A query related to British Diesel Engines for Aircraft.

Graham1973

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I was reading the novel 'The Trojan Horse' (1940) by Hammond Innes. In this the Germans are trying to steal a diesel aircraft engine from the British. All that's mentioned about the engine is that it "...develops twice the power of present engines at five hundred revolutions..."

What I'd like to know is where the British ever working on diesel engines for aircraft in the lead up to WWII?
 
Yes, the Napier Culverin, for example but that was a licensed Jumo 204. So, almost everything that D. Napier & Son knew about aircraft diesels, they'd bought from Junkers ;)

Another was the Bristol Phoenix, a diesel derivative of the Pegasus 9-cylinder radial. Bristol only built a few and packed it in around 1932. I'm not sure if work on the Phoenix was directly influenced by German technology. That said, Bristol Siddeley did license locomotive diesels from Maybach.
 
From the wiki entry on the Rolls Royce Crecy:
(the preceding bit being that Tizard suggested a 'sprint' engine for a fighter in 1935 and Ricardo said two stroke would be interesting if you weren't worried about fuel consumption)

"Previous experience gained between 1927 and 1930 using two converted Rolls-Royce Kestrel engines through an Air Ministry contract had proven the worth of further research into a two-stroke sleeve-valved design. Both these engines had initially been converted to diesel sleeve-valved operation with a lower power output than the original design being noted along with increased mechanical failures, although one converted Kestrel was subsequently used successfully by Captain George Eyston in a land-speed record car named Speed of the Wind.[2] The second engine was further converted to petrol injection which then gave a marked power increase over the standard Kestrel.[3]

Single-cylinder development began in 1937 under project engineer Harry Wood using a test unit designed by Ricardo. The Crecy was originally conceived as a compression ignition engine and Rolls-Royce had previously converted a Kestrel engine to run on Diesel. By the time they started development of the Crecy itself, in conjunction with the Ricardo company, the decision had been taken by the Air Ministry to revert to a more conventional spark-ignition layout, although still retaining fuel injection."

Harry Ricardo was well known as a diesel engine expert, so just his association with an aircraft engine project would lead to the assumption it was diesel.
 
Thanks for the information. For what it's worth the novel is set in February 1940, which suggests that the either the Culverin, the Phoenix or the Beardmore Tornado, the last of which is the engines fitted to the R101 are all in the frame.
 
An image of the diesel Kestrel engine, as fitted to the 'Speed of the Wind' record car . . .

ricardo-diesel-kestrel-rr-d.jpg

Source :-

Beardmore Tornado HERE

cheers,
Robin.
 

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