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Post by Thunder Child on Nov 7, 2004 15:30:51 GMT
I like the horse-like stride of the Tom Kidd machines...
I also have a little TWOTW booklet (http://drzeus.best.vwh.net/wotw/wotw1983.1.html) which contains a drawing of the Martian camp on Primrose Hill with the Flying Machine lying on the ground. It looks like the American Flying Wing.
I will scan and post this picture soon.
Johan
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Post by Thunder Child on Nov 10, 2004 16:05:24 GMT
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Post by McTodd on Jan 10, 2005 0:18:29 GMT
For what it's worth, Goble's Martian Flying Machine is clearly based upon Hiram Maxim's gigantic steam-powered biplane of 1894 (which achieved the closest to flight before the Wrights). EDIT: I have Goble's illustration in a couple of books but my scanner's out of action at the moment. However, here is a copy culled from Google: And here is a side view of Maxim's machine (the 'nose' is on the left): What appears to be a cockpit sticking out on two spars in Goble's illustration is, in fact, an elevator panel on Maxim's machine. The two-tone grey object behind the two men on the left of the machine is the boiler, mounted on the craft's platform (the nearest thing it has to a fuselage). Goble's drawing shows 'smoke' coming roughly from that area, as if from a boiler. I believe he simply modelled his Martian machine pretty well directly upon Maxim's. The reproduction of Goble's drawing in 'The Complete War of the Worlds' is excellent, and several different gradations of grey are visible, such that, for example, the lower wing on the right can be seen against the upper wings (they all blend into black on the above thumbnail and in the Castle Books reprint) as well as the lower blade of one of the two huge propellors that the Maxim machine was driven by. However, I can't explain the odd rectangle that makes the wing on the left look like a cross - I can only guess that Goble, unfamiliar with the few experimental flying machines there were in a pre-aircraft age, and probably not terribly au fait with aerodynamic principles (he can be forgiven for that - who was, in those days?), botched his copy of the Maxim craft.
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Post by Bayne on Jan 15, 2005 0:36:53 GMT
[glow=red,2,300]Wow and most assuredly cool. Thanks for that McTodd! [/glow]
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JonT
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Post by JonT on Apr 6, 2005 18:49:34 GMT
i like the Kidd painting, the FM's look great and the flying machine is a really good design, it reminds me of an american stealth bomber.
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Post by Leatherhead on Apr 7, 2005 15:49:33 GMT
are we sure that the flying machine had wings? how do we know they don't have some kind of anti-gravity system?
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JonT
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Post by JonT on Apr 7, 2005 15:58:02 GMT
well waynes version of the flying machine did have suspension pods and not wings. i cant remember the description from the book, i think it was also suspension pods?
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Post by mctoddridesagain on Apr 7, 2005 16:08:00 GMT
Wells' narrator, writing as he was some years after the event, mentions the time it must have taken for the Martians to get the hang of flying in our denser air, which they would have been hard put to estimate from Mars. This implies an aeroplane type device.
In the Pearson's serialisation, the Narrator has this to say:
The version in the novel, while shorter, similarly does not imply the use of antigravity.
The fact that for humankind the secret of flight is cracked thanks to examination of the Martians' machines after the war also precludes, in my opinion, exotic antigravity type devices; their technology has to be capable of being understood by Edwardians.
Which is not to say that Wayne can't have antigravity, it's just that that is not what was used in the novel.
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Post by Lensman on Apr 7, 2005 22:06:28 GMT
The novel describes the flying machine as "flat and broad and very large", indeed like the lovely Tom Kidd painting shown in this thread and posted to Dr. Zeus's site.
That suggests to me the Martians were not using anti-gravity. But I think much better evidence is their method of travel from Mars to Earth. Antigravity would have allowed takeoff without the use of gas explosions, and would have allowed "soft" landings, not the very hard, meteoric landings the novel clearly describes in at least two places.
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Post by Moorkey on Jul 27, 2005 20:59:59 GMT
When the flying machine is described as flat and strange, the image of the stealth bomber (the huge flying wing) always (rather inconveniently) pops into my head. Does anyone else think this? The image of a Martian box-kite never quite gelled with me. The idea of them understanding space-flight, advanced weaponry, a method of locomotion that (still) eludes mankind, only to think up a flying machine that is so blatantly fragile and dangerous. Considering that their intellect is supposedly 'vastly superior to our own' the idea of them thinking up a machine that is so similar to mankind's efforts at the time is very hard to swallow.
Does anyone else share my thoughts?
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Post by mctoddridesagain on Jul 27, 2005 22:29:29 GMT
Well, of course they wouldn't have been flying powered boxkites, poor old Goble was illustrating it 6 years before man had even flown! However, you're thinking in terms of our state of the art technology - Goble (and Wells, in his descriptions) was basing his illustration on the state of the art at his time. So, really, you're just as guilty of present-dayism as he was!
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Post by Moorkey on Jul 28, 2005 19:17:28 GMT
I most probably am. Perhaps it was something, by the very definition, alien (such as we are scarcely able to imagine.)
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Post by Lensman on Aug 5, 2005 7:00:43 GMT
We don't know what the flying machine's method of propulsion was. However, it would seem to be something similar to rocket propulsion, due to the great speed with which it lept into the sky and rapidly climbed. There also was no description of any noise which would be associated with propellors. Of course this is interpreting the description in the light of modern technology. Wells was, quite properly, very vague about the details of the flying machine because at the time no one knew how to build a heavier-than-air flying machine. It is good that he did so because that part of the novel isn't outdated.
This is sheer speculation, of course, but it has been pointed out that the Heat Ray might have been used as a fuel-less propulsion system. Heat the air in a (non-)"combustion chamber" sufficiently and it will expand rapidly, giving you rocket propulsion.
I see no evidence the Martians were using the flying machine for close support of ground attacks. All we know is that it was used to drop black smoke as though it were a bomber. The flying machine is clearly described as "very large" (end of I-17) and hence it could easily have carried one or more Martians. As it was large and acted as a "bomber" perhaps we should think of it that way. Contrariwise, during the conversation between the Narrator and the Artilleryman (II-7) it is said that the flying machine can be used to allow the Martians to "go round the world." This would seem to me to be the strategic reason the Martians were experimenting with flying; to be able to cross from England to the continent of Europe and eventually to other continents. Therefore perhaps it was primarily a cargo plane, altho was clearly capable of doubling as a bomber.
There's no evidence the Martians had automation or remote control sufficiently sophisticated enough to control a flying machine. They apparently automated a digging machine, and the Tripods apparently had an automated "assist" in the walking mechanism since one staggered on for a bit after the controlling Martian was killed, but it seems very unlikely they would have attempted to build an automated or remotely controlled flying machine when they didn't do this for their Tripods.
And I'm not the only one to question that the Martians would have used much advanced automation even if they had the technology for it. Wells clearly states the Martians could work 24 hours a day without need for sleep or breaks. Having the "perfect" communistic state, they would have wanted to keep everyone happily working (slaving) away for the good of all. Unemployed workers are unhappy workers.
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Post by ArmoredTrackLayer on Nov 30, 2005 16:40:46 GMT
A gotha flying wing always comes to mind, and the same screeching engine noise is how I imagined it to sound.
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stuka
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Post by stuka on Feb 22, 2006 2:27:37 GMT
you mean the Horten- IX jet fighter? from Medal of Honor: Frontline? Yeah, that's basically the way I think of the martians machine. Two words: Flying Wing. If they had mastered Anti-grav technology, why go through all the trouble of packing tripods into tin-cans and firing it out of a cannon? they could lord over us with their UFO's.
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Post by Moorkey on Apr 2, 2006 7:03:18 GMT
I have seen several designs that would fit the bill in a book titled 'Secret Projects-German fighters 1939-1945'
Projects such as the Messerschmitt 163, Gotha Go229, and others I cannot muster in my mind at the mo.
I agree that they would have used 'conventional' aeronautics, as an anttigravity machine would have enabled 'ID4' style city destroyers.
(P.S. I have seen a good piece of film that, though only 3 seconds or so long, wouldnt go amiss in a WotW movie.
If anyone has played Combat Flight Simulator 3, the opening video shows, towards the end, an american thunderbolt blowing up a bridge, hollywood style. Then from behind him comes this unearthly howling sound. Cue Matrix Style bullet time of a Gotha flying wing appearing through the cloud of debris, then screaming after the thunderbolt. It gave me the willies, no messing!)
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Post by Topaz on Jun 15, 2006 0:52:25 GMT
...Another possibility is that the pilot or operator(s) was killed, or died due to infection later in the campaign. Without the specialist skills needed to operate the craft, perhaps the Martians were faced with the equivilant of a platoon of sqaddies sitting on an Apache helicopter, but with no one to fly it... Interesting idea, and it fits the story quite well. The Flying Machine wasn't seen until about midway through the war, IIRC, so some of the early arrivals were probably already becoming ill. Flying, and especially any kind of air or air-to-ground combat, is a specialized skill in any military service and very likely only a few of the Martians would have been 'assigned' and trained for working with the Flying Machine. If more than a couple of those started getting sick - especially the engineers or 'ground crew' - the machine would have been useless.
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