Thanks for sharing your family's story.

Thanks for sharing your story.

How great. Thanks for sharing.

I'll give you 20. U.S Dollars for her pens!

Jay Muzquiz not everything can be bought

@@jaymuzquiz2942 If that's a joke its in bad taste, if its not, you are in bad taste

@@sfbfriend I'm F@cking low life scum bag! Anyways what did I say?

Querencias7 nowadays britainstan is in decline

And slide rules - remember them?

Within the last several years, there has been a huge rise in people not being able to use "where" and "were". WTF? Please educate me on why this is so hard for people to figure out. "W *h* ere W *e* re you?" Just... wow. : /

Querencias7 the irony is less than two generations down the road our automotive industry self -destruted at the hands of bad management and union stupidity! Every thing belongs to the Germans and the Japanese yet we supposedly won the war?

It's amazing to think that all this was done including the space program and putting a man on the moon ... with just a slide rule

FallenTemplar No he is English. If he was British he may have a Scottish accent, or welsh. This narrator has a southern accent.

Oh yes the Gardner tough as teak almost indestructible and last forever But very low revs I believe

+freakboynv2000 I would like to add, that Packard also made a marine version, used in the US PT boats, I seem to remember they used 3 per Boat.

+freakboynv2000 ,, 'commander dowding,,how many resherves have we? il n-y en-a- plus,monsieur le ministre,, , every sector is fully engaged,,,all are in the air, I, ,'be quiet,don;t tawlk to me, please,,,I am sho moved,,never in the course of human conflict has so much been owed by sho many to sho few, churchill said this to dowding at the height of the biggest luftwaffe attack since the start of the BOB, dowdings' pilots had done it,shortly after,hitler indefinitely put off the invasion seelowe. god bless the RAF AND BANKER BEAVERBROOK WHO SAW THAT INDUSTRY KEPT ON MAKING WEAPONS TO BEAT THE GERMAN ADVERSARY.

The packard marine v12 was a completely different engine. It shared nothing with the merlin design.

the p 51 mustang soaring

'Wentworth' standard dimensions! Shows how much you actually know.

Yes and the alloy was Rolls Royce made I think they named it duralium

I was a driver

Luftwaffe pilots knew about the Merlin and they respected it too much to dislike.

Gee you will draw the Crabs

Think of the total ginormous number of war machines.. The waste of raw materials and life - why? Because there is always a mad man dictator and a willingness to try to live with such until it is not longer feasible. Recognizing the mad man early on would allow a defeat much cheaper in material and human life, but most politicians are appeasers not realistic until forced by circumstances. Since WWII we have seen this over and over and currently.

CFITOMAHAWK2. No, the British and all the other allies had been at war for three years before the USA entered both WW1 and WW2. The USA was on the British side, not the other way around.

We're glad to have you as allies too!

@18tangles First change they made was changing form copper lead main bearings to lead silver with indium coating. This reduced break in time and IMPROVED longevity and load capability. That was just the first improvement. Rolls was in collaboration with Packard and they adopted each others refinements.

British Ford improved it as well and gave Rolls-Royce the definitive engineering drawings of their own engine. When RR sent a set of drawings to Packard the archive filled an entire shipping container. Like Ford, Packard had to take an engine apart, measure everything, average out the discrepancies, and then create usable production drawings.

@@tomjoseph1444 First change was to cast the head and block seperate as RR Had a special machine to machine the valve seats and guides in their intragal head block design, that special machine was not available and RR also changed their design !!!

My grandfather worked for Packard as an engineer. He helped perfect tumbling formulas to deburr engine parts after the machining process.

+Jack Sprat You're easily impressed. It's probably the noise from the propeller that you're feeling.

+MrShobar Having witnessed a dyno-test of a Merlin (no prop attached), I can vouch for the awesomeness of a Merlin at full-chat. Even through 6" of concrete & a quad glazed viewing window, the noise was chest shaking...

l sat in a cessna 150 on the centre line, waiting till a Spitfire did a low pass. Actually it was better described as a beat up. His prop was less than a foot from the tarmac and his wingtip was a few feet from mine. And it must have been going 250mph at least!

A Scania 14 ltr v8 is better

I have been in the test bed when they were running

I believe they also fixed the leaks and simplified the construction.

Not mentioned in my Haynes Rolls Royce Merlin Owners workshop Manual 109 mods 20 Packard not one about main bearings AND NOTHING IN THE OTHER SECTIONS OF IT EITHER Mod number please Nick

@@jacktattis Come on Jack pull your head out of your @$$ and accept the Fact Packard knew how to build engines, having built them as long as RR, You do know the Liberty V12 of WWI fame that the Brits used and license built as the Nufield tank engine clear into WWII was designd by Vincent of Packard. Brits also used thousands of the Packard M2500 PT Boat engines in their MTB's MGB's and air sea rescue boats it was that engine and its quality that brought RR to Packard for Merlin const. They were impressed by the build quality !! !

Thanks for sharing.

This machine is the pentacle of master-craftsmanship. I would of been proud to just change the oil!! The British Got it Right!! Such a wonder of engineering it is even displayed on church windows!!!

Agreed - my father was an RAF fitter and maintained the merlin engine and others - finally looking after the merlin engine of a MTB. - before being captured trying to make his way to Australia.

@Omni Duo Your testimony is really moving, how lucky you were to have someone like your father, who lived and served in the first person in his specialty of aviation mechanics. It would be necessary and fair that all the documentation he left you should not be lost, because of its enormous historical value for your descendants and for everyone.

I have an old DOS version of AutoCad and whereas I was trained to do Manual Draughting I can now keep or print as many copies as I like and recall any drawing quite quickly. Even my Sheet Metal Bender Brake was made from ideas and experimentation. Imagine the amount of Drawings required for a Diesel Engine.

And they did it with slide rules and a book of logarithms.

Nothing but a Slide ruler and maybe a mechanical calculator.

Mk XVI used Packard Merlins.

@@WilliamJones-Halibut-vq1fs All Merlin engines were Rolls Royce Merlin engines, Packard was well paid to make some of them which were copied from the Rolls Royce Merlin engine. Rolls Royce did all the development. The Spitfire Mk XVI was a Mk IX with the Packard copy.

Barrie Rodliffe The Americans referred to their engines as V-1650 usually with a dash number after it eg V1650-3 which was approximately a Merlin 61 rather than Merlins. They may have referred to the as Merlins colloquially. The Allison was a V-1710. The Americans changed much of the engine such as adding a Stromberg throttle body swash plate carburetor, ignition system and many of the parts as part of Packard’s mass production standardization effort. Packard “merlins” came back with better tolerances. They were not interchangeable and Spitfires and Lancaster with Packard Merlins got their own mark numbers. Spitfires Mk XVI were Spitfire IX with a Packard Merlin. Making an exact copy would have slowed Americans down. The Americans made a water injected Merlin V-1650-7 for the P51H that could use 110/150 fuel. RR never did that.

@@WilliamJones-Halibut-vq1fs The Packard copies were just that, nothing was changed. the Stromberg carburetor was a copy of the carburetor already used on Rolls Royce Merlin engines and given to Bendix Stromberg by Rolls Royce. Packard copied the mass produced Rolls Royce Merlin engine. Better tolerances is just a silly Myth. Rolls Royce made many more Merlin engines than Packard as well as al the Griffon engines and jet engines. How was Packard so slow. The P 51 H which had reliability problems and had the Packard copy of the Rolls Royce Merlin 130 engine which did work very well unlike the Packard copy.

@@barrierodliffe4155 - Packard made several changes to the Rolls-Royce Merlin when going into production in the US. First was a two-piece cylinder block like the Allison V-1710. It reduced costs by reducing the number of rejected castings and making machining easier. Rolls-Royce later adopted their own two-piece block and Packard adopted their design. They also adopted a two-piece connecting rod like the Allison's instead of RR's famously unreliable three-piece unit. Modern builders almost always use the stronger Allison-style rod when rebuilding Merlins today. It allows higher rpm's. Packard changed the main bearings to the GM/Allison type which RR later adopted in the UK. Packard also cut the crankshaft output quill spline to fit the Wright Cyclone supercharger. The Cyclone supercharger had been in production for years, was reliable, and available in one and two speed models with single or dual stages. Since the Wright unit was meant for the 30 liter Cyclone it had spare capacity for the 27 liter Merlin. They were also widely available from several manufacturers as Wright, Pratt & Whitney Canada, Lycoming, and Studebaker all had them in production. At that time RR had not yet adapted the French Marman two-speed supercharger design so the decision gave Packard easy options for future applications. RR later changed the output quill on their own engines to a stronger spline design. Rolls-Royce used a Skinner Union carburetor early in the war. SU was a subsidiary of RR. The Bendix Stromberg PD12 throttle body fuel injector, also called a "pressure carburetor," was an American part used by Allison in the V-1710 and by Wright and Pratt & Whitney in their radial engines since 1936. It was not a RR part. You have that totally backwards. Packard adopted the PD-12 from the start and never used SU carbs which would have had to be imported. RR adopted the Bendix PD-12 in 1943 after first trying "Miss Shilling's orifice" as a stopgap measure on their SU carburetors. They came out with their own version later. As for the tolerances "myth," both Packard and British Ford found Rolls-Royce's specifications impossible. Their practice was to build parts to a loose spec then match over/under spec parts during assembly. A piston that was at the high end of tolerance would be put in a cylinder that was on the high end of tolerance and so forth. Some parts would be hand-finished to make them fit. Cylinder bores were all hand-honed by an expert craftsman. This reduced reject parts but required a lot more hand finishing. Both Packard and Ford had the capacity to machine to tighter tolerances so that any part would fit in any engine. No better an expert than RR's own Stanley Hooker wrote in his biography, Not Much of an Engineer, "In my enthusiasm, I considered that Rolls-Royce designs were the ne plus ultra, until the Ford Motor Co. in Britain was invited to manufacture the Merlin in the early days of the War. A number of Ford engineers arrived in Derby, and spent some months examining and familiarizing themselves with the drawings and manufacturing methods. One day their Chief Engineer appeared in (Merlin development head Cyril Lovesey's) office, which I was then sharing, and said, 'You know, we can't make the Merlin to these drawings.' "I replied loftily, 'I suppose that is because the drawing tolerances are too difficult for you, and you can't achieve the accuracy.' "'On the contrary,' he replied, 'the tolerances are far too wide for us. We make motor cars far more accurately than this. Every part on our car engines has to be interchangeable with the same part on any other engine, and hence all parts have to be made with extreme accuracy, far closer than you use. That is the only way we can achieve mass production.'" Packard's experiences were similar: ""As Robert J. Neal writes in Master Motor Builders, documenting Packard engines: "This was but the beginning of a monumental task of redesigning an engine which was not originally designed for mass production so that it could be made by American mass-production methods, and so that it could be fitted with American fittings and accessories as mentioned above [for example, carburetors, fuel pumps, generators and so on] or British accessories and fittings, depending upon which government the engine was intended for." Neal also notes that "Rolls-Royce's drawings did not specify tolerances and fits, and Packard had to take parts from an existing engine and make measurements to determine these specifications as best as they could, using engineering judgement where necessary." Of the total of 168,068 Merlin variants built, Rolls-Royce built the most at 82,117 but needed three factories to do it (32,377 at Derby, 26,065 at Crewe, and 23,675 at Glasgow). Packard produced 55,523 in their Detroit Grand Boulevard plant. Ford of Britain built 30,428 at its Manchester factory. Ford boasts the RAF never rejected a single one of their engines. (Note: These numbers vary slightly depending on the source.)

KD8GIS Bruce this engine, manufactured under license, was put into the P51D Mustang, enabling it to be the most effective fighter plane of the war (kills racked up on missions). The Mustang airframe mated to this engine was the near perfect combo for propeller-driven fighter aircraft

@@TheSulross My father was a Mustang pilot.

Thanks mate! We couldn't have done it without our 'Yankee' cousins!

Quite so!

Of course, it’s a rolls

Boy Lra dddlookafteryourworkforceandyourworkforcewilllookafteryou, onaweekwhen2000havegotobeletgo.

Yup that's the one.

Mind you it helps with focus if the alternative is getting blown up in your bed or being overrun by a foul dictator. We do owe these people a great debt even today after 80 years for keeping the dictator at bay. I am sure most of them would be thrilled to see our modern tools.

They built these factories in the middle of nowhere --- they had to build housing and related. They also worked 12hr days, 7 days a week. Having doctors on staff means you're not calling out, only a doctor can allow you to leave. How do you think a company doctor is going to treat you? Better have uncontrolled fluids from somewhere else you're getting to work. During wartime, production never stopped. If you want free housing and meals, you can still join the military, or go to prison. Both offer such.

Gribbo9999 Hilarious in retrospect. 3400 underage girls groomed by well tanned gentlemen and most of England’s people too fearful to say something or even notice, others blown up at Manchester Arena, feminist hating their own boys, soldiers decapitated in their own capital, cockneys extinct soon to be followed. A German Dictator didn’t do this. (He would have halted such things) . Britain did it to themselves. It’s wonderful of course according to vetted BBC and Guardian establishment journalists.

That's why they went to Glasgow ship builders to build them. They knew the ship builders had seen and done it all before and had a track record of banging out top notch engineering on the spot. Nobody else was qualified its as simple as that. They already knew what brutal weather and steep angles did to engines due to boats being basically the most brutal regime that any piece of metal has had to deal with out in the North Sea. What's more interesting is how bad the Germans where at building engines compared to us. They couldn't even get their war birds to fuel correctly under heavy G.

....and history.

So true!

K4Fusion it was a sad day when the unlimited hydroplane races converted over from Merlin or Allison egines to turbine engines. I used to love the Thunderboats as they roared over the start line and the lake/river and even the GROUND shook. it's a thrill to hear one of the few remaining Merlin powered plane goes over, but somehow it was even more thrilling when all that power was in contact with water.

Those Merlin in the Mustangs were ALL Packard Built in the USA, NO British built merlin was used in a production merlin Mustang !!!

@@markdoldon8852 Problem is the Hydros used up a lot of those Merlins and Allison engines. There was one Allison, dual Turbocharged that ran for a couple years recently that gave the turbines one hell of a run for their money winning some heats, but it too has disappeared, there are a few vintage hydro still running for display only and easy today in 2023.

That is how many manufacturers work. But during the war, with rapid increase in production the level of mistakes was far beyond what any modern manufacturer could sustain. In many ways the Merlins surviving as long as they did was a miracle.

@wolfen244 You are thinking central control of an economy not the manufacturing of an engine.

You can thank accountants and greed for selling the British engineering and manufacturing industries to China.

Jet Li The Packard V 1650-9 had problems which limited power, the Rolls Royce Merlin 130 was better.

jet Remember PACKARDS were war time products with an urgency to get em out !!! It was a war tool not a work of art !!! And dumb ass they got the job done !!! !

@@barrierodliffe4155 Hey dumb ass The 130 was a LATER version !!!!!

It's mind boggling. I wonder how the staffing requirements would differ if that engine were to be developed in today's world vs. back then? Technology would have made a huge impact.

Check out my post.

Even the Germans thought 11,000 parts was too many...

"Technology" INCREASES the "manpower" required to produce "simple" machines like engines. "Robots" and "computers" and "CNC machine tools" take a hell of a lot more "manpower" to design, build, program, transport, install, provide with electricity and other "resources", maintain, service and put into "production" than a simple "manual" machine tool does. Only idiots who haven't set foot in a "factory" in their lives think otherwise. And there aren't 11,000 fucking parts in a Merlin unless it just grenaded and vaporized its "internals" they way MANY did.

++@@deeremeyer1749++ How nice to have the ultimate in expert opinions from you! KZfaq would be a much better informed place if you were to bugger off for a while and leave it alone.

Now sold of to the Germans

@@pbysome You are mixing up the car company with Rolls Royce Aero Engines. The latter, that built the Merlin etc, is a public company, listed on the London Stock Exchange. The car company was sold to BMW, but it never had anything to do with the Merlin.

My brother works at Arnold Engineering Development Center in the USA and he always enjoyed testing the Rolls Royce Trent Engines when they had a test program a year or so ago.. The Rolls Royce engineers always allowed testing the engines to complete failure.

Sorry, but BMW now own Rolls-Royce.

Had the same class in 72. Maintenance &Repair. We only got to cast an Ashtray shaped like America.

+soaringtractor You deleted all of your other replies. You missed this one.

Shit for brains tractor...'The Packard Merlin engine improved performance, but the single stage, two-speed supercharger still limited the effective ceiling to about 20,000 feet. The engine used was not the famous Merlin 60 series used in the P-51 and Spitfire MK IX with a two stage blower, but rather it was a variant of the earlier Merlin XX used by the Hawker Hurricane II and Spitfire MK V.

..S hi T must feel embarrassed for all the crap remarks he leaves when he is off his meds.... "Crap spilt in aisle 5...can we have a bucket and mop.."

@boris boris The Defiant actually was quite an effective night fighter.

@boris boris Even as a day fighter the defiant did ok at times often shooting down more than they lost, including Bf 109's, Do 17's and Ju 87's. During the Blitz the Defiant was responsible for more Luftwaffe aircraft than any other type of fighter.

Oh they had computers, but they were people, the word computer was the name of a profession!

Ha! Very true. When I started work, my job title was "assistant computer"! I actually made it to "Chief Computer" before I left.

A good slide rule (my Dad had a two foot slide rule for his work in engineering) and intelligent use can do wonders as we saw in WWII. The Atomic age ushered in by slide rule. My career started with Dad's slide rule. I still have it. Also a small collection of rules.

I only hope people remember how to do things without computers, and pass it on.

tscooter Remember son the modern world was developed and built including the modern computer WITHOUT the computer !!!! When people had real intelligence and could think !!!

That was one of the Problems the Brits had in war time, they spent too much time hand polishing and building art when they needed to be cranking out war material...there was a war on and many engines/planes did not last very long anyway....PACKARD showed them how to crank them out....

Wilbur Finnigan I do not agree, i think that R&R built almost tree times more these engines than Packard. At least I read so on Wiki.

Aleksandar Funduk Go back and re read the post. Total Merlin production from all sources was about 150,000 total units...Packard built 55,523. and Ford of England built 33,000 that is 88,000 that RR did not build. RR only built less than half the total production. And RR started building them in the mid 1930's and ended production in 1950. 14/15 years Packard made engines for four year and Ford of England about the same time. The facts man just the facts.....

Wilbur Finnigan I guess by reading mr Finnigans answers to other people on this topic, he owned The Packard Motor Company earlier.

Aleksandar Funduk NOPE ! ! ! Just trying to set the Limeys straight...most do not know that Packard was contracted with to build the Merlin for the BRITS.. most find it hard to believe and accept....but facts over looked

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Especially for the German spies.

Did you see that machine used that came from Saginaw Michigan?

Yes machinery was imported from the USA. The U.K. was being bombed and a lot of replacement materiel was obviously required :-)

I believe it was Wickes Bros?

Also I believe a lot of machine tools were developed in the US anyway, would have been exported to the UK anyhow, though clearly RR made a fair few themselves.

Agree.

Me too!

+Andy Harman I agree. There's a museum near there with a dedicated display for the Merlin and pilots that were lost during the War. Very moving.

+Andy Harman how come they made such good war engines and aircraft but they make such terrible (TEDDIBLE!) cars? They havent made anything you'd want to own since the Spitfire (CAR) who the hell owns an unreliable jaguar when you can just get a (dead reliable) Lexus?

+Andy Harman I used to visit the Crewe plant when I was an IT tech in the late 90's. It was really cool to see guys driving bare chassiss around the site!

+Robert Maybeth Rolls Royce making cars is like a mechanic trying to make a quilt- stick with what you know how to do the best. RR is an aircraft engine company.

+King Rose Archives It is kind of ironic, considering that a German company, the former builder of Hitler's People's Car, now owns the factory where RR Merlins were built.

Pfft...all of those real people and so called heroes are war mongering brits.

@@chopchop7938 Says the moron with no brain.

Modern engines are still built by "real" people and flown by "real" heroes from all free nations.

And plenty of smoking. Lol.

They had asbestos ear drums back then.

And Packard

@@WesB1972 Packard had little to do with it, they were well paid by Rolls Royce to copy the Merlin engine.

@@barrierodliffe4155 BULLSHIT !!!!! Packard was paid for the first 6,000 engines by the Brits, after that the rest of the 31,000+ were bought and paid for by the USA and provided via Lend Lease !!! "WE..." know the truth !!!

@@wilburfinnigan2142 WE know your truth. What you are trying to claim is that each Packard copy cost $ 21,667. or over 8 times the cost of each genuine Rolls Royce Merlin. I know USA was profiteering out of the war but that is really stupid.

@@barrierodliffe4155 - You have it backwards. Packard had to pay Rolls-Royce for each engine they made. After the war Rolls upped the license fee so high Packard chose to drop production rather than pay.

From that amazing company called Wickes, established in 1860, makers of the finest heavy mill machinery.

@Robert Jensen 150 hours between overhauls when used in combat, some engines could not get close.

Rolls-Royce used a three-piece fork and blade connecting rod set (excluding fasteners). One rod was mounted to the crankshaft and the second on top of the first one through the fork in the first rod. There were problems with lubricating the outside bearing. Splash oiling was insufficient. Later they changed to the Allison-style connecting rod which has two separate connecting rods both mounted directly to the crankshaft, one inside the forks of the other. Early Merlins (as well as early Allisons) were prone to rod and crankshaft failures.

I was a draftsman for a summer at Westinghouse in KCMO in 1955. Fortunately the Navy offered me a scholarship to college to be an engineer. I was not a good draftsman, too little patience. Drafting in those days, just before the cadcam era, was exacting work. More power to the Brits of WWII.

And those factories ofvthat vintage had HORRENDOUS accident and yes, even death rates. People today are no less careful the difference is that accidents are far less less common, and when they do happen are far less likely to main or kill. There is nothing to celebrate about the lack of safety equipment or procedures. In fact its something to be shocked at.

@@markdoldon8852 well put. One can never be too old to be ignorant.

I am Australian but very proud of My English heritage..

Muslim country now days...

@@briancritchley5295 I'm Aussie as well. I'm ashamed my grandfather's were born in a country that jails people for jokes on Twitter. Disgusting country.

Your people are dying.

Didn't notice the nationalistic propaganda aspect of the video, eh? BTW, Almost all of the "old Nazis" and your so called "GREATEST GENERATION" are dead now so you need to look for dumb somewhere else. Also, most were computer illiterate.

There are always downvotes.....you wonder where they come from.

Julian Those are all PACKARD Merlins swinging Hamilton props !!!

Julian that Lancaster a Mk X is powered by 4 Packard built merlins !!!!

John WRONG !!!! US NEVER put out a spec for the engine !!! Henry Ford designed and built the engine and OFFERED it inplace of the Merlin which he REFUSED to build for the Brits. BUT USAAF and the Navy were into radials and were not interested, it was cut to V8 and built 26,000 of them for the Sherman tank. Fords engine was turbocharced and put out close to 2,000HP just a FYI !!! The V8's put out close to 600HP !!!!

John Burns wrong !!! They cut the V12 to a V8 and as the Ford GAA engine of 1100 cu in it went into the sherman tank, later the V12 was used in some later larger tanks !!!

@@wilburfinnigan2142 Read Callum Douglas, _The Secret Horsepower Race._ The Ford plant in Manchester was taken by the Air Ministry for the Merlin. The Air Ministry did all the engineering. Ford, as in all shadow factories, only did the administration. Callum Douglas an F1 engine designer and WW2 engine historian, who spent 5 years researching his book in the UK, USA and Germany. He learnt technical German to research the German archives.

@@wilburfinnigan2142 F1 engine designer and WW2 plane engine historian Calum Douglas wrote in a post: _Claiming that Britain didn't mass produce engines properly because if they had, they would never have needed to ask Packard for help. Despite having made twice the number anyone else did (it took Packard 4 years to exceed RR annual Merlin production by the way, and_ *_all the Packard Merlin`s we used had to be modified by RR after they arrived in the UK,_* _because to allow Packard to work as they wished to, they agreed to let Packard make huge runs of exactly the same spec' engines, which were obsolete by the time they were finished and had to be modified by RR in Britain to the latest mod-spec individually after shipping)._

+Blaze0357 it makes me proud to be british

+soaringtractor In other words, Why build a Rolls when a Chevy will do?

+soaringtractor Well I could say the US had a population of ? 200 million +, while we had a pop. of 50 million, we were also alone at that time, while the US sat back and watched. We paid for every item we bought, whether delivered or sunk in the Atlantic. You Take some fun about the Merlin, just remember, this engine was used to power the US PT boats, 3 per boat. You mock the UK, just remember one thing, how many US cities were bombed, how many US people died in air raids. how many UK people went back to work after they had been bombed out of their homes.

yes I agree,it was our war, but the US was so far behind in modern tech, it had to join in, I think you should check your history. Same as 1917, the US had to use allied equipment, planes etc.when the US landed in North Africa , we supplied them with UK 45 pounders., grow up and learn

Typical , your in a box, thinks the US rules the world, open the lid and get out, open your eyes, your country sucks, Much of the US pop lives in the 3rd world.. you and your country have caused what is going wrong in the world.

At the races in Reno it is so full filling to hear those and the Round engines. They have different music

Phantom unless they were close to 10,000 ft they were NOT at full boost !!! DUUUUUHHHHHHHH !!!!! Full boost kicked in about 10,000FT !!! Dumb ass

That's what we appreciate. A well considered polite reply. Twat.

pold poldecki. You should be proud too. Poland had the highest number of non Brits fighting in the Battle of Britain (145) and were formidable pilots. Thanks from a Brit.

Had a couple of their own squadrons attached to the RAF Pold.

The Polish 303 squadron was by far the most effective during the Battle of Britain. Dowding himself acknowledged that without them the outcome could have been different. Their loss/kill ratio was the best in the RAF and they fought like lions, downing 126 German aircraft, for the loss of 18.. We should be proud and happy that Poles came to the UK to fight and now come to work. They earned it, many times over.

thumbs up to them

Bobby ... you forgot the Hurricane which actually took down more German aircraft than the Spitfire in the Battle of Britain. And the Lancaster which lifted 2 1/2 times anything the B-17 or B-24 could deliver. And the Mosquito which was the fastest fighter in WWII and could deliver the same bombload to Berlin as a B-17. there were many very capable aircraft built in WWII for very many different operations and I would never say one is better than another.

the extra octane from 81 to 91 made the differance,the germans did not have this

One of the closet things to perfection built by man.!

The other thing close to perfection was the p51 mustang plane and then the rolls Royce engine and thert

The other thing close to perfection was the p51 mustang airplane with it,s lamp ear flow wings and

Dr The same way the Allison P40, P38's P39's did ?????

The Brits also produced big improvements in carrier design before we did.

The RR Griffon was better.

It's short 150 hour time between overhauls argues against that. They constantly had to be taken out of service to be rebuilt.