Engine Development Overview
| Year | Description | HP | Lbs | P/W Ratio hp/lb |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1865 | American Civil War: April 12, 1861 – May 9, 1865 | |||
| 1878 | January 16, 1878, the Turkish ship Intibah was sunk by Russian torpedo boats with a (Wikipedia) Whitehead torpedo (driven by a three-cylinder compressed air engine). | |||
| 1884 | The modern (Wikipedia) Steam Turbine was invented in 1884 by Sir Charles Parsons, whose first model was connected to a dynamo that generated 7.5 kilowatts (10.1 hp) of electricity. | |||
| 1885 | (Wikipedia) Gottlieb Daimler received a German patent for supercharging an internal combustion engine The (Wikipedia) first practical steam-powered submarine was Nordenfelt I, a 56-tonne, 19.5-metre (64 ft) vessel with a range of 240 kilometres (130 nmi; 150 mi), armed with a single torpedo. |
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| 1903 | Wright Brothers - Wright Flyer Engine [1] The Wrights had gone to several automotive manufacturers looking for an eight-horsepower engine that would weigh less than 20 pounds for each horsepower. The automotive people declared that the weight limitation was impossible. | 12 | 180 | 0.07 |
| 1906 | (Wikipedia) HMS Dreadnought was the first capital ship to be powered by steam turbines, the fastest battleship in the world. | |||
| 1908 | Ford Model T Engine - The original mass produced automobile engine. 20 horsepower, 400 pounds. 20 horsepower is riding lawnmower size now. [2] | 20 | 400 | 0.05 |
| 1913 | Grover Loening managed the Wright company factory through 1914 | |||
| 1916 | Lawrance A-3 2 cylinder air cooled. Most of the parts were purchased from machine shops rather than being manufactured in-house. | 28 | 200 | 0.14 |
| 1917 | In April 1917, the worst month for the entire war for the RFC, the average life expectancy of a British pilot on the Western Front was 69 flying hours. How about the engines? Short answer, apart and checking everything at 50 hours. [3] |
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| 1917 | Curtiss-Wright OX-5 - 8-cylinder water-cooled .According to Wright bulletin #16: “all engines with exposed valve gear require complete readjustment and lubrication of the valve gear approximately each five hours.” | 90 | 390 | 0.27 |
| 1918 | Bentley BR.2 - 9-cylinder rotary engine, 1,521.8 cubic inches. Fuel: 20 gallons per hour. Oil: 2 gallons per hour. This was the last type of rotary engine to be adopted by the RAF. With the BR.2, the rotary engine had reached a point beyond which this type of engine could not be further developed, due to its inherent limitations. | 250 | 490 | 0.50 |
| 1918 | August 1918 - Liberty L-12 - 12-cylinder liquid cooled Vee piston engine. Fuel: ≈ 30 gallons per hour. Oil: ≈ 1 gallons per hour. | 449 | 845 | 0.53 |
| 1918 | 11 November - End of World War 1. | |||
| 1920 | Lawrance gets a Navy contract for development of an air cooled radial engine of 200 H.P at 1,800 RPM. | |||
| 1921 | Lawrance engines passed their 50 hour acceptance test. | |||
| 1923 | Jan 15 - USS Langley had begun flight operations. 200-horsepower air-cooled radial engine needed for planes that would fit on the Langley‘s elevator. With liquid cooled engines, 25% or more of engine failures were related to the cooling systems. | |||
| 1923 | May 15 - Merger of Wright Aeronautical and Lawrance Aero Engine Company. Charles Lawrance was retained as a vice president of Wright. | |||
| 1924 | Sep 21 - Frederick Rentschler resigns, Charles Lawrance becomes president of Wright Aeronautical. | |||
| 1924 | Sept 28 - Liberty V-12 Liquid cooled The 1924 Douglas World Cruisers had two planes complete the flight. They had about 371 flight hours. “Chicago” used 6 engines, for an average of 61 hours per engine. “New Orleans” used 4 engines for an average of 92 hours per engine. [4] |
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| 1925 | July - Pratt & Whitney Aircraft formed. Rentschler, George J. Mead, Andy Willgoos, Charles Marks, and John Borrup left Wright. | |||
| 1925 | Wright Whirlwind J-5 Nine-cylinder air-cooled radial engine A leap forward in engine life and reliability. According to Wright bulletin #16: “With the enclosed valve gear of increased area, it is expected that the valve clearances will not require readjustment for periods of from twenty-five to fifty hours, and that the rocker arm bearings will need lubrication only each fifteen hours.” Charles Lindbergh used this model engine in the “Spirit of St Louis”. |
220 | 520 | 0.42 |
| 1926 | Pratt & Whitney Wasp R-1340 - Nine-cylinder single-row supercharged air-cooled radial engine The U.S. Navy did not trust the reliability liquid cooled engines. Their strict, state of the art long term engine test required a test engine to keep running for 50 hours. So the big qualification test on March 4, 1926 to prove that your engine was reliable could be completed in less than 3 days. The Wasp first flew on May 5, 1926 [5] When substituted for the water-cooled engines of the Boeing and Curtiss fighters, the Wasp saved between 250 and 300 pounds in total airplane weight. This weight saving was quickly translated during flight testing into faster rate of climb, higher ceiling, shorter turning radius, and lower landing speed — all with an equal top speed. This was flying in what Chance Vought called a “cobbled-up job” where the airframe and engine were mated without a designer‘s skill. |
600 | 930 | 0.65 |
| 1927 | Pratt & Whitney Hornet R-1690 - Nine-cylinder single-row supercharged air-cooled radial engine Passed the 50 hour qualification test on March 25, 1927 You can see that the power to weight ratio is getting a lot better, but radial engines are known to use a lot of oil. According to Wikipedia, this engine burns about 74 gallons of gas and 9.6 quarts of oil per hour at full throttle. [6] Glenn L. Martin made a study for the Navy on a new multi purpose airplane that could be used off a carrier as a torpedo plane, bomber or long-range scout. One design was based on a 600-horsepower Packard water-cooled engine and the other on the 525-horsepower air-cooled Hornet. Martin's figures showed the Hornet-powered bomber would have exactly half the installed weight of the water-cooled power plant. Total weight of the Hornet version would be 3,000 pounds less than the water-cooled design plus a 15-mile-an-hour edge in top speed. At this point the Navy publicly announced that they had abandoned further development of liquid-cooled engines and henceforth would build all of its aircraft around air-cooled engines. |
789 | 1,014 | 0.78 |
| 1927 | Pratt & Whitney engineers made a study and sent Boeing a
prospectus on what the substitution of the Wasp for the Liberty could do
to his mail plane design. “We would rather carry more mail than a radiator and water for cooling.” Boeing told Pratt Whitney executives, explaining his switch from Liberty engines. |
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| 1927 | Transcontinental Air Transport was another early entry in the passenger business. TAT put its passengers to bed in a Pullman at night to carry them through rough-flying mountain stretches and flew them by day to offer a 48-hour transcontinental service. The combination slashed 70 hours from a transcontinental rail trip, but at a fare of 16 cents a mile it found few takers. | |||
| 1928 | Wright Whirlwind R-975 / J-6 | 675 | 450 | 0.62 |
| 1929 | Pratt & Whitney R-985 Wasp Junior | 640 | 450 | 0.625 |
| 1930 | Allison V-1710 - V-12 supercharged four-stroke liquid-cooled piston aircraft engine | 1,500 | 1,395 | 1.05 |
| The first airline in China used a Hornet powered Loening amphibian to follow the muddy Yangtze River 800 miles from Shanghai to Hankow. | ||||
| 1953 | Lycoming O-320 - Four cylinder opposed four-stroke air-cooled piston aircraft engine In 25 years the power to weight ratio hasn‘t improved greatly, less gas is used and oil consumption has dropped to the point where you always carry a quart or two of oil with you. You check the oil before every flight, but you don't need oil before every flight, compared to the two and a half gallons per hour oil consumption of a P & W Hornet. The 1925 Navy test was asking for a engine to last for 50 hours. Lycoming now says that you can run an O-320 for 2,000 hours before a major overhaul. |
244 | 150 | 0.61 |
