Chapter 309: Chapter 272: Big Belly Number One_2

This also means that this manned aircraft can greatly hance the connection betwe two distant regions and significantly reduce the time it takes to travel to these remote areas.

If you travel from West Australia to the capital Sydney via industrial railway, it will take at least two days.

But what about taking this passger aircraft? At an average speed of 70 kilometers per hour, it takes about t hours to reach Sydney.

Of course, currt airplanes can't support such long flights, ev with multiple fuel tanks, the SF's maximum range is only kilometers.

Actually, based on the size of SF, it is tirely possible to add a few more fuel tanks and increase the maximum range to at least 500 kilometers.

However, doing so might not be worth the risk as nobody can guarantee that the aircraft gine won't counter problems, especially during long flights.

Ev the very stable car gines we have today can pottially fail after running continuously for more than t hours.

Although the chances of failure have now be reduced to a very low frequcy, if a car has a breakdown on the road, it's just an inconvice. If an airplane fails in the sky, the death rate is 0%.

Therefore, a maximum range of kilometers is sufficit for currt airplanes, as it still requires nearly sev hours of flight time.

After more than sev hours, ev if the aircraft gine has no problems, it must be allowed to cool down and undergo maintance before flying again.

Anyway, the distance from West Australia to New South Wales is not too far. If necessary, a transfer stop in the middle of the route wouldn't waste too much time.

Although passger aircraft have be developed, Arthur has no plans to use them in the short term, at least not within two years.

He would wait for these aircraft to undergo a high-frequcy, long-term tests that prove the fault rate is within an acceptable range before attempting to use them.

Of course, Arthur will also take all necessary precautions ev in such situations.

Arthur is not very satisfied with the currt passger capacity and stability of SF and has no need to expose the aircraft to the scrutiny of other countries. He gave Director Theodore the task of continuing to develop passger aircraft with improved stability, safety, speed, and maximum range.

Since all three Monarch-class battleships were undergoing sea trial tests, the Royal Shipyard had not started building new warships, but was ready to repair the battleships if needed.

After all, each battleship was built with millions of Australian dollars and needed to be protected from any accidts.

The good news was that over the past few months, there had be no accidts during the naval tests of the three dreadnoughts. The Australasia, having undergone a year of rigorous sea trials, is almost ready to be officially commissioned into the fleet.

As for the remaining Australia and New Zealand battleships, if the sea trials go smoothly, they should be able to be officially commissioned in the latter half of this year, becoming the trump cards of the Australasian navy.

By th, Australasia will officially become one of the top t naval powers in the world. Ev stretching the truth, it is not impossible to say that their naval power has reached the great power level.

In fact, considering the control of the sky by the aircraft, the Australasian navy does have great power level combat effectivess in coastal operations, although it can only be considered at the tail d of the major power level.

To catch up with top powers like Britain and Germany, having dozs of dreadnoughts would be absolutely necessary.

After all, historically, since the birth of the dreadnought in 906, the construction of dreadnoughts has be quite exaggerated amongst the major powers during the short eight-year period until 94.

The British Empire built the most dreadnoughts, a whopping 9 ships in just eight years, leading the world pack.

Ranked second naturally was the German Empire, which built 7 dreadnoughts in eight years.

Although the United States was relatively weak before World War I, they still built six classes of dreadnoughts totaling ships.

Britain's construction speed was extremely exaggerated, averaging 3.6 dreadnoughts per year, a rate that Australasia's shipbuilding industry could not ev catch up to if it tried.

Germany was also quite exaggerated, building two dreadnoughts per year on average.

If considering Australasia's shipbuilding capabilities, working at full capacity for eight years, they could build only about t dreadnoughts.

Of course, this does not consider the costs of building dreadnoughts and crew training time, only taking into account the construction speed of the warships.