You left out that other wonderful Merlin success story - the Fairey Battle
I think this is closer to an important problem. The Fairey Battle, the Fairey Fulmar and the Fairey Barracuda needed bigger engines.
Both Great Britain and the USA developed aircraft engines that put out 2000HP+ in the thirties. Nobody else did. Because of the Fw190s, the Typhoons were thrown into service before everything was debugged. Once they fixed the Napier Sabre, it became an awesome engine.
Lots of these high powered engines were dead ends, definitely including the Rolls Royce Vultures. I am sure that radial engine fans wonder why they did not work harder on the Bristol Centaurus. Both the British and the Americans were able to build big, rugged, heavily armed
and fast aircraft. The Germans and Japanese had to cope with lower powered engines, and accept lower performance and lower firepower and ruggedness.
One of the reasons the Bristol Centaurus did not appear earlier is that the British wanted lots of Bristol Hercules engines. These were used on just about everything except single-engined aircraft.
I see that the Nakajima Homare engine was rated at around 2000HP, in spite of its 36_litre displacement. This was small by WWII radial engine standards. The R2800 was 46_litres. I suspect that Nakajima was quoting emergency power, with the water methanol injection activated.