VI: no Allison V-1710

[wuzak]

Thanks for your reply, Wuzak. I'm not so sure the no P-40 means no P-51, although if there is no V-1710 to power the airframe there might not be the transition to the Merlin. I've always thought the P-51 was designed in pretty much the perfect set of circumstances. It wasn't contracted by the USAAF and didn't have that oversight during initial design. The designer, Smued, had filed away a kind of outline of best ideas for a future fighter that he was able to draw upon and the lack of oversight let him put as many advances in the design as possible. Given the RAF's preference (tradition?) for inline power plants who's to say the Merlin wouldn't have been incorporated from the start. Just my thoughts.

Schmued may have had the origins of the fighter design which enabled him to quickly design the NA-73X, but was there an engine, other than the V-1710, to power it? And no, a Merlin was not the answer. All UK production was spoken for and US production would not produce significant quantities of engines for 2 years.

Without the British coming to NAA seeking a second supply of P-40s I'm not so sure that Schmued's fighter project would have been adequately funded.

Which means no Mustang/P-51.

 

[Shortround6]

In 1940 the British were buying (or taking over french orders) a slew of American aircraft. Buffaloes, WIldcats, Hawk75s, Hawk 81s (with Allisons), P-38s (without turbos and with) P-39s (with Allisons), Lockheed Hudsons, Martin Marylanders, Douglas DB 7s, and even small numbers of B-17s and B-24s. not to mention trainers.

In NO CASE were any of these aircraft powered by any sort of British engine. Not one Merlin, Mercury, Pegasus, Hercules, or even Kestrel came over the ocean to power one of these planes. Even planes made in Canada were often adapted to American engines, not always to the benefit of the aircraft. the whole idea was to supplement British production to the greatest extent possible, not leave hundreds of British airframes sitting out on the ramps without engines.
British were also placing orders for American engines to be fitted to British built aircraft. P & W R-1830s for Beauforts and Wellingtons. R-2800s for the Warwick, At least one Stirling wound up with R-2600s at some point but that may have been later.

Allison built 1149 engines in 1940 and 6,400 in 1941. Many of those were for French and British orders. Without those several thousand engines Britain would have been much harder pressed and there were certainly have been no spare Merlins to send to California.

 

[swampyankee]

One major difference is that Pratt&Whitney Aircraft and Curtiss-Wright were large scale manufacturers of engines for the commercial market; Allison existed solely because of potential government contracts. Similar to P&WA and C-W, Continental, Lycoming, Jacob, and Warner sold most of their output to the commercial market, not to the government. The existence or non-existence of Allison would have fairly little impact on any of these companies. The one that may be affected would be Packard, in that it may get those contracts that had been awarded to Allison.