Looking for trouble

I love the whole alternative history/Tech thing and flying Battleships are just so awesome, crazy I agree, but just plain awesome.

Having spent quite a lot of time happily looking at various images and reading stories and stuff I found that there are mainly two groups. One, and I think the most covered, is the alternative Edwardian/First World War era type. The other is the space ship version as in the film Space Battleship Yamato.

Anyway, I got to thinking and began wondering that if the tech came about pre first world war, how would these things have developed? Wars have this way of speeding up technical development so I set my aerial battleships in the early 1940's. This way I can include better aerodynamics, early airborne radar and various stuff like that as well as have another war to fight as well.

I can't live with a super lighter than air gas filled Hull so I was thinking on something from Nikola Tesla who might have got into bed with Wright aero engines giving way to a production of a series of Tesla Wright Lift Generators. So I stuck 4 of them on my ships each capable of generating 7500 tons of weight compensation (or something - not really thought about this too much).

I'm thinking colossal diesel electric motors/generators and accumulators to feed the power hungry lift generators and drive the electric motors for the props. So I guess the whole of the hull, less the superstructure is just full of diesel engines, power station grade electrical gear and seriously large amounts of diesel fuel - plus ball turrets coz you just have to have ball turrets ;)

So anyway, here we are in an alternative 1942 and capital ships are still the pride of a nation. Here are the Predator class Battlecruisers: Huntress and her sister ship, Tigress, 2 hours out from the Scapa Flow sky dock and looking for trouble.

I'm not sure that the Royal Navy would approve of such flamboyant markings like I have on the Tigress but this is my alternative world and I'll hang furry dice off the rudder if I want to ;)