The ultimate 'Flak Tower'?

[Grey Havoc]

IMAGE CREDIT: Tales of Future Past/Future War​

In 1935, French engineer Henri Lossier proposed to do for air defence what the Maginot Line did for ground defence. He planned to keep the Luftwaffe at bay by protecting Paris with a tower of reinforced concrete 1.23 MILES high.

This staggering edifice, almost six times as tall as the newly completed Empire State Building, would be ringed at regular intervals with what looked like dovecotes of the gods, but were, in fact, gigantic aerodromes to launch fighter planes against the invading German bombers while anti-aircraft guns on the tower helped with the heavy lifting. The idea was that rather than spending precious minutes climbing to fighting altitude, the fighters could swoop down on the Hun like eagles-- French eagles, but eagles none the less.

Of course, since war doesn't break out everyday, the tower was designed for other uses in peacetime, such as office rental, weather prediction and a sanitarium where tuberculosis patients could recuperate in the clean, high-altitude air.

http://davidszondy.com/future/war/Mile%20Tower.htm


Just trying to build the thing would have been a nightmare....

 

[archipeppe]

Just trying to build the thing would have been a nightmare....

... and logging this tower, by sabotage or simply because it may have overstretched
contemporary technology, may have done more damage, than the heaviest air attack !

Another "Maginot oddiness".....

 

[Grey Havoc]

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/fort-more-than-mile-high/

Now another French engineer, Henri Lossier, proposes a jump in construction to 6,560 feet, nearly a mile and a quarter high, in the form of a concrete tower, to be part of the defences of Paris. From its cone-shaped hangars, some over a mile above the ground, airplanes could be launched on a minute’s notice; while firmly-mounted anti-aircraft guns at this great elevation would reach invading planes more readily. The recoil of a hundred four-inch guns at once would vibrate it four inches. The details are shown in the illustrations, as also a comparison with a well-known New England mountain. In times of peace, such a structure could be devoted to many purposes; its great height furnishing advantages not otherwise obtainable, such as pure, thin air, and sunshine.

The material proposed is lightly re-enforced concrete; the thickness of the walls of the great sloping tube being 40 feet at the base, and gradually diminishing. Ten million tons of material would be required, or more than the Great Pyramid’s. (The Eiffel Tower weighs 7000 tons, the structure of the Empire State Building, 200,-000.) The wind pressure against the tower would be colossal; it is designed to resist 200 pounds to the square foot, or a total shove of a hundred thousand tons, small compared to its weight. In the heaviest gale, it would bend 5-1/2 feet from the vertical, at the top.

The question as to what height it is possible to reach, with given materials, before the pressure of the structure above is too great for its base, has been studied by M. Lossier. His conclusion is that a tower like this could be raised a third of a mile fur-ther; one of specially reenforced concrete to 20,000 feet; and one entirely of steel to 32,800 feet, or nearly a mile higher than Mount Everest, the loftiest mountain on the globe! Similarly, he concludes, the limit of bridges, with our present materials, is 4,600 feet for a concrete arch span; and 16,400 feet, more than three miles, for the span of a suspension bridge, before the steel would give under its own weight!

 

[Grey Havoc]

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/maginot-tower/

 

[chuck4]

How would airplanes land back in those conical hangers?

 

[Rheged]

Skyhooks?

 

[Avimimus]

Wasn't this thing supposed to have elevators for raising the aircraft back up? The idea was to elevate anti-aircraft guns and to remove the necessity of climbing to meet bombers - but one can do this while still landing on conventional runways at the base. I'm not sure if there is any evidence of this solution (of if it is just my mind filling in blanks after all these years).

What'd be really neat would've been if they designed elevators large enough to allow refuelling and rearming while the aircraft was being lifted back up to height! Although I haven't seen any evidence of this.

 

[Grey Havoc]

Via the 'Aviation, Imagination of the Future from the Past' thread (h/t The Artist):