How Pratt & Whitney Changed Aviation

when the chief engineer of the German arrowmaker bloman Vos got hold of a recovered Pratt and Whitney r2800 and saw that the lapping of the two halves of the crankcase was machined with such great Precision but it not only didn't need a ceiling gasket it also didn't leak oil something which was common in many British and Japanese Aero engines he said that if that's what the Americans can Mass produce then the war is already lost Pratt and Whitney built almost half of all the Allied engines used in World War II going from just 5 000 a year at the beginning to 50 000 a year at the end the Pratt and Whitney r2800 double wasp exemplified this ability of the US in particular to build powerful yet highly reliable engines in very large numbers the r2800 was the latest in a line of groundbreaking radio engines but they were all derived from the company's first design that changed the direction of Aviation from the mid-1920s onwards and would become pivotal during World War II this is the story of how the Pratt and Whitney wasp and its descendants took on the world [Music] [Applause] foreign sleep with our modern lifestyle of the always-on internet mobile phone by your side 24 7. and now with many of us working from home it's all too easy to try and do that little bit more here or there maybe reply to that work email or that Twitter post or the Facebook post and just push your bedtimes further and further back but neglecting your sleep will come back to bite you in the morning with you not only feeling like crap but over the long term it can have very real effects on your health causing issues with your immune system hypertension cardiovascular disease weight related issues and others it's not only lack of sleep you can also have poor quality sleep by being too hot or cold my wife likes her side of her bed very warm while I like mine quite a bit cooler so when I saw eight sleep it piqued my interest eight sleep is the world's first sleep Fitness Company more efficient sleep 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discount which you can get by following the link now showing and in the description below so whilst you check that out I'm gonna have a lie down the history of the Aero engine in the first half of the 20th century was dominated by two basic types air cooled radio engines and the liquid called inline engine the air cooled radio was the first to be used on aircraft it offered a lightweight compact design that was cooled by the airflow of the propeller however the internal combustion engines of the time were still a new technology and had a long way to go before all the bugs would be shaken out of them one of these bugs was for cooling issues on the early air cooled radials there was a French water cooled version called the Samsung 9z water cooled radial which was popular from 1908 to 1920 and was licensed to both British and Russian engine makers but lost out to the air-called radio later to overcome the air cooled problems a radical idea was used to fix the end of the crankshaft to the frame of the aircraft and the propeller to the engine casing and allow the whole engine to spin and create his own airflow to cool it down and the air fuel mixture was drawn through a hollow crankshaft these engines became known as rotary engines because the whole engine rotated along with the propeller this worked well and was popular with World War One Fighters But as time went by the performance limitations of a rotary design in particular getting enough air and fuel through the hollow crankshaft meant that the inline water cooled engines became more powerful and popular it wasn't until the early 1920s for cooling issues with radio engines made them more reliable in 1920 the NACA the predecessor to NASA noted that air-cooled radials could offer an increase in powerweight ratio and reliability and in 1921 the U.S Navy said that they would only purchase aircraft fitted with air cooled radials soon after other Naval Air arms around the world also followed their lead the development of radial engines was boosted by the U.S Navy funding of Charles Lawrence's 1922 J-1 engine which used aluminum cylinders with steel liners to produce an engine that could run for 300 hours compared to the typical 50 hours of the time afterwards the right aeronautical Corporation with the encouragement of the US Navy bought up Lawrence's company to produce the J5 Whirlwind which in 1925 was widely claimed as the first truly reliable aircraft engine and gave Navy Pilots the confidence to fly long distances over water so much so that it was chosen to power Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of Saint Louis on the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic from Long Island New York to Paris in France Frederick renchler an executive at right arrow was convinced that air-cooled radials would be the future of Aero engines being lighter and more powerful than the heavier water cooled inline engines and be more reliable in combat due to a lack of liquid cooling that could be damaged or leaked which could cause engine damage or failure whilst opponents claimed that their shape would make them less aerodynamic and slower rental claimed that the lighter weight and greater power would more than make up the difference renchler whose family business made automobile engines and was expected to take it over was enlisted in 1917 as a first lieutenant in the aviation section of the U.S army signal Corps here he worked on inspecting the Hispano Souza water cooled V8 Aero engines built under license by Wright Martin company something which she found fascinating and noted that they weren't that much different to the car ranges his family made although wrestler went on to become the president of right arrow and had pushed them to make the J5 Whirlwind he believed that the company should invest in future radials but the board which was made up of mostly investment bankers with little Aviation knowledge didn't agree and wanted to continue on the safe path of making water cooled inline engines which were now the norm so renchler left to start his own engine business with Wright's chief engineer George Mead and several other of Rights best employees renchler approached a friend of his father James Cullen president of Machine Tool Company Niles behman Pond who had a subsidiary the Pratt and Whitney Machine Tool company which had spare capacity and funds after World War One if the right idea came along with a customer waiting soon the Pratt and Whitney Aircraft company was founded half owned by Pratt and Whitney and half owned by renchler and Mead meanwhile the Navy had to work within the Washington Naval treaty which limited the number of battleships each country could build but allowed them to convert normal ships into aircraft carriers and these would need planes with powerful reliable engines around this time Charles Vaught founder and president of the aircraft maker Vaught turned up at the Navy almost begging for orders as his company was going for a tough time the Navy told him that if he wanted orders he should come back with something genuinely original and not the same old planes thought replied but if he could get hold of an engine that weighed 650 pounds and produce no less than 350 horsepower he could build a world meter so when rankschler approached the Navy a few months later with the idea of a lightweight powerful engine the long-running match between vort and Pratt and Whitney started with the vort O2 Corsair this also suited the Navy as Curtis airplane and motor company and right arrow would go on to merge and form a new company Curtis Wright which would have had the Monopoly in Navy Aero engines without Pratt and Whitney the advantage of the big radios had against the big v12s was they didn't need the heavy complex Plumbing for the cooling system and the radiators which were susceptible to the jolts and bangs of heavy Landings especially on rolling ships at Sea something that could weaken the braised joints in the radiators and loosen hose connections and cause him to leak let alone taking a round of bullets through them they also had greater power to weight ratio which meant faster climb rates and were easier to maintain which made them an ideal engine for carrier-based aircraft the first Pratt and Whitney Aircraft Company engine design was the r1340 WASP a 22 liter nine-cylinder radio which included many Advanced features like a rotary induction blower a split counterbalanced crankshaft symmetrical front and rear forged crankcases push rod housings and accessories arranged to allow maintenance without dismantling the engine the new engine was tested and rated by the Navy at 410 horsepower and weighed in at under 650 pounds or 294 kilos for Navy liked it so much that they placed an order for 200 before the sixth engine had even been built during testing it was found that the Machining of the engine was so precise that they had to pull it apart to loosen up the piston rings to allow more oil to bypass them and lubricate the cylinder walls and it was this Precision which Pratt and Whitney were world renowned for that would become a Hallmark not only of the WASP but its later derivatives the WASP name came from renchler's wife Faye after you heard the ancient development team saying that the buzzing noise that the nine cylinder engine made was like a swarm of bees and what name could they call it she suggested this should be called the wasp and the name stuck it wasn't only the Navy which used the WASP the four trimota was the first civilian Airlines to use them but its use would go on to include executive transports Sports planes Racers Fighters passenger transports World War II training aircraft agricultural aircraft and even helicopters but the engineers at Pratt and Whitney didn't sit on their Laurels Mead was already working on more powerful versions and by 1930 it was up to 600 horsepower with the r1340-49 as aircraft developed the power requirement went up too so in 1929 they started experimenting with two rows of seven cylinders 14 in all with a second row offset to sit behind the gaps between the front row this allowed it to increase capacity without increasing the frontal area and creating more drag smaller cylinders also allowed an increase in the crank speed and more but smaller power pulses made for a smoother operation with increased engine life the new engine was the 30 liter r1830 twin wasp which had power outputs between 800 and 1350 horsepower this will become the most widely used of any of Pratt and Whitney's radials and including the license built units it had the largest production run of any aircraft engine in the world with 173 618 engines produced up until 1951 and was used in a range of aircraft that included the Douglas DC3 DST the B-24 Liberator the Grumman F4F Wildcat Curtis P36 and the thickers Wellington to name but a few while the twin wasp had the largest production runs the second largest and probably the most famous of all the descendants was the r2800 double wasp although this was a development over twin row radials the double wasp was now an 18 cylinder with two rows of nine cylinders and was a year ahead of the other big American 18-cylinder radial the right r3350 duplex Cyclone which was designed for the new super bomber program and ended up powering the B-29 super Fortress the r3350 being larger at 54.9 liters to the r2800s 46 liters however for both engines early cooling issues would be a problem and something which severely plagued the right 3350 till the end of the war the normal way to cool the cylinder heads was with cooling fins which were either cast or forged along with the head but because of the tight spacing getting enough surface area from the cast fins was difficult to achieve so Pratt and Whitney decided to ditch for cast fin idea and go with something more radical they forged the cylinder head as a larger part initially and then used gangs of Milling saws following a preset shape to machine all the fins from the solid metal forging in one operation saving a considerable amount of time in the process this created many more thinner and closer pitched cooling fins that gave each cylinder a much greater surface area for which to dissipate the Heat and solve the cooling problem by now the design and building of the big radials had been honed into a highly scientific process so when the first r2800 ran in 1939 It produced 2 000 horsepower straight off the bat but over time they still managed to increase the power up to 2400 horsepower and by the end of the war is up to 2800 horsepower with the experimental r2800-57 fan called version this combination of power and durability coupled with the two-stage two-speed superchargers gave the US Navy The Edge over the Japanese in the Pacific with planes like the vort F4U Corsair the Grumman f6f Hellcat and in Europe the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt all of which were more than a match for the Japanese planes in the Pacific or the German planes in Europe there were many stories of double wasp powered planes coming back to base with a cylinder head shot off but so long as they still had oil in them they could often still get their pilots home the only time the WASP series came under serious pressure was with the r4360 WASP major which really pushed the radial design to its limits this was a 71.1 liter 28 cylinder 4-row radial engine pushing out 3 000 horsepower in the initial models and up to 4 300 horsepower in the later ones with dual turbos and a supercharger making it the largest and most powerful piston engine to be made in the US the cooling issues which had played the right 3350 were also evident in the WASP major although not to the extent that it caught fire and it was a reliable engine in flight but due to its complex build it made maintenance difficult and expensive requiring frequent replacement of the cylinders the extra cooling flaps which were also required also added extra drag to the aircraft which like the r3350 and the B-29 put more pressure on the engines at the most critical times for giant convair b36 Peacemaker strategic bomber was based around six of these massive engines and they were also used in the later model b-29ds and in the b50 the post-war updated version of the B-29 but this would be the Swan Song of the big radios before the Jets took over the cost of the maintenance and the extra downtime required to complete it made aircraft using the WASP major expensive to run in the commercial world the Boeing strato Cruiser which used four wasp Majors was unprofitable without government subsidy and was quickly dropped when jet airliners became available but in all 18 697 wasp Majors were built between 1944 and 1955. the WASP range of engines might not have been the most sophisticated or powerful per liter compared to the ever more exotic v12s but they were some of the most important ever made in the lead up to and during World War II and without them the US might not have had the upper hand in the Pacific the place which really proved to the world just how good they were and the carrier Power was now the way forward so I hope you enjoyed the video and if you did then please thumbs up subscribe and share and thanks go to all our patrons for their ongoing support

Channel: Curious Droid

Views: 710,745

Keywords: pratt and whitney, wasp, twin wasp, double wasp, major wasp, curtiss wright, r-1340, R-2800, Salmson 9Z, J-1 engine, J-5 Whirlwind, Hispano-Suiza, Vought, Vought O2U Corsair, R-1340, Ford Trimotor, R-1830 Twin wasp, Wright R-3350 Duplex Cyclone, R-4360 Wasp Major, paul shillito, curious-droid

Id: dMPcgaVboUQ

Length: 18min 18sec (1098 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 18 2022