The Little World

No one can accuse the Ruritanian people of being wasteful – they are not profligate in any way. Nor can they be ignored as engineers and scientists – any nation that concocts brandy and aviation fuel from turnips must be accorded a good deal of respect.

Thus it is not surprise to see that the workshops of Aerotania ( The state-sponsored aviation company ) used a good deal of ingenuity when they were assigned the task of making a fleet of mail planes for the Ruritania Post. A number of discarded, interned, and crashed aircraft were available for conversion and Aerotania engineers set about sawing, riveting, and rigging.

The first priority was the removal of arms and associated structures on the aircraft. This was easy to do on the junked C-47’s as they were unarmed to begin with. The Savoia Marchetti SM.79 was a little more work as a couple of smooth panels had to be beaten out of aluminium to close in machine gun positions. Fortunately there were enough old fighter planes to provide the metal.

The Heinkel He 111 was a little more work – the upper turret was simple bent sheet of aluminium, but the sterbebette was more work. It just hung out in the airstream and caused drag, and nothing would fair it in. In the end they cut the damned thing off entirely and welded on the wheel well doors off a crashed B-26 as a streamlined housing. This gave more room inside for sacks of mail.

The problem of range then reared up – Ruritanian turnip fuel doesn’t have as much octane as standard aviation fuel ( though the turnip brandy is powerful enough to dissolve stainless steel…) and you need more of it to get anywhere and home again. The planes would need more of it to operate over air routes to Africa and Asia.

Fortunately Ruritania is located on the attack routes to many German cities and the countryside is littered with drop tanks from escort fighters. As there are only so many hot rod racers, water tanks, and bird baths that are needed, there is a great pile of the tanks still left. Aerotania workshops just picked the best of them and bolted them up under the Heinkel and Savoia Marchetti and that was that.