Were the Rolls-Royce Vulture & Packard X-2775 Horrible Failures?
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- Опубліковано 10 лют 2025
- The Rolls-Royce Vulture and the Packard X-2775 were X-24 engines designed and built in the pursuit of more power, for WWII aircraft and racing planes respectively. In this video we cover the interesting engineering and design of these engines while also taking a look at the important historic context.
H-24 Napier Sabre Explained Simply : • The Complex Napier Sab...
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Headline attribution: Packard 1A-2775 engine cross section-author LM Woolson (creativecommon...) Major modifications to drawing by placing moving pistons, conrods and crankshaft into the original image (created by Lets Go Aviate). In some places the original image is used unedited.
Chapters:
1:06 Packard X-2775 History
2:58 Packard X-2775 Design
7:18 Packard X-2775 Improvements
10:42 X Engine Lives Again : Rolls-Royce Vulture
11:37 Rolls-Royce Vulture Design
15:43 X Engine's Last Stand
Video attribution:
HISTORY OF AVIATION by PublicResourceOrg ( • HISTORY OF AVIATION ), licence CC-BY
The Air Force Story (Chapter 3) -- Struggle for Recognition, 1923-1930 by U.S. Air Force Reserve ( • The Air Force Story (C... ), licence CC-BY
Spitfire Recognition| US Air Force Instructional Film (1944) by Armoured Archivist ( • Spitfire Recognition| ... ), licence CC-BY
Inline 6 animation-author MichaelFrey (creativecommon...) crom + zoom + lines overlaid
X-engine animation-author MichaelFrey (creativecommon...) overlaid arrows
Radial engine animation-author Duk (creativecommon...) no changes
X-engine (90°)-author MichaelFrey (creativecommon...) used multiple times on screen at once. Overlaid tick and cross
The Battle of Britain 1940 by Written by the Victor ( • The Battle of Britain ... ), licence CC-BY
Gloster Meteor - A Short History by A Short History ( • Gloster Meteor - A Sho... ), licence CC-BY
Image attribution:
Daimler-Benz DB 604-author Thomas Vogt (creativecommon...) overlaid text title
Napier Cub-author unknown;source The Flight magazine archive from Flightglobal (creativecommon...) overlaid text titles
Macchi M.39-author Alan Wilson (creativecommon...) no changes
Packard 1A-2775 engine cross section-author LM Woolson (creativecommon...) crop+zoom
Packard 1A-2775 engine crankshaft-author LM Woolson (creativecommon...) overlaid arrows
Kirkham-Williams Racer-Reproduced from Aero Digest Magazine Vol.11 No.3 September, 1927. No changes
Hawker Tornado 3-view line drawing-author Emoscopes (creativecommon...) overlaid text
Williams Mercury Racer-author MAC06130 (creativecommon...) no changes
Schneider Trophy-author Morio (creativecommon...) no changes
Rolls Royce-kestrel-author PeterGrecian (creativecommon...) crop+zoom+overlaid text title
Rolls-Royce Kestrel rear-author Zala (creativecommon...) crop+zoom+overlaid text title
Rolls-Royce Merlin-author JAW (creativecommon...) crop+zoom+overlaid title text
Avro Lancaster Bomber by Julian P Guffogg (creativecommon...) crop+zoom
Napier Sabre III engine at RAF Museum London-author (creativecommon...) no changes
RR Griffon-author TSRL (creativecommon...) no changes
The Napier Sabre H-24 Engine Explained : ua-cam.com/video/xdkgcXnWoxY/v-deo.html
WW2 V-12 Engine Design Decisions Explained : ua-cam.com/video/Tz8vTnl-pAU/v-deo.html
Aviation V-8's Explained - Good for Car's, Bad for Planes? : ua-cam.com/video/wIKkp5Qd02o/v-deo.html
@@txkflier Thanks for reminding me
Thanks for this. Other reviewers have posted videos mentioning the failure of the Vulture, but without going into any detail. This has filled in the gaps.
What an incredible amount of research and information in less than 20 minutes. Always impressed with your presentations.
Im really enjoying these videos. Well presented and good for the layman to understand. Also, the topics involved are rare, and so definitely corners a niche in the market...
Great to just now learn about these engines! Very well done presentation sir !
Informative and enjoyable indeed. Corrected a lot of negative impressions/assumptions I, as a complete layman, had about X engines.
I think this was a good balance analysis and kept to the title of the video, an unusual feat on UA-cam. Thank you.
I knew Harry Lomas who was a Vulture developement engineer(also the father of Bill, the world motorcycle champion). He told me that the real problem with the Vulture was that they couldn't make the crank webs strong enough and this was the reason for it's failure.
This is a phenomenal video. Somehow, I was unaware of this engine configuration.
Underrated channel. Subscribed and notifications on.
Thank you so much for your wonderful videos. Much appreciated!
Not sure why you think the Vulture in the Tornado was less troublesome than in the Manchester. Only three Vulture Tornadoes ever flew -- P5219, P5224 and R7936 -- they flew very few hours, and yet of those three, one (P5219) had a complete engine failure on 31 July 1940, leading to an immediate forced landing in which it was damaged. A one in three failure rate in service in just a few flying hours is truly awful. However, could it have been made reliable? Possibly, but even then it would have still been a short-lived white elephant. One aspect you didn't mention is the poor economics of the X-24... the complexity and high component count of these X-24 engines was a direct driver of manufacturing cost and maintenance overhead. It costs very little extra to make or to service a big V-12 like a Griffon than a small V-12 like a Peregrine, as the material cost is a small proportion of the total cost - most goes into labour and machine time, which are broadly similar regardless of swept capacity. It was always going to be better to be able to procure nearly twice as many Merlins or Griffons than half as many Vultures, for the same industrial capacity and cost.
To put it simply the Manchester placed the engine under more stress than did the fighter.
It was always my understanding that the main reason the Vulture failed in service besides its constant catastrophic overheating problems was its sheer dead weight and bulk specifically in multi engined aircraft, It was common knowledge that while operating the aircraft in the standard set up in normal circumstances it was a good unit with huge potential.............until RAF Manchester crews started discovering to their cost that having a single engine shot to death by flak or fighters doomed the aircraft instantly as the sheer weight and size of the dead engine created so much parasitic drag the remaining engine had the utmost trouble even simply keeping the aircraft airborn, a story I heard that I am unable to fully validate was that Manchester pilots soon learned to refuse to extinguish burning engines letting them burn through engine mountings until it actually fell off which restored some yaw equalibrium and reduced wing drop, and thus enabled the pilot to get the aircraft home far more easily, all this coupled to the fact that they could produce two/almost three Merlins in the same time and tooling it took to make one vulture.....an absolute must in the middle of an all out war, do I believe the vulture could have had a future ? actually yes, but in single engined aircraft given more development time.......but that very time was a luxury we didnt have......a case in point being the Napier Sabre which was verging on being a deathtrap in its early days but went on to become a massively powerful and reliable power unit after a lot of further development ........one daydream I had years ago did however make me ponder what if they had decided to test a Manchester with FOUR vultures ? thereby not only increasing the aircrafts speed and altitude performance by a huge margin it could also have meant losing one engine would have been far less catastrophic for the crew.
@@usernamesreprise4068 but four better Merlins, like the two-stage 60 series, or four Griffons, would always have been better than four Vultures. Which is why those aeroplanes actually happened (Lincoln and Shackleton)
@@harryspeakup8452 There must be about twenty alternative power units from the likes of Bristols etc that were available at the time, but the facts were the government read all their own prospective benefits literature and practically ordered Avro to use the Vulture, remember this was in 1938 and the merlin was just coming online with 1025 horse power, also the griffon was barely off the drawing board,
and the procurement brief to Avro was for a STRICTLY two engined bomber aircraft with quite frankly far too optimistic requirements in every metric for the time (which all those "expert" politicians were ruthlessly pushing simply to save money - like ALL politicians past and present THEY knew best - until they didnt... then it was always someone elses fault) chadwick from day one knew what we would need and that it would require four engines but the government also pushed the maximum of 100 feet wingspan on him in order to fit into the out dated hangers the RAF currently had...a requirement the likes of Short Brothers (Stirling) and Handley Page (Halifax) were never held to. The Lancaster only came about when Chadwick redesigned the inboard halfs of the wings to accept four power units, my point was if the government was so determined that Avro use Vultures they SHOULD have given Avro the leeway to use four, it would have been an aircraft in a class of its own for the time.
Oh, very simple, weight.
Unreal man, I thought I had seen all the WW2 footage there was. Nicely done, you’ve found quite a bit I’ve never seen before.
I beieve the word you mean to use is "obsolete", not the word 'redundant'. Redundancy in a system or engine describes an asset not a detriment. Just saying. Great video and very informative and knowledgable, thanks a ton. Great photos as well. 😊
Informative and enjoyable. Thank you.
There are also 'star' configurations like the Jumo 222. It sort-of looks like a radial, but is better thought of as six in-lines arranged circularly. A lot of development went into it, but never got far past prototype. Probably for similar reasons as the X-configurations.
Thx for the interesting video. Have fun!
Thanks, informative and enjoyable. 🤓
Omg...these detailed HR photos you throw in...gorgeous engineering!!! Btw...I love your accent; you sound the same as the guy from the Backyard Ballistics channel here on YT...
This is a very interesting channel, Thank you. 👍🇮🇹 🇺🇲 subbed.
Interesting question about the firing interval, it should not be too hard to find since several of these engines still exist, the firing order is usually on a plate attached to the engine. I should look into it, the 30 degree firing interval would not be popular with the aircraft crew.
The air crews hated the Napier Daggers in the Hereford, they turned at 4000rpm and had a 30 degree firing interval so sounded like the flat 12 running at up to 8000rpm (for hours!), they were also impossible to keep in synch so would constantly beat. The Dagger was accused of shrieking. Interestingly, the Pratt & Whitney H24s had a 30 degree firing interval.
The Vulture was not R-R's first attempt at an X engine. At the same time that Rowledge was designing the Kestrel at Derby, Royce was designing the "Eagle XVI" at West Wittering, this was an X16. It went nowhere and did not fly. One of the interesting facts about it was that Royce avoided the big end problems by using two knife and fork rod pairs side by side on the same crankpin, meaning that the bores were offset.
I have often wondered about this time at R-R, Royce set Rowledge to design a V12 when he had previously designed the asymmetric X16 Cub and the Lion at Napier but not a V12 (although he had re-engineered the V12 Condor at R-R). Royce then set himself to design an X16 when he had previously designed straight 6s and V12s exclusively. Was it some sort of challenge? A bet? In any case, we know the outcome.
Quite a bit of the Vulture's big end engineering was derived from the work Rowledge did on the X24 Exe. Like the Exe, it all worked in the prototypes, but production was a different story.
Sounds familiar, where have I heard that before.
The Vulture did have an influence after it was cancelled, the supercharger was adapted as the first stage in the two stage Merlin supercharger. According to Hooker, R-R used two Vultures to test the compressor designs for the Whittle jet engine, they needed that much power.
When my USA saw the trouble Britain and Germany were having with these engines, they decided, 'hey, we can $how these fool$ a thing or two with our V-3420 coupled Allison', then later proceeded to kill a few test-pilots with Siamesed turboprop engines. Imagine what the British engineers went through trying to perfect the crazy engine layouts in the Princess and Brabazon, for lack of the promised RR turboprop that was cancelled at the last minute. This is one of the best videos on these engines that I have seen. Great job!
The DB-604 worked very well. 2660hp in 1940. Altitude performance was very good too.
It was abandoned in 1942, in favour of the Jumo 222, which also turned out to be a flop. On the one hand, the Germans did have a nasty habit of letting inter-manufacturer politics get into their design loop. On the other, there must have been *some* reason.
I know these are a lot of work to produce but thank you for the education.. !!
I think this hits the nail on the head. Without turbines arriving on the scene, engine designers would have needed to come up with layouts to use more cylinders in the quest for ever more power. Maybe some X-24, H-24, or something even more exotic like a liquid cooled radial engine (like the Zvezda M-503/504 except for aviation use) would have been developed to the point it could be considered reliable and mature. But as it was, turbines arrived, and until then the very successful and well understood V-12 layout was good enough.
(yes, I'm aware of the Sabre, but given the major problems it had I wouldn't call it a particularly successful engine.)
Thank You from Susa, Italy. Yes, here too on the Alps are aviation enthusiasts.
Fantastic. Can you maybe look at the Fairey Prince and Monarch engines one day?
The Vulture design predates the Peregrine.
The Vulture blocks had wider spacing than the Kestrel Peregrine.
The Vultures bore spacing of 6.1in (154.94mm) was very close to the bore spacing of the Merlin, which was 6.075in (154.305mm).
The Kestrel and Peregrine had a bore spacng of 5.625in (142.875mm).
The Vulture did share a bore and stroke with the Kestrel/Peregrine, but not much else.
One of the possible solutions for the Vulture's big end bearing issues was to revert to a fork and blade type rod system, with two sets of these per crankpin, which would have meant offsetting 2 cylinder banks from the others.
This was the system used by the Allison X-4520 air-cooled X24 of the 1920s.
The Vulture had been run to 2,500hp by the time of its cancellation. Possibly more.
The Vulture wasn't Rolls-Royce's first X engine.
In response to a government request, Rolls-Royce built the F, which would be developed into the Kestrel. They also built a test bench engine, the Eagle XVI, an X16 engine, but the airframe manufacturers preferred the V12 layout, so the engine wasn't developed.
Daimler Benz also developed an X-24 engine, the DB604. But that was cancelled mid war.
Excellent piece, I often wondered why the Vulture failed ( except it had a horrible name, who would want to fly an aircraft kept in the air by vultures ).
Vultures fly very well, now calling it the RR Ostrich might have some unhelpful connotations!
The X-2775 has a 60/120 degree X-angle, hence a standard L6/V12 crankpin configuration would result in a Double-Fire engine where two cylinders fire simultaneously. Packard apparently used a unique pin configuration to get even-firing 24 cylinders using 4-stroke cycle.
Regarding U engines
Also make a video. Thank you very much for your good channel
During the bombing of Germany a lot of engine behaviour under attack became available. It was very clear that damage to any part of the coolant system resulted in failure. If the aircraft made it back with one engine closed down, that engine may be reusable without over haul. But many radial engines continued to deliver useful power after surviving massive damage. If oil pressure was maintained, they ran with whole cylinder assemblies missing. Some amazing photos on the net. Engine power increased as later fuel octane rating allowed higher compression/supercharging.
Do you use Algodoo for your simulations?
If so I salute you!
Shure looks like it?
However you are doing it I love your sims
Doing valve lash adjustment 24 cylinder X engine must’ve been fiddling nightmare. Lubing all the bearings and pistons looks troublematic. Bottom cylinder banks would burn oil and top ones would starve of oil.
The Germans also had the DB 606 and DB 610. The former also had considerable reliability problems in the He-177.
The Vulture was also intended to power the Handley Page HP.56. But due to the Air Ministry not being certain that RR could fix the Vulture, the Ait Ministry ordered Handley Page to redesign the HP.56 to be powered by 4 RR Merlins becoming the HP.57 Halifax. This was done to ensure that one of the medium bombers designed to meet P.13/36 would be serviceable. The decision to order the Manchester and HP.56 (as back up) was taken 8n February 1937, and the decision to change engine was made in October 1937.
X-configured engines were also designed for tank use. In 1944/45 Porsche designed the Sla-16 engine (Simmering luftgekült afgeladen) X-16 (four banks of 4 cylinders), diesel engine with exhaust gas turbocharging. It was developed by the the Austrian firm of Simmering-Graz-Pauker, and was intended for use in the Panther and Tiger tanks. The 36,5 litre engine developed about 770 hp. Five engines had supposedly been built by the end of the war and hundreds of hours of bench testing performed. It has also been claimed that one engine had been installed in a Jagdtiger, for testing. The factory was unfortunately overrun by the Russians and they removed all prototypes, machine tools and records.
The new Russian T-14 Armata tank is also fitted with an X-12 configured diesel engine, in this case an X-12, i.e. four banks of three cylinders each.
There is at least one motorbike, that has 2 cylinders,
and both pistons move same time (both go up, and both go down, same time.)
But only one of those pistons press air and gas, and explode,
the other one is pushing out the exhaust gas.
But in both cylinders, the sparkplug will give spark.
That is to make the sparking system more simpler.
Also interesting was the Rolls Royce Exe, a much smaller (22 liter) sleeve-valved X-24. They planned to use this in the Fairey Barracuda dive/torpedo bomber, and it got as far as flight testing. They also enlarged it into the Pennine, which had a 46 liter displacement, but this never flew. What I find strange about these two engines was the departure from the usual Rolls Royce practice of naming 4 stroke internal combustion engines for birds of prey - the Exe is a river and the Pennines is a mountain range.
Perhaps because the Exe and Pennine were air cooled rather than liquid cooled?
@jbepsilon Interesting. I totally missed that little detail. Wonder how it would have worked.
@@iskandartaib Most air-cooled inline engines had intake manifolds extending on the sides of the engine block, then the air made a 90deg turn and flowed across the cylinders into an exit manifold where another ~90deg turn was made before the heated air was exhausted to the outside.
@@jbepsilon No, I meant, how well would it have worked. Air cooled in-line engines of this size are rare, the weight savings alone would have made the concept attractive, if it had worked well.
@@iskandartaib Air-cooled inlines in general were unable to achieve competitive power/weight vs liquid cooled inlines or air cooled radials. Problem is that with air cooled cylinders you need higher bore spacing for the cooling air to pass between the cylinders. Which means a longer and heavier crankshaft and engine block. Oh, and since they are longer they need to be made relatively stiffer as well, further adding weight. Adding insult to injury, liquid cooled engines get a lot of additional stiffness from monoblock construction which you can't really do with air cooling. Further adding weight to reach required stiffness.
Additionally, most radials went through several iterations of bigger and thinner fins to provide sufficient cooling as the power of the engine was increased. Can't make the fins bigger on an inline as you'll run into the neighboring cylinder. Back to the drawing board?
5:35 that has to be the oddest design I've ever seen. If it were me I would have siamesed the opposite banks on the same bearing similar to a merlin split rod end.
It was a great concept, surely they just muffed it up with to much complexity
Can't speak for the Packard engine because I know nothing about it, but yes, the RR Vulture was a huge failure.
The problem is that it needs More Moving Parts !!!
This is now the 4th X engine I have come across with the 60/120/60/120 configuration. Nobody ever seems happy with them.
Aircraft engine standard nomenclature shows the induction, the fuel system, the design of the engine, then the displacement.
"O-360" means a horizontally opposed engine of 360 cubic inches, rounded to the nearest five. It doesn't show the number of cylinders. An IO-360 would be an opposed design of 360 cubic inches with fuel injection. A TSIO-520 would be a turbosupercharged fuel injected engine of 520 cubic inches. An R-670 was a carbureted 670 cubic inch radial engine that was used on the Stearman biplane. An R-3350 would be the Wright Duplex Cyclone engine that was used in the B-29 and the DC-7, but they delete the fact that this engine is not turbocharged, it is supercharged via mechanically driven blower fan. I'm not sure why they don't do this, since the naming convention states that this would be an SR-3350.
The name convention of the 1920s-1940s?
@@waynec3563 Still to this day.
@@Flies2FLL What I am trying to say is that the military piston engine designations didn't have the prefixes I for injection or T for turbosupercharging.
I believe the designation to which you refer are manufacturer designations.
@@waynec3563 Those designations are industry wide, though some manufacturers take a few liberties. A TIO-540 Lycoming approximates a TSIO-520 by Continental, for example.
I guess the x configuration asks a lot of the crank and packs a lot of heat in too
Your analysis of the firing order is a good piece of work.
The simple fact is that, as Calum Douglas notes in his book, by the end of the war the Merlin was producing twice as much power per litre as some other aero engines. If you have two engines of equal power and reliability, the one with fewer parts is better. We're seeing this nowadays where engines are getting smaller, with fewer cylinders and more boost. If you could get the power with a two stage supercharger on a V12, a 24 cylinder engine with double the number of pistons, rods, valves, camshafts and so on lost its point. RR agreed to drop the Vulture in WW2 and concentrate on the Merlin/Griffon, and this proved to be the correct decision. The last time and place to introduce a relatively novel engine is in a major war.
Plus Rolls Royce had two other 24 cylinder engines under development. The Exe and the Pennine. Both were air-cooled X layout 90° sleeve valve designs. Pratt & Whitney also had two H-24 sleeve valve engines in development.
@@mpetersen6 The Exe was pre-war, and was cancelled at the same time as teh Vulture, at the request of Rolls-Royce.
The Pennine was a 1944 design that used a single piece master rod and crankshaft built up in sections, like many of the big radials.
@waynec3563
Simply too many irons in the fire. The same as with P&W and Wright. Wright's case of overly complicated was the Tornado. With 42 cylinders and 21 cylinders firing per engine rotation that sound at full power would have been glorious.
The Exe if it produced enough power would have been useful. Plus being air cooled it would have eliminated problems of unequal coolant flow.
There were plenty of engines designed, built and tested with more than 12 cylinders. H-24s, X-24s, Hexagonal 24s plus engines with even more. The only aviation engines with 24 or more cylinders l can think of that really saw service were the R-4360, the Sabre or maybe the Eagle. The Soviets developed a Hexagonal 24 turbo compound that flew but was not used in service.
@@mpetersen6 Air cooling doesn't eliminate coolant flow problems, in fact it leads to real pain with ducting design and fin design, especially around heads. It's worth looking at the weird finning of radials with more than one row.
@@EbenBransome
True, air cooling has its own challenges in managing airflow and baffling. The Franklin Automobile Company did a lot of testing on managing airflow and getting maximum cooling of their air cooled engines. Franklin did build engines for helicopters. One thing they found was that if the intake and exhaust valves were rotated 45° on the cylinder centerline the cooling effect on the heads was enhanced. P&W used this on the R-4360.
But the major advantage of air-cooling is the deletion of coolant radiators, coolant pumps etc.
Detroit Diesel built a vertical shaft submarine x 2 cycle engine. It was OK but required special lubricating oil. This engine did not have master/slave connecting rods. It had identical rods with partial bearings. Unlike the master/slave rod engines, the DD engine’s piston motions were identical.
It is possible to build a radial or X layout with all link rods. One system uses a fixed gear in the crankcase centered on the main bearing. The rod carrier has a gear with the same number of teeth that meshes with the fixed gear. Another system uses two extra linkage rods on the road carrier. This was developed by the Nordberg Corporation for their 12 cylinder radial stationary engines built for power house and pumping applications. Old Machine Press website for info.
Fairbanks Morse tried a X layout Diesel with a 60-120-60-120 layout. Also Old Machine Press. Great web site
@ OMP IS a great web site. It seems every possible mechanism changing pistons motion to rotation has been tried.
No the vulture became reliable just as they replaced it. It was found that if they were dismantled after leaving the factory they were full of metal particles. It was believed they were sabotaged but they never manged to catch the culprit.
Toyota is presently enduring a major recall on V-6 engines . It was found that cleaning after machining was not thoroughly successful. Lead to thousands of failed engines . Due to debris being left inside . So perhaps it was a QC issue ?
Citation is needed for that. It was the Sabre that was famously being badly made till English Electric took over Napier and promptly fixed the quality problems.
You don't think only one person assembled the engines?
@@EbenBransome Also required the government to intervene and order Bristol to help with sleeve production.
@@waynec3563 the Vulture was in service in August 1940 on the Manchester. The Sabre in June 1941 but had to be withdrawn with problems not solved properly till June/October 1942. The Griffon was in service in Feb 1943 The Centaurus only entered service in mid 1943. The Vulture was likely the best of them and producing more power in June 1940 on the Manchester than the Griffon on the Spitfire XII in Feb 1943. The Vultures misfortune was that its maker also made the Merlin and concentrated on that.
@@williamzk9083 They had to concentrate their resources. And one factor in continuing with the Griffon over the Vulture was that the Griffon could fit into the Spitfire, though it wasn't originally intended to do so. Some changes to the design had to be made, which delayed development,but it worked well in the Spitfire.
If Manchester's problem was the Vulture engine, why wasn't it built with Merlin engines? By 1942 it was there were some versions almost as powerful as the Vulture. Could it be that they decided to get rid of medium bombers altogether?
These engines, as well as a few OTHER beasts being developed in the U.S. and Britain might well have eventually had the bugs worked out but ..."eventually"???... during wartime??? Reliable, high performance engines with known characteristics and performance were available in numbers and most were amenable to upgrades and improvements. It is only natural that potentially more powerful but very temperamental types took back burner somewhat.
DB606-610 series boasts similar configuration and problem
Those aren't X-24s at all and had thermal loading problems, when installed to deeply in the early He-177. What about that is the same?
The x-layout could have been used as a model for a compact and powerful tank engine ...
If the tooling was still in existence the Curtis D-12 and the Conqueror would have been great tank engines. I think the US Army's tank development staff liked air-cooled radials for light weight and simplicity due to lack of liquid cooling.
I thought he was talking about a Honda K24 engine.
Question Answered. Why do radials have a master rod. Cheers.
You "overlooked" The Allison X24 engine and the DalmerBenz X24...Interestng Packard X24 was 2775 Cu In and they delivered to the US Navy their M2500 as a V12 for PT Boat use developed from 1250 to 1850 HP, less complicated and very successful....
Excellent, thank you. How fortuitous that the Manchester morphed in to the Lancaster!
18:47 - OK, obviously the nose art states that the aircraft was named "Jill" (I wonder if the letter code was "J"), but what is "SRI.G AJAH"? the name of the pilot? What's it short for? The girl kind of reminds me of Minnie the Minx (a character in a British comic strip in one of those British comics for boys from the 1970s - can't remember if it was The Beano or The Dandy or something else) - the hair is wrong but the face is right. Same attitude.. 😁
From the start of this video, the big thing to me was that all the successful radials had an odd number of cylinders per bank (there must be a reason for that) while this one had even numbers and uneven crank angles.
I covered this in detail my radial engine video, but in short, the odd number of cylinders per bank on a radial is required to achieve an even firing interval, and this is not possible with an even number of cylinders per bank.
The X-24 is not a radial though. Each inline 6 (this engine has four inline 6's) has an even firing interval, so by using the same crankthrows on the crankshaft as an inline 6, an even firing interval is possible.
A single row 4 cylinder "X" engine would not be able to achieve an even firing interval.
How does the X layout differentiate from the H layout used by BRM ?
One crankshaft vs 2 (like in the Sabre).
... also used on the Sabre. Basically the X has one common crankshaft whereas the H engines have a separate crankshaft for each horizontally-opposed configuration, the two cranks both driving a common output shaft into the gearbox
One is a H and the other an X. Lol.
Alisson tried again with the double 1710. This became the 3420, in the end the engine was plagued with development problems and the programme was shut down in 1944. Mercedes coupled two DB603 engines on a common crank case ant his became I believe the DB606 it was more shaped like a W and was very prone to fires.
Daimler-Benz actually, which is why the engines are named DBxxx. Mercedes is for road vehicles. We should be very grateful to the German engineers who kept trying to invent new things in wartime, and thus made far more mistakes than Alied engine designers did.
Daimler Benz coupled several engines together. The DB 601 doubled was the DB 606, the DB 605 double was the DB 610, and the coupled DB 603 was the DB 613.
These were essentially two complete engines joined by a common reduction gearbox. Clutches woudl allow one engine to drive the propeller by itself.
The He 177 was prone to fires because the centre exhausts of the DB 606 were vertically down, and any oil leaks woudl find their way onto the exhaust. The HE 177 also didn't have a proper firewall, so an engine fire lost more than just the engine.
The original proposal for the V-3420 was for the X-3420. It was to use as many components from the V-1710 as possible, and meant that the bottom two banks could not be below horizontal. Allison countered that they could make the double Vee more powerful and with less development issues.
@waynec3563
There are always people who know more, thank you.
These engines make no sense. A V-12 with a 7 inch stroke, like the Liberty, and a 7 inch bore would be 3,232 cubic inches displacement and using a maximum piston speed of 4,000 fpm could have exceeded 3,000 rpm. Why even try to build something that's obviously going to have a much longer development time and double maintenance requirements?
Overweight overcomplicated and unreliable, a dog of an engine ,Stan and Ernie Rollers two top engineers should have realised the Vulture was going nowhere. Instead Stan and Ernie should have concentrated their limited resources on the Griffon ,a productionised 'R Series' drag race engine built for Reggie Mitchells Hot Rod the S-6B. The Griffon first ran on the test bench in April 1937 churning out a very respectable pony count of 1,730. No bigger heavier than a Merlin, the Griffon could fit any aircraft the used Merlins without major alteration , yes cats&kittens Joe Smith at Supermarine did just that re working the Spitfire to take a Griffon. DP845 started life as the controversial Mark 3 Spitfire, that should have entered production. DP845,s Merlin 20 swapped at Rollers Hucknall Test Centre for an early Griffon 2B twirling a four blade Rotol Jablo propeller, a guinea pig for the proposed Mark 4 with six 20mm Hispano Oerlikon Cannon. The Mark 4 morphed into the 12, a grass cutting Spit with two Hispano cannon designed to go after low flying hit and run raiders, most hybrided from Mark 5 airframes with a fixed tail wheel. Talk about over egging the pudding
A few things wrong, but I don't have the time to comment on more than one. The ""productionised 'R Series'" Griffon (R series?? was there a series?: the engine was also known as the HX) was developed in 1931/33 (by Stewart Tresilian if memory serves) and went nowhere, the Griffon you are talking about was a totally different engine with the bore and stroke being the only things they share (as well as being 60 degree V12s).
Alright two issues, the Griffon first ran in the experimental department in November 1939 and is thus sometimes referred to as the 1939 Griffon with the earlier one being referred to as either the 1933 Griffon or the 1931 Griffon. It went into service in 1942.
Oh, and Stanley Hooker was NOT an engineer and Hives was not R-R's top engineer.
@@robertnicholson7733 Excuse me, did you work for Rollers in Derby, if so tell me more ?.
@@basiltaylor8910 Unnecessary, the correct information is not hard to find, especially if you own the R-R Heritage Trust books on aero engines, numerous other books on the aero engines including Stanley Hooker's book, and been interested in these engines for over 40 years. Even Wiki has the correct information.
@@robertnicholson7733 Okay ,does Roller Heritage have a website I can access in order to buy these books you are talking about?,. I have one book on Roller Aero Engines by another publisher picked up second hand at a local bookshop.
bored old man with too much time to think and an engineering background, would 90degreeengines have worked?
Goofy ass engine😂
Great video,looks like to proves that X engine don’t work.the engine in the Russian new battle tank has a X engine and what I heard it was not reliable
The DB-604 worked very well. The Allison X-8 worked very well.
Rolls Royce failings isn't a good measure of an entire engine configuration.