The Problem a lot of these time travel books have is that the "time travelers" do NOT bring all the technical information of how to produce the weapons/planes/ships they have with them.
And unfortunately for even time travel reality ( there is a real stretch in itself) the planes/engine/ computers of 2021 (or even 2001) are generations different than the even the prototype engines of 1941 so that the only things they have in common is general operating principles.
In aircraft fabrication they were using those big Hydraulic presses to bend chemically milled sheets.
Without the knowledge of how to do chemical milling the big hydraulic presses are much less useful.
I agree. It going to be a very specific piece of information, and the odds are against it being in a ships data archives. It'll be a document with some obscure and technical name, like: ''Metallurgical fabrication of the B-52 airframe.'' Or maybe: ''Engineering analysis of the P&W J57 turbine blades.''
Maybe the downtimers will get lucky, and someone in the 2021 fleet will have a PDF of this document. But if they don't, then things get alot more complicated... Reverse engineering without the requisite knowledge is really hard.
In the turbine engine there a number of generations in such things as turbine blades, some of which had nothing in common with their predecessors except shape. For instance RR went, in the years between 1972 and 1987, from an inlet temperature to the turbine of 1530degrees K to 1739 degrees K. using not only different alloys and different layouts of air passages to cool the blades but 3 different casting techniques. This is on the Civil RB 211 turbo fan.
up until 1977 the blades were investment cast in a traditional multi axis grain structure. Between 1977 and 79 they developed a way to cast the blades with very long lengthwise crystals nearly eliminating any crosswise grain boundary lines and greatly increasing tensile strength. Later they were able to make blades that were actually one large crystal.
Good point. The first mention I can find of this 'single crystal' casting method was a business week document from 1966. This is what it said specifically:
''For basic research, P&W set up a metallurgy group six years ago that now has 35 Ph.d's among its staff of 100. Earlier this year, the group came up with a method of casting nickel alloys to produce a "single-crystal" structure that is four times more durable than conventionally cast material. P&W will use the process to cast turbine blades and vanes.''
I'm guessing that the blades on the J57 engine probably didn't use these kindof production techniques... But even so, they could still be problematic for 1940s engineers to reconstruct. Without knowing the specifics, its hard to say one way or another.
Even if you had some of these to examine in a 1942 laboratory, how do you duplicate them?
Or how do you try to backdate any of their features (except for overall shape) to the materials and fabrication techniques used in WW II.
I would note that it usually took around two years (at best) during WW II from breaking ground on a new factory to actually getting mass production numbers of either engines or airframes. This was for engines/ airframes using pretty much existing technology. You can't build the factory until you know what machinery is needed to put in it and for mass production the machines have to placed in a logical order (and near whatever services are going to be needed, electrical, compressed air, steam, nitrogen supplies, etc. When I worked at P & W 40 years ago some of the machines extend down below floor level and had large cooling tanks for the cooling fluid poured on the piece and the cutter/s as the piece was worked on. Trying to move machines after they are installed is a major pain in the ass.
Yeah, going from a blank sheet to an actual, flyable B-52 bomber in 24 months is a real stretch. Granted, there were only a handful of them in Birminghams story, but that still seems implausible. Honestly, it would have been more realistic if the Americans had gone for the B-36 design. Or even a buffed out B-29. Creating an highly advanced aircraft from scratch when you don't even have all the infrastructure in place is going to run into delays. Blueprints are nice, but they don't fix other things.