Shortround6
Major General
I have been taken to task for my contrarianism in regards to the British use of the Hispano 12Y engine in the Whirlwind.
A lot of times good information gets lost in the middle of threads so my thoughts on the Hispano 12Y and possible British use will be in a different thread.
As usual, timing in very important. Like when were the British to start to undertake the procurement of Hispano engines for the Whirlwind (or any other purpose).
There are at least three aspects of this question of Hispano 12Y use.
1. Do the British buy the engines from another country or licence build?
2, When do they make the decision (Purchase option can be later in timing but runs risk of engines not being delivered)
3. Figure out if the Hispano engine that can be obtained from either path is really any better than the Peregrine.
Let's expand on these points.
1. The only source of up to date Hispano engines in 1938-39 is Hispano company, either from French or Spanish factories. Other countries made hispano engines under licence but not the newest versions.
It has been suggested that Westland was using Hispano cannon so why not their engines. This rather ignores the fact that Westland was not dealing with Hispano in any country. The British 20mm Hispano cannon were built by British MARC. This was a company that was set up to manufacture the 20mm cannon and in which Marc Brikigt held stock. Granted the incorporation papers covered a possible wide range of products.
However the first factory only ever made guns, no engine manufacturing machinery was installed. It also rathe skips over the point that Westland did not buy the guns from British MARC but the British government bought the guns and then sent them (or had them shipped) to the factories to be installed. There was no "relationship" between Westland and Hispano-Suiza.
As a side note the British firm of Alvis had negotiated licences for several French Gnome-Rhone radial engines during the late 30s and built a small plant (15 engines per week?) by the end of 1938 or early 1939 but no orders for engines were forthcoming from the British Government. I don't know if they were frozen out by the existing engine manufactures or what happened. The Alvis plant was considerably expanded and did do considerable sub contract work and engine repair/overhaul during the war.
A similar fate may have been in store for any company that tried to establish a Hispano engine factory in England in 1938-39. Assuming that they could get around the licence agreements between British MARC and Marc Brikigt and the French and Spanish branches of the company.
2. The cannon factory paper work was started in Jan 1938, prototype guns were being fired in Jan/Feb of 1939 but large scale deliveries (small compared to later in the war) didn't occur until some point in 1940, I highly doubt you could build, equip and get an aircraft engine factory into operation any quicker. You don't have to have the blue prints for the engine you wind up building in hand when the factory foundation is poured but neither can you switch to the latest/greatest version in a week or two. By 1938/39 Hispano engine development/production was going in several different directions. You had the older engines whos type numbers did get into the 40's. They used the Hispano-Suiza supercharger and pretty much date back to 1936-37. The newer engines (starting with Y-45?) use the Szydlowsky-Planiol supercharger but Hispano does not make that supercharger, they buy it from from the outside company which means it is not theirs to licence. When the Swiss licenced the 12Y engine in 1938 to power their licenced MS 406 fighters, first production plane delivered in Nov 1939, they wound up with the Y-31 with the Hispano supercharger and not the SP supercharger, A later version of the plane flew with a Licenced Y-51 engine in Oct 1940 but production versions didn't show up until 1941.
In the summer/fall of 1939 the French need just about every New Hispano 12Y engine they can get their hands on and in fact were trying to fit Merlins to several prototypes so the idea of relying on French (or Spanish ) engines doesn't look good.
Work is being done on the 12Z engine but it is only flying in a few prototypes in the spring (through June) of 1940 and is hardly available for export or licence.
3. Was the Hispano really a viable alternative to the Peregrine?
It has been suggested the Hispano would enable the Whirlwind to perform better at altitude. However none of the available pre-war engines show any power advantage over the Peregrine. The Y-45 engine even with the SP supercharger makes 910 hp at 4200 meters ( 13,780ft) compared to the Perigrine's 885 at 15,000ft. I would note that Hispano-Suiza superchargers were pretty poor specimens and were sometimes noted as getting so hot they blistered the paint off the supercharger housing.
The later HS engines do a bit better but they are too late to substitute for the Peregrine.
The Swiss had quite of bit of trouble with the 12Y-51 rated at 1060hp (at a lower altitude than the -45 engine) with crankshaft bearings, This was resolved in 1944, 3 years after they first flew the engine/airplane.
I would note that the next Swiss engine The Sauer YS-2 used a crankshaft 30kg heavier than the one used in the 12Y-51 among other changes, like four valve cylinder heads.
When the Russians were negotiating the license for the 12Y engine in the early 30s the trial engine failed to complete a 100 hour endurance test. The story of the Russian M100-105 series is a story of continued beefing up of parts and weight gain to reach the power the Russians did get at the service the life the Russians accepted. I would note the Russians even adopted the expedient of making the bore 2mm smaller to beef up the cylinder walls. Once you have the production machinery in place it is hard to make any major changes in engine design and the Hispanos were designed with 170mm bore spacing (dates to WW I V-8 engine) which makes it hard to fit thicker cylinder walls or change the liquid cooling spaces between the cylinders or to make the crankshaft bearings any longer (bigger diameter yes). The Crankshaft in the 12Y engines went about 50kg and had NO counter weights although they did have dampers. Torsional vibration was a problem. The engine needed work to either spin faster or take higher boost pressures.
The Sauer YS-2 went 1510lbs to show what kind of weight increase was needed to come close to a Merlin. As an alternative the Peregrine the HS can stay lighter but it's capability for improvement is limited without weight gain.
Now all of this may be viewed as contrarian and not in spirit of saying "what if we use unobtainium, what kind of improvement would we see?"
But basically the problem is there is no good alternative to the Peregrine, there is not production capacity for the Peregrine in Britain. If you can create production capacity are you better off building the Peregrine or some alternative engine? The Hispano is not really a good alternative even if the British of 1938-1940 would stoop so low as to use a French engine. The last is more an attitude of the times rather than the merits of the French engine, which as stated, weren't that good. Marc Brikigt and company were working on the 12Z but their timing was off and the war intervened. Post war French 12Z went 1365lbs and Spanish 12Z-89 went 1410lbs.
A lot of times good information gets lost in the middle of threads so my thoughts on the Hispano 12Y and possible British use will be in a different thread.
As usual, timing in very important. Like when were the British to start to undertake the procurement of Hispano engines for the Whirlwind (or any other purpose).
There are at least three aspects of this question of Hispano 12Y use.
1. Do the British buy the engines from another country or licence build?
2, When do they make the decision (Purchase option can be later in timing but runs risk of engines not being delivered)
3. Figure out if the Hispano engine that can be obtained from either path is really any better than the Peregrine.
Let's expand on these points.
1. The only source of up to date Hispano engines in 1938-39 is Hispano company, either from French or Spanish factories. Other countries made hispano engines under licence but not the newest versions.
It has been suggested that Westland was using Hispano cannon so why not their engines. This rather ignores the fact that Westland was not dealing with Hispano in any country. The British 20mm Hispano cannon were built by British MARC. This was a company that was set up to manufacture the 20mm cannon and in which Marc Brikigt held stock. Granted the incorporation papers covered a possible wide range of products.
However the first factory only ever made guns, no engine manufacturing machinery was installed. It also rathe skips over the point that Westland did not buy the guns from British MARC but the British government bought the guns and then sent them (or had them shipped) to the factories to be installed. There was no "relationship" between Westland and Hispano-Suiza.
As a side note the British firm of Alvis had negotiated licences for several French Gnome-Rhone radial engines during the late 30s and built a small plant (15 engines per week?) by the end of 1938 or early 1939 but no orders for engines were forthcoming from the British Government. I don't know if they were frozen out by the existing engine manufactures or what happened. The Alvis plant was considerably expanded and did do considerable sub contract work and engine repair/overhaul during the war.
A similar fate may have been in store for any company that tried to establish a Hispano engine factory in England in 1938-39. Assuming that they could get around the licence agreements between British MARC and Marc Brikigt and the French and Spanish branches of the company.
2. The cannon factory paper work was started in Jan 1938, prototype guns were being fired in Jan/Feb of 1939 but large scale deliveries (small compared to later in the war) didn't occur until some point in 1940, I highly doubt you could build, equip and get an aircraft engine factory into operation any quicker. You don't have to have the blue prints for the engine you wind up building in hand when the factory foundation is poured but neither can you switch to the latest/greatest version in a week or two. By 1938/39 Hispano engine development/production was going in several different directions. You had the older engines whos type numbers did get into the 40's. They used the Hispano-Suiza supercharger and pretty much date back to 1936-37. The newer engines (starting with Y-45?) use the Szydlowsky-Planiol supercharger but Hispano does not make that supercharger, they buy it from from the outside company which means it is not theirs to licence. When the Swiss licenced the 12Y engine in 1938 to power their licenced MS 406 fighters, first production plane delivered in Nov 1939, they wound up with the Y-31 with the Hispano supercharger and not the SP supercharger, A later version of the plane flew with a Licenced Y-51 engine in Oct 1940 but production versions didn't show up until 1941.
In the summer/fall of 1939 the French need just about every New Hispano 12Y engine they can get their hands on and in fact were trying to fit Merlins to several prototypes so the idea of relying on French (or Spanish ) engines doesn't look good.
Work is being done on the 12Z engine but it is only flying in a few prototypes in the spring (through June) of 1940 and is hardly available for export or licence.
3. Was the Hispano really a viable alternative to the Peregrine?
It has been suggested the Hispano would enable the Whirlwind to perform better at altitude. However none of the available pre-war engines show any power advantage over the Peregrine. The Y-45 engine even with the SP supercharger makes 910 hp at 4200 meters ( 13,780ft) compared to the Perigrine's 885 at 15,000ft. I would note that Hispano-Suiza superchargers were pretty poor specimens and were sometimes noted as getting so hot they blistered the paint off the supercharger housing.
The later HS engines do a bit better but they are too late to substitute for the Peregrine.
The Swiss had quite of bit of trouble with the 12Y-51 rated at 1060hp (at a lower altitude than the -45 engine) with crankshaft bearings, This was resolved in 1944, 3 years after they first flew the engine/airplane.
I would note that the next Swiss engine The Sauer YS-2 used a crankshaft 30kg heavier than the one used in the 12Y-51 among other changes, like four valve cylinder heads.
When the Russians were negotiating the license for the 12Y engine in the early 30s the trial engine failed to complete a 100 hour endurance test. The story of the Russian M100-105 series is a story of continued beefing up of parts and weight gain to reach the power the Russians did get at the service the life the Russians accepted. I would note the Russians even adopted the expedient of making the bore 2mm smaller to beef up the cylinder walls. Once you have the production machinery in place it is hard to make any major changes in engine design and the Hispanos were designed with 170mm bore spacing (dates to WW I V-8 engine) which makes it hard to fit thicker cylinder walls or change the liquid cooling spaces between the cylinders or to make the crankshaft bearings any longer (bigger diameter yes). The Crankshaft in the 12Y engines went about 50kg and had NO counter weights although they did have dampers. Torsional vibration was a problem. The engine needed work to either spin faster or take higher boost pressures.
The Sauer YS-2 went 1510lbs to show what kind of weight increase was needed to come close to a Merlin. As an alternative the Peregrine the HS can stay lighter but it's capability for improvement is limited without weight gain.
Now all of this may be viewed as contrarian and not in spirit of saying "what if we use unobtainium, what kind of improvement would we see?"
But basically the problem is there is no good alternative to the Peregrine, there is not production capacity for the Peregrine in Britain. If you can create production capacity are you better off building the Peregrine or some alternative engine? The Hispano is not really a good alternative even if the British of 1938-1940 would stoop so low as to use a French engine. The last is more an attitude of the times rather than the merits of the French engine, which as stated, weren't that good. Marc Brikigt and company were working on the 12Z but their timing was off and the war intervened. Post war French 12Z went 1365lbs and Spanish 12Z-89 went 1410lbs.
