The Secret Horsepower Race: Western Front Fighter Engine Development

This is a great work - it is comprehensive and academic with footnotes but also has popular appeal with beautiful photos and illustrations nearly all taken from original primary sources. The author did a lot of primary research and writes from a position of authority - being part of design teams of high powered Formula 1 race car piston engines.It deserves the 5 stars.Having noted this, it is not for the casual or general reader. It focuses on the development of aircraft piston engines on the Western Front of WW2 - namely the German, British, American and to a lesser degree (due to their lack of progress) Italian engines. This encompasses not just the engine block but also issues like ball bearings, fuel, turbo and superchargers and boost devices like nitrous oxide. It is superb and rich with technical details.The books is hefty being about 9 x 12 inches (23 cm x 31 cm roughly) and wonderfully illustrated. PLEASE do not be confused by the cover with the painting of the WW2 warbirds. This is NOT a book about aces, or dogfights or the plane designs except where it crosses over to engine issues like where the radiators and air intakes are mounted. The casual WW2 buff or warbird buff may find the details and nuanced discussion about ball bearing design, impeller blades, and intercooling too much but if you really like that sort of discussion, this is the book.It sheds light on an interesting aspect of the technological nature of WW2. Most people are aware that the Allies had superior resources, production and technology but not exactly how and way except in terms of quantity. Less well known are issues like the quality of the aviation fuel - how 100 octane gasoline, for example, was hard for the Germans to synthesize, and how nickel (which is useful in many alloys) hampered their engine work. Finally the whole structure of how industry and research was carried in conjunction with the military showed the greater flexibility in the Allied system - another under appreciated point.Again, a great work, and probably one that will be much sought after in the years to come. If you are interested in the topic or have a friend that is keen on the area and has a technical interest, then this will be a treasured work.

For those interested in military aviation during the Second World War, truly groundbreaking, definitive texts are few and far between: William Green's Warplanes of the Third Reich, Rene Francillion's Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War, Gunther Sengfelder's German Aircraft Landing Gear come to mind as similar examples of definitive works that were painstakingly researched, and which have stood the test of time. Calum Douglas' work falls into that select category. It is brilliantly researched using original source material. The diagrams, blueprints, graphs, original correspondence, and (perhaps most impressively) photos of individual components are exquisite and plentiful. Want to see the connecting rods of a Jumo 222? This book contains photos of the original design, after it failed, and the later design that tried to cure the problem. Want to see microscopic sections of the plain bearing material used on a DB605 compared to that used in a RR Merlin? It's here. This book provides unprecedented insight into the problems German aircraft engine builders faced due to materiel shortages, such as the lack of sufficient nickel, using minutes kept at their own meetings. It definitively answers questions that have been floating about in the "warbird" community for decades. For instance, there has been widespread speculation that the Daimler Benz engines used different compression rations in their left and right hand cylinder banks because the supercharger was mounted on the left side of the engine, which resulted in lower inlet pressure in the right hand bank. It turns out the inlet pressures were measured at each cylinder during the war, and there was no appreciable variation between any of them. Similarly, the much speculated reasons why the promising Jumo 222 failed to see production are also made clear. Problems with the DB605, its oiling system, and its main bearings are spelled out in detail. When they were first introduced, every aircraft that used them had trouble, and they were de-rated for fighter use for a significant period of time. It was clearly understood to the Germans that aircraft which taxed the engines most also experienced the most problems, and the He-177 was identified in that regard. That puts to rest the ongoing debate about whether it was the engines or the installation that caused so much grief to he Greif. On the allied side, the work Sir Stanley Hooker and his team did on supercharger development and the changes in design that resulted is all here, illustrated, photographed, and performance charted. The American turbochargers are also similarly addressed. Sleeve valves and even disc valves are discussed as well. In addition to those kinds of things, the book provides an amazing insight into just how much technology was being brought to bear on piston engines back then. Looking at a schematic of the nose oiling system used on the Jumo 213 crankshaft, which incorporated a deaerator, or the scroll vanes used around the superchargers of some engines makes you realize just how much brilliant engineering went on and how hard people worked to win the war. Similarly, there is a detailed analysis of carburetors and direct fuel injection. I learned that the advantages of the latter were more than just that the engine did not cut out under negative G loads. Direct injection allowed for greater overlap between inlet and exhaust valves with better scavenging and cooling as a result. I did not know before reading this book that Rolls Royce actually ran a Merlin using a Jumo 211 fuel injection system just to test what could be done with it. This book contains a photo of the lash-up test engine. I could go on and on, but the point is that this is one of those seminal works that will be still be highly regarded fifty plus years from now. It belongs in any enthusiast's library.

If you have an interest in WWII history and technology, the 480 pages of The Secret Horsepower Race by Calum E. Douglas are a treasure trove of original source documents and artful storytelling. The book chronicles the life and death duel for piston aircraft propulsion superiority between Britain and Germany during WWII. Perhaps one third of the book is verbatim transcripts of documents and personal discussion between the respective military organizations/personalities and the manufacturers/personalities responsible for the design and production of piston aircraft engines. It is precision history right from the original sources. There are hundreds of photographs, tables, charts, and diagrams of the engines, engine parts, and performance characteristics. This technical information is expertly blended with geopolitical, energy, metallurgical, and managerial issues in logical, chronological fashion. There are welcome summaries at the end of each significant time period to refresh the memory of the intermittent reader. Some will opine that some of the images are small or difficult to read, but this is more that balanced by having all this original information in one place. I read a lot of WWII books, but I learned dozens of new things from this book as well as a wider perspective on the competitive knife-edge that is war.

Este livro tem o conteúdo mais concentrado e esclarecedor sobre motores aeronáuticos a pistão que já tive a oportunidade de ler.Meu conhecimento prévio é relativamente bom sobre o assunto. Desde tenra idade, motores e aviões da Segunda Guerra Mundial eram assuntos comuns com meu pai, um ávido engenheiro aeronáutico e piloto de testes.Mas nunca tive a oportunidade de aprender e entender tanto em uma publicação.Em poucas palavras, não posso "pagar" pela dedicação, foco e qualidade da pesquisa de Calum.Não quero menosprezar vários autores sobre o mesmo assunto, mas esta pesquisa superou todas as expectativas que eu poderia ter.Não só recomendo, como digo que, se você não ler este livro, estará perdendo a oportunidade de dobrar ou triplicar seu conhecimento sobre o assunto. (Com base nisso, você já é um "conhecedor")

Libro appena arrivato. In perfette condizioni. Sfogliato un pochino poi lo guarderò con calma. Arrivato dopo il previsto ma niente di che.

Muss man über dieses Buch noch eine Rezension schreiben? Und noch dazu eine positive? Falsche Frage. Kann man es lassen?Also: Ein Motorenbau-Ingenieur mit Formel 1 Erfahrung schreibt ein Buch über die Flugmotoren-Entwicklung westlicher Nationen während des 2. Weltkrieges, verfolgt diese chronologisch nach Nationen getrennt, bietet auf gut 450 Seiten eine Fülle von Originalzitaten, zeitgenössischer Photos technischer Bauteile, Zeichnungen, Leistungsdiagramme, Kurzbiographien beteiligter Personen, Quellenverzeichnis, Register… Noch etwas?Nun, selbst aus diesen Zutaten könnte man weniger machen, als der Autor, nämlich das Publikum mit simplen PS-Vergleichen und Schilderungen utopischer Projekte ergötzen. Calum E. Douglas aber ist der Sache wirklich auf den Grund gegangen und hat die Archive SEHR gründlich durchsucht und die Dokumente SEHR genau gelesen und er hat eine neue Quelle ausfindig gemacht in Form der Aufzeichnungen des Daimler Ingenieurs Kollmann – kurz, er hat sich als detailversessener Historiker betätigt. Auf diese Weise erhält der Leser ganz neue Einblicke nicht nur in technische Probleme des Motorenbaues, sondern in die ungeheuren Herausforderungen der Rüstungswirtschaft, das Management der NS-Elite und die Folgen des Versagens kleinster Bauteile für den Luftkrieg.Ein zentraler Punkt der Darstellung sind die Auswirkungen des Rohstoffmangels auf Entwicklung und Produktion der Flugmotoren. Der Mangel an Legierungselementen wie Chrom, Mangan, Nickel, Cobalt, für die Herstellung thermisch und mechanisch hochbelasteter Bauteile wie Kurbelwellenlager und Auslassventile brachte den Leistungsfortschritt der deutschen Motoren für fast zwei Jahre zum Stillstand. So war etwa der DB 605 mit seiner Einführung im Jahre 1942 bis zu Ende 1943 leistungsmäßig um 125 PS reduziert, blieb dennoch unzuverlässig und war Ursache zahlreicher Abstürze. Eine der für mich interessantesten Ausgrabungen Douglas` ist aber, dass dieses Riesenproblem durch erst durch Mismanagement völlig außer Kontrolle geriet: Der Leiter der Motorenentwicklung im RLM, Wolfram Eisenlohr, der 1937 den brillianten, aber politisch unliebsamen Helmuth Sachse ersetzte, hatte versäumt, ein konsistentes Testprogramm für Auslassventile mit reduzierten Nickelgehalt sicherzustellen – ein Fehler epischen Ausmaßes.Dieses Beispiel zeigt, dass in diesem Buch mehr drinsteckt, als Details für Motorenfreaks. Leser, die sich die Frage stellen, was eine swirl throttle ist, warum die Me 109G kaum einen Fortschritt zum E-Modell darstellte, warum die deutsche Luftwaffe mit einem solch atemberaubenden Tempo zusammenbrach, welche Folgen es hat, wenn Ideologie Sachkunde verdrängt – sie alle werden hier fündig.Ein einziger, schwerwiegender Mangel ist zu konstatieren – das Buch ist zu schnell zu Ende.

Histoire technique, contexte technique, mémoire des intervenant.Du remarquable travail

Fantastic book!