Chapter 397: 1899 and Airship Trials

The year 1898 drew to a close amidst the clamor of the Colombian Civil War, and as time arrived at 1899, good news followed one after another for Spain.

First was the flight experiment that had already been conducted at the end of 1897, which was performed once more at the end of 1898.

At this time, the Eagle test aircraft had already reached its third generation, namely the Eagle III aircraft.

The reason the previous Eagle II was not mentioned much was mainly because the interval was too short, and compared to the Eagle I aircraft, there was no significant progress, so the Sky Project Team did not report the test contents to Yu Kaluo.

Compared to the Eagle II aircraft, the improvements to the Eagle III aircraft were much greater.

First, in order to increase the aircraft's lift, the new Eagle III aircraft had wings much larger than the original Eagle I and II aircraft.

The wing area, compared to the Eagle I aircraft, had increased by more than double, with the total wing area already exceeding 41 square meters.

Increasing the wing area was only one part of the aircraft's improvements. The new Eagle III aircraft adopted a more powerful gasoline engine, and this engine was precisely the latest product developed by the National Power Laboratory.

With both power and lift improved, it was naturally a matter of course that the aircraft's flight time and distance achieved a significant increase.

According to the results reported by the Sky Project Team, the flight distance of the Eagle III aircraft had already exceeded 30 kilometers, and the time spent hovering in the air had already exceeded 20 minutes on multiple occasions.

Compared to the Eagle I aircraft's flight time of less than a minute, the results achieved by the Eagle III aircraft clearly already showed relatively huge progress.

If one were to say that the Eagle I aircraft only demonstrated the powerful potential of aircraft, then the Eagle III aircraft had already infinitely elevated the role of the aircraft.

As the aircraft's flight time and flight distance grew longer and longer, it also meant that the debut of a military aircraft truly possessing combat capabilities was not far off.

Regarding the third flight experiment conducted at the end of 1898, Spain still maintained a high degree of secrecy domestically.

At the same time, the first airship experiment in Spain was also being conducted in full swing.

Compared to the slow progress of the aircraft, the airship demonstrated extremely powerful immediate combat capability right from the beginning of the experiments.

Currently, the aircraft could only fly a distance of 30 kilometers at most, and it still could not ensure the aircraft's successful takeoff and landing.

But the airship was different; the first-generation airship produced by the Spanish Airship Laboratory was already capable of free navigation within several tens of kilometers.

The reason it could only fly a distance of several tens of kilometers was actually mainly because it was the first experiment, and the experimental personnel, in order to ensure safety, had set the airship's flight distance relatively short.

The takeoff and landing of an airship were much safer than those of an aircraft; as long as no accidents occurred to the airship itself, the flight process was quite safe.

Currently, according to the report from the airship R&D project team, for the next experiment, they would consider flights of distances of hundreds or even several hundreds of kilometers, and would improve the airship's safety as much as possible.

If they could truly achieve safe flights of several hundreds of kilometers, that would actually mean that the commercialization of airships was not far off. After all, the area of the Spanish mainland was not large, and the distance at the widest point from east to west was only a little over 1, 00 kilometers.

If an airship could fly a distance of several hundreds of kilometers, it would also mean that the airship could easily take off and land in any city on the Spanish mainland, which was something the current aircraft was far from achieving.

Compared to the painstaking concealment of the aircraft's R&D results, Spain did not hide its airship R&D results in the slightest, and even made them public through news reports.

When European countries took notice of the Spanish news reports, they were shocked by Spain's airship technology.

Because according to current Spanish airship technology, it was already capable of carrying two people or heavy objects of equivalent weight into the sky and flying a distance of several tens of kilometers.

Flying into the sky was not unfamiliar to European countries. As early as the American Civil War, there was a position called military observer, whose task was to ascend in a balloon to observe the deployment of both armies.

Of course, the position of military observer was as unreliable as its task, and the probability of sacrifice was very high.

But it could not be denied that there were already means at the time to allow people to briefly ascend into the sky; this was not a goal that seemed like science fiction and impossible to achieve.

Ascending into the sky was indeed not difficult, but flying for several tens of kilometers in the sky and landing safely was something that seemed somewhat difficult for European countries to achieve.

It was precisely because of this that when Spain announced the R&D results for the airship, European countries were immediately stirred up; dozens of newspaper media outlets of all sizes from European countries rushed to Spain, competing to report on news related to the airship.

Yu Kaluo's goal was to have European countries and these media outlets focus their attention on the development of airships, so for these European newspaper outlets that had flocked to Spain, Yu Kaluo did not place any obstacles.

It was also because of this that at the beginning of 1899, under the recording of cameras from dozens of newspaper outlets from over ten European countries, Spain's airship successfully conducted its second flight test.

Compared to the first conservative experiment of only flying several tens of kilometers, the second flight experiment appeared much bolder.

The departure point for the second flight experiment was still the Spanish capital, Madrid, and the destination was the large city of Valladolid in the north of Madrid.

Valladolid is the capital of the Castile and León region, separated from Madrid by the Central System mountains.

The reason this place was chosen as the destination for the flight experiment was, on one hand, that the straight-line distance between Valladolid and Madrid was 162 kilometers, which was a reasonable experimental interval that was neither too close nor too far.

On the other hand, Valladolid and Madrid were separated by the Central System mountains, which could also happen to demonstrate the airship's ability to cross large mountains and plateaus.

Spain also wanted to use this experiment to express one point to the outside world, which was that the airship's flight would not have any terrain limitations; if it could fly a distance of nearly 200 kilometers within Spain, it could similarly fly a distance of over 200 kilometers in other European countries.

If the fact that the airship could fly several tens of kilometers in the last flight experiment only shocked European newspapers and media, then the flight distance of this flight experiment was enough to make the newspaper media from European countries express their doubts.

This was not a short distance of several tens of kilometers; the straight-line distance alone reached as high as 162 kilometers.

Even if the airship was flying in the sky, it was impossible to maintain an absolutely straight path. This actually also meant that if an airship wanted to fly from Madrid to Valladolid, the flight distance would infinitely approach 200 kilometers.

That an airship-type contraption could carry people or heavy objects of several hundred jin for a distance of nearly 200 kilometers was something the reporters from these newspaper media simply could not believe.