Best Aircraft in Many Different Roles Part II

mosquitoman said:

Problem with the engine, the Centaurus version was going to be the first but due to development problems, they shoved the Napier Sabre in

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Problems started to appear as soon as volume production started. Up to that point the engines had been hand-assembled by Napier craftsmen, and it proved to be rather difficult to adapt it to assembly line production techniques. In particular, the sleeves tended to fail quite often, seizing the engine in the process. At that time Bristol were developing their own sleeve valve designs, and their Taurus

The Taurus was a 14-cylinder two-row radial aircraft engine, produced by the Bristol Engine Company starting in 1936. The Taurus was developed by adding cylinders to the existing Aqulia design, creating a design that produced just over 1,000 horsepower (750 kW) with very low weight.

Bristol had originally intended to use the Aquila and Perseus as two of its major designs in the 1930s, but the rapid increase in size and speed of aircraft in the 1930s demanded much larger engines than either of these. The mechanicals from both of these designs were then put into two-row configuations to develop much larger engines, the Aquila becoming the Taurus, and the Perseus becoming the Hercules.
..... Click the link for more information. engine had the same bore. At first Bristol refused to work with Napier, but eventually, under intense pressure from the Air Ministry The British Air Ministry was the civil service branch in charge of the RAF, and had policies before World War II that placed too little emphasis on fast effective fighter aircraft until it was almost too late.


..... Click the link for more information. , they relented, and the problems soon disappeared with the addition of Bristol's well-machined sleeves.

Quality control also proved to be a serious problem. Engines were often delivered with improperly cleaned castings, broken piston rings, and machine cuttings left inside the engine. Mechanics were constantly overworked trying to keep Sabres running, and during cold weather they had to run them every two hours during the night so that they wouldn't seize up. These problems took too long to straighten out, and for many the engine started to attain a bad reputation. To make matters worse, mechanics and pilots were unfamiliar with the very different nature of this engine, and tended to blame the Sabre for problems which were caused by incorrect handling. This was all exacerbated by the representatives of the competing Rolls-Royce company, who had their own agenda.

The problems were eventually addressed, however, and the engine started to reliably allow higher and higher boost settings. By 1944 the Sabre V was delivering 2,400 hp (1,800 kW) consistently, and the reputation of the engine started to improve. This was the last version to see service, however. The later Sabre VII delivered 3,500 hp (2,600 kW) with a new supercharger, and the final test articles delivered 4,000 hp (3,000 kW). By the end of the war there were several engines of the same power class; the Pratt Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major was at that time producing about 3,055 hp (2,280 kW), but used over twice the displacement, at 4,360 in³ (71 L).
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Napier+Sabre

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the lancaster kicks ass said:

but CC doesn't think inlines look right on bombers........

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