The Merlin: The engine that saved the free world?

[JDK]

Good grief, I was hoping JDK or a UK resident would step up and set us straight.

I'll take that as a compliment. Unfortunately I had some other things to do. Where to start?

How about - why have so many people misunderstood the question?

Regards,

[muddyboots]

Because you haven't explained it to us properly, you tosser.

I hope that is taken with the spirit in which it is intended

I really have no intention of dissing the UK during WWII. Obviously had they not been there to resist Hitler things would have gone very differently.

And John, Roosevelt wasn't in love with Stalin. As he said, Stalin was a man you could do business with. If the price of beating the Axis was a Soviet dominated Eastern Europe that was a price Roosevelt was willing to pay for beating Germany out of France and England. To claim that Roosevelt and Stalin were anything but world leaders carving up the world is shaky thinking at best. As for Germany not being very well supported in the US, when people like Henry Ford, Bush, Kennedy, and Lindberg were rooting for them, it wasn't just a minority. Germany was doing well financially, or gave the image of it. We were still in a depression. People saw business with Germany as a way out of the depression, while the UK and France were certainly unable to help us. Of course Germany was popular in America especially among the business class especially. While there was some labeling of anti FDR people as pro Nazi, it is also true that isolationists and conservatives were more willing to work with Hitler than with Stalin, or have you missed the anti red scare that had been going on for thirty years or more? Claiming FDR didn't see Stalin as a threat is not the same as being friends. If you're going to make claims, make them accurate please. FDR was no more a communist supporter than you are, beyond being willing to use them to beat the Nazis, which I am sure we all agree was necessary at the time. If FDR was so crazy about Stalin, why didn't he tell him about the bomb? He and Churchill signed an agreement specifically not to do that. Obviously it was because he didn't trust him with that kind of power. FDR was using Stalin, no more no less.

[Mark Allen M]

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Last edited by Mark Allen M on Mon Sep 10, 2012 9:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[muddyboots]

Marks right. I'll refrain form any more political/historic discussion. The powerplant itself should be the main focus of this thread. There's so much more to learn from those who know, as opposed to the mounds of crap we all regurgitate over and over about which country had the bigger stake in the war. We all fought, and made huge contributions, first to beating Hitler, and later to beating Russian hegemony. How did RR get tooled up so quickly to produce so many merlins, anyway?

[k5083]

Francis K. Mason's The British Fighter (Putnam) is good on this subject because it treats the aircraft chronologically with attention to the Air Ministry specifications and support, the path of engine development, and the competition between engine and airframe makers.

Prior to the selection of the Hurricane and Spitfire as the RAF's new 8-gun fighters in 1934-35, companies such as Gloster, Miles, Martin-Baker, Bristol, and even Vickers and Hawker themselves were designing other fighters around other powerplants. It's hard to dispute that the Ministry made the right choice in selecting the Merlin Hurricane and Spitfire, but there were alternatives. However, there's no point developing a fighter for a competition that has already been lost, so after 1935, those companies moved on to other designs looking ahead to the next generation. Similarly there's no point designing engines without likely airframes to hang them on. Rolls certainly back-burnered the Peregrine and Vulture to focus on Merlin development and production, effectively killing the promising Westland Whirlwind and the not-so-promising Avro Manchester. As it became clear that the next generation of engines would have to be more powerful than the Merlin, Napier shifted resources from the Dagger to the Sabre; Bristol sidelined the Taurus in favor of the Hercules and Centaurus.

(The Hercules is worthy of some mention as it was later employed operationally as an alternative to later-series Merlins in the Lancaster, Halifax, Wellington and Beaufighter. A Hercules-powered Hurricane was proposed in case Merlin production did not keep up. This doesn't prove anything about the Battle of Britain, but it does go to show that the Merlin was not indispensable after 1941.)

So without the Merlin, there would have been other engines (Peregrine, Vulture, Taurus, Dagger, maybe a quicker-developed Hercules) and other fighters. Every leading aeronautical power in 1939 had at least one proven operational engine of 1,000-1,200 hp. Rolls was not the only company in the UK capable of making such an engine. Even granting that sleeve-valve radials and X-24/H-24 inlines seemed to have more than their share of teething problems, from the perspective of 1934 we can't say that these wouldn't have been ready if there had been the incentive.

I'd agree that whatever other engines and fighters Britain would have had in 1940 wouldn't likely have been as good as the Hurricane and, especially, the Spitfire. That was the point of the whole competitive process after all. Whether Britain's fighters needed to be absolutely as good as they were to win the battle is an open question. My inclination is that relatively fine distinctions in performance had fewer operational consequences than airplane buffs obsessed with the differences between types are inclined to assume.

August

[andyman64]

I will start by apologizing for my inflammatory remarks obviously I,myself not a fan of the B36 funny thing is I am a fan of big round engines actually more than inline again I apologize and now if you all will excuse me while I go put another coat of ice on my igloo!!!

[Locobuster]