Knights of the Sky

[Tripledot]

Fighter pilots are often referred to as "the knights of the sky"- your challenge is to make this literal. Have air superiority be the domain of the landed aristocracy, equipped, maintained, and manned by the gentry. I'll put this in Before 1900 because I'm assuming it'd take a pre-1900 PoD for this to be possible.

 

[Lalli]

Probably if there is not enlightenment nor French Revolution and then world might remain more conservative.

 

[CountPeter]

At certain points, this was the case.

Although there were of course numerous non-landed pilots, a lot of Europe during WW1 had proportionally high numbers of aristocrats as pilots, and a culture of aristocratic pilots being the face of air combat was still popular in many countries going into WW2.

Ultimately, the idea of the young aristocrat as master of the skies just died out with the global power of aristocracy in general.

 

[Atterdag]

It would require a feudal society transforming into one with a modern army and perhaps avoiding noble resistance by still guaranteeing them military privilege. Sounds like a dumb idea though.

 

[Puzzle]

Maybe a delayed WWI and an earlier depression. The only planes that exist are ones for races, there's no demand for passenger service so when war breaks out the only people with planes are bored aristocrats who fly planes for a hobby. When war breaks out they strap on machine guns, and the years of experience mean that the former racers cut a massive swathe through any attempts to train up new ones. Since there's also been no real development of planes past single seaters, bombers aren't a thing, and there's no incentive to build massive fleets of planes so the existing talent pool is deep enough. It's a stretch.

 

[Deleted member 114175]

Maybe a post apocalyptic society after a nuclear war, where the technology is somewhat advanced, but trade networks collapsed completely causing fuel to be in much lower supply and making computerization hardly feasible. So WW2 style single seat fighters are the most sophisticated feasible planes that can be reliably produced, anything else would be as relatively expensive as an aircraft carrier. Because having an air force is still a massive advantage over not having one, a small fleet of expensive and hard to replace fighters is flown by pilots recruited from the upper class who later become an aristocracy.