I am thinking of Wing Commander III's claim that the Excalibur was developed specifically to counter the Kilrathi Bloodfang; that seems like a late development if the Bloodfang has been around since 2656.
The Strakha is an interesting case since we see both of the designs in one place: the intel memo announcing that the ship exists in the Kilrathi Saga manual, which identifies the 'bar of soap' version as a prototype and the pointy one as the production model.
The first recorded encounter with a Bloodfang I know about is at
K'Tithrak Mang in 2667 so that makes the development time on Excalibur much more reasonable.
I never bought the whole prototype/production model idea because it doesn't actually answer the question of why they look so different. It just says they are and expects that to sell.
Thinking and knowing are two different things. There is no evidence of "ballistic transparent plasteel" anywhere.
The fighter that looks like it's designed to have lifting surfaces is not well suited? Yet a giant flying dart is? Think about that for a second. If you are doing atmospheric flying what would you rather be in? I'd rather have something that has lifting surfaces in case damage inflicted upon the ship causes all its controls to fail. A Broadsword has the ability to at least attempt to glide. The Longbow is like a lawn dart. It's going straight down.
No but modern aircraft in the real world don't use glass for cockpit windows so it makes since that 700 years in the future they wouldn't revert to 1920s technology for windows. What ever the material is called I promise you it is weapons fire resistant just like the rest of the ship.
Actually neither of them could glide. The Longbow like you said has very lightly in the way of arrow dynamic lifing surfaces but it has a shape that over all would help to minimis drag and there for friction at higher speeds. The Broadsword on the other hand while it looks more like a convetional airplane has several large flat surfaces facing forward that would create alot more drag. Also the turrets completly distort and dirupt the airflow under the spaceframe. What this means it that while the Broadsword looks aerodynamic it is actuly not at all. Second Longbow has the benefit of both a better trust to weight ratio and afterburners over the Broadsword. These are both very improtent factors in both a fighters ability to menuver in an atmosphere and return to space after a mission.
It is a point of fact that modern jets jets don't glide well at all. They are just too heavy and fall too fast when compared to older planes like the B17 or P51. Considering the lack of functioanl aerodynaics that most WC fighters display I would imagine that they are all like F117s. You lose the flight computer and you better bail out unless you want to die because you are not going to crash land them; just crash.
I don't think lifting surfaces are such a big deal in Wing Commander. I mean, we can stop and hover indefinitely in an Excalibur...
... but this whole discussion is strange. There's no evidence anywhere that any of these are supposed to be ground attack craft.
I don't think anything we fly is equivalent to the A-10; the closest you get is the Excalibur, since you actually use it for ground attack missions and it gets classified as a "Space/Atmospheric Fighter-Bomber"... but even then, it's clearly a fighter-bomber like a Tornado and not a dedicated ground attack craft. The thing that makes the Warthog special is that it's a DEDICATED ground attack craft. You're not using them for torpedo runs or dogfights or anything like that. There's just no fighter like that in Wing Commander.
Both the Broadsword and the Longbow are supposed to look like World War II strategic bombers -- B-17s and B-29s. They're out of place on a carrier, but that's obviously the inspiration for the design... from the glass cockpit on the Longbow to the ball turret gunners and the paint scheme on the Broadsword. Action Stations does talk about how space-to-ground bombing missions were one of the pre-war carrier roles and it's possible that's part of the Broadsword's early design history... but it's still not an A-10.
(You can imagine the other bombers like the Banshee and Crossbow being more along the lines of traditional carrier-based torpedo planes... but the Broadsword and Longbow are supposed to look like strategic bombers.)
Actually there are a number of dedicated ground attack aircraft including versions of both the F 15 and F 16. Both the A4 and A6 where deicated ground attack fighters. What makes the A 10 special is that she is a Tank hunter as here primary role. A squadron of A10's was intended to maul up to a full battalion of enemy armor per sorte.
My compaison of the Longbow to tha A10 was ment to highlight the simalarities of their ordance HPs. A10s don't carry allot of heavy bombs. They use a combination of smaller missles and light bombs. It was seggested that Broadsword's supperior heavy ordenice carring capacity made it the better ground attack craft. I was attempting to show evidence that the opposite; while being very counter intuative, was likely the case. After all there is little doubt that tin the real world the A10 is one of the best; if not the best air to ground killing machine on the planet.
I never considered Strategic bombers as insperation for Longbow and Broadsword because so many light and medium aircraft had turrets back then. I can see the corilations but think that planes like the TBF Avenger, Douglas A-20 or Mitsubishi Ki-51 might better discribe the roles the designers where tring to fill. The Broadsword, because she is so much bigger then other WC fighters might actually have been inspiered by the B25s used in the Doolittle raid off of Hornet and Enterprise.
