As if you were pronouncing it in spanish, see in spanish a sounds as the A of Accent in English and the i sounds as your e in English: i = your e in spanish, as if you were up to say damn it, but then you write down daemn it. And talking about your vídeoclip, see actually are coupled engines, coupled by a welding but still coupled engines, and germans did it because Hitler forbid Goering to authorize the development of 4 engined heavy aircraft.
In his autobiography 'He-1000' Ernst Heinkel described the disbelief that he and He-177 Chief Engineer Hertel felt when Generalluftzeugmeister Udet expected this 4 engine aircraft (already expected to meet stringent performance demands for a late 1930s heavy bomber) to be capable of dive bombing. This led to extra structural reinforcement which added weight and reduced payload and performance and left them scrambling for ways to make up for these losses. If I recall correctly, the idea of reducing drag with coupled engines cooled by surface evaporation (which was dropped early on) arose from attempts to claw back performance losses caused by the dive bombing requirement. This had worked well for the He-119, so it seemed like a good idea. Heinkel held Hertel responsible for the missing DB-606 firewall and later fired him for allowing it. Heinkel offered a new He-177 version with new wings supporting 4 discrete engines as you describe in the video, only (as he put it) to be declined by a piqued Goering, personally embarrassed before Hitler due to the ongoing failure of this aircraft who ordered Heinkel make the He-177 work with coupled engines. While attempting to do so, Heinkel built two of the the 4 discrete engine versions in secret out of the view of Goering in France (the Farman He-274) and in Vienna-Schwecat (the He-277B). Both were said to have shown really promising performance and the Farman was used by France after the war into the 1950s for launching high speed test aircraft. Thus Germany lost it's final chance (perhaps too late to be of much use) at a possibly first class heavy bomber. Goering was adept at deflecting personal blame. He told Heinkel that Udet had told him the He-177 was required to dive bomb, which he rightly considered to be madness. Sounds like he dismissed coupled engines after the fact the same way. Much of this grief might have been avoided had the Jumo-222 appeared on schedule, but it arrived late in the war and really wasn't ready for operations. Junkers just didn't have enough qualified engineers to oversee production plus intensively develop this 24 cylinder engine. Contrast this sorry tale with the Avro Manchester. This was a heavy bomber built around the Rolls Royce Vulture X shaped engine that turned out like the DB-606 to be unreliable in service. Rather than being forced to waste time and resources making the unworkable work, its designer Roy Chadwick was allowed by the British Air Ministry to redesign the wings to carry 4 Rolls Royce Merlins, resulting in the hugely successful Lancaster. So much of the engine technical problems the Luftwaffe suffered was due to remarkably poor technical oversight from the RLM. In another video you mentioned the German lack of equivalent to the British use of RTOs to report what was happening in the engine development and production which held the British engine manufacturers to account. Had Germany somehow been able to find back-channel sources of strategic minerals like tungsten, chromium, tin and manganese specifically for engines, backed up decent official technical oversight, one can only imagine the engines they might have made. Given all of that, what they achieved - especially in gas turbines - was pretty extraordinary IMHO. Heinkel made a point during in his book that the imposition of The Treaty of Versailles sought to destroy Germany's ability to produce viable military aircraft. In his view the interwar years showed it had failed to significantly affect German air-frame design but that it had seriously impacted reciprocating engine design and development. He had considered moving into building such engines himself, but he considered Jumo, BMW, Bramo and DB had too big a lead for that. Besides Heinkel was aware of transonic propeller tip speeds limiting the ultimate performance of propellers. So he chose a different direction and pioneered jet aircraft - for which once again his efforts appear to have been slapped down by the RLM. Great video! Totally enjoyed it.
@@jbepsilon An interesting question. The inline thrust concept was pioneered by Claudius Dornier when he worked for Zeppelin, then later on his own aircraft like the Do-X flying boat, so he had quite some experience with it. I don't know if Heinkel, Hertel and the Gunthers would have considered it, but it might have been an elegant solution, albeit with more potential for drag than one giant prop driven by coupled engines buried in the wings. Given the extra weight imposed by the bracing to meet stresses caused by ridiculous dive bombing requirements I would guess Hertel was looking primarily for aerodynamic advantages. Had he known the trouble the DB-606 would cause he might well have considered paired inline thrust nacelles. Who knows?
This double engine was also used in the Messerschmitt Me 261, where it worked well. But in the Me 261 the double engine was installed in wide nacelles that cantilevered in front of the wing. While in the He 177 the double engine was buried in a narrow, cramped compartment that blended with the wing. This made it very difficult to service and very prone to fires.
The Napier Sabre 24 cyl engine in the Typhoon also had two crankshafts although this was how it was designed - not done as an after thought. It had its fair share of teething problems (which included catching fire) but really came into its own once these were ironed out. It had sleeve valves and was really compact making it also tricky to work on and a lot of special tools were required.
@@squidwardtentacles244 yes i do! I got it from a commercial pilot I know. Missing the starter though. Otherwise complete. 1944 model. Not stuck, turns freely. Not sure where he picked it up. Makes a neat conversation piece in my motorcycle shop.
@@suzi_mai Really that is awesome, would love to see some videos or pics of it. Cant be many of them around, there is a guy trying to put one in a plane and they have only 2 of them so super rare as most were sadly chucked in the ocean after the war.
Impressive as the Sabre was, AFAIU the issues were never really ironed out and it remained a very temperamental and maintenance heavy engine. Eventually it was superseded by the Bristol Centaurus radial (also a sleeve valve design, FWIW) in the Tempest Mk II and later Sea Fury, but that was too late for WWII and then jets took over.
I'm reminded of later work with coupled engines. Specifically the F-84 Thunderscreech with the supersonic propller and coupled turboshaft engines, and the A2D Skyknight with a similar layout. Ed Heinamann likened the gearbox trouble to a chronic toothache, and walked away in disgust. A rare thing for the man. The Thunderscreech was deemed a death trap early on. It does puzzle me from this distance why Dornier's 335 wasn't gaining more attention. Seems safer at every stage.
Great video. DB606 was also licensed by the Japanese Navy and imported in 1941. This was used as a reference when making the inverted-W24 for the Navy's prototype 'Keiun'. By uprating Atsuta (DB601) from 1,200->1,700 horsepower and coupling, Keiun was inevitably only an "expensive toy", but it's still interesting engineering. 3,400 takeoff horsepower!
The tree DB 600 engines series shared similar issues with all double engines that was tried to be produced like the Vulture all sharing similar unreliability due to the excessive heat generated by inner exhaust system possibly because of badly cooling system. The other issue was that the DB engines was built too near the main spar with no firewall despite the criticism of the engineers. The real failure of the DB 600 engine series was the enormous waste of resources and time when it could be easily built like the Lancaster but unfortunately it was built with a moderately dive requirement requiring strengthening of the wings and of course weight. Really a good job, looking forward to see your next video 👍👍👍
I think at first they tried surface cooling, by sending the coolant in tubes below the wings plates, and it gave the bomber a speed well past the contemporary fighters! But at high altitude and low temperatures it made the plates crumple, so they had to add ordinary coolers, giving more drag, and needing defensive armament, and more weight and drag.
The photograph of the HE-119 at 1:22 is interesting as it includes what appears to be members of a Japanese delegation. The 7th and 8th prototypes of the HE-119 were sold to Japan and insights gained were used to design the Yokosuka R2Y which also used coupled engines driving a single propeller.
The Fairey Prince and Monarch engines were also double engines (V within V), which flew in Fairey Battle, but were not proceeded with. A Monarch engine supposedly still exists at FAA Museum, Yeovilton, UK.
There's a crash recovered He-177 engine at the Wings museum in Sussex, it's not THAT badly damaged and it's an interesting thing. They've also got the block of a Napier Sabre with the sleeve valve installed, so you can turn a crank handle and watch the sleeve rise and fall and oscillate. I knew how sleeve valves worked, but it's a cool thing to watch.
The machetti aircraft that still holds the float plane speed record was powered by 2 fiat engines one behind the other with shared induction systems I think...I suppose that's a success story? It killed its first three test pilots. I'm in awe of the man who went fourth....that's courage in my opinion.
Moving away from aircraft, the record for combining engines has to be the Chrysler A57 Multibank. This had 30-cylinders and consisted of five inline-6 cylinder engines.
The British made a similar mistake in the Avro Manchester with is 24 cylinder RR Vulture engines. However, Britain realised it was going to take a lot of time and effort to get working, IF it would work properly at all and simply changed the design to use four Merlins instead and the Lancaster was born. German aircraft engine development in WW2 is lamentably awful, they wasted what resources they had and didn't have anythingto challenge the Griffon-Centaurus-Sabre generation of British engines, instead they were left using developments of what they began the war with.
Tecnically the DB engines are far more evoluted than RR ones thanks not only to Bosch mechanical fuel injection and as italian as japanese industry don't even were capable of make his copies works decently....
@@kkteutsch6416 The _evolute_ of an X-24 would be the crankshaft, between the twin crankshafts for a H-24, those barmy DB W engines must have had it somewhere between the bolted flat plate top covers. The V-12 Griffon made tons of power with very little fuss. An inverted Griffon might have allowed a slightly narrower top engine cowling from the sort of inverted cylinder _evolute?_ Are you sure you mean or understand _evolute?_
Well done. What an interesting design. It goes to show that wars make country's desperate enough to try anything. Thank you for all the effort you put into the research on DB Engines. Phew! All those figures!
They did a good job with metric horsepower; basing it on whole metric units (1PS = 75kg*1m/sec) and having it almost exactly equal to Watt's (and imperial) horsepower.
Post-war, a French-version of the Heinkle He 274 was built and became successful as the French A.A.S-01A, which was to have become the 1st French Nuclear-Bomber, except the 1st French A-bomb was exploded from a tower in 1960, as the A.A.S-01A and its 2nd sister-plane had been scrapped 7 years earlier in 1953. From 9/44--1953, it become a 'Mother-ship' carrying Various research craft to be dropped from altitudes to test. Single, not coupled, DB 603/605s were used per engine nacelle. The French plane was as fast as the coupled-engines used on the He-177 series.
I looked at the one Kermit Weeks has on display in his museum Florida and it was very interesting to study up close. I could see why there was a problem with cooling such a large liquid cooled engine and complicated gearing system for the prop. After spending 60+ years as an A&P mechanic is was impressive as the Lycoming 7755 radial at the Smithsonian Institution has on display. You could see how they pushed the limits of piston engines !
Had they gone with a pusher puller arrangement similar to the Do 336 on each wing they probably would have met with more success. Without the firey crashes.
They were not 'welded' together, they were bolted together, 'der dicke' said that when he was infuriated about the problems experienced with this eccentric double engine layout! I still think the Greif had the potential to be a great aircraft, but there was not enough time to iron out the snags! Late war German designs had a unique 'futuristic' look about them, the Germans are an innovative people like most Europeans, but even more so than others!
I could imagine the frustration and trouble, in fitting the Centre Exhaust Manifold - or Headers, between both engines. To fix and tighten all those nuts in the tightest space would require a small hand! What do others think about this?
I have had the idea for a scale model, using 72x 50cc scooter cranks, rods , pistons, cylinders, and heads build a foam crank case, to be cast in aluminum, using two light weigh cranks using counter rotation on oneof them. Use a turbo or compound turbo setup, with a large plenum per four banks, being similar to a boxer engine, with another stacked on top with the exhaust exiting top and bottom, intake in center, being 4stroke, 72 cylinders a cylinder fires every 10° of rotation, a 2-stroke every 5° a 4crank 2stroke could be built. 9 cylinder inline , so two opposed 18 cylinder engine stacked on top of each other, it would be cool for a 1/4 scale p-51 or similar , or build multiple engines for a 1/8 scale B-52 , it would make plenty of power to actually fly a person or two, a B-52 or p-51 the size of a cessna 2-6 seater, , the engine with mild boost making 5hp /cylinder and firing a single cylinder every 10° rotation, or two cylinders every 20° and revving to 8500 rpm, making 4-7Hp /cylinder, with an emergency rating of possibly 9-10 HP per cylinder, for 60 seconds, holding the waste gate closed longer, the emergency waste gate will eventually open At roughly 16-18 psi, normally running 6-8 psi, or extreme power running 10-12psi, for 30 minutes or so, the extra emergency power up to 16-18 psi for 30 seconds. Normal energy running 1 bar, 14psi +/- 1 psi with the emergency waste gate open it 16-18 psi. Maybe the engine can handle more. The sound of 72 cylinders spinning at a cruise speed of 7200 rpm, and a peak rpm of 8500-9000 must sound like something else!! Or a 2stroke version spinning 18,000 rpm with 50-85 cc per cylinder it would be plenty of power for a mid sized automobile!
Great video didn’t realise these engines existed. For the next video can you produce tables of the performance figures rather than reading them out, and just point out the important figures? Cheers
Another merged block engine design was the Rolls-Royce Vulture engine, which was based on having 2 Peregrine, but instead of having a 'W' configuration, it was in a 'X' configuration. Early in the war it was the engine used by the Avro Manchester heavy bomber, but it turned out that the engine was not reliable. The engine failure resulted in the 4 Merlin engine powered Heavy Bomber which became the legendary Avro Lancaster en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Vulture ua-cam.com/video/42wvC5fSfIg/v-deo.html Makes you wonder if the Heinkel He 177 Greif with 4 engines would be just as successful
Off the double engines built and flown in the period the Sabre was likely the best. In terms of combining two inline engines into one unit i really think the least ambitous of them the Allison V-3420 may have been the best if it had entered service.
If they had to have four MB 600's in only two nacelles to have enough power, a much better solution would seem to have been to have two engines in each nacelle mounted back to back in a pull/pusher configuration. The would have had the advantage of each nacelle having essentially two counter-rotating props to more efficiently absorb the power produced by each of the two engines and they would have avoided all or most of numerous and often fatal problems of the hugely problematic and fire-prone side by side configuration. Hind sight is always 20/20, but I wonder why they didn't do this? Does anybody here have any ideas?
In the end, the double-engine idea used on the Daimler-Benz DB606 and DB610 proved to be disastrous becuase the engineers never considered the complexity of the design and the fact the whole unit became very vulnerable to engine fires. It wasn't until 1943 when engineers at Luftwaffe's Rechlin test center identified some _56_ causes of engine problems and by correcting these problems, the engine was _finally_ able to work reliably.
IMO....The most ingenious German WW2 aircraft, aside from Me-262/163, was Do 335...2 contra-rotating engines sharing common fuselage. As in everything during wartime...Too Much, Too Little, Too Late
Since criticism with hindsight seems to be in style, picture this: Stalin starts WWII, Britain, France, Germany, and the US are allies. Imagine the technological leaps Germany could have made then, partnering w the other three nations. I guess we could add Italy to the club also, with their technology spinoffs from the likes of the M.C.72.
This reminds me of the RR Vulture engines that powered the Avro Manchester - which was another non-standard engine design to develop powerful engine for a bomber. And it failed just as spectacularly as these DB600 double motors did.....
CONVERSION HELP Pferdestärke is pronounced (that is as close as I can get it using English annunciation) 1 PS (Pferdestärke, literally Horsepower in German) is equivalent to 0.9863 HP
Putting two engines together to back into the 1920s on cars. The problem always becomes keeping multiple engines close enough in rpm and the overall weight of the gear box.
Coupled aeroengines go back to at least 1911 with Henri Coanda's monoplane that used two rotary engines at right angles to the aircraft centerline coupled to gear box to drive a single propeller. Bugatti came up with a U-16 during WWl. The Miller V-16 was two straight 8s with seperate crankshafts feeding a common output shaft via gearing. In the 20s Bugatti developed a coupled 32 cylinder engine set. 4 straight 8s with gearing.
It is a mystery to me why they didn't abandon the two-in-one engine concept as soon as they saw the magnitude of the problems it had operationally. Especially as they had a four-engine He-177 on the drawing board as early as 1938!! (That was news to me, BTW.) Were they oblivious to the conversion of the Avro Manchester into the Lancaster and the success of the four-engine bomber? Did they know of it but decline to do something similar for reasons of "national pride?" Honestly, I can't think of a single two-in-one piston-engined aircraft that was a success. Am I wrong?
As we are all listing other double engines can I offer the Allison double V-1710 (the V-3420) and the Chrysler two V-8s end to end and the A-S Double Mamba - and I think there were double opposed motors from Arsenal and Hispano-Suiza?
The GM EDM big 2 str oke diesels and the tinny torpodo ( that became the Crosley ) both were welded together . Btitish Napier ( and later in the 1960s ) the BRM WERE H- 16 .
_Why did WW2 Germany start welding engines together?_ Because glue hadn´t been invented yet...? (Yes, yes. I am aware that primitive animal-collagen-based glues were extant in the 40s, but that wouldn´t be nearly as funny, would it?) I cannot help thinking that this excellent video, one of many, couldn´t have been joined with a _ahem_ better title....
Kind of an odd way of doing things but it works. The far more modern, but still old BMW M70 is a similar concept. It does have a new original crankcase containing a single shaft driven by two otherwise separate inline 6s which are essentially M20B25s. In theory I don't know why you couldn't make a w24 that way, but I don't know of any engine like that. Such an engine would probably have 4 rods per crankpin. There was at least one american analogue to these DB engines, the Allison V-3420, which was two V-1710s.
Large earth scrapers have for wheels and an engine at each end. The rear engine carries a deliberately lug of balm e damper on thx non drive end. If this is not fitted, harmonic vibrations will literally break a crankshaft. Was this a component of these DB engine failures?
I guess that brings us rather neatly to the Rolls-Royce Vulture x motor which led to the failure of the Avro Manchester and the success of the Merlin powered Avro Lancaster. What seemed like a simple idea turned into a nightmare of unexpected problems as everyone on both sides discovered.
Also the H configuration Napier Sabre suffered a very drawn out development period, and remained a very temperamental and maintenance intensive engine in service. But the Sabre's problems were AFAIU largely due to the sleeve valve system, and less due to the H configuration with the gearbox connecting the two halves together.
The failure of the Manchester also killed off the Hawker Tornado which used the Vulture but without the overheating issues. That delayed the replacement of the Hawker Hurricane by three years until the Hawker Fury and Typhoon which used the same basic airframe as the Typhoon but with new engines. With the Vulture available the Typhoon would have entered service in time for the Battle of Britain.
Correct but the great issue with the He 117 was that it had the absurd requirement to have a moderate dive capability that required inordinate wing trengthening making it very time consuming to convert the bomber to much more simple 4 engine bomber like the Lancaster. It was absurd because it could have saved quite a lot of weight and simplified wings to produce...
Why didn't they put the two engines one behind the other, in an elongated nacelle and with two different propellers one pulling and one pushing, and without any mechanical connection between the two? Possibly the aft propeller might be designed to spin faster that the forward one, as it would on an air flow already accelerated by the other one.
Harmonic torsional vibration... ? Perhaps in a war plane it would last long enough. Detroit diesel did this modules put together twin s on one gear box . Germany lost ww2 and now sells POS BMW Audi Benz break alot $$$ for revenge..
@@Keckegenkai That joining two engines (or any pulsating rotational mass) on to one spur gear is very difficult since each rotating assembly vibrates at different frequency and a node of Maximum torsional shear occurs where they join.. In other words it's not a good idea..
@@Dilley_G45 It's actually more than that. Torsional vibration can exponentially increase forces on shafts and teeth of gears if shear node occurs near or at their position. Second and third order torsional vibration calculations some of the most intense physics engineering problems. Today we have Finite element analysis computer program can model such unlike back then .
+@Ravenloard The Panzer Maus tank was developed to use a tank version of the DB-603, called the MB509 V12. Only two were constructed. There was also a proposed marine version of the DB-603 called the MB503.
Very informative and enjoyable presentation. I always thought radial engines were primitive as compared to the German inverted V engines. However, as with so many of the German intricate designs, the simplicity, reliability the ability for the American radial engines to be mass produced wins out.
There's someone in one of Greg's Airplane and Automobiles video that said Germany is prioritizing Inline engines as it was simpler and faster to make than Radial engines, that theory _kinda_ make sense to me considering how many inline engined aircraft Germany have late war, but i can't really confirm this as the source is just a singular UA-cam comment
Have a look at the double stacked radials used on planes like the B-24 and I don't think you'd call it simple; and it wasn't just the US that made a large use of increasingly complex and powerful mass produced radials. I think Greg's channel mentions a few times the debates of radials vs inlines, with the use of improved coolants allowing watercooled inlines to start surpassing inlines, then the Fw 190 came along... a very interesting subject!
Germany did produce about 60000 BMW 801 radials, mostly used in FW190A. I think that's about 1/3 the production numbers of the DB600 and Jumo 200 series inlines, so less but not insignificant. The interesting thing is that almost all of the German bombers used inline engines (I think there was some Ju88 variant with the BMW 801, but very low numbers), whereas the US bombers all used radials.
Reason for Mercedes Daimler,s wacky conjoined engine, is simple, the lack of 100 Octane Petrol, even the brightest German Chemists could not synthesize the formula for 100 Octane Petrol. So no chance of 2,000- 2,100 ponies from a single German built aero engine of 18 or less cylinders, like Pratt&Whittney,s Excellent R-2800. The nearest Daimler got from a single engine without nitrox (GM) power boost is 1,900 from their model 603 that powered Heinkel,s Model 219 (Uhu), a twin engine tricycle undercarriage night fighter, and the nemesis of many Mosquito,s. To make Germany part self sufficient in petrol for auto and aero applications, fat Herman with the RLM,s blessing set up plants in Leuna to extract petrol from coal, thus conserving precious stocks of crude suitable for aviation petrol brought in from the Rumanian oil fields at Ploesti. Pretty crap petrol ,okay for your 3-ton Opel Blitz Lorry, Volkswagen Kublewagen and Horch 4x4, a ponced up over engineered Dodge Command Car but useless in the tank of a BF109F or FW 190A . From 1936-37 to 1944-45 Fat Herman,s Luftwaffe burnt 87 Octane, same crap petrol you fill the tank of your lawnmower extracted from Rumanian crude or coal, so cats&kittens the Daimler,s pony count is lower than an equivalent Allied engine. To make my point, in late 1937-early-38 Rollers( Rolls-Royce) at Derby modified a Merlin 3,fed on 87 Octane 990-1030 ponies, same engine now tweaked burning 100 Octane 1,200 ponies, not bad for a change of diet , .Those one hundred seventy extra Roller ponies won us the Battle of Britain, allowing the pilots of Spitfires, Hurricanes, and Defiants to ramp the bollocks out of their Merlins to chase down DB engined BF 109,s and 110,s without fear of the engine blowing up at high boost ratings. Because of crap petrol ,crap materials DB engines were second from bottom on the pony count score board, with the life expectancy of a Mayfly. So in all DB,s Conjoined engine was a futile waste of time, precious materials and expertise. Guess cats&kittens, who made a conjoined engine work reliably, the GM Allison 3420, 2,600 ponies burning 100 Octane for less than sixty litres.
I am no expert, & perhaps I'm missing something. But why with one dialog am I seeing illustrations which haphazardly keep changing from inline design to side by side design, to two engines on wings? As well as nose mounted single four blade , double four blade, & two separate engines on wings ???
The truth was that all high powered radial or in-line engines was very heavy on consumption. Perhaps it better to say that the engineers was more concerned having the highest output with reliability, apparently not with German double engines. Consumption wasn't a great concern...
@@paoloviti6156 Very true, I can understand that when you need speed and performance, Fuel consumption is of little concern,, I just wondered if any one knew how thirsty these engines were?
@@neildelaney5199 those big engines were very thirsty. I know that the Pratt and Whitney R-2800 for example was gulping gallons just to warm up before taking off but also the Rolls-Royce Merlin was no joke too
At cruise the WWII aviation engines were actually pretty efficient, producing BSFC numbers comparable to modern car engines. Scale up your car engine to produce 2000hp, and run it at 70% max power and it'll gulp a lot of fuel too.
If you are not allowed to build a four engine bomber you have to make the two propellers bigger right ? This is what happens when politicians design airplanes.
+@loonattica8096 Not welded. It was basically two engines sharing a common reduction gear housing. Each engine was clutched and could be ran independently.
How to pronounce Daimler.
ua-cam.com/video/iEWwSHaLM4c/v-deo.html
EXCELLENT VIDEO.....Thanks very much.....
Shoe🇺🇸
It is fun to say "Dameler".
As if you were pronouncing it in spanish, see in spanish a sounds as the A of Accent in English and the i sounds as your e in English: i = your e in spanish, as if you were up to say damn it, but then you write down daemn it. And talking about your vídeoclip, see actually are coupled engines, coupled by a welding but still coupled engines, and germans did it because Hitler forbid Goering to authorize the development of 4 engined heavy aircraft.
In his autobiography 'He-1000' Ernst Heinkel described the disbelief that he and He-177 Chief Engineer Hertel felt when Generalluftzeugmeister Udet expected this 4 engine aircraft (already expected to meet stringent performance demands for a late 1930s heavy bomber) to be capable of dive bombing. This led to extra structural reinforcement which added weight and reduced payload and performance and left them scrambling for ways to make up for these losses. If I recall correctly, the idea of reducing drag with coupled engines cooled by surface evaporation (which was dropped early on) arose from attempts to claw back performance losses caused by the dive bombing requirement. This had worked well for the He-119, so it seemed like a good idea. Heinkel held Hertel responsible for the missing DB-606 firewall and later fired him for allowing it.
Heinkel offered a new He-177 version with new wings supporting 4 discrete engines as you describe in the video, only (as he put it) to be declined by a piqued Goering, personally embarrassed before Hitler due to the ongoing failure of this aircraft who ordered Heinkel make the He-177 work with coupled engines. While attempting to do so, Heinkel built two of the the 4 discrete engine versions in secret out of the view of Goering in France (the Farman He-274) and in Vienna-Schwecat (the He-277B). Both were said to have shown really promising performance and the Farman was used by France after the war into the 1950s for launching high speed test aircraft. Thus Germany lost it's final chance (perhaps too late to be of much use) at a possibly first class heavy bomber.
Goering was adept at deflecting personal blame. He told Heinkel that Udet had told him the He-177 was required to dive bomb, which he rightly considered to be madness. Sounds like he dismissed coupled engines after the fact the same way. Much of this grief might have been avoided had the Jumo-222 appeared on schedule, but it arrived late in the war and really wasn't ready for operations. Junkers just didn't have enough qualified engineers to oversee production plus intensively develop this 24 cylinder engine.
Contrast this sorry tale with the Avro Manchester.
This was a heavy bomber built around the Rolls Royce Vulture X shaped engine that turned out like the DB-606 to be unreliable in service. Rather than being forced to waste time and resources making the unworkable work, its designer Roy Chadwick was allowed by the British Air Ministry to redesign the wings to carry 4 Rolls Royce Merlins, resulting in the hugely successful Lancaster. So much of the engine technical problems the Luftwaffe suffered was due to remarkably poor technical oversight from the RLM. In another video you mentioned the German lack of equivalent to the British use of RTOs to report what was happening in the engine development and production which held the British engine manufacturers to account. Had Germany somehow been able to find back-channel sources of strategic minerals like tungsten, chromium, tin and manganese specifically for engines, backed up decent official technical oversight, one can only imagine the engines they might have made. Given all of that, what they achieved - especially in gas turbines - was pretty extraordinary IMHO.
Heinkel made a point during in his book that the imposition of The Treaty of Versailles sought to destroy Germany's ability to produce viable military aircraft. In his view the interwar years showed it had failed to significantly affect German air-frame design but that it had seriously impacted reciprocating engine design and development. He had considered moving into building such engines himself, but he considered Jumo, BMW, Bramo and DB had too big a lead for that. Besides Heinkel was aware of transonic propeller tip speeds limiting the ultimate performance of propellers. So he chose a different direction and pioneered jet aircraft - for which once again his efforts appear to have been slapped down by the RLM.
Great video! Totally enjoyed it.
I wonder for a bomber why they didn't consider a push-pull configuration (like, say, Do-335) with two nacelles with two engines each?
@@jbepsilon
An interesting question.
The inline thrust concept was pioneered by Claudius Dornier when he worked for Zeppelin, then later on his own aircraft like the Do-X flying boat, so he had quite some experience with it. I don't know if Heinkel, Hertel and the Gunthers would have considered it, but it might have been an elegant solution, albeit with more potential for drag than one giant prop driven by coupled engines buried in the wings. Given the extra weight imposed by the bracing to meet stresses caused by ridiculous dive bombing requirements I would guess Hertel was looking primarily for aerodynamic advantages. Had he known the trouble the DB-606 would cause he might well have considered paired inline thrust nacelles. Who knows?
Love this. I've always been obsessed with the DB series of engines. Thank you for the time and effort you have put into making these videos.
Here’s an “Ata Boy” from a random internet stranger.
This double engine was also used in the Messerschmitt Me 261, where it worked well. But in the Me 261 the double engine was installed in wide nacelles that cantilevered in front of the wing. While in the He 177 the double engine was buried in a narrow, cramped compartment that blended with the wing. This made it very difficult to service and very prone to fires.
Me 261. Three prototypes built. Never entered service. Used entirely for test work.
The Napier Sabre 24 cyl engine in the Typhoon also had two crankshafts although this was how it was designed - not done as an after thought. It had its fair share of teething problems (which included catching fire) but really came into its own once these were ironed out. It had sleeve valves and was really compact making it also tricky to work on and a lot of special tools were required.
I have one of these! Complex af, can't see how you could maintain in wartime.
@@suzi_mai You have a 24 cylinder napier sabre
@@squidwardtentacles244 yes i do! I got it from a commercial pilot I know. Missing the starter though. Otherwise complete. 1944 model. Not stuck, turns freely. Not sure where he picked it up. Makes a neat conversation piece in my motorcycle shop.
@@suzi_mai Really that is awesome, would love to see some videos or pics of it. Cant be many of them around, there is a guy trying to put one in a plane and they have only 2 of them so super rare as most were sadly chucked in the ocean after the war.
Impressive as the Sabre was, AFAIU the issues were never really ironed out and it remained a very temperamental and maintenance heavy engine. Eventually it was superseded by the Bristol Centaurus radial (also a sleeve valve design, FWIW) in the Tempest Mk II and later Sea Fury, but that was too late for WWII and then jets took over.
I'm reminded of later work with coupled engines. Specifically the F-84 Thunderscreech with the supersonic propller and coupled turboshaft engines, and the A2D Skyknight with a similar layout. Ed Heinamann likened the gearbox trouble to a chronic toothache, and walked away in disgust. A rare thing for the man. The Thunderscreech was deemed a death trap early on.
It does puzzle me from this distance why Dornier's 335 wasn't gaining more attention. Seems safer at every stage.
Indeed. And the Do-335 push-pull approach could have been used for bomber aircraft too with wing-mounted nacelles.
Great video. DB606 was also licensed by the Japanese Navy and imported in 1941. This was used as a reference when making the inverted-W24 for the Navy's prototype 'Keiun'. By uprating Atsuta (DB601) from 1,200->1,700 horsepower and coupling, Keiun was inevitably only an "expensive toy", but it's still interesting engineering. 3,400 takeoff horsepower!
The tree DB 600 engines series shared similar issues with all double engines that was tried to be produced like the Vulture all sharing similar unreliability due to the excessive heat generated by inner exhaust system possibly because of badly cooling system. The other issue was that the DB engines was built too near the main spar with no firewall despite the criticism of the engineers. The real failure of the DB 600 engine series was the enormous waste of resources and time when it could be easily built like the Lancaster but unfortunately it was built with a moderately dive requirement requiring strengthening of the wings and of course weight. Really a good job, looking forward to see your next video 👍👍👍
I think at first they tried surface cooling, by sending the coolant in tubes below the wings plates, and it gave the bomber a speed well past the contemporary fighters! But at high altitude and low temperatures it made the plates crumple, so they had to add ordinary coolers, giving more drag, and needing defensive armament, and more weight and drag.
the sideways superchargers of the benz motors are pure art
The photograph of the HE-119 at 1:22 is interesting as it includes what appears to be members of a Japanese delegation. The 7th and 8th prototypes of the HE-119 were sold to Japan and insights gained were used to design the Yokosuka R2Y which also used coupled engines driving a single propeller.
Excellent overview. Super well done! I'm a big fan of your channel.
The Fairey Prince and Monarch engines were also double engines (V within V), which flew in Fairey Battle, but were not proceeded with. A Monarch engine supposedly still exists at FAA Museum, Yeovilton, UK.
There's a crash recovered He-177 engine at the Wings museum in Sussex, it's not THAT badly damaged and it's an interesting thing. They've also got the block of a Napier Sabre with the sleeve valve installed, so you can turn a crank handle and watch the sleeve rise and fall and oscillate. I knew how sleeve valves worked, but it's a cool thing to watch.
I love how you also discuss the logistics surrounding the engine!
The machetti aircraft that still holds the float plane speed record was powered by 2 fiat engines one behind the other with shared induction systems I think...I suppose that's a success story? It killed its first three test pilots. I'm in awe of the man who went fourth....that's courage in my opinion.
Moving away from aircraft, the record for combining engines has to be the Chrysler A57 Multibank. This had 30-cylinders and consisted of five inline-6 cylinder engines.
The Napier Sabre H-24 sleeve valve engine also flew and reached 3,500HP. And flew in Hawker Tempest and Typhoon.
Absolutely fantastic! I love the history of aircraft in vivid details
The British made a similar mistake in the Avro Manchester with is 24 cylinder RR Vulture engines. However, Britain realised it was going to take a lot of time and effort to get working, IF it would work properly at all and simply changed the design to use four Merlins instead and the Lancaster was born. German aircraft engine development in WW2 is lamentably awful, they wasted what resources they had and didn't have anythingto challenge the Griffon-Centaurus-Sabre generation of British engines, instead they were left using developments of what they began the war with.
The X-24 RR Vulture was abandoned but the H-24 Napier Sabre was eventually a success. Pratt and Whitney also tried some H-24a .
Your comment conveniently ignores German development and implementation of turbojet engines.
Do you think before you type?
Tecnically the DB engines are far more evoluted than RR ones thanks not only to Bosch mechanical fuel injection and as italian as japanese industry don't even were capable of make his copies works decently....
@@kkteutsch6416 The _evolute_ of an X-24 would be the crankshaft, between the twin crankshafts for a H-24, those barmy DB W engines must have had it somewhere between the bolted flat plate top covers. The V-12 Griffon made tons of power with very little fuss. An inverted Griffon might have allowed a slightly narrower top engine cowling from the sort of inverted cylinder _evolute?_ Are you sure you mean or understand _evolute?_
@@givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935 the most common fail on RR engines were just the crakshafts, according to a book I own about Spitfire....
Excellent series. Don't forget to include the Soviet engines.
I appreciate the accuracy of your research. 👍
Well done. What an interesting design. It goes to show that wars make country's desperate enough to try anything. Thank you for all the effort you put into the research on DB Engines. Phew! All those figures!
Aa Video that explain questions I ever had--the HE 177 information are great
--thx
Great video I really enjoy this detailed stuff
As a note I am a blind subscriber and your audio was so good I didn’t miss the video
Cheers
So many parts, so terribly complicated ... but somehow beautiful
Allison tried the same thing with the V-1710 giving the V-3420.
And I just learned about the T40 and Double Mamba turboprops in the same vein. 😮
There's nothing worse than a bad idea that won't go away. Allison tried it with the V3420 and it didn't work out well.
They did a good job with metric horsepower; basing it on whole metric units (1PS = 75kg*1m/sec) and having it almost exactly equal to Watt's (and imperial) horsepower.
Post-war, a French-version of the Heinkle He 274 was built and became successful as the French A.A.S-01A, which was to have become the 1st French Nuclear-Bomber, except the 1st French A-bomb was exploded from a tower in 1960, as the A.A.S-01A and its 2nd sister-plane had been scrapped 7 years earlier in 1953. From 9/44--1953, it become a 'Mother-ship' carrying Various research craft to be dropped from altitudes to test. Single, not coupled, DB 603/605s were used per engine nacelle. The French plane was as fast as the coupled-engines used on the He-177 series.
I looked at the one Kermit Weeks has on display in his museum Florida and it was very interesting to study up close. I could see why there was a problem with cooling such a large liquid cooled engine and complicated gearing system for the prop. After spending 60+ years as an A&P mechanic is was impressive as the Lycoming 7755 radial at the Smithsonian Institution has on display. You could see how they pushed the limits of piston engines !
Had they gone with a pusher puller arrangement similar to the Do 336 on each wing they probably would have met with more success. Without the firey crashes.
They were not 'welded' together, they were bolted together, 'der dicke' said that when he was infuriated about the problems experienced with this eccentric double engine layout! I still think the Greif had the potential to be a great aircraft, but there was not enough time to iron out the snags! Late war German designs had a unique 'futuristic' look about them, the Germans are an innovative people like most Europeans, but even more so than others!
I'm pretty sure the engines were not literally welded together. Looks like they were bolted to a common gear reduction/propeller drive.
I’m sure someone has swapped it into a miata.
Love this channel
I could imagine the frustration and trouble, in fitting the Centre Exhaust Manifold - or Headers, between both engines. To fix and tighten all those nuts in the tightest space would require a small hand! What do others think about this?
I have had the idea for a scale model, using 72x 50cc scooter cranks, rods , pistons, cylinders, and heads build a foam crank case, to be cast in aluminum, using two light weigh cranks
using counter rotation on oneof them. Use a turbo or compound turbo setup, with a large plenum per four banks, being similar to a boxer engine, with another stacked on top with the exhaust exiting top and bottom, intake in center, being 4stroke, 72 cylinders a cylinder fires every 10° of rotation, a 2-stroke every 5° a 4crank 2stroke could be built. 9 cylinder inline , so two opposed 18 cylinder engine stacked on top of each other, it would be cool for a 1/4 scale p-51 or similar , or build multiple engines for a 1/8 scale B-52 , it would make plenty of power to actually fly a person or two, a B-52 or p-51 the size of a cessna 2-6 seater, , the engine with mild boost making 5hp /cylinder and firing a single cylinder every 10° rotation, or two cylinders every 20° and revving to 8500 rpm, making 4-7Hp /cylinder, with an emergency rating of possibly 9-10 HP per cylinder, for 60 seconds, holding the waste gate closed longer, the emergency waste gate will eventually open At roughly 16-18 psi, normally running 6-8 psi, or extreme power running 10-12psi, for 30 minutes or so, the extra emergency power up to 16-18 psi for 30 seconds. Normal energy running 1 bar, 14psi +/- 1 psi with the emergency waste gate open it 16-18 psi. Maybe the engine can handle more. The sound of 72 cylinders spinning at a cruise speed of 7200 rpm, and a peak rpm of 8500-9000 must sound like something else!! Or a 2stroke version spinning 18,000 rpm with 50-85 cc per cylinder it would be plenty of power for a mid sized automobile!
With the propensity to catching fire,,,, reminds me of an Italian manufacturer we all know and,,, dare say love?
Ferrari of course.
This was very interesting. Please do more ww2 engines
Great video didn’t realise these engines existed. For the next video can you produce tables of the performance figures rather than reading them out, and just point out the important figures? Cheers
Glad I was not a mechanic on these double engines - it must have been a nightmare setting the ignition timing just to start with
It’s really amazing how far ahead of everyone they were in certain fields
please have a look at the Avro Manchester engines suffering from the same problems !!
😂 and today far behind
Seems like having the exhaust on the outside ports and the intake inside the V would have made more sense, especially on a forced induction engine.
Bevel drive ohc, 4 valves per cylinder. The drawing is great.
Bevel gear shaft driven cams were common on inline aircraft engines.
Another merged block engine design was the Rolls-Royce Vulture engine, which was based on having 2 Peregrine, but instead of having a 'W' configuration, it was in a 'X' configuration. Early in the war it was the engine used by the Avro Manchester heavy bomber, but it turned out that the engine was not reliable. The engine failure resulted in the 4 Merlin engine powered Heavy Bomber which became the legendary Avro Lancaster
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Vulture
ua-cam.com/video/42wvC5fSfIg/v-deo.html
Makes you wonder if the Heinkel He 177 Greif with 4 engines would be just as successful
Off the double engines built and flown in the period the Sabre was likely the best. In terms of combining two inline engines into one unit i really think the least ambitous of them the Allison V-3420 may have been the best if it had entered service.
Napier had the benefit of past experience with double engines, having made the smaller Dagger and Rapier previously.
If they had to have four MB 600's in only two nacelles to have enough power, a much better solution would seem to have been to have two engines in each nacelle mounted back to back in a pull/pusher configuration. The would have had the advantage of each nacelle having essentially two counter-rotating props to more efficiently absorb the power produced by each of the two engines and they would have avoided all or most of numerous and often fatal problems of the hugely problematic and fire-prone side by side configuration. Hind sight is always 20/20, but I wonder why they didn't do this? Does anybody here have any ideas?
Wow, quite interesting! Thanks!!!
In the end, the double-engine idea used on the Daimler-Benz DB606 and DB610 proved to be disastrous becuase the engineers never considered the complexity of the design and the fact the whole unit became very vulnerable to engine fires. It wasn't until 1943 when engineers at Luftwaffe's Rechlin test center identified some _56_ causes of engine problems and by correcting these problems, the engine was _finally_ able to work reliably.
IMO....The most ingenious German WW2 aircraft, aside from Me-262/163, was Do 335...2 contra-rotating engines sharing common fuselage. As in everything during wartime...Too Much, Too Little, Too Late
Just casually throwing in a picture of a Ki-64 powered by a tandem coupled engine at 4:19 and not talking about it. 😏
Since criticism with hindsight seems to be in style, picture this: Stalin starts WWII, Britain, France, Germany, and the US are allies. Imagine the technological leaps Germany could have made then, partnering w the other three nations. I guess we could add Italy to the club also, with their technology spinoffs from the likes of the M.C.72.
Welded? Exactly where are these engines "welded" together?
This reminds me of the RR Vulture engines that powered the Avro Manchester - which was another non-standard engine design to develop powerful engine for a bomber.
And it failed just as spectacularly as these DB600 double motors did.....
CONVERSION HELP
Pferdestärke is pronounced (that is as close as I can get it using English annunciation)
1 PS (Pferdestärke, literally Horsepower in German) is equivalent to 0.9863 HP
"Fair-der"-Shtair-ker" is probably nearer and captures the umlaut on the A.
Putting two engines together to back into the 1920s on cars. The problem always becomes keeping multiple engines close enough in rpm and the overall weight of the gear box.
Coupled aeroengines go back to at least 1911 with Henri Coanda's monoplane that used two rotary engines at right angles to the aircraft centerline coupled to gear box to drive a single propeller. Bugatti came up with a U-16 during WWl. The Miller V-16 was two straight 8s with seperate crankshafts feeding a common output shaft via gearing. In the 20s Bugatti developed a coupled 32 cylinder engine set. 4 straight 8s with gearing.
Outstanding channel.
Oil seeping past the pistons into the combustion chamber was, presumably, always a greater risk with an inverted engine.
I see two engines on a reduction box but I don't see two blocks welded together
+@tomdave42 It was two engines that could be ran independently and sharing a common reduction box.
It is a mystery to me why they didn't abandon the two-in-one engine concept as soon as they saw the magnitude of the problems it had operationally. Especially as they had a four-engine He-177 on the drawing board as early as 1938!! (That was news to me, BTW.) Were they oblivious to the conversion of the Avro Manchester into the Lancaster and the success of the four-engine bomber? Did they know of it but decline to do something similar for reasons of "national pride?" Honestly, I can't think of a single two-in-one piston-engined aircraft that was a success. Am I wrong?
Better to have 4 x reliable engines than 2 x very iffy engines.... especially when the engines are a target for enemy fighters.
Now I'm trying to picture a metric horse. 🐎
As we are all listing other double engines can I offer the Allison double V-1710 (the V-3420) and the Chrysler two V-8s end to end and the A-S Double Mamba - and I think there were double opposed motors from Arsenal and Hispano-Suiza?
Chrysler put more than two together for tanks. I Saw one at the Chrysler museum. It was very impressive!
The GM EDM big 2 str
oke diesels and the tinny torpodo ( that became the Crosley ) both were welded together . Btitish Napier ( and later in the 1960s ) the BRM WERE H- 16 .
Wow! Great topic!
_Why did WW2 Germany start welding engines together?_
Because glue hadn´t been invented yet...?
(Yes, yes. I am aware that primitive animal-collagen-based glues were extant in the 40s, but that wouldn´t be nearly as funny, would it?)
I cannot help thinking that this excellent video, one of many, couldn´t have been joined with a _ahem_ better title....
This is a job for flextape
Yes, I was intrigued at the idea of engines being welded together and then found that they weren't.
Kind of an odd way of doing things but it works. The far more modern, but still old BMW M70 is a similar concept. It does have a new original crankcase containing a single shaft driven by two otherwise separate inline 6s which are essentially M20B25s. In theory I don't know why you couldn't make a w24 that way, but I don't know of any engine like that. Such an engine would probably have 4 rods per crankpin. There was at least one american analogue to these DB engines, the Allison V-3420, which was two V-1710s.
The Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport, NY has an Allison 3420 on display with the reduction gearing and prop shaft and it is quite the site to see
@@jeremyporter7443 If I'm ever in NY I'll make sure to check that out.
Large earth scrapers have for wheels and an engine at each end. The rear engine carries a deliberately lug of balm e damper on thx non drive end. If this is not fitted, harmonic vibrations will literally break a crankshaft. Was this a component of these DB engine failures?
14:05 this should be 20.9 psi of total pressure, 6.2 psi of boost
Some Sherman tanks had five dodge straight six truck engines all geared together. Each section could be replaced when needed.
I had an engineering professor who would remind us:
If it didn’t work very well in theory,
It won’t work any better in practice…
Is it the 601 you have pictured at the two minute mark the one in the Smithsonian that’s actually a license built Japanese copy
Good eye! Didn’t think anyone would notice it.
@@flightdojo tough to say, I’m just an airplane nerd that hangs out in a lot of air museums 😂
Hmmm Jaguar also welded two engines together making it a powerfull but troublesome to maintain unit.
I guess that brings us rather neatly to the Rolls-Royce Vulture x motor which led to the failure of the Avro Manchester and the success of the Merlin powered Avro Lancaster. What seemed like a simple idea turned into a nightmare of unexpected problems as everyone on both sides discovered.
Also the H configuration Napier Sabre suffered a very drawn out development period, and remained a very temperamental and maintenance intensive engine in service. But the Sabre's problems were AFAIU largely due to the sleeve valve system, and less due to the H configuration with the gearbox connecting the two halves together.
The failure of the Manchester also killed off the Hawker Tornado which used the Vulture but without the overheating issues. That delayed the replacement of the Hawker Hurricane by three years until the Hawker Fury and Typhoon which used the same basic airframe as the Typhoon but with new engines.
With the Vulture available the Typhoon would have entered service in time for the Battle of Britain.
Just amazing..... where do you find this content? The subject matter.
They really should have looked at the issues with the Vulture, most of which seemed to also afflict the DB versions.
Those DB606 and DB610 were as a disaster as the Rolls-Royce Vulture. At least the British changed their minds fast to get the Lancaster
Correct but the great issue with the He 117 was that it had the absurd requirement to have a moderate dive capability that required inordinate wing trengthening making it very time consuming to convert the bomber to much more simple 4 engine bomber like the Lancaster. It was absurd because it could have saved quite a lot of weight and simplified wings to produce...
The Vulture used two small obsolete 800 hp engines as a base, it ended up not being worth the effort.
To save forward performance like the heinkel 177
Good show, sport. Best wishes.
Much appreciated!
ermagerd...how did i only find this now!?!?!
The secondary harmonics of this set up must have been horrendous.
good content.... little tip, slow down a little. Some times you are speaking to fast.
Why didn't they put the two engines one behind the other, in an elongated nacelle and with two different propellers one pulling and one pushing, and without any mechanical connection between the two? Possibly the aft propeller might be designed to spin faster that the forward one, as it would on an air flow already accelerated by the other one.
Overheating?
Why anyone would think that conjoining two engines into one package would be easier than simply having a four engined bomber escape me. Very odd!
Harmonic torsional vibration... ?
Perhaps in a war plane it would last long enough.
Detroit diesel did this modules put together twin s on one gear box .
Germany lost ww2 and now sells POS BMW Audi Benz break alot $$$ for revenge..
what does that comment even try to convey?
@@Keckegenkai That joining two engines (or any pulsating rotational mass) on to one spur gear is very difficult since each rotating assembly vibrates at different frequency and a node of Maximum torsional shear occurs where they join..
In other words it's not a good idea..
@@MitzvosGolem1don't underengineer the gears/connections then
@@Dilley_G45 It's actually more than that.
Torsional vibration can exponentially increase forces on shafts and teeth of gears if shear node occurs near or at their position.
Second and third order torsional vibration calculations some of the most intense physics engineering problems.
Today we have Finite element analysis computer program can model such unlike back then .
The Rolls-Royce Crecy engine first ran in early 1941 and made 5000HP....
DB 610 in pather tank 😅 impossiple but would be pretty wounderwaffe
+@Ravenloard The Panzer Maus tank was developed to use a tank version of the DB-603, called the MB509 V12. Only two were constructed. There was also a proposed marine version of the DB-603 called the MB503.
Very informative and enjoyable presentation. I always thought radial engines were primitive as compared to the German inverted V engines. However, as with so many of the German intricate designs, the simplicity, reliability the ability for the American radial engines to be mass produced wins out.
I don't think I would consider a "radial engine" primitive. Ever take the time to figure out how the cam timing works?
There's someone in one of Greg's Airplane and Automobiles video that said Germany is prioritizing Inline engines as it was simpler and faster to make than Radial engines, that theory _kinda_ make sense to me considering how many inline engined aircraft Germany have late war, but i can't really confirm this as the source is just a singular UA-cam comment
Have a look at the double stacked radials used on planes like the B-24 and I don't think you'd call it simple; and it wasn't just the US that made a large use of increasingly complex and powerful mass produced radials. I think Greg's channel mentions a few times the debates of radials vs inlines, with the use of improved coolants allowing watercooled inlines to start surpassing inlines, then the Fw 190 came along... a very interesting subject!
Germany did produce about 60000 BMW 801 radials, mostly used in FW190A. I think that's about 1/3 the production numbers of the DB600 and Jumo 200 series inlines, so less but not insignificant. The interesting thing is that almost all of the German bombers used inline engines (I think there was some Ju88 variant with the BMW 801, but very low numbers), whereas the US bombers all used radials.
Reason for Mercedes Daimler,s wacky conjoined engine, is simple, the lack of 100 Octane Petrol, even the brightest German Chemists could not synthesize the formula for 100 Octane Petrol. So no chance of 2,000- 2,100 ponies from a single German built aero engine of 18 or less cylinders, like Pratt&Whittney,s Excellent R-2800. The nearest Daimler got from a single engine without nitrox (GM) power boost is 1,900 from their model 603 that powered Heinkel,s Model 219 (Uhu), a twin engine tricycle undercarriage night fighter, and the nemesis of many Mosquito,s. To make Germany part self sufficient in petrol for auto and aero applications, fat Herman with the RLM,s blessing set up plants in Leuna to extract petrol from coal, thus conserving precious stocks of crude suitable for aviation petrol brought in from the Rumanian oil fields at Ploesti. Pretty crap petrol ,okay for your 3-ton Opel Blitz Lorry, Volkswagen Kublewagen and Horch 4x4, a ponced up over engineered Dodge Command Car but useless in the tank of a BF109F or FW 190A . From 1936-37 to 1944-45 Fat Herman,s Luftwaffe burnt 87 Octane, same crap petrol you fill the tank of your lawnmower extracted from Rumanian crude or coal, so cats&kittens the Daimler,s pony count is lower than an equivalent Allied engine. To make my point, in late 1937-early-38 Rollers( Rolls-Royce) at Derby modified a Merlin 3,fed on 87 Octane 990-1030 ponies, same engine now tweaked burning 100 Octane 1,200 ponies, not bad for a change of diet , .Those one hundred seventy extra Roller ponies won us the Battle of Britain, allowing the pilots of Spitfires, Hurricanes, and Defiants to ramp the bollocks out of their Merlins to chase down DB engined BF 109,s and 110,s without fear of the engine blowing up at high boost ratings. Because of crap petrol ,crap materials DB engines were second from bottom on the pony count score board, with the life expectancy of a Mayfly. So in all DB,s Conjoined engine was a futile waste of time, precious materials and expertise. Guess cats&kittens, who made a conjoined engine work reliably, the GM Allison 3420, 2,600 ponies burning 100 Octane for less than sixty litres.
I agree with all your points, but maybe you could have posted a "condensed" version
Could you expand on that a bit?
@@givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935 needs more cowbell
I am no expert, & perhaps I'm missing something. But why with one dialog am I seeing illustrations which haphazardly keep changing from inline design to side by side design, to two engines on wings? As well as nose mounted single four blade , double four blade, & two separate engines on wings ???
Nice to know what these engines burnt per minute..I think the Merlin would burn 2 gallons per minute at cruising speed?
The truth was that all high powered radial or in-line engines was very heavy on consumption. Perhaps it better to say that the engineers was more concerned having the highest output with reliability, apparently not with German double engines. Consumption wasn't a great concern...
@@paoloviti6156 Very true, I can understand that when you need speed and performance, Fuel consumption is of little concern,, I just wondered if any one knew how thirsty these engines were?
@@neildelaney5199 Those engines are running rich. Fuel is used for cooling. 1l per second is likely at WOT.
@@neildelaney5199 those big engines were very thirsty. I know that the Pratt and Whitney R-2800 for example was gulping gallons just to warm up before taking off but also the Rolls-Royce Merlin was no joke too
At cruise the WWII aviation engines were actually pretty efficient, producing BSFC numbers comparable to modern car engines. Scale up your car engine to produce 2000hp, and run it at 70% max power and it'll gulp a lot of fuel too.
If you are not allowed to build a four engine bomber you have to make the two propellers bigger right ? This is what happens when politicians design airplanes.
And if the double engine was great Georing would have said he built it like Kim Jun Un
Injin?
You never said why it was disastrous they didn't have a firewall. I assume it's because the engine fires melting the tires and hydraulics?
He 177 caught fire a lot. Bcz of heat, so spread easy with no firewall.
@@suzi_mai Right, but it's something that he mentioned, but never elaborated on. We're left assuming and trying to figure out why he mentioned it.
So were they welded together or bolted together at the gear housing?
+@loonattica8096 Not welded. It was basically two engines sharing a common reduction gear housing. Each engine was clutched and could be ran independently.
Krauts are not well known for understanding Occam's razor..................................... Even today...................
This was interesting but why the distracting monotone background?
Point taken ,but do not opt for a condensed reply, I go all out, like a Jack Russell with a bone !!!!!.
So does combining 2 engines really reduced the drag and increas the speed of the bombers?