Shield Failure

On 18th August Major Hans Weber was wounded during an escort mission and being weak through loss of blood became disorientated, force landing on the coast of what he thought was France. Unfortunately he descended on the outskirts of Dymchurch in Kent. The landing was heavy and he was in no condition to destroy his FW390. The aircraft had been witnessed to being in trouble as it crossed the coast and was quickly secured by the local home defence and Major Weber taken to Hospital.

This forced landing was welcomed by the RAF as it had suspected that the FW390 had at least partial fuselage force field shielding and was taken to RAE Farnborough for investigation. The airframe had sustained severe damage and flying restoration was foregone in favour of examination of the power plant/power generation system as well as the shielding capability. The coupled twin V12 engines had both sustained catastrophic crank shaft failure as the prop was under power on impact. However the generator, accumulator and associated shield hardware were scavenged and test rigged using a Tesla-Royce power unit.

The English power unit was of a lesser rating than that fitted to the FW390 but more than enough for static energy generation. The tests proved beyond doubt that the FW390 had close skin ballistic shielding of 70% of the airframe which covered most of the vital areas vulnerable in combat.
Although the power generation hardware could be reverse engineered and any useful technical data employed into the allied shield generation program, there was still a problem of a suitable power unit. Current RAF and USAAF power units could not deliver enough energy to provide lift as well as energise and maintain a protective shield. It was realised that the FW390 relied upon a conventional albeit high lift aerofoil section for over 50% of its lift therefore releasing energy for the shield. The problem was that none of the allies had building programs that included what was considered old technology airframe design.

This left them lagging behind the Germans in both engine output and airframe design and something would need to be done quickly. So, the powers that be at the air ministry made a cup of tea and telephoned a small brown dog who was also having a cup of tea and thinking about something that a clever chap by the name of Zgerken mentioned about energy weapons. The problem was that there was still the problem of an engine that could produce the required output - this was going to need more than one cup of tea and in the meantime there would need to be a stop gap solution.
During one of the shield tests at Farnborough a small test capacitor was coupled to the test rig which overloaded and blew. It was noted that although the shielding absorbed the explosion the shield integrity dropped notably. Although the energy drop was quickly compensated for it was apparent that a sufficient or sustained energy discharge within the shield could effectively drain the shield to a point where it no longer offered any protection.

The stop gap came in the form of high discharge capacitors built into the body of 30mm shells with thin wall casings. The Spectre carries 4 x 30mm canon as standard and so the inner canon were removed and modified units made suitable for use with what was now called the ECP round - Electro capacitor projectile or, as the RAF called them, cap guns. The extra hardware and weight meant that the remaining 2 x 30mm canon had to be replaced with 20mm but with this armament the shield take out time could be reduced by 50%.