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wuzak
Captain
Wasn't the initial order for 200 or 300?
This is the way it should have been from the beginning....
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Wasn't the initial order for 200 or 300?
This is what Packard historian Robert J. Neal had to say about royalties:
www.enginehistory.org/members/articles/PackardGasTurbines.pdf
end of page 9 and start of page 10
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wuzak
Captain
me too, maybe a royalty issue?
maybe it will work this way
The article is not specific about how much "royalty" was paid or even if one was paid. However it is clear what was paid to Packard and that didn't include any "royalty" payment. In the national interest the UK government took over much of the responsibility for producing engines and licensing production. It is absolutely normal for things made under license to pay per unit for the "intellectual property".
The first order was for 310, this was later increased, however production was so slow to start with it was almost cancelled completely. At the outbreak of war I believe just over 100 Spitfires were actually in service from about 130 produced. Things changed very quickly once war was declared.
Shortround6 that figure is way to optimistic. The figures I have are as follows:
Power/Boost/RPM/altitude
Merlin 46 1100/+9/3000/22,000ft This is with ram and the larger 10.85" supercharger
V-1650-1 1120/48.2"/3000/18,500ft this is in high blower without ram.
V-1710-39/F3R 1150/42"/3000/12,000ft No ram or backfire screens
V-1710-81/F20R 1125/44.5"/3000/15,500ft No ram or backfire screens
That's only three thousand feet higher. In comparison to the competition, as well as two-stage V-1710 development (a point I seemed to have forgotten), that's just not all that much of an improvement.
Tomo and pbehn First off let me apologize for the hyperbole that statment really isn't painting a fair picture of RR. That being said RR did have reservations about licensing the Merlin that was alleviated by the royalty fee.
I had a source with more details surrounding the circumstances than the Neal article above, but for the life of me, I can't find the damn thing. Dan Whitney also mentions that royalties we're payed to RR. Then there's the AAF budget office figures which are consistent with a royalty in the $3000 to $4000 range.
Tomo the V-3420 was sitting on the shelf by mid 1940 so it's not really relevant. The actual orders that were in place before Jun of 1940 were insufficient to keep production going to 1942. Even the orders placed right after the fall of France would just take production in to 1942. Keep in mind that none of the R40-C winners were powered by an Allison and the AAF saw the existing types as only interm aircraft. Bleak my have been to stong of a word but the outlook for future orders was most certainly not an optimistic one. Not all the poins I listed earlier were concurrent or applied for the whole period in question. But I would say that there was enough of them at any given time to make the correct development path of the V-1710 nothing but difficult choose. With hindsight I think it's clear that they should have made some different choices but they just couldn't know that at the time.
Power/Boost/RPM/altitude
Merlin 46 1100/+9/3000/22,000ft This is with ram and the larger 10.85" supercharger
V-1650-1 1120/48.2"/3000/18,500ft this is in high blower without ram.
V-1710-39/F3R 1150/42"/3000/12,000ft No ram or backfire screens
V-1710-81/F20R 1125/44.5"/3000/15,500ft No ram or backfire screens
That's only three thousand feet higher. In comparison to the competition, as well as two-stage V-1710 development (a point I seemed to have forgotten), that's just not all that much of an improvement.
Tomo and pbehn First off let me apologize for the hyperbole that statment really isn't painting a fair picture of RR. That being said RR did have reservations about licensing the Merlin that was alleviated by the royalty fee.
I had a source with more details surrounding the circumstances than the Neal article above, but for the life of me, I can't find the damn thing. Dan Whitney also mentions that royalties we're payed to RR. Then there's the AAF budget office figures which are consistent with a royalty in the $3000 to $4000 range.
Tomo the V-3420 was sitting on the shelf by mid 1940 so it's not really relevant. The actual orders that were in place before Jun of 1940 were insufficient to keep production going to 1942. Even the orders placed right after the fall of France would just take production in to 1942. Keep in mind that none of the R40-C winners were powered by an Allison and the AAF saw the existing types as only interm aircraft. Bleak my have been to stong of a word but the outlook for future orders was most certainly not an optimistic one. Not all the poins I listed earlier were concurrent or applied for the whole period in question. But I would say that there was enough of them at any given time to make the correct development path of the V-1710 nothing but difficult choose. With hindsight I think it's clear that they should have made some different choices but they just couldn't know that at the time.
Jugman, the document linked by ssnider actually gives a long explanation of the setting up of the contract. Packard and any wartime manufacturer has to be very careful with the contract simply because the war can stop at any time or another engine favoured. I fully expect RR were paid a royalty, it is normal, but also it wouldn't be Packard that paid it because as the article says "He did not object to paying RR a royalty since it would merely be added to the cost of the engines".
Often lost in the discussion is how much things changed in a short space of time. Maximum production at Packard reached 2,000 per month, but the first enquiries for Packard to build 1,000 to 6,000 engines. By June 1942 Packard were receiving contracts for 14,000 engines which allowed them to gear up to produce 24,000 engines in 1944.
Shortround6
Major General
The initial contract called for 9000 engines with a peak production of 800 engines per month. Of these only 3000 were slated for US use.
I have no idea how the British government felt about paying 3-4000 dollars to Packard to pay to RR for engines going into British/Canadian aircraft?
Or if Royalties were only paid on Engines accepted by the US government? Contract was signed pre-lend lease.
By the end of 1944 Packard had built 26,759 of the single stage engines and the US had taken delivery of less than the 3,000 in the initial contract.
I have no idea if the royalty payments were modified in later contracts due the British/Canadians getting 100% of the single stage engines from the later contracts.
There is plenty of room for confusion.
I have no idea how the British government felt about paying 3-4000 dollars to Packard to pay to RR for engines going into British/Canadian aircraft?
Or if Royalties were only paid on Engines accepted by the US government? Contract was signed pre-lend lease.
By the end of 1944 Packard had built 26,759 of the single stage engines and the US had taken delivery of less than the 3,000 in the initial contract.
I have no idea if the royalty payments were modified in later contracts due the British/Canadians getting 100% of the single stage engines from the later contracts.
There is plenty of room for confusion.
Ahhhh. Isn't hindsight so wonderful. Or not, we can just make up and alter history on conjecture, supposed, ifs, and other abstractions. History is what it is.
As far as Packard were concerned their clients were the UK and USA governments with RR acting as technical consultants. Whatever the royalty issue was it was none of Packard's business or interest. There was some separation on the accounts of who gets what I suspect. As an example 1,200 Spitfires were sent to Russia mainly with Packard engines. So in the scheme of things, USA supplied 1,200 free issue engines to RR who supplied the airframes.
If I may.
The main advantage the Merlin XX have had over the V-1710 with 9.69:1 S/C drive is timing - it was in production more than 2 years earlier. For a war that spanned 4-5-6 years, two years is a major chunk of time. Even the V-1650-1 predates the 'better' V-1710 versions by almost a year. That is not just some academic question, but a fact (boy, do I hate the word 'fact' by some two weeks now) that P-40s and P-39s were often found wanting in 1942, when all the Allied war effort was under the major push by Axis forces.
There is no wonder that V-3420 was on the back-burner in 1940 - Allison was swamped with re-designing the C series engines into the F series, the E series was being developed, turbo supercharged versions were also developed, plus some flirting with pusher installations, all while we have 4 1st-line fighters in pipeline that will need a trouble-free installation. Allison was not RR, that sports major experience with military V12 engines, with appropriate backing from respective government.
With that said, the 1st priority, after the C series of engines is out from design shop, should've been the simple thing of making the 'faster' S/C drive, like it was the 9.60:1.
We can also recall that Merlin was supposed to be superseeded by 2000 HP+ class of engines in the UK, while in Germany there was also such a push with Jumo 222 and similar engines that went nowhere, that were to replace the DB 601 and Jumo 211. At the end of the day, the plain vanilla V12 engines proved to have much more stretch than originally envisioned due to engineers doing their job and acces to a 'better' fuel. We also need to consider that those improved V12 engines don't dictate brand new airframes, that came out with their own risks and price tag that easily went to be twice of previous designs.
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wuzak
Captain
The R40-C winners were to be powered by even more experimental engines than the V-3420, though some variants were to have Allison power.
The XP-54 and XP-56 were to be powered by the Pratt & Whitney X-1800, while the XP-55 used the V-1710.
There were 3 submissions by Vultee to R40-C, all powered by the X-1800. These were ranked 1st, 2nd and 6th.
The XP-54 would be powered by the equally experimental H-247-, which did not feature in any initial submissions.
There were 5 versions of the proposal by Northrop:
N-2 - R-2800
N-2A - X-1800
N-2B - X-1800
N-2C - V-1710
N-2D - R-1830
These were ranked 9th, 8th, 5th, 15th and 18th, respectively. The project chosen for development had to use the R-2800 instead of the preferred X-1800.
3 versions of the Curtiss XP-55 proposal were submitted - the P-249T, P-249A and P-249C, powered by the Wright Tornado, Allison V-1710 and Continental IV-1430. They were ranked 3rd, 12th and 4th, respectively.
Due to delays with Tornado and IV-1430 development, the V-1710 found its way into the XP-55.
Curtiss also proposed 2 other projects for R40-C, with 2 versions for one and 3 for the other. Of these, 3 were to be powered by V-1710s.
2 of Bell's 5 submitted designs were to be powered by the V-1710, while the V-3420 was to power one of McDonnell's 4 Model 1 variants.
Shortround6
Major General
A lot of the stretch came from the better fuels developed as the war went on.
Some came from better metallurgy which allowed the engines to stand up to the higher boost and sometimes higher RPM.
And some came from total redesigns that just kept earlier designations.
Pratt & Whitney started work on the "C" series R-2800 in 1940. It didn't go into production until 1944.
Allison in 1939-40-41 was not only designing multiple versions of the same engine (only possible due to it's modularity, the same thing that made it hard to change superchargers) but was expanding from a job shop that could make 1-2 engines a week to a factory that could make over a 1000 engines a month in Dec 1941.
There may have been a period in 1940 when Allisons future as a major engine builder was in doubt but that had pretty much ended by 1941.
Some came from better metallurgy which allowed the engines to stand up to the higher boost and sometimes higher RPM.
And some came from total redesigns that just kept earlier designations.
Pratt & Whitney started work on the "C" series R-2800 in 1940. It didn't go into production until 1944.
Allison in 1939-40-41 was not only designing multiple versions of the same engine (only possible due to it's modularity, the same thing that made it hard to change superchargers) but was expanding from a job shop that could make 1-2 engines a week to a factory that could make over a 1000 engines a month in Dec 1941.
There may have been a period in 1940 when Allisons future as a major engine builder was in doubt but that had pretty much ended by 1941.
MiTasol
1st Lieutenant
And changed even quicker once Lord Beaverbrook became Minister for Aircraft Production.
To summarise Wiki
Castle Bromwich Aircraft Factory
Nuffield: 1936–1940
In 1936, the British government had formalised a plan under the Air Ministry called the Shadow factory plan to increase capacity within Britain's aircraft industry. Headed up by Herbert Austin, the plan was to create nine new factories and add additional capacity and facilities to Britain's existing car manufacturing plants to enable them to quickly turn to aircraft production should the political situation in Europe change towards war.
In 1936, the Air Ministry purchased a parcel of land opposite Castle Bromwich Aerodrome which encompassed an old sewage works. Developed and managed by the Nuffield Organisation, owners of Morris Motors, they were briefed to manufacture Supermarine Spitfire fighters and later Avro Lancaster bombers. The theory was that the local Birmingham skills-base and production techniques used in the manufacture of motor vehicles could be transferred to aircraft production.
CBAF ordered the most modern machine tools then available which were being installed two months after work started on the site.[1] Although Morris Motors under Lord Nuffield (an expert in mass motor-vehicle construction) managed and equipped the factory, it was funded by government money. When the project was first mooted, it was estimated that the factory would be built for £2,000,000, however, by the beginning of 1939, this cost had doubled to over £4,000,000.[2]
However, even as the first Spitfires were being built in June 1940, the factory was still incomplete and there were numerous problems with the factory management which ignored tooling and drawings provided by Supermarine in favour of tools and drawings of its own designs.[4] Meanwhile, the workforce, while not completely stopping production, continually threatened strikes or "slow downs" until their demands for higher than average pay rates were met.[5] By May 1940, Castle Bromwich had not yet built its first Spitfire in spite of promises that the factory would be producing 60 per week starting in April.[2]
It is worth noting, however, that key players, such as Alex Henshaw, viewed the problems as primarily those of poor management during the initial phase.
Vickers-Armstrong: 1940–1945
After the fall of the government of Neville Chamberlain, the new Prime Minister Winston Churchill appointed press tycoon Lord Beaverbrook as the Minister of Aircraft Production. On 17 May, Beaverbrook telephoned Nuffield and manoeuvered him into handing over control of the Castle Bromwich plant to Beaverbook's Ministry.[6] Nuffield was furious and reported the incident to Churchill, but Beaverbrook countered by sending in aircraft expert Sir Richard Fairey who wrote a secret report which detailed how expensive machinery had been unused, the assembly line in chaos, and the employees not doing their work:[7]
I agree, although Neville Chamberlain gets a bad "rap" much of the above especially the ordering of shadow factories for the Merlin and Spitfire, done in peace time under his watch were what allowed the UK to survive. Beaverbrook achieved a lot, but under a national government he had powers no one has in peace time.
soaringtractor
Banned
- 33
- May 8, 2014
P-40's with Merlin's would have helped a lot in 1942.
The Fulmars should be replaced for the FAA by Martlets, which is what they basically did anyway. Maybe keep a few (10% of the number produced) for recon, for which they were reasonably well suited, but most of those engines should go to better planes. FAA seemed to have a lot of problems making specs for airplanes - they probably needed a purge too. How else do you explain atrocities such as this
View attachment 488556
People here seem to think the Merlin XX (20) was the end all merlin !! IT was NOT !!! Merlin XX (20) was a SINGLE stage 2 speed supercharged engine or the Packard V1650-1 which was used in the P40 F and it made NO difference in overall performance !!! It was the 60 series Merlin that has the 2 stage 2 speed high altitude supercharger, in service in 1943, the year of the P51 B Mustang !!
Two nose guns is probably enough, with the vastly improved performance.
The trouble with a lot of these suggestions is that they require not a different decision made at point in time X but time machines and inter dimensional transporters
For instance the first 723 Defiants used Merlin III engines and these offer no real improvement over the Allisons in the early P-40s. It is only the last 350 or so Defiants that have the Merlin XX.
Swiping engines from Fulmars is even worse, The first 250 use Merlin VIIIs which might be able to be changed to Merlin IIIs by changing the supercharger gear. The next 350 use Merlin 30s which are single speed engines using a cropped impeller. Not what you want for P-40s.
Now you have to shuffle engines back and forth across oceans. Please remember that the British planned to use P & W R-1830s in the Beaufort until the ship carrying the first 200 engines got torpedoed.
As for making more Beaufighters sooner? That means sorting out Hercules production much sooner, it means getting more power out of the Hercules sooner Early Hercules engines had around 250-300 less horsepower than the later ones.
Fairey Firefly used Griffon engines. A single stage two speed Griffon weighed about 350lbs more than a single stage two speed Merlin and about 400lbs more than an Allison so these are not drop in replacements for American aircraft.
NO US army aircraft was capable of operating off RN carriers and in fact would have had extreme difficulty on US carriers. P-39s and carriers are a disaster of epic proportions.
Could things have been done better, yes.
My theory, though i realize this is a larger and entirely different discussion, is that fighters and fast attack aircraft (you could classify Mosquito as either) made for much better bombers. I don't think the mass-civilian bombing was effective or a good idea for a bunch of reasons. If you want to say, knock out German oil industry (best target) or even something more iffy like V-2 factories or ball bearings, neither the US day bombers or British night-bombers are very effective. Same if you want to destroy enemy tanks etc.
For the former use Mosquitoes or A-26 Invader, just more of them, for the latter use fighter bombers like Corsair, P-47, Tempest / Typhoon, or any Soviet fighter.
I think engine production could have been more heavily emphasized.
For that matter, for the Soviets
- put defensive guns in Il-2 from the outset
- make half as many Il-2 and use that extra industrial / production capacity to speed up / improve engine production
- let all the top designers out of jail (put some Curtiss execs in there)
The trouble with a lot of these suggestions is that they require not a different decision made at point in time X but time machines and inter dimensional transporters
For instance the first 723 Defiants used Merlin III engines and these offer no real improvement over the Allisons in the early P-40s. It is only the last 350 or so Defiants that have the Merlin XX.
Swiping engines from Fulmars is even worse, The first 250 use Merlin VIIIs which might be able to be changed to Merlin IIIs by changing the supercharger gear. The next 350 use Merlin 30s which are single speed engines using a cropped impeller. Not what you want for P-40s.
Now you have to shuffle engines back and forth across oceans. Please remember that the British planned to use P & W R-1830s in the Beaufort until the ship carrying the first 200 engines got torpedoed.
As for making more Beaufighters sooner? That means sorting out Hercules production much sooner, it means getting more power out of the Hercules sooner Early Hercules engines had around 250-300 less horsepower than the later ones.
Fairey Firefly used Griffon engines. A single stage two speed Griffon weighed about 350lbs more than a single stage two speed Merlin and about 400lbs more than an Allison so these are not drop in replacements for American aircraft.
NO US army aircraft was capable of operating off RN carriers and in fact would have had extreme difficulty on US carriers. P-39s and carriers are a disaster of epic proportions.
Could things have been done better, yes.
As far as V-1710 and Curtiss.
The engine was made by Allison but for all practical purposes was a government engine.
What gov. dick head wanted was what was done
Curtiss was run by money fools with quantity over quality, which is why all the half-arsed P-40 improvements (P-60) except for the Q were an embarrassing waste of time.
You would have to remove those in charge before any changes could be made; combine with those in charge of the Allison, one giant cluster-f.
Oh and do not forget the super duper engine the gov. had others wasting time on, which the first P-60 was supposed to have.
The engine was made by Allison but for all practical purposes was a government engine.
What gov. dick head wanted was what was done
Curtiss was run by money fools with quantity over quality, which is why all the half-arsed P-40 improvements (P-60) except for the Q were an embarrassing waste of time.
You would have to remove those in charge before any changes could be made; combine with those in charge of the Allison, one giant cluster-f.
Oh and do not forget the super duper engine the gov. had others wasting time on, which the first P-60 was supposed to have.
Motorsport Micky
Recruit
- 6
- Apr 6, 2018
As a newbie please excuse my contribution unannounced, but worthy as the Ki100 feat mentioned above is there is another which could be thought of as being the epitome of derring do and mix of man and machine. The story of the P51 and 30 Luftwaffe fighters comes to mind
One Man Fighter Squadron: Held off 30 German fighters from attacking a squadron of B-17 bombers for over half an hour
Wildly applauded at the time it certainly is worthy of mention as maybe the most extreme...unless somebody else knows different ?
Motorsport Micky
