renrich
Chief Master Sergeant
In one of my references, there is a evaluation flown between the F6F5 and Zero 52 and the Vmax of the Hellcat was 409 MPH at 21600 feet, Zero was 335 at 18000 feet. This thought occurred to me early this AM and while it has only a fuzzy connection to the subject of this thread, I would pose this question to those of you who are better informed than me. The Merlin and DBs that powered BFs and Spits and many others were around 1600 Cubic inches and started out generating around 1000 HP or maybe a little less but worked up in some cases to around 1700 HP which was almost an increase of 100%. The R2800 with 2800 CI started at about 1800 to 2000 HP and worked up to around 2500-2700 HP, not even a 50% increase. Why the big difference?