Best Aircraft Engine of WWII ?

Obviously no rocket or jet engine.

The chief designer of Blohm & Voss, Dr. Richard Vogt, has been quoted saying in admiration of a captured example of the Pratt & Whitney R-2800; "How could our leaders ever have dreamed of going to war against a nation which could afford to build so beautiful an engine for a fighter ?".

Do we all agree with Dr. Vogt, or does someone have a better suggestion ?

 

others

the merlin, allison, cyclone, and the sakea 31 come to mind

 

Good big power:

Pratt & Whitney R-4360 corncob 28 cylinder engine would do just fine i guess?!

For Sound...I would go for the Merlin or a Db605...they just sound great!

 

Packard's Merlins.

 

Why not original RR Merlins?

And about original question: Best, defined how? Most powerful? Most reliable? Most economical? For what use?

I admit that Merlins were very good, althought later years of war merlins started lagging behind with HP, as merlins displaced "only" 27L and getting more HP out was increasingly difficult. Thats why brits replaced merlins with Griffons at their main fighters (spitfires) as Griffon had 37L displacement and therefore more potential.

Big radials were usually very reliable and very powerful, due to their large displacement. For instance, P&W R2800 had 46L displacement. Downside to these radials is their huge frontal area which wasn't good for aerodynamics. Also, aircooled radial engines tend to have lower powerratings than watercooled inlines with same displacement because watercooling allowes better heat management.

Larger inline radials, H24 etc configurations had the potential to be the best aircraft engines (in my opinion) as they combined smaller frontal area with huge displacement and watercooling. Unfortunatelly (or luckily) war ended before these engines managed to get much foothold. And some of these were also plagued by reliability problems.

 

All of the above, really. The 'best of' topic is mostly a matter of opinions, but I have found that, personally at least, they are often the topics I learn most from. :smok:

 

Something definitely went right when they designed the Merlin. Today a tuned Merlin produces a hefty 4000hp which is on par with the larger modified radials.

Currently the world speed record on piston engines is hold by a heavily modified P-51 with a Merlin sitting on its nose.

 

Its true that watercooled (or should I say liquidcooled) engines have more potential than aircooled, due to the fact that liquidcooling is more efficient way to remove excess heat from engine than air.

Reason for Merlin being so popular with high speed aircrafts etc is the fact it was produced in so vast numbers and there are really many people who are familiar with that engine and you probably will get many, many custom made hipo-parts for merlin with relatively small amount of cash.

 

What about the Griffon ? It proved extreemly effective on the Spit !

KBO

 

Suppossedly, and I can't remember the source, the Packard built Merlins had a slight performance edge over the Rolls-Royce Merlins. Something to do with better machining, higher quality materials, etc. Then again, Packard didn't have to worry about being bombed and had access to better everything.

 

Packard, IIRC, re-engineered the Merlin a touch to make it easier to mass-produce. Would that have an effect?

 

IIRC there were over 30 versions of RR produced Merlins and 10 mass produced versions of Packard Merlins. Most of the Packard build Merlins went to British use, mainly to their bombers.

I have never heard that there were any performance differencies between the Packard built and the RR built variants of the same engine. Then again, I'm no expert in engines.

AFAIK, the RR built Merlin 66 produced the same 1580hp in the nose of a Spitfire IX than the Packard produced Merlin 266 in the nose of a Spitfire XVI.

 

Did some digging in the usenet about Merlins.

Production:
Rolls Royce, Derby 32,377
Rolls Royce, Crewe 26,065
Rolls Royce, Glasgow 23,647
Ford, Trafford Park, Manchester 30,428
US production (Packard) 37,143 (Merlin's, supplied to British aircraft)
US production (Packard) 18,380 (V-1650's, supplied to US aircraft,
including the P-51)

As for the reliability:
"The Rolls-Royce Merlins were more reliable: some of the very early
Packards had a tendency to catch fire. On the other hand, Packard
produced their engines a lot faster, trading off some of the extreme
precision of the Rolls-Royce engines (hand-scraping the bearing shells
and cylinder head mating faces, for instance) for getting them out the
door with speed. Once the teething problems were sorted, many groundcrew supposedly preferred the Packard because of the excellent toolkit that accompanied it: there wasn't too much to choose between them overall."

The British hand finishing Merlins were a little reliable it seems, but maintaining them on the field must be a PITA as every part that got changed needed the same hand finishing the original part had. The Packard Merlins didn't suffer from this.

 

Interesting. I have always heard my grandfather speak very highly of Packard cars.

Interestingly enough, WW2 is considered the main reason Packard went into finacial troubles after the war. GM, Ford, and Chrysler were building trucks, cars, AFV's and other vehicles while Packard was building engines. After the war, the big 3 already had their hands on the sheet steel production mills and Packard couldn't get enough material to build cars they had orders for. Since folks wanted a car and not an excuse, they bought form Ford, GM, and Chrysler.

 

lots of the Packard car assembly plants were shipped to Stalin...

 

In 1939, the Merlin was producing just over 1,000 hp. By 1945, it was producing over 2,000 hp, in service (DH Hornet). That speaks for itself, as does the fact that it was selected to power an aircraft which only entered production in 1945 - and was one of the fastest piston-engined planes ever to see service.

On the 'historical significance' side, it powered the Spitfire and Hurricane in the BoB (and was still powering front-line fighters at the end of the war), powered the best light bomber - and most versatile plane - of the war (Mosquito), the best escort fighter (Mustang) and of course the Lancaster.

Some engines which entered service later in the war were bigger and more powerful, but no other engine had a record remotely like the Merlin's.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

 

And, because we're a tank forum, the Merlin also became the Meteor that was used in good number of our tanks.
Did any other nation do that? Or did they have no need?
Oli

 

The original Shermans used aircraft engines - rotary ones, which is why they were so tall for their size.
Later Shermans used 'Ford' engines - basically an American-produced Meteor.

The Germans tended to use Maybach engines, which AFAIK were specialised tank engines.

 

As for RR Griffons, they proved extremely disappointing in the nose of a Spitfire. The 37 litres of displacement (used more gas per mile) and heavier design (compared to a Merlin) neutered the range of a Spit to the point the Griffon engined Spit was considered useless.

 

Griffon-engined Spit was useless? :roll: For what? We took Giffon-Spits up to Mk 24 (47 as Seafire), from the XII and then kept the engine for Spiteful, Seafang and MB-5.

For 330 lbs more weight it provided 380 more HP, Merlin's sfc was 0.45 lb/HP/hr and the Griffon was 0.46 lb/HP/hr - a 23% increase in power, 2% increase in engine weight (don't know about mounting weight) and a 26% increase in fuel consumption, not sure what the fuel capacity of the last Merlin Spit was, Mark 1 was 85 gallons, but the Seafire 47 was 154 gallons - an 81% increase. More than made up for fuel consumption

From http://freespace.virgin.net/john.dell/meandgr.htm
Oli