You're absolutely right. I totally mispoke there.

What about the R 4360 corn Cobb engine?

@Jason Phelan I guess we'll never know...

@Jason Phelan Hmmm.... Now that you mention it, messing a detail like that is a good way to generate comments. That would be very devious. :)

Hemispherical combustion chambers were designed and brought to production by Dodge/Chrysler, however after this obviously beneficial design was seen by other companies, almost everyone were also making "Hemi" engines, since the term Hemi simply refers to the engine having a hemispherical shaped combustion chamber instead of the older flat, wedge, or bathtub designs since it provided [IIRC] more "room" for intake and exhaust gases to move in and out through poppet valves efficiently, while the position of the spark plug in the hemispherical combustion chamber provided more efficient combustion that was less prone to knock and also effectively changes the compression ratio, as well as the total cubic inches. Feel free to correct me, but this is what I learned in tech college though my memory isn't perfect. The engine in this video is also of Hemi design, you can see the half-circle combustion chamber shape in the cutaway at the beginning

My dad's favorite engine to work on. He was USN in WW2

DEPENDABLE ENGINES

The same thing happened to my dad in 1943 over Truk. Three cylinders blown off and made it back.

All of you in this thread have amazing heroes for Dads. Much respect. The WASP R2800 was the best of the old adage "if it ain't broken, don't fix it". It got many of our heroes home, and that's what mattered.

Holy crap. You Yanks engineers sure built a helluva engine. Talk about redundancy . Only way to bring the plane down was to kill the pilot . American quality engineering at its best . From one of your many mates in Australia

Amazing story. My grandfather was in the navy on the USS Ward which ferried many soldiers from New Guinea. They were hit by a Japanese bomber that had made a kamikaze dive into them after being shot down by a p47 in the battle of Ormoc Bay.

Amazing that it didn't puke all its oil and seize!

Yea, the 'Jug' was a tank.

Your Uncle Rocks!

P47 is and was the real badass fighter of ww2

Rockkitty100you know your stuff,peace from Dallas!

@@paultiffanyrutherford5898 Could not climb, turn, dive or get very high other than that it was fine

He's a legend! Cheers!

That makes sense, because they used constant speed propellers. Engine RPM is dictated by the propeller governor. It will compensate for a reduction in power output by reducing the pitch of the propeller blades to maintain the same RPM.

@@singleproppilot I don’t want to be rude, but your not even close.

I would not have done that, but then again, I’ve never been shot at while flying.

@@howardrickert2558 Oh, I guess I’ll just surrender my A&P and pilot’s certificates on your account… Or not.

@@singleproppilot yes, please do.

True that. There are still about 50 airworthy R-2800 powered DC-6s, but no airworthy DC-7s, which used the Wright 3350.

@@davidedmundson8402 I didn't realise it was that many. Dad also flew the DC-7c with the 3350 Turbocompound.

@@davidedmundson8402 50 is a bit high. We have about 7 airworthy in Alaska, one in Hawaii, Red Bull in Austria, and maybe one or two others around the world

El P. W R - 2800 lo uso el C-123 " Provider " en la guerra de Vietnam.

that is what the air lines said. they retired the dc7 and kept the dc6

You could say that again, you could say that again.

Best part? Done with brains and slide rules. No CAD, no computers... Nothing like that.

WHO WAS THE MASTER ENGINEER THAT CREATED YOUR HEART!?!? IT HOLDS THE POSITION OF ~~NUMBER-1 ~~ AS THE WORLDS BEST, AND MOST EFFICIENT PUMP EVER MADE~!~

@@newmoon54 That would be my parents. And your parents, our parents etc.. Themselves the product of aeons of evolutionary selection.

Hand polished rods! I picked a -43 B series off ebay. Have not tore into it yet. Building a decent stand to mount it on first.

terrencemolinari - In other words, a tough lady, my friend.

Здесь речь про вторую мировую . вов это отдельный этап когда в войну вступил СССР открыв второй фронт после Британии , а по словам СССР ,Адольф сам себе открыл второй фронт напав на СССР

I still have one of those overhaul manuals... plus the original leather bound shop manuals for assembling the engine.

Your mom sounds like one badass lady!!

What a FIND!

Not only are you correct, but today's computer tech has proven to be a dead end, unless NFT's and virtual real estate are considered things 😂.

The magnitude of the leap from the Wright flyer to, say, a P 37 was astoundingly impressive. Not so sure I buy mar into the idea computer technology evolution's been ' fettered by government controls or restraints'? In what way do you have in mind?

@@xxxYYZxxx And what do you suppose enables modern air traffic to operat as it does? What is the critical technology underpinning the ability of, say, an F16 Viper to fly whilst being so agile. Is that done with NFTs too?

@@babboon5764 Air traffic control was around long before stuff like the iPhones and iPhone 2's and iPhone 3's etc. The reason things like NFTs exist is because there's virtually nothing new to sell. Everything "new" these days is just another proto-obsolescent, back-door infested android app, OS upgrade, or "environmentally compliant" electronic device.

@@Farweasel I'd say it's not just "control and restraint" when every last new, ie "compliant" electronic device is basically just hackable spyware.

Do you mean water meth?

@@LaneHadway127 nope, meaning typical car engine style cooling where the block and head[s] have water jackets and a pump that cycles to a radiator.. break any part of that system, the water leaks out, rendering it unable to cool off properly.. thus dead engine after it cooks the oil or melts components

Water-cooled engines can overheat easily with a leaky cooling system. My last car had serious issues when the head gasket went leaky…

How quickly and how many times did it happen ?Stop a Merlin the Plane will glide for 20+ miles Stop a P/W and the plane goes into a fatal nose dive

A round engine always makes me look up, particularly nowadays. Riding around in a B-25 was sonic nirvana.

Make sure your kids know what those manuals are and their story. It seems today's young people are uninterested in their own family history unless they can sell it on eBay or a yard sale otherwise they toss it out on their way to Starbucks.

@Breck Hollis, fascinating information.

Please elaborate..... I wanna watch. Im just so mesmerized right now. Everything is engineered to be such a junk nowadays I'm just in awe about this quality engineering!

@@thomasbarlow4223 Takes skill, time, creativity. Most of this missing today: must be cheap, engineered to break down, made fast. High quality engineering is an art, the skill acquired over many decades AND mistakes. For me the perfect design also has a beauty, elegance. But we engineers are weird, it's a common knowledge. ;))

@@panan7777 As a Machinist and Machine Repairman back in the day, I occasionally came across a design I called "Elegant simplicity."

The better engines for fighters was always Allison , Merlin, Packard.

The P-47 used both mechanical supercharging and turbocharging. Other uses of the R-2800 never used a turbo. The P-47 was still a useful fighter later in the war, as it could climb to higher altitude than just about any other warplane. It certainly helped to have 150 octane gas!

The cylinders have fins as do all air cooled engines. The pistons not so much.

I would contend that the MS and FS gears on the 2 stage 2 speed supercharger were just as complex

I'm so glad someone said about that. My grandfather flew those back in the army

Your name is Pratt... any relation to the PW family?

@@paulbourgeois5600 Very distant. Nowhere near close enough to be of any consequence.

There weren't really any mods to increase power, not in the sense that the words mods/modifications are applied to cars and motorcycle's. The addition of water injection made the War Emergency Power (WEP) setting on the throttle possible, which is 130% throttle also known as overboost, previous to that the maximum power setting on the throttle was called military power and is considered 100% throttle, but aside from that all power increases were done by increasing boost as a result of the advent of higher octane fuel and the use of after-cooler's, they always had inner-cooler's, after-cooler's were added on when boost was increased to a certain point because the higher boost increased the intake charge temperature to the point where without additional cooling of the charge the power increase was offset by having to retard the timing and richen the fuel mixture to eliminate detonation. But there were no changes to the cams or heads or any of the types of mods associated with increasing power the way it's typically done with vehicles, it was simply the ability to turn up the boost level because of the increased octane levels. They started out at the beginning of the war with octane levels around 95 and by the end of the war were running 130, which was actually rated at 130/150. Some sources and people like to quote the 150 number because it's the bigger of the two number's but the rating system used by the aircraft industry at the time used two ratings, the lower one is representative of the octane level at the "auto lean" setting for the fuel control of the engine and the higher number is representative of the octane level at the "auto rich" setting on the fuel control. Also, those octane number's can't be compared to what's commonly called "pump gas" which is what we get at gas stations in the US since commercial gas for vehicles is measured on a different scale.

@@dukecraig2402 excellent clarification

@@dukecraig2402 It's been awhile since I read material, but if I remember correctly. Mods like shimming the blowoff valves, advancing the camshafts, and porting/polishing the intake/exhaust/turbo was all being done. Which is significant modification when combined with massive increases in manifold pressure(52" to 72" MAP) & fuel injection.

Hot rod hardly worth the effort Rugged engine but not a speedster

@@alt5494 They were still massive engines and their P:W ratios were below the Inline and their S:P ratios were as well

I was thinking of the Douglas DC-6 for post war uses lol

The man himself? That's really cool, thanks for pointing that out

That's a really informative comment, thank you 👍

I noticed the Connie too, the first B-29 with the Wright 3350s was forced down several times and eventually crashed into a factory killing many. We were supposed to see the B-29 "Fifi" at mount comfort but he threw a jug through the cowling and turned back. But I do love the sound of an idling A-1 skyraider! Neat to know that was Boeing. I was thinking how he looked like Floyd the barber from Mayberry!

I LOVE working on radials. This is a fun one.

Some of the licensed manufacturers built engines meant for specific applications. I know Nash primarily built engines meant for naval aircraft. F6F Hellcats and F4U Corsairs. Aircraft that used the R-2800 include the P-47, F6F, F4-U, B-26, and F7F. The engines saw later use in passenger aircraft and helicopters.

Ford also built an incredible amount of jeeps!

With 18 cylinder s, that's a lot of pistons times 57,000.

@@williamturner1517 At peak production (July 1944) the Rouge River Plant was spitting out 186 R-2800's a day.

My Dad worked at P&WA from 1940-1976. During the war he worked in the experimental department where they would trouble shoot problems and come up with solutions

@@TheInfidel_SlavaUA why do you think the TBOLT was later relegated to ground attack missions once the prancing horse came onto the scene in force. Both are very good aircraft that did their respective jobs very well, stop the damn hate train before I blow it up with 10 HVARS

Unsurpassed by WHOM? Certainly not the ME-262 jets to which you refer, their kill ratios were off the charts, but they were too late to the fight to affect the outcome of the war. Kill ratios and flight characteristics aren't the sole criteria for rating a warbird's "greatness" because it wasn't just planes shooting at each other, it was a race of science and industry where the sooner a new design cold be fielded, the more overall impact it would have on the war. Most A2A kills overall? Who downed the FIRST ME-262? By the time the 'Stang arrived, the Luftwaffe had been pretty much hollowed out by the T-Bolt, the Lightning, the Brits, and especially, the RUSSIANS. If I were to choose one to personally own and fly, I too would go with the Mustang, but if I had to rate them by the overall amount of damage meted out to the enemy over the course of the war, the Jug wins, hands down.

@@FusionAero absolutely agreed, I love the mustang and the way it flies in simulators, but if I had to go into a world war and had the choice between a 51 and a 47, I would pick the 47 every time

Each had a specific reason for being built . & Both airplanes did great at their job .. the 47 was big & bad & could take a bullet . But it couldn't make it on fuel to Germany & back as an escort to the bombers ! Then came the mustang built for that job ! .and a well needed plane for sure . Both were great planes .so thanks to the 2800 & thanks to the merlin .! Without both we may not be free americans today . ! But .neither engine can cure our problems today ...June 12th 2023 .just saying that ..love the fact we won wwii . & Thanks to our leader those days .F.D.R. & Churchill ..

Something that Chrysler bet on with their cast iron v12 in the 40s. Ford went with a all aluminum v12 with twin cams and 4 valves. Ford had enough of a lead in development that the cost (resource) advantage to the Chrysler didn’t help.

@Jazzmaster Jay layers of protection. Especially at that time when you were likely going to take a hit whether you wanted to or not. Its like knife fighting.

Well, a radial needs to use pushrods (as opposed to overhead cams). four valves per cylinder with pushrods is not very practical. So, radial -> 2 valves per cylinder, even if it's not as good as 4 valves per cylinder.

@@dizzywow Four valves with pushrods is common. Pretty much all truck diesels, including in the 3/4 and one ton trucks, trains, and such, and I believe the Ford Godzilla 7.3 gas is a four valve pushrod V8.

@@joefair3391 You're kinda wrong on a few points. Most Large commercial vehicle on US roads today are OHC or DOHC. Cummins ISX (15L) and M series DOHC and OHC motors replaced the pushrod N14 and M11 20 odd years ago. I'm not a expert on the ISM but I'm real familiar with the ISX as I own and maintain one. Cummins X or M series are pretty much the rule for all Internationals and the most common engines in newer Peterbilt, and Kenworth. Commons X and M are available and common in Volvo's, Freightliner, and Western Star Detroit went OHC way back at the end of the 80's with the series 60 family. (10L thru 14L) Currently they are on the DD series, also OHC. (13, 15, and 16 liter.) I've owned both a 60 (12.7L) and DD (15L). Series 60's and DD's were/are the standard engines for Freightliner and Western Star. Lastly, Ford's 7.3 Godzilla is a 2 valve engine.

Your Merlin stops you can glide a Spitfire better than 20 miles Your P/W stops you go into a fatal dive the plane glides like a Brick

I noticed the Constellation as well. Not being certain whether it had a P&W engine or a Wright engine, I DID remember that the Constellation was joking called "The World's Finest Tri-motor" because it would often lose at least one engine on any long flight.

Douglas DC-7s also used Wright R-3350s......

You remind me of me

Again, a bit off. The R2800 was used on the entire DC6 series, as well as the Convair 240-340-440 and Martin 202-404. The DC7 used a Wright turbo compound 3350.

Mmmm, the Beech 18 - while going to school for my A&P, I worked for an ex ceo, retired from SnapOn. I primarily worked on a T-28 restoration project, but they had a few other aircraft, a T-6, T-34, and our favorite, his Beech 18. It was polished aluminum in Army Air Corp markings, and was their vacation plane and was flown regularly. I absolutely loved working on the 985s, to me they’re like what the Chevy 350 is to car guys. When I worked for another guy, he also had a Beech 18 he wanted to have restored, and I got to work on cataloging everything and disassembling it for a year or so. But he ended up selling it before I could start rebuilding anything. I REALLY wanted to take a crack at the disassembly of the 985s, inspect them, and clean/repaint/repolish to make them look new again. Sigh, twas not to be. I did get to work on Merlins, a Bristol Centaurus, the Allison V-1710 (my personal favorite), 1340s, 1820s, the usual Continental and Lycomings, a Ranger and a few other radials, but never the R2800 - although I came close. I did some volunteering at the CAF on a Lockheed PV-2 Harpoon restoration, but it was a complete teardown that was taking years, and unfortunately a lot of the WWII guys who were doing a lot of cleaning, some disassembly and such, were passing - so they were getting antsy to get a plane that was already done and airworthy, which they did; however they sold the Harpoon to a private individual to finish restoring. We got the engines pulled off, but they basically just sat in a corner. I touched the 2800 a lot, but that’s about it.

Haha, I’m glad I found a comment that pointed out the Hemi comment; I was thinking of posting, glad I didn’t.

it's a Griffon, and a Sabre, and you need to get the rest of your facts straight too, especially about the Sabre.

Ahh, the Napier Sabre, 70 hours service life. My old boss Ron Sheraton was on the development team at Napier.

So was my dad. The F6F was his specialty but he worked on anything with the Wasp or Double Wasp. Lucky for my mom and us eight kids, he got stationed in Chicago with the Great Lakes fleet. He hated it there and refused to ever go back to Chicago.

What, you don't think making swords and digging for gold are historical?

@@diggr13 Neither are UFO's.

@@diggr13 It use to be about historical events, the current channel has little to do with it anymore. This so called "Reality TV" is nothing of the sort, it is rehearsed, scripted, choreographed and staged, there is nothing spontaneous about it. Watching someone pretend to struggle digging for gold or someone hammering out a knife from a railroad spike on a studio set is not actual history, its a fabrication. It often has very little to do with tech its all about a commentator critiquing, if it doesn't have drama or conflict it wont fly. Unfortunately, the majority of what is now on TV is fabricated reality TV, I find it silly and annoying. I watch some news or reruns of Johnny Carson and finally turn it off, then read a book about actual history.

Yes thanks

Pratt and Whitney Machine hired several disgruntled engineers from Curtis Wright to start their aircraft engine business.

@Bill Lawrence - When I was just a kid, my family went to I think, Laguardia Airport to see Grandma off to Mexico, probably in the mid fifties. As the plane, a Lockheed Connie was building speed, an engine caught fire in a big way - flames pouring out of it as it launched. It circled around and landed without any issues, but we all thought we were waiving goodbye to Grandma for the last time! Quite a harrowing thing to watch in person.

@@Loulovesspeed Those big Wright 3350s that powered the Connies didn't have the reliability that the R-2800 did. The Connie has been referred to as the "world's best 3 engine airplane", because it was always flying around with one shut down. It's a pretty good bet the pilots of your grandma's plane had practice at that sort of thing.

@@billlawrence1899 - I hadn't seen a Connie for many years until I moved to Florida in 1974. I went to the Sebring 12hr. endurance race and right in the middle of the grounds was a Constellation on display. Pretty cool to see one after all those years. It is still a contemporary looking propeller driven aircraft of sorts.

​@@Loulovesspeed The Connie was arguably the most beautiful airliner ever built. It was also a mechanical nightmare. Pilots who flew it came in two flavors. They either loved it or hated it. There was no in between.

That's very interesting!

How the hell would they bore a tapered cylinder? Do you have a cite?

@@dizzywow They grind it in apparently, but I don't have a clue as to what the precise technique is. They refer to the taper as a 'choke' when they're discussing it. Here's a link to the video I referenced: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/epthld14077aaZ8.html The full video was broken up into 2 parts and this is the second. They discuss the geometry of the cylinder at about the 5 minute mark. I highly recommend watching both parts of the chat as it's a fascinating glimpse into a very rarely discussed topic.

@@dizzywow with a tapered boring tool.

@@AtlasLathe US factories and shipyards running full tilt, well outside the range of axis bombers would certainly agree with the first statement.

If any aircraft engine could be said to be the "engine that won the war" it would most likely be one of the Soviet engines used by the Red Air Force. The Soviets bore the brunt of the fighting in Europe. In the Pacific it most definitely is one of the Wright or Pratt & Whitney radials. The R-2800 is the engine that powered the fighters that destroyed Japanese naval aviation. The Hellcat and Corsair. Aside from the Allison's and some Merlins used in P-40s, P-39s, P-51s post Iwo Jima and P-38s every engine used by the US in the Pacific theater was a radial.

People seem to forget that it was that bombers that destroyed the Nazi's ability to make war, the fighters just had a supporting role.

The Allison V1710 was used in more total airplanes and more types of airplanes in WW2 than any other allied engine, and served from the 1930s right through WW2, and powered some very capable designs such as the P-40, P-38, A-36, and more. It continued in use post war in airplane racing, boat racing, tractor pulling and much more. It even powers modern replicas of the FW190 and Russian Yaks.

@@AtlasLathe Fair points, ground forces win wars, not airpower. If you never capture the territory, the enemy never needs surrender. But many fighters did double duty as CAS and strike aircraft as well (P-51, A-36, P-38, F4f, F4U, P-40, P-47, Typhoon, Mosquito, etc.). Bombers did next to nothing to stop the IJN in teh Pacific. And until the B-29 was in range of Japan, bombers in general accomplished very little overall in terms of strategic bombing in the Pacific.

Need a picture of that. Do you know of any?

Thanks for noticing Light! I hope you enjoyed the video. Don't worry, I make plenty of time to loaf off, just ask my wife.

Only exhaust

8:42 cooled by being sodium filled? Would the sodium be blown out every time the exhaust valve opened?

@@dreamdiction Research how a sodium filled valve works. It’s pretty clever.

Wouldn’t that be a mistake in start up vs a limitation (within reason that is) of design?

@@air-headedaviator1805 yeah, that's operator error. And I know at least some warbirds have systems now that won't turn on the ignition until it does the required rotation. I think those are retrofit, but it might have been original in some (or all) of them. They are very reliable engines, but nowhere close to turbine engines, and far from "indestructible."

Often the rotation was done by manually pulling the blades on the prop.

@@jamesfisher4326 That was HARD work!

Depends on whether or not the starter is clutched. If not, you pulled the blades through by hand to feel for liquid lock. It was 9 blades for a Pratt 1830

Because the R-2800 didn't power the Spitfire, the aircraft that won the war!

The Spitfire isn't the aircraft that won the war, it's the aircraft that didn't lose the war.

Merlin engine powered so many aircraft including the P51, a combination that gave the Allies the advantage of bomber protection over Germany. So it definitely won the Defense over England, and helped the Attack over Germany paving the way for victory.

@@seagullsbtn I'm quite aware if the P51, & the Merlin. Great aircraft, great engine, but hyped a lot. It was the definitive escort fighter for sure, it was also quite vulnerable, like all liquid cooled aircraft engines in combat. The Luftwaffe pilot loss rate, many experienced combat pilots, was 140% from mid '43 thru late spring '44, most damage was done via P47s,(P&W R2800s) before all but one group(56th) were relegated to ground support. The 56th had the most air to air kills of the USAAF in Europe with their R2800 powered Thunderbolts. The Mustang was in service a year before Thunderbolts, & basically had a year of air combat after 47s went to ground support, so weigh it all out. The destruction 47s did to the Wehrmacht was tremendous.. All top 10 P47 aces survived the war in the ETO. The P47M & N models were also much faster than the Merlin powered 51. Just sayin'.😁

I wonder how far that was offset when P&W introduced the water & glycol injection system? Given the cooling need, maybe they overlaid that on a rich mix? It a fair point to throw into the mix 'though.

@@Farweasel the water and glycol was on top of the rich mixture and was usually limited to a few minutes at a time (for take offs and combat) to save blowing up the engines. Liquid cooled engines also used water and glycol, the Germans also used Nitrous Oxide (laughing gas) on air and liquid cooled engines.. The Americans and Brits experimented with super fuels like Triptane that boosted performance so much that octane rating were superseded by Performance Number ratings. There is also a mindset issue, most US radial engines (and later derivatives) were initially designed with economical commercial use in mind (short bursts of high power followed by long periods of medium to low power whilst cruising), whilst the European liquid cooled engines always had military applications in mind with high power use for most of the flight and shorter lives. Air cooled sleeve valve radials like the Bristol Hercules and Centaurus seemed to have more stamina and power per cubic inch than there poppet valve contempories (a post war commercial version of the Hercules had the longest time between overhauls (TBO) of any large aircraft piston engines). An engine that is not well known in the US is the Napier Sabre a 24 cylinder H configuration water cooled sleeve valve of similar displacement to the RR Griffin it eventually reliably produced about 50% more power than the Merlin and a sprint version was once believed to have exceeded 4500bhp. The piston engines from that era with the lowest specific fuel consumptions were Napier designs the Nomad I & II, liquid cooled, flat 12 cylinder, 2 stroke diesel, with variable speed supercharger, power recovery turbo charger and in one version reheat, they looked like a cross between a gas turbine and liquid cooled piston engine.

@@stuartf6385 D'Oh! P47s. *Of course* - Forgot about that didn't I! What's that advisory? Oh yeah. 'Engage brain before operating Keyboard'.

If I remember in the me109 it gave the pilot a better view ahead during combat but I have never found a definate reason and always have wondered how the oil system worked.?

@@glennpowell3444 They used a dry sump oil system, oil is pumped from a tank to all the parts that need it, then scavenge pumps pick it up and return it to the tank.

Greg's airplanes channel has a two part explanation at kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fpeJf9qDtrKmj30.html and kzfaq.info/get/bejne/m52CZpylr53Uo6s.html

@@robertmoreth8536 Thanks.I figured it must be a similar setup as a radial.

Even stranger they had superchargers which ran at 90 deg to the crank plane.