It would be nice to hear some mechanic stories

[PWR4360-59B]

I didn't want to post in the stories section and clutter it up with this post. Since this is the engine section I guess
it needs to be related. So if any WW2 guys are still around with good stories, or even into the 50's 60's and 70's
Recips were operational into the 70's I think on National Guard planes, such as Constellations, KC and C-97's, so there should be some good stories out there.

 

[Tony Kambic]

You could chance joining the Aviation Engine Historic Society. There are some stories posted there about R-2800, R-3350, R-4360 and J-57..

 

[XBe02Drvr]

So if any WW2 guys are still around with good stories, or even into the 50's 60's and 70's

Well, WWII guys are getting few and far between these days, but I had one for an Engines instructor when I went to A&P school in the 70s.
He was trained at Packard on Merlins and was sent to 8th AF along with the first P-51s. All went well until a supply SNAFU caused his outfit to be sent replacement engines of Rolls Royce manufacture. They had inherited maintenance responsibility for a few stray American owned reconnaissance Spits, and somebody up the supply chain got the idea they were a Spitfire outfit. When they protested they needed Packards, they were told to "make do". Apparently the RR version was not a "drop in replacement" for the Mustang, so they had to field engineer a modification, which resulted in a visit to a nearby RR plant.
Having been trained at Packard and seen the rows of identical modern semi-automated machine tools and efficiently organized production controls and QC and QA systems, he was astounded to see little cubicles with craftsmen making each part start to finish using a variety of aged tools and machines, and doing all their own dimensional checking with micrometers and dial gages. Not a "go-no go" plug gauge to be seen anywhere, and no QA inspectors in sight. When asked about QA, the workers were offended by the idea their workmanship needed to be checked by anyone.
Our instructor said: "Did you ever wonder why the booming British aircraft industry withered on the vine after the war? I never did!"
After D-Day, a lot of the fighters were sent to strips in France, and some re-organizing took place and he got sent to a B-17 facility, then a B-24 outfit, and finished the war working on radials. He thought the P-47s R2800 was the "slickest thing since sliced bread".
Cheers,
Wes

 

[PWR4360-59B]

There are still some of the national guard mechanics that worked on recips into the 1970's or so, as well as the various rebuild shops that worked on the military recips in the day. So there are still lots of them out there I would think. Gosh even the few shops that are still in the now, would be nice to hear some of their stories. Vintage engines guy ????? He posted on this site, lets hear some good stuff !!!!

 

[MIflyer]

One of my college professors flew Mustangs in WWII. He said that his airplane had a "real" RR Merlin in it, and not a Packard. He said it made big difference in smoothness of the engine, because RR carefully handselected parts, such as using pistons that all weighed the same. Packard's Merlin was designed to be simply assembled, US automotive-style, and the company had to build the parts to tighter tolerances than RR for that very reason.

Now, was one approach better than the other? Well, my professor said it made a big difference to him. On the other hand I had a Scottish engineer tell me he thought the Packard Merlins were smoother than the RR versions, as we watched the Crazy Horse 2 seat P-51 taxi by. He rebuilt RR motorcars as a hobby so he may have known what he was talking about.

Interesting thing was that the American Volunteer Group C series V-1710's for their Tomahawk I's were not stock engines. When Great Britain agreed to let the Chinese have 100 Tomahawk 1's in return for later Kittyhawk models, that deal did not include the engines they had ordered for the Tomahawks. Engines were bought separately from the airplanes and the Brits were not willing to give up any of their order of Allison engines. So the AVG had airframes with no powerplants.

But Allison said that they had a warehouse full of non-compliant V-1710 engine parts and they could use those to build enough engines for the Chinese order. So Allison engineers and technicians hand built each engine, machining special spacers and bushings where required to take up the slack where holes had been drilled too large or milling produced the wrong shape. The result was that those 100 engines the flying Tigers got produced more HP and used less gas than stock engines. The Flying Tiger pilots said you could tell it, too, their Hawk 81A's being faster than the usual P-40's.