Joint Defence Fighter

Rhino 3d and PSP7.

The Republic of Carthago and Rema had been rivals for supremacy in the mezzoterranian theatre for more than 2000 years, after the three punic wars and several other skirmishes had ended undecided. With the advancing air armament of Rema and its northern ally Teutonia in the early 20th century, the phoenician military high command demanded the development of competitive lighter than air technology or at least the purchase of a fleet of airships to keep the political and military situation balanced over the sea, that Maledetto Bertoni, leader of the "Conglomerato Nazionale" and new dictator of Mezzoterra, called "Mare Nostrum" more and more often. Therefore, the old 1774 alliance between the Lands of new Hope and Carthago was revived in 1927. Several technology projects were initiated, with Hugges Aircraft Industries and Republican Phoenician Aerodyne as the main contractors. Whereas Carthago had a vital interest in advanced airship technology, eldoradian engineers were interested in phoenician state of the arts metallurgy and aerodynamics. The best of both worlds was to be combined in the Joint Defence Fighter (JDF) project, an aircraft to be solely deployed from carriers to defend the fleet against hostile fighter groups.


The eccentric layout of the airframe, drawn by phoenician engineers, irritated the eldoradian staff at first sight, but turned out to be well balanced and stable later on.
The low attachment of the new Hugges "Westworld 2" engine had been chosen to keep the propeller blades out of the docking process as far as possible, as this had been a critical momentum in carrier ops so far. The JDF-1s layout was to enable even more unexperienced pilots to achieve a carrier clearance after a comparatively short trainig schedule. The compact plane featured a heavy armament of four "Barkas" machine guns, good turnabilty, a superior climb rate and outstanding stability. The narrow cockpit, which had been designed around the average phoenician recruit and a rather poor backward visibilty were minor shortcomings. Also, other than most western designs, the JDF-1 had the tendency to flat spin, if driven to the extreme.
The evaluation JDF-O series came along with a closed canopy, but most fighter jockeys of both sides demanded the plane to be open, as it was a common agreement, that a real fighter pilot had to "smell" his enemy. Another reason, as Cpt. Waldo Pepper, leader of the eldoradian evaluation group put it was, that "this funny ride felt a little less claustrophobic that way". A closed canopy was first introduced with a small series of Hugges racing aircraft, powered by a supercharged version of the Westworld power plant.

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