Andrew Mace wrote:
>
> Interesting story. As a P.S., did you see the latest issue of _Triumph
> Over Triumph_, Paul Richardson's new magazine? In an article about
> "shadow factories" he talks of the motor industry's involvement in the
> war effort (WWII), and suspicions about that industry's ability to
> manufacture "to aircraft standards" products such as the R-R Merlin
> engine. A R-R engineer wondered why a Ford engineer was spending so much
> time pouring over the engine blueprints and asked if the tolerances might
> be too close for them?
> An interesting story, possibly somewhat apocryphal, but....?
>
An aprocyphal story, perhaps, but only for this reason--Continental
Engines was licensed by Rolls-Royce to build their Merlin in the US for
use in our aircraft under contract by Allison, and others. An old
Continental Engine employee from their Muskegon, MI plant told me, in
1976, that Rolls_Royce, after repeated failures of the engine produced
in the US, sent their engineers in and examined the engineering process,
and immediately modified all US engineering processes to an order of
magnitude difference. If the tolerances were specified in thousands, the
Rolls-Royce engineers specified ten-thousands..., which concurs somewhat
with the story about the Ford engineer (Ford, I suspect, was far too
busy producing B-24s at River Rouge to be seriously involved with Merlin
production). That and other changes produced an engine equal to that
produced in the UK... which was why early Mustangs sent to the UK (the
first order of Mustangs ever built) with Allison-built Merlins had such
a bad reputation (particularly for lack of reliability and lack of power
at altitude), and why later Mustangs with Merlin engines built under R-R
supervision did so well in air combat.
Brings about another question... Spitfire owners recognize the heritage
of the name of their cars... and yet, there's no association of Mustang
owners to the WWII aircraft of the same name... they seem to think only
of horses.... <g>
As for TOT, wish it was available here for order from the local
newsstand... I suppose I will have to pester Paul for subscription
information--I held off inquiring, since the summer issue was late in
coming... I suspected it was simply a result of Ken's death, and the
later death of Paul's mother.
Cheers, Andy.
--
My other Triumph runs, but....
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