During the first half of the twentieth century, the development time of any aircraft was often very long.

Mainly, countries are all experiencing the aerodynamic layout of aircraft, and they don’t know what kind of aerodynamic layout of aircraft can perfectly match the aircraft’s own aircraft engine. Often, the developed aircraft are modified many times because the engine power is too large and too small, which wastes time and financial resources.

Especially during the war, if a new aircraft cannot achieve a perfect combination of aerodynamic layout and the engine itself, it is easy to have weaknesses, which increases the enemy's chance of attack and even affects the entire war.

To be able to solve or minimize such unnecessary errors, a critical equipment is required, its name is a wind tunnel.

Wind tunnels were not new in this era. Aircraft design companies with slightly larger scale have built wind tunnels.

However, most aircraft designers in this era were affected by the commercial operations of airlines. Because the wind tunnel costs are too high, the operating costs are higher, and the efficiency is very low. The aircraft market is in a saturated state and sales are too low, so only small-scale simple wind tunnels are built. The wind tunnel size that can be provided to aircraft designers is too small, and they can only rely on models to conduct wind tunnel testing. The test data is very inaccurate because of manual operation.

In this case, flight designers usually design an aircraft based on theoretical aerodynamics. They will be sold to customers by the company's boss without wind tunnel testing or just a few tests. They often have to undergo many continuous modifications to barely meet the needs of customers. In order to avoid detours, many aircraft companies even make slightly changes on aircraft that were previously very effective, and more by increasing engine power to meet customers' upgrade needs.

The unchanging aerodynamic layout has seriously affected the continuous improvement of aircraft engines, making it impossible for aircraft engines to perform their true performance, wasted resources, and also affected the progress of the aircraft industry.

It was not until the outbreak of World War II that the aerodynamic layout of the aircraft had to be improved due to the war's needs. As a result, many aircraft that should have been very excellent were tested due to lack of experimental data and dozens of test flights. Many were not designed until after the end of World War II, which wasted precious time in the war and wasted manpower and financial resources.

The most typical example is that Germany's aircraft engines met the standards of the jet era in 1940, but because Germany's aerodynamic layout was still in the era of propeller low-speed aircraft, the newly developed jet aircraft did not have corresponding wind tunnel experimental data, and had to conduct hundreds of prototype test flights. Often, the prototypes and pilots tested were destroyed and killed, and the result was that it was a big delay in the precious time for the Luftwaffe to equip new aircraft. It also caused the Luftwaffe's main fighter jets to be replaced from before World War II to the end of World War II. It was only a small-scale improvement, which was one of the fundamental reasons why Germany's large number of advanced technologies could not be applied to new fighters in time to bring transportation to Germany.

When the Luftwaffe realized this serious problem and immediately set out to build the world's largest large wind tunnel laboratory, it was defeated and surrendered before it could be completed. In the end, the Germans' advanced technology that led the world to the United States and the Soviet Union.

As a later generation, Zhang Meng knew the decisive influence of aviation power on future wars, and the huge role of wind tunnels in aviation development was clearer, so he would not take detours. At the same time, his aircraft carrier battle group had been planned, and there must be a carrier-based aircraft that meets the requirements in the next sixteen months to form combat effectiveness. He did not want the pilots he had worked hard to die for unnecessary test flights. He could not afford to lose, especially time waited for anyone.

The Raptor fighter, which combines the advantages of Spitfire and BF109 fighter, has been launched to develop projects and is urgently needed to test it. In order to shorten the development time of Raptor fighter as much as possible and for the future development of the Tang Empire Air Force, Zhang Meng decided to equip the Raptor fighter with corresponding wind tunnel laboratories.

Considering that there is no CNC computer system in this era, the artificial calculation error is very large. In order to reduce data errors, the real machine wind tunnel test is more realistic and accurate than the data from the model wind tunnel test, but that also means a huge cost issue in wind tunnel investment.

If a problem can be solved with money, it must not be a problem.

At least that's what Zhang Meng thought.

Either you don’t build it, or if you want to build it, you can build the world’s largest and most complete wind tunnel group. Zhang Meng doesn’t care how much it costs.

Of course, Zhang Meng's decision was no longer limited to simply providing full-size wind tunnel test data for Raptor fighters.

The role of the wind tunnel group is not only to provide accurate experimental data for Raptor fighter jets. In the entire national defense industry and civil industry, wind tunnels can not only meet the aerodynamic measurement of fighter jets, but also provide real data on compressive, heat-resistant and air resistance simulation for helicopters, civil aircraft, cars, trains, rockets, missiles, artillery shells, satellites, space shuttles, space capsules, etc. After injection, it can also simulate ships, submarines, etc., and there are also more equipment developments related to people's livelihood, such as vacuum cleaner parts, large buildings testing of hundreds of stories high-rise buildings, and compressive and thermal tests of various materials play an important role in the construction of a country's fluid mechanics industry.

Taking advantage of the US economic crisis and the inexpensive opportunity of various cement, steel and other materials, Zhang Meng planned to be in place at once to meet all the demand for wind tunnel laboratories in the next forty or fifty years.

Zhang Meng did it as soon as he said that, and immediately found Martin, Tesla and others to discuss the feasibility of establishing a super wind tunnel group test base.

When he heard that Zhang Meng was going to build a super wind tunnel group, Martin and other designers of Raptor Airlines suddenly had an extremely excited green light in their eyes. Even Tesla, which has always been calm, was a little surprised, because according to Zhang Meng's proposal, a super wind tunnel group requires at least hundreds of millions of dollars, and even if the raw materials at a bargain price brought about by the US economic crisis, it would have to be hundreds of millions of dollars.

Obviously, Tesla still doesn’t know how rich Zhang Meng’s family is.

Zhang Meng immediately appeased Tesla. Money is definitely not a problem, the question is whether we have the technical ability.

Martin said: "The most core equipment for building a super wind tunnel group is large and high-quality air compressors!"

Zhang Meng asked: "Where can I get it?"

Martin replied: "At the best of my knowledge, Quincy Air Compressor Company in the United States is the top experts in this field, and they have the ability to make the high-quality large air compressors needed for us in the super wind tunnel group!"

"No problem! I'll do it!"

Zhang Meng gave Martin a positive look and signaled him to continue.

"The wind tunnel group cannot be built in one or two days. At present, what we need most urgently is the prototype produced by the Raptor fighter. It requires a full-size wind tunnel test for it. It requires a 2.4-meter supersonic wind tunnel test. It is conservatively estimated that more than 8,000 tons of cement must be poured in the foundation construction alone. At least 700 steel cement columns are drilled into the ground. On average, each cement column must be more than 33 meters thick to maintain stability."

"We have steel cement, and we use special cement and Krupp steel for you. This is OK, let's continue!"

Martin thought this would scare Zhang Meng, but this was the simplest problem for Zhang Meng.

Undoubtedly, Zhang Meng took advantage of the US economic crisis and used various conspiracies, which could even be said to be despicable, shameless, dirty and other means. Zhang Meng robbed a lot of the most basic raw materials such as special steel and special cement in the hands of Americans. It may be more appropriate to describe them astronomical numbers.

Well, Martin smiled bitterly, and pretended to be underestimating his boss's abilities.

"Another problem is that we need to set up a 1,000 kV ultra-high voltage and 200 ampere super circuit system to provide at least 20,000 kW of instantaneous power and 120,000 kW of core power."

Everyone was stunned, with no reaction except for the expressions of the two.

One is Zhang Meng, because he knew that only one person could do it in this era. The other is Tesla, because he played this super game more than 20 years ago, which caused the entire New York power outage for three months, and he was the culprit.

"There is no problem with this, and the Tesla academician will assist in solving it, right?"

Zhang Meng looked at Tesla, and the latter asked calmly: "You have to build at least two additional thermal power stations of 500,000 kilowatts for me, otherwise the people will spend the night in the dark, don't blame me for not reminding you!"

Well, Martin and others then remembered that they were surrounded by Tesla, a super awesome person.

It was originally a very difficult thing, but it turned out to be very simple.

"Is there any other question?"

"I can solve the remaining problems myself! I'm not going to choose a location now!"

Zhang Meng said directly: "The wind tunnel group must be built along the mountain. We only have the ability to build on Wawawu Island. Fortunately, there is a natural large cave group, so I think it will be easy to build!"

"That's right! This is indeed a unique condition!"

Martin and others nodded. In their opinion, the natural resources of the entire Tang Empire, that is, the natural cave group of the Wawawu Islands, are still valuable.

Afterwards, everyone studied some details. After that, Zhang Meng handed over the task to Martin, Tesla and others, and he called Zhang Zhong and Madoff over.

Obviously, Zhang Meng is planning to cheat the Americans again.
Chapter completed!