning" could be:
• Catastrophic accident. Something like an early test/demonstration happening with a large crowd, and ending up crashing into said crowd and causing significant injury and death. There have been more than one promising project canned because of a PR disaster.

Are these factors enough to delay aircraft development by three decades, or should I include some other factors?

Answer 1

I think that delaying aircraft is not all that difficult, even for an earthlike world. Assume that a conflict with the technology and scope of WWI comes about 10 years early and another one is 10 years late.

• World War 0.5 proves and improves the technology of Dreadnought-style battleships. Navies get operational experience, they find out how to fight other navies and how not to fight shore defenses. Aircraft are limited to a few observation balloons and Zeppelins which prove ineffective for naval warfare.
• Then the development of aircraft runs straight into a post-war depression. They are improved greatly over the years, but there is no convenient war to spur the development of bomb sights, synchronized MGs, and so on.
• By the time World War 1.5 kicks off, aircraft have about 1930 flight performance and 1920 armament. Visionaries talk about air power, but they don't really have the technology to back their dreams. Aircraft bombs of the era are unable to penetrate battleship decks which have been designed against plunging fire. Each battleship or cruiser has a couple of observation floatplanes to direct their artillery, and they are armed with pintle-mounted and wing-mounted MGs to fight each other, but the primary role of the aircraft is to find the enemy and to call in artillery corrections.
• Radar happens to be developed for surface fire control, and some boffins come up with radar to direct AA fire, and also radar-fused proximity shells, which means that observation aircraft have to keep their distance. When naval air goes after battleships, getting in close enough is suicidal, and the puny weapons can't do much damage.
• WW 1.5 is fought with this technology. Aircraft make giant leaps during the war years, but with their late start carrier aviation isn't really mature by the time the war ends. The hints are tantalizing, but there is a fierce battle between the "gun deck" admirals and the "glory hound" pilots who are not doing their proper job -- finding the enemy and calling for fire. The admirals win.
• Add another 15 years of post-war depression and peacetime development. Radar gets better, and so do catapult-launched seaplanes. Perhaps even supersonic jet seaplanes. But they won't challenge the battleships.

That makes the aircraft slightly more advanced than you called for, but the battleships still rule the seas.

Answer 2

I'll take a more specific path, but I'm aware of its possible limitations.

In this alternate history, Gen Billy Mitchell failed to sink the Ostfriesland in 1921. As for a reason, let's say that the final bombing runs disobeyed Mitchell and dropped their bombs directly on the ship, rather than beside it. The deck armor worked as advertised, and the ship stayed afloat. Mitchell, of course, lost his temper and made intemperate remarks about his superiors, just as he did in our history. The problem is, without having actually sunk the battleship his defense at his court-martial rang hollow, and he lost popular support.

With the results of the test in hand (destroyer and light cruiser sunk, battleship survived), the movement toward super-dreadnoughts was reinforced and the momentum of naval attack aircraft hobbled. The sort of dedication to development which characterizes fast technology was discredited for aircraft, and as a result the new doctrine fell badly behind.

All of this seems at least superficially arguable, and presumably would have affected the European powers as well as the US. But it's not clear that this would have affected Japan as much, since they prided themselves on their intrinsic superiority to the gaijin. In the worst case, this would produce a slaughter in the Pacific, with the US badly lacking in air forces capable of contesting with a competent Japanese carrier arm (even if not quite as developed as it was in our history).

Answer 3

Remove petroleum.

Without petroleum available the only fuel available on the strategic scale would be coal. Coal has lower energy density per mass and higher viscosity than oil based fuels. So power systems would be significantly heavier.

This would be no issue for ships or trains which can carry the extra mass fairly efficiently. Aircraft on the other hand would have serious issues with having extra mass. I am not sure if building coal powered aircraft is practical without jet engines or gas turbines, which require better metallurgy and manufacturing. Certainly the extra difficulty would retard the development of aircraft and reduce the performance of any that are built.

Side effects

Obviously there would be some minor unwanted effects. While cars are not as sensitive to weight as aircraft, coal powered cars might not be able to marginalize electric cars. This would result in a boost to electric engines and battery technology. I doubt the boost would be sufficient to allow battery powered aircraft, but their electric cars should be usable. They would probably have improved electric technology overall. The reliance on batteries would probably create functional recycling systems as well.

Even so their cars would probably have lower performance and range than gasoline powered cars of same level. This would probably have effects on culture and logistics that would add to effects caused by lack of air travel. Trains, electric no doubt, would be main long distance land transport. Continents would be linked by passenger ships.

Tanks also have issues with engine efficiency because moving all that armor requires high power. Both steam powered and electric tanks are possible, but I think warfare would be closer to WW1 than WW2, with static fronts and reliance on rail connections for logistics.

Making petroleum scarce

Outside the topic, really, but there are basically two ways. You can remove easily usable petroleum deposits or you can remove the economic demand for oil.

You can locate deposits on sea floors or distant deserts and jungles. You can make them deep. You can make less of them. You can even hand wave and say that due to early development of bacteria that efficiently consume organic material in anoxic conditions there are no significant oil deposits at all.

You can reverse the order of events so that instead of lack of oil pushing development of electric technology forward, early development of electric technology removes the demand for developing oil economy. As is electric technology is largely based on contributions of "great people™" like Faraday, Edison, and Tesla rather than general development of technology. You could probably get away with pushing them and electric technology earlier. Especially if it happened safely before current events.

Answer 4

In my world, I want two primary things: Battleships to maintain their prominence much longer (Story takes place in roughly 1950s era tech), and as part of that, aircraft to initially develop much later.

You really need aircraft delayed (compared to our world). That alone saves the battleship.

Battleships didn't really stop being considered the mainstay of most fleets until WW2 was well underway and it became apparent that they didn't quite cut it.

A fifteen year delay in aircraft development is enough for this.

I'm mostly not worried about how fast aircraft would develop once they arrive, for the sake of this particular question. I want to focus on what factors would slow down the development of aircraft.

No WW1 would do it.

WW1 saw a major drive to develop the aircraft as an armed fighting arm. Until then it was considered little more than a way to do reconnaissance.

So WW1 could simply be avoided (or kept from developing into something huge).

No German state forming would have done that.

Or even something as simple as the failure of the assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand.

If we put the story in 1950, I'd want aircraft that are maybe 15 years along the development cycle - So, late WWI. If aircraft develop at the same pace, this would put first flight at around 1935, a little over 30 years later than what happened in history.

I've identified a handful of factors that could slow and inconvenience aircraft development, but I'm not certain it is enough:

Higher surface gravity, about 30% higher. Combined with Lower atmospheric density, by about 15% lower.

An unlikely combination. More likely is that increasing gravity will increase atmospheric density.

These two mean larger wings and/or more powerful engines are required to get a plane of the same weight off the ground.

Yes, but it also means you have to deal with a world with a higher gravity and a denser atmosphere (not less dense, but more dense). You will have to develop engines that are more powerful anyway for all your surface transports and this means you can't avoid developing the engines.

Delay in easy Aluminium production. If I don't want other things to be affected, this would have to be minimal, and the effects on aircraft would similarly be minimal.

And we need Aluminum for what ?

Planes can be build from wood and canvas and they'll happily sink a battleship with a torpedo or a bomb (well, several bombs).

Lack of need. The world is largely on a single continent.

Single continent's don't need battleships.

If anything a single continent makes having long distance air transport even more desirable both economically and militarily. You want to be able to reach everything on the other side of that continent as fast and easily as possible.

Rail travel is common and easy. There ARE other continents, but they're significantly less populated, and ships are also relatively common. I'm considering shorter distances between continents and islands as well.

One huge continent makes seem unlikely. Rail travel would have to cross varying terrain and be developed in varying climatic conditions. Consider the difficulty of building the trans-American and trans-Russian railways.

Far from discouraging the development of air transport, I think it would encourage it, simply because business and government would want an alternative.

Military Disdain. A significant driver of early aircraft was their use by the military, which was resisted by many "Old-school" leaders. If these old-school leaders "Won" their arguments, the military money may not exist.

That happened here too, and didn't delay anything very much. One war proved they were useful and planes were instantly adopted by everyone.

A factor to their "Winning" could be: Catastrophic accident. Something like an early test/demonstration happening with a large crowd, and ending up crashing into said crowd and causing significant injury and death. There have been more than one promising project canned because of a PR disaster.

The history of air flight, commercial and military, is littered with disasters. All that happened is that people pushed harder. In peacetime the first jet airliners had a lousy safety record due to a tragic fault. Result : hardly slowed the development of commercial jet aircraft at all. Crashes of commercial piston aircraft made very little impact in slowing the development of those.

Are these factors enough to delay aircraft development by three decades, or should I include some other factors?

Just prevent WW1. Job done.

Answer 5

Just building a bit on the of a higher gravity. I had the idea pop into my mind before reading through your question, did some google searching and stumbled upon the following link: Would Planes Drop From the Sky?

In the article it concludes that:

So, if the gravity doubles, then the lift needs to double (because the plane weighs twice as much). The plane can do this by flying faster, or flying through denser air. But whichever method is used to double the lift, will also double the drag. The long and the short of it is: if gravity increases by some amount, then the amount of power required to keep the aircraft aloft will increase by the same amount. For example, 5 times gravity would require 5 times the power.

They do kind of cancel each other out in part because the air density will also increase, but some extra power in the engine will likely also be required. This could definitely cause planes to be more expensive, and to have had some issues in early testing and development.

Seems you've considered that a bit already, but figured I'd get some science involved a bit as well.

Best of luck!