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This section details the development and use of many significant piston engines.
Twelve-Cylinder Firing Order Display Air-Cooled Aircraft Engine Cylinders - by George Genevro Table of US Engine Details, provided by Larry McClellan (PDF, XLS) OX-5s to Turbo-Compounds: A Brief Overview of Aircraft Engine Development by Kimble D. McCutcheon
During the period between the World Wars, aircraft engines improved dramatically and made possible unprecedented progress in aircraft design. Engine development in those days, and to a large extent even today, is a very laborious, detailed process of building an engine, running it to destruction, analyzing what broke, designing a fix, and repeating the process. No product ever comes to market without some engineer(s) having spent many long, lonely, anxious hours perfecting that product. This is especially true of aircraft engines, which by their very nature push all the limits of ingenuity, materials, and manufacturing processes. - Download Article (712 K PDF) -
No Short Days: The Struggle to Develop the R-2800 "Double Wasp" Crankshaft by Kimble D. McCutcheon
Just prior to World War II, engineers at both Pratt & Whitney and Curtiss-Wright worked feverishly to produce the first air-cooled engine capable of more than 2,000 horsepower. The efforts of both teams were nearly thwarted by severe vibration from unexpected sources. This is the story of how the Pratt & Whitney team, through hard labor and persistence, identified and solved the problems with vibration. The result was one of the most successful engines of all times - the R-2800.
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From the dawn of powered flight, all aircraft were powered by
piston engines until the
morning of Sunday, August 27, 1939, when the first gas turbine engine took to
the air. Nearly every noteworthy aircraft performance improvement was the
direct result of an engine improvement. Many of these engine improvements ranked
among some of the greatest accomplishments of the first half of the Twentieth
Century.
