No Merlin, what are the alternatives?

Aozora said:

One of the reasons Rolls-Royce developed the Merlin, starting in 1932, was a perceived need for an engine to replace the Kestrel

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wuzak said:

Yeah...I still haven't finished mine!

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buffnut453 said:

imagine the history books replete with references to how the Spitfire and Hurricane, both powered by that marvellous Buzzard engine, won the Battle of Britain.

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Balljoint said:

Back to the V-1710, wasn't the BoB fought at altitudes more fitted to its capabilities?

While no small matter, the Allison shortcoming was super/turbo charging. Sadly, this was a matter of will rather than technology. With no Merlin, it would have been entirely feasible to expedite a high altitude Allison much earlier.

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Shortround6 said:

Unfortunately you can have all the will in the world but if you don't have the technology to back it up you aren't going very far.

While the bombers may have been coming in at 15-18,000ft the 109s were often coming in much higher. Getting bounced from above is NOT a good way to intercept bombers.

The world in general didn't have very good superchargers in early-mid 30s because the fuel in use (80-87) simple wouldn't tolerate very high boost pressures. In the US ALL superchargers were designed by ONE company (General Electric) until around 1936-37 when both P W and Wright, getting fed up with the GE supplied designs STARTED working on their own. It took several years for this to start to pay off. Allison had been making parts of GE superchargers under sub-contract as part of their engine related work, they sure weren't making ANY money on the V-1710 until 1939.

A small part of Hookers claim to fame was not only did he design the Merlin XX/45 and 60/61 superchargers but he discovered that some of the basic formulas for supercharger design were WRONG in the text books. While somebody else might have discovered it with no Merlin and no Hooker it it going to take a lot more than a snap of the fingers to "expedite a high altitude Allison much earlier".

Rolls Royce made about 1/2 the number of "R" racing engines during the 30s as Allison made V-1710s from 1930 to Jan 1939 let alone other engines.

The Allison was a good basic engine but the Allison company didn't have the number of people or the experience to do much more than they did.

Lets all remember that there were ONLY TWO companies beside Allison to get a two stage mechanically supercharged engine into large scale production ( at least several hundred made) during WW II, Rolls Royce and P&W. Bristol didn't do it, Napier didn't do it, Wright didn't didn't do it, Daimler Benz didn't do it and neither did Junkers or BMW. No Japanese company did it. No Italian company.

No will or it isn't quite as easy as it seems?

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Balljoint said:

CobberKane's thread is probably the better format to delve into this. But my point is that radial engines had reasonable good boosting. Allison was a rather small operation and got little support for a high altitude engine. Sanford Moss got much of the basic work rolling and, with interest from the airlines, had the workable radial engines. Great Britain better saw the need for a high altitude, liquid cooled engine and, like the P-51, might have contracted the work to the US had the Merlin not been available. All what if.

The Allison suffered from brain-fade problems such as flame arresters. And the AAF really didn't need high altitude escorts since the bombers could look after themselves. Sans the Merlin, the Allison was the best bones available for a liquid-cooled, high altitude engine. But of course there were other engines and other ways to skin the cat.

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Piper106 said:

The Buzzard / R was substantually the same displacement (2240 cubic inches) as the DB 601 (2070 cubic inches) and the Hispano Suiza 12Y / 12Z engines (2200 cubic inches) and rpm potential. History tells us that two teams working from about the same potential, the Damler Benz team turned the DB 601 into a great fighter engine, and while Hispano Suiza was only able to come up with a second class fighter engine. In this alternate history, if Rolls Royce engine development is as un-inspired as that at Hispano Suiza and RAF command structure as un-inspired as the French, German would have been the primary language taught in British schools by the mid 1940s.

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Shortround6 said:

The two engines mentioned were NOT the same potential. The Hispano was several hundred pounds lighter than the DB 600/601 engine which limited both the RPM and Boost pressures that could be used. Please look at the Russian V-105 engine for "development" of the Hispano. Beefed up crankshaft, beefed up block, changed cylinder heads with 3 valves instead of 2. Unfortunately they kept both the poor porting and SIX blow though carburetors of the Hispano. Using better fuel than the Hispano had they fell short of 1300hp and that was only achieved bu using superchargers optimized for low level work.
Post War Hispanos ( in France, Spain and Switzerland) gained a LOT of weight, fuel injection, multi valve heads, 100-130 octane fuel and got all the way to 1600-1700hp for all their displacement. Rolls-Royce had built 5 different V-12 engines (and two more variations) before starting work on the Merlin. Plus the car business. The Rolls management had also hired R.J. Rowledge who had Designed the Napier Lion.

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