Messerschmitt Bf 109 , Why an INVERTED V-12 Pt. 1? inverted V12s vs. upright

greetings this is Greg the messerschmitt bf-109 used an inverted V type engine so did the 110 the Stuka the Heinkel 8111 the focal wolf fw 190 Dora 9 the theis less torque and quite a few others in fact almost every German airplane from World War 2 that used a V type engine used an inverted type yet nearly everywhere else in the world when a V type was used it was upright there are a few exceptions for example there were some Japanese and Italian planes that used license-built versions of German inverted V 12s and there was the very short live Boeing expiate which used an inverted packard v12 but these were the exceptions and not the rule in some cases as with the fw 190 a series they went with a radial but even the 190 eventually switched over to an inverted V 12 for the door 9 variant so what was it about the inverted v12 that made it so desirable to the Germans normally in these videos I quote original primary source material meaning either NACA NACA reports manufacturers data or test data from some agency that was testing airplanes during the period like the US Army Air Force Royal Air Force etc this video will be a bit different I was unable to find any primary source data to definitively answer this question even Taylor's book from the Smithsonian doesn't make any mention of this by the way the book is a free download and if you would like to learn about aircraft piston engine history you really should get it again it's free now I did find an occasional sentence in other books here or there but nothing that was verifiable and nothing that comes from a primary source so in short no smoking gun on this issue so for this discussion on the inverted V design what I'll do is cover the various reasons a designer might choose an inverted type over an upright and I'll tell you which reasons I think were the primary considerations for the Germans I think my reasoning is sound but you'll have to judge that for yourself of course if anyone of you have another theory please share it in the comments and if anyone can provide information from an original primary source I think we would all love to see it so let's start by taking a look at a conventional v8 this one is a hispano-suiza v8 from the world war 1 era the general layout of a typical aircraft v8 is with the valve mechanism at the top the cylinders below then the crankshaft and at the bottom and oil sump in most automotive applications the sump would contain the engine oil meaning it would essentially double as an oil tank in most but not all aircraft applications now especially warplanes this sump will be the dry sump type meaning it's just a collection point from which the oil is pumped to an oil tank separate from the engine so why flip it upside down well I think the main reason is that in a single-engine airplane with the engine in front of the pilot it improves visibility in the case of the feast leur stork shown here visibility in the forward and downward direction is improved by the use of an inverted V type it's using the Argos air-cooled v8 I think another very important reason is ease of maintenance most of the components a mechanic will have to work on are relatively low and within easy reach once the cowling is open in the case of the BF 109 using an inverted v12 has both of these advantages which are important to a frontline fighter additionally it moved the exhaust stacks down thus if flying at night it reduces the flash from the exhaust stacks which would degrade the pilots night vision I don't think this was a primary consideration as the 109 was never seriously used as a night fighter but it was probably at least a small or contributing factor to the design choice in addition to the visibility and ease of maintenance there's another factor for the 109 which I think was important the use of an inverted V type reduces the frontal area of the airplane the 109 wasn't a particularly slippery airplane but keeping the frontal area to a minimum helps performance I'll explain the 109 uses fuselage-mounted landing gear while this design results in narrow gear and thus a relatively high amount of losses on takeoff and landing it does have some advantages the 109 swings can be easily removed and the fuselage can be rolled around without the wings this makes production and ground transportation of the airplane relatively easy since the fuselage has to be wide enough at the bottom to accept the landing gear and at the top more or less only wide enough for the pilots head an inverted V II allows for the minimal frontal cross-section in fact if you look at the 109 you will see that the entire fuselage is shaped to take advantage of this that inverted V shape is continued from the cowling all the way back to the tail compare this to the more boxy shape of the Spitfire this rectangular shape is common in aircraft using upright v12s the inverted design also moves the weight lower in the fuselage and thus lowers the center of gravity as all of the aircraft axis run through the center of gravity depending on other design factors this could improve roll rate not all German airplanes had all of these advantages for example the Stuka does have the forward visibility advantage and of course the advantage in terms of accessibility for maintenance but its landing gear is mounted in the wings the BF 110 doesn't get much advantage in terms of visibility and neither does the HP 111 so I suspect that when the German Ministry of aviation called the R LM laid out the specs for German fighters in the early 1930s they specified an inverted v12 primarily because of advantages in forward visibility which affects all the single-engine airplanes if they have the engine in the front and also for the advantage and may which was going to affect all the plains period reduced flashing from the exhaust was probably secondary and the reduced cross section and fuselage-mounted landing gear were likely things that Messerschmitt did on their own since these design features are not even close to being present across all German single-engine aircraft now to meet these rlm requirements German companies Daimler Benz euchre's and Argos all built inverted V types Daimler Benz built the DB series of engines used in the 109 and others euchre's built engines for the Stuka as well as the door of nine and Argos built the engine for the Stork so if the inverted V type has these advantages why did the Americans and British go with upright engines with the exception of the Boeing expiate I mentioned earlier which never made it to production I can't think of any US combat plane that ran an inverted V type there were some training aircraft that used inverted engines from Ranger but that was about it designing a v12 aircraft engine is an expensive undertaking the manufacturer paying for development is going to want to get the best possible chance to get a good return on the investment in the u.s. Packard Co designed the Liberty v12 engine and manufactured them then they developed the packard one a 2,500 in 1924 during the 1920s this was a very successful aircraft engine of which the 3a variants shown here was the most numerous however soon packard found themselves losing market share a lot of market share to the new air-cooled radials in fact they were losing so much market share that they converted their packard v12 to a marine engine and used it to dominate both boat racing we're going to come back to the Packard v12 in a few minutes Rolls Royce and Allison had to have seen this they knew that the threat from air-cooled radials was serious so in order to give their engines the best chances of success in the markets they would have to be usable not only an aircraft but anything else they could put them in and that means tanks and boats building an inverted v12 adds to the cost of the engine and might not add a huge amount but when you plan to bid on contracts to build tens of thousands of these things saving even a small amount per engine really adds up an inverted V type has to use a dry sump while most of these v12 especially in aircraft use dry sump anyway it's a bit more complex and expensive in an inverted V type because you need to scavenge pumps and two of everything else that's associated with those since you have oil collecting not at a single point as in an upright V but in two places basically the left and right valve covers worse maintaining an inverted v12 and a tank would be a nightmare a lot of the parts you would need to access would be deep in the bowels of the tank not on top in a boat it wouldn't be much better I can't think of a single tank or marine application ever that used an inverted v8 or an inverted v12 think of it this way when the mechanic walks up to an airplane in World War two he would usually be standing under it at least under the engine if you walked up to it on a tank or a boat engine he would usually be standing over it so the optimal orientation in each case differs so did marine or tank applications ever happen for aircraft engines or is this just one of Greg's wild theories well yes it did the British had a variant of the rolls-royce Merlin which was called the meteor it was used in numerous British tanks including the Crusader and the very fast comet the Merlin was also used in other less successful things I think it's safe to say that when designing the Merlin it was fortunate for rolls-royce that they went with an upright design in fact the meteor variants stayed in production until 1964 far out lasting its aviation counterpart in the u.s. aircraft radials were commonly used to power tanks the m4 Sherman had numerous engine options and of those options too were aircraft radials one was the Continental our 75 which was essentially a right 975 that engine was used in a lot of airplanes including interestingly the Messerschmitt m18 and the sparrow hawk seen here going aboard the USS Makin airship the other aircraft engine used in the Sherman was the r18 20 also very commonly used in aircraft including the b-17 the Sherman tank has sort of a bad reputation most of the criticism seems to revolve around the idea of one versus one combat against a much heavier opponent I'm not sure it makes sense to compare a medium tank like a Sherman to a heavy tank like a tiger one on the basis of 1v1 combat even Germany's medium tank that people like to use for this comparison which was the Panther was 10 tons heavier than the Sherman and far less reliable when looking at tanks it's important to try and see the big strategic picture by the way I am going somewhere with this and it is related to aircraft b12 so just bear with me for a moment a heavy tank like a tiger one can be very effective on the battlefield but what if you can't get it to the battlefield then you have no tank which is not good think of the logistical issues involved here the u.s. had to ship tanks all over the world and then keep them supplied with supply lines thousands of miles long involving rail ship and truck at some times air transportation now not only do you have to ship the tanks which are heavy you have to ship the fuel ammunition and spare parts doing this with a Sherman which weighs about 35 tons is a big enough problem now do it with a tiger at 54 tons or even a panther at 44 tons and it's a far bigger problem remember it's not just the weight of the tank it's all the stuff needed to support the heavier tank meaning more fuel heavier parts heavier ammunition etc then once you have the tank in theater and you manage to keep it running if you're on the offensive as the US generally was your tanks are going to need across bridges of course the enemy is going to blow the bridges as they retreat so that means your engineers in many cases will have to build bridges the US Army built pontoon bridges for this purpose which the Sherman's could cross a heavier tank will need a bigger bridge which will be harder and probably take longer to get into position and set up so it's not all about Armour thickness and firepower tank warfare in World War two especially for the US has a lot to do with actually getting an operable combat effective tank to the battlefield and for that purpose the Sherman was excellent still you have to take the threat especially if you're a tanker in World War two you have to take the threat of a heavy tank like a tiger on the battlefield or the even heavier king tiger very seriously now in reality with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight we know that the Germans didn't have enough of these things in Western Europe to alter the course of the war there were actually very few times that US Army Sherman's encountered Tiger tanks after d-day still at that time there was cause for concern so if you want to be really sure you're gonna be able to defeat these new heavy tanks one way to do that is to have a really big gun heavy tank of your own the Tigers had an 88 millimeter gun let's build a tank with a 105 millimeter gun or so the thinking went so the u.s. built this the 64 tonne t29 with a 105 millimeter gun initially it was powered by the Ford GAC v12 engine which is a decent-enough engine I couldn't find a picture of one but this is the v8 variant similar design just eight cylinders instead of twelve anyway someone decided to put in the slightly larger and more powerful allison v12 if you've been following this channel you know that allison never really got to show what it could do during World War two the US Navy didn't want that engine or any other liquid-cooled aircraft engine and the US Army Air Force was married to the idea of using a turbocharger for second stage supercharging thus Allison focused on building a single stage supercharged v12 and bet on two aircraft with turbos for second stages one was the p39 which never got his turbo which was an Allison's fault and the other was the p-38 lightning which had a lot of issues in the European theater and all of its problems also were not Allison's fault so Allison sort of got the short end of the stick here but now in tanks for a moment it looked like it might finally be Allison's time to shine their engine is needed in the new US heavy tank which would be able to counter the king tiger then the war ended it turned out that the Sherman's did just fine in fact the US Army had to intentionally slowdown to allow the Soviets to take Berlin first / the Yalta agreement both Patton and Churchill were quite displeased with that decision once the war in Europe ended there was no real reason to continue development of the t29 and thus ended Allison's very short run as a Tank Engine remember the Packard v12 we talked about earlier well all that work developing their aero engines for boat racing really paid off and Packard got contracts to provide engines for PT boats the Packard v12 and this is not the Packard Merlin was used in PT boats throughout the war and serve very well there were three engines per boat the fat the Packard v12 could push these PT boats up to about 44 knots very fast in fact still fast by modern standards for comparison the US Navy's modern mark six patrol boat has a maximum speed only one not faster there's a lot of confusion about the various Packard v12s but know that the Merlin except in some experimental or testing situations was not used in PT boats every operational PT boat used the Packard designed v12 the Merlin was not the only v12 design Packard built during the war okay so we got a bit off-track but I think that I showed there was a large market for aircraft engines in both tanks and boats and in all cases they used an upright v12 as opposed to an inverted so I think the Germans went with the inverted design primarily because it offered a number of advantages in aircraft and I think the main advantages were visibility and ease of maintenance of course in some cases like with multi-engine airplanes like the 110 or even single-engine airplanes like the 190 d9 the airplanes design minimizes the visibility advantage but those planes were not around when the decision was made to develop the inverted v12 in the US and in Britain I think the designers stuck with what they knew rolls-royce and Packard were automotive companies and of course automobiles used upright v12 add in the fact that they correctly anticipated emerging markets for tank and boat engines and the choice to build upright engines allowed the use of rolls-royce b12 in a lot of tanks and the Packard v12 in a lot of PT boats thanks for watching have a great day

Channel: Greg's Airplanes and Automobiles

Views: 527,847

Rating: 4.8836913 out of 5

Keywords: Messerschmitt, Bf109, ME109, Me 109, Bf 109, Rolls Royce Merlin, Allison V12, Inverted V12, Inverted V-12

Id: H1YLwRQLB_I

Length: 18min 50sec (1130 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 11 2019