Other liquid cooled aero engines with tank potential?

Shortround6 said:

Packard was in a better place to do it as Packard was buying (or making) all new machinery. RR needed to introduce the new parts/processes to existing production lines without interrupting the flow of engines.

Packard did change a few things, like some of the connections for the coolant passages?

It was pretty much a co-operative effort.

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My understanding:
- RR engineered the 'two piece block'
- since Packard was to start making Merlins, the prudent thing was for them not to make any of the 'single piece block' engines, but to start with the 'two piece block' engine
- RR followed suit quickly enough (1942?)

I hope D Deleted member 68059 will lead us through this

tomo pauk said:

My understanding:
- RR engineered the 'two piece block'
- since Packard was to start making Merlins, the prudent thing was for them not to make any of the 'single piece block' engines, but to start with the 'two piece block' engine
- RR followed suit quickly enough (1942?)

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Well, that is the gist of it. RR started with a PV12 that had separate heads on a one-piece crankcase/block, but dropped that and went for various prototypes with crankcase, blocks, separate heads and gawd-awful "Ramp heads". The Ramp heads cracked and failed, with just an early production batch of 172 engines for Fairy Battles as the Merlin I. Ernest Hives, the RR Derby Manager, led an emergency redesign of the Merlin engine with an updated version of the Kestrel-like one piece block with single-plane 4-valve heads that was good enough to pass the 100 hour tests and went into production as the Merlin II in 1937 and provided the backbone for future development, in time for the BoB. The two piece block was designed by RR but, the need for production held it back from introduction. However, as Packard were starting from scratch, the two piece block was used from the start by Packard. Derby built two piece block engines started with the Merlin 61 Two-Speed Two-Stage intercooled engine in 1942.

Eng

Dan Whitney in his book, 'Vees for Victory' notes that post war an E series Allison V-1710 was prepared / modified / reserved for use in an armored vehicle. No indication which vehicle this engine was intended to power.

Seems reasonable to me. The Allison would be equivalent to the RR Meteor.
'

re the continued use of the Liberty engine in British tanks - a return to the question

In Britain, prior to the Cromwell, most of the time the selection of which engine to use in a tank was left to the designer/manufacturer of the tank.

The first modern 'Infantry' tank - the A12 'Matilda II" - was sort of an exception to the rule. The basic design was done in cooperation under the Mechanization Board - between the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich and Vulcan Foundry. The powerplant initially selected was a twin 6-cylinder diesel arrangement designed by AEC - a company that Vulcan had been dealing with constantly for many years re engines for its railway engines.

The second modern 'Infantry' tank was the A22 'Churchill'. Vauxhall who designed and built the majority of Churchills, naturally selected a Bedford 12-cylinder horizontally opposed engine designed by its subsidiary Bedford Motors.

Nuffield Mechanization & Aero Limited designed the first of the fast 'Cruiser' tanks - the A13 - and since Nuffield held the license for production of the Liberty engine (modified by Nuffield for tank use) it was selected it for the A13.

The next 'Cruiser' tank - the A16 'Crusader' - was also designed by Nuffield and so was fitted with the Nuffield Liberty.

The next 'Cruiser' tank - the A24 'Cromwell I' (later renamed the 'Cavalier') was also designed by Nuffield and so was fitted with the Nuffield Liberty.

The next 'Cruiser' tank - the A27L 'Cromwell II' (later renamed the 'Centaur' was built by English Electric/Leyland Motors but derived from the 'Cromwell I'. It was originally intended to fit the Meteor but doubts about the serviceability and the possibility of delays in the supply of the Meteor resulted in the use of the Nuffield Liberty. The production design was, however, modified to allow the fitting of the Meteor at a later date by (relatively) easily changing out bits and pieces. The refitting of the Meteor engine resulted in the re-designation 'Cromwell' of one Mark or another.

The next 'Cruiser' - the A-27M 'Cromwell III' was built primarily by BRC&W and was fitted with the Meteor from the start.

Basically, Nuffield had an inordinate amount of influence on the designs and insisted on using his company's engine until he was emphatically told 'No' by the Tank Board which was not set up until 1940.

see "Britain's Struggle To Build Effective Tanks During The Second World War"

I have wondered If the Franch had stayed longer would engines like the Hispano-Suiza 12Y have been able to be used maybe they could have gone air-cooled and used a variation of the Gnome Rhone 14 (the 14K looks like a pretty good option France had thousands of them lying around

Shortround6 said:

I will submit the theory (not my own) that Ford was working on an aircraft engine for a while.

I do tend to discount the idea that Ford of America got any help/information from Ford of France.
It may be possible that Ford of England sent something to Ford of America, might depend on what level of secrecy they operating under.

For those of us that grew up as the information age formed it is a little tough to understand what it was like in late 30s or 1940s.

Most intercontinental communication was either telegraph or mail. While there were intercontinental phone calls the medium of transmission was radio. First telephone cable between Canada and the UL was laid in 1956. Air mail letters had special thin, light weight stationary/envelopes.
If you wanted to send regular mail it went by ship. If you want to send a few hundred drawings it went in a crate. The crate went to the docks, was put on a suitable ship and was sent on it's way.
Ford of America may well have been aware of the Merlin though articles in the aviation magazines/books of the day. They would have been idiots not to be aware of it.
The 1938 Jane's has three photos and a short description for example.

While microfilm dates back to the mid 1800s it didn't really start to be used until the 1920s-30s. It was increasingly used in industry and a much use was made of it during WW II to reduce the weight of air mail traffic.

RR sent the sample engine and crates of drawings to the US, that was what it was going to take to get an accurate idea of what it would take to make the engine.

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Engineers like to go to conferences and go on holiday and it's amazing just how many other engineers they meet when on their travels and they do like to talk about engineering. ,

Piper106 said:

Dan Whitney in his book, 'Vees for Victory' notes that post war an E series Allison V-1710 was prepared / modified / reserved for use in an armored vehicle. No indication which vehicle this engine was intended to power.

Seems reasonable to me. The Allison would be equivalent to the RR Meteor.
'

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According to Hunnicutt's book on American heavy tank development, at least one of the prototypes of the T29 heavy tank was fitted with an Allison V1710 connected to a CD-850 transmission.

That transmission is interesting because even though it started out as a heavy tank transmission, more refined versions of it would be used in the M46,M47,M48 and M60. Additionally, large numbers of British Centurion tanks would have their RR Meteor engines and associated transmissions replaced with the American AVDS-1790 diesel and CD-850 transmission. So even though the T29 never saw mass production, it was an important stepping stone in American tank development.

The US T29 and T32 tanks used Ford's GAC V-12 engine.

Only the first prototype T29 had an Allison.
The GAC was the intended production engine.

Use the RR Kestrel 400 to 450hp V12v as the medium tank engine for lighter/smaller tanks like the Valentine chop some cylinders off to make a 225hp straight 6 or a 300hp V8. For a postwar 45 ton tank use a land version of the RR Griffon.

RR are going to be too busy doing its proper job of spamming out Merlins so farm out the job to a competent precision engineering company who can develop and build the engine in a shadow factory. Alvis, Daimler and Meadows were very well regarded precision automobile engineers or maybe Metropolitan Vickers who were heavy engineers again with a reputation for precision.

The Napier W12 wont do the job it was a hand made file and scrape to fit engine that was made in handfuls by skilled fitters. The RAF stopped buying aircraft using it around the start of the 1930s for a reason. RAF rescue boats did use the SeaLion but I bet if you had offered 3 x 1000hp Merlins instead of 3x 500hp Lions they would have snatched your hands off.

Back to tank engines Leyland worked for most of the war on a 450hp Heavy Oil Tank Engine (their term for a Diesel) but it never went anywhere and going by Leylands post war efforts at high power diesels its probably a good thing they never managed to get it into a tank. Google Leyland 0.500 engines and gaze in wonder at all the pictures of engines with a leg out of bed (conrod making a break for freedom from the tyranny of the crankcase) or covered in oil from leaky gaskets and blown turbos.

fastmongrel said:

Use the RR Kestrel 400 to 450hp V12v as the medium tank engine

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That will pretty much cover anything through the Cromwell. The Merlin was a bit much for a 30 ton tank.
Chopping cylinders is a bit harder than it seems. V-12s run rather nicely with a 60 degree angle, So do V-6s, V-8s like 90 degree bank between cylinders for even firing. You can get around it but it is usually a bodge.

From 1944 Meadows and Rover produced the 600bhp version of the Meteor engine as Merlin production was creating
a shortage of Meteors for the Cromwell.

Engines for US tanks weren't a problem as the Sherman being the main production vehicle had several reliable engines
to choose from.

Soviet tanks used diesels which were reasonable and the tank weights were kept down.

Larger German tanks were the candidates for larger aero engines due to the weight the Maybach HL230 was trying to move.
The need for aircraft engines didn't help matters for German tank upgrades and much stronger transmissions would have been
required. The other difficulty was spare parts. Although German logistics experts wanted a 20% reduction in tank production in
order to allow already built vehicles to have a decent store of spares to keep them up to scratch they were ignored in favour of
greater tank output - not really optimal when so many ended up sitting around waiting for parts.

fastmongrel said:

Use the RR Kestrel 400 to 450hp V12v as the medium tank engine for lighter/smaller tanks like the Valentine chop some cylinders off to make a 225hp straight 6 or a 300hp V8. For a postwar 45 ton tank use a land version of the RR Griffon.

RR are going to be too busy doing its proper job of spamming out Merlins so farm out the job to a competent precision engineering company who can develop and build the engine in a shadow factory. Alvis, Daimler and Meadows were very well regarded precision automobile engineers or maybe Metropolitan Vickers who were heavy engineers again with a reputation for precision.

The Napier W12 wont do the job it was a hand made file and scrape to fit engine that was made in handfuls by skilled fitters. The RAF stopped buying aircraft using it around the start of the 1930s for a reason. RAF rescue boats did use the SeaLion but I bet if you had offered 3 x 1000hp Merlins instead of 3x 500hp Lions they would have snatched your hands off.

Back to tank engines Leyland worked for most of the war on a 450hp Heavy Oil Tank Engine (their term for a Diesel) but it never went anywhere and going by Leylands post war efforts at high power diesels its probably a good thing they never managed to get it into a tank. Google Leyland 0.500 engines and gaze in wonder at all the pictures of engines with a leg out of bed (conrod making a break for freedom from the tyranny of the crankcase) or covered in oil from leaky gaskets and blown turbos.

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Hi
The Napier Lion W12 aircraft engine design was started in July 1916, first flying in 1918 (first Lion entered RAF service in October 1918) and in production until 1932. Production rate during 1927 was fifty per month (is that classed as a handful?), by the end of 1929 it had reduced to less than 18. It was regarded as a reliable and hard working engine but had reached the end of its development potential after ten plus years of production and service, probably the reason the RAF stopped buying aircraft with it fitted. The Vickers Victoria for example had its Lions replaced by the more powerful Bristol Pegasus (Spec.25/33) becoming the Victoria VI. (Info from 'British Piston Aero-Engines and Their Aircraft' by Alec Lumsden).

Mike