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Aviation History
1945
1945 - 2398.PDF
DECEMBER 6TH, 1945 FLIGHT 605 GERMAN PISTON-ENCINE PROGRESS The B.M.W. 803 consisted of two liquid-cooled 14-cylinder units driving co-axial airscrews. verted liquid-cooled in- line and the 14-cylinder air-cooled radial series ranging in power between 2,000 and 2,400.h.p. They had a number of other developments, hut:, as has happened, in other countries, they had found the development ot high-power piston engines very slow and diffi- cult. Moreover, they were handicapped by a nurnber of bad technical decisions from the German Air Ministry, and a policy of stopping and restarting certain developments. In the last stages of the war the greater part of their -• research facilities and development capacity were reserved for jet and rocket units. Furthermore, development was being harassed all the time in continually increasing measure- by our bombing. From the most^^feliable opinions it was gleaned that jjuffer war conditions they did not feel that a 5,000 h.p. liquid-cooled engine, or a 4,000 h.p. air-cooled type, could have been got into series production in less than lour years. It was suggested that the solution for the former would probably have been found on the lines of either the Jumo 222 or the B.M.W. 803, although to us the latter seemed to be an indifferent effort, which was unlikely ever to become a classic type. Little to Learn Looking at the excellent record of steady development and the increasing powers obtained from our own piston engines throughout the war, one cannot feel that there is a great deal to learn from Germany about the piston/ aero engine. As in the previous war, they tended to uyge larger swept volumes than ourselves, and the British de- DETACHABLE TWIN CYLINDER UNITS signers remain the world's masters at obtaining high powerfrom a given cylinder capacity. Our whole supercharger technique was certainly in advance of that achieved by the Germans. Their develop- ments in this direction were, no doubt, impeded by the limitations of the fuels available to them. They had to right the war mainly on supplies of 87-octane for liquid- cooled engines, and 92-octane for air-cooled types. Their bold decision, before the war began, to concentrate on direct fuel injection undoubtedly helped them considerably in getting the best out of the fuel available, and it yielded increasing dividends as the number and size of cylinders were increased. When one considers the troubles that are liable ^J^-'al'Ke"" through the problems of reliability and maintenance under operational conditions, owing to the trapping of fuel in inverted cylinders, it is probably true to say that the Germans could not have made successful SPACE USED FOR OIL TANK DRIVE FROM FRONT ENCINE OVERHEAD CAMSHAFT '•m. Layout of valve gear in a single section of the B.M.W. 803, i \ showing the arrangement of the camshafft drives. FRONT AIRSCREW Cylinder assemblies of the B.M.W. 803 with overhead camshaft gear. "^ DRIVE FROM REAP ENCINE In the B.M.W. 803 the drive for the co-axial airscrews was taken from the rear unit through the point un:t by five longitudinal shafts in the inter-cylinder spaces. The re- maining two spaces were used for other purposes large-scale use of their basic inverted V.12 types without injection equipment. Some of our party formed the opinion that German aero engineers were less ignition-con- scious than we are. This may be no derogatory criticism of our ignition equipment, but rather that German engines
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