WOMBAT. When the United States Army Airforce needed a plane capable of transporting fighters over long distances without the need for in-flight re-fuelling they called on SWORD, the Scientific World Organisation for Research and Development to provide the solution. The answer was Wombat, a transport plane with the ability to carry a fully armed and fully fuelled fighter plane on its upper docking surface after rendezvous in-flight. As Wombat has the ability to fly higher than a fighter, and much higher than a conventional transport plane and at much greater speeds, it will be able to transport a fully armed and fuelled fighter plane to any part of the globe in only a few short hours. Upon arrival at its destination Wombat can either land with the fighter still safely secured on its upper docking platform or the pilot of the fighter can re-start his engines, be released from the Wombat and land on his own allowing the Wombat to return to its home base without the need to land and re-fuel during the transport mission. Picture 1 – Top Right Seen on the tarmac at SWORD’s North American facility Wombat waits for take-off clearance for its first test flight. Picture 2 – Bottom Right Wombat takes to the skies for what everyone on the ground hopes will be its first successful test-flight. Picture 3 – Bottom Left After mid-air rendezvous with the fully armed and fully fuelled fighter to be used in the test, the pilot of the test fighter will deploy his landing gear and slowly manoeuvre his fighter until it is only a few short inches above the docking platform of the Wombat transport plane. It is at this point that ultra-powerful electro-magnets just below the surface of the wombat’s docking platform will be engaged to draw the test fighter fully down onto the docking platform. As power to the electro-magnets is slowly increased it will lock the fighter solidly in place and the test fighters pilot will be able to close down his own crafts engines allowing Wombat take the full strain of the fully loaded fighter for the first time. Picture 4 – Top Left With its test fighter cargo safely locked in place Wombat comes into land after a successful first test flight. Author/Artists Notes To get the four picture merge used in this presentation and keep picture quality via Photoshop I had to drastically reduce the size of the original pictures which means they are not as big as I would like. The plan now is to select what I feel is the best of the fours pictures used in this presentation and to present it on its own at full size in my gallery here at Renderosity tomorrow. I hope you have enjoyed this presentation of the Wombat transport aircraft.