The Secret Horsepower Race by Calum Douglas (and piston engine discussion)

Also on the subject of targets for the bombers

Target: Hitler’s oil, Allied attacks on German oil supplies 1939-45 by Ronald C. Cooke and Roy Conyers Nesbit


Apart from the oil plants and transport network, there were other weak points in the German economy, which would have been very worthwhile targets for attacks by the Anglo-American strategic bombers. These were plants producing key war chemicals such as synthetic nitrogen, methanol (synthetic wood alcohol), tetraethyl lead and synthetic rubber. Nitrogen was vitally important in the manufacture of explosives and V2 rocket fuel; it was also essential in the production of agricultural fertilizer. Tetraethyl lead was an indispensable ingredient of aviation fuel; without it the Luftwaffe’s fighter aircraft would have been deprived of 40 per cent of their engine power and have been hopelessly outclassed in combat. With the almost complete cessation of imports of natural rubber from overseas on the outbreak of war, the production within Germany of synthetic rubber, needed for many types of wheeled vehicle, assumed great importance.

In the case of some of these products, for example nitrogen, the plants that manufactured them were very few in number and of large capacity. Direct attacks on them would probably have had an even more crippling affect than the raids on the oil installations. Although, the Western Allies knew a great deal about German industry even before the war began, the military leaders did not appreciate the crucial importance of the chemical industry or of the close interdependence between certain branches of production, as between the manufacture of oil, chemicals, synthetic rubber and explosives. This information came to light only after the war, when American and British survey teams carried out post mortem investigations in Germany into the effectiveness of Allied strategic bombing.

None the less, manufacture of the above key items was greatly hampered as a by-product of the oil-offensive, although this fact was not fully realised at the time. When the oil plants at Luena and Ludwigshaven were temporarily put out of action, Germany was deprived of 63% of its current output of nitrogen, 40% of its synthetic methanol and 65% of its synthetic rubber production.





Brute Force: Allied Strategy and Tactics in the Second World War – John Ellis

P217/218

Ethyl Fluid, this was ‘an indispensable constituent of high-grade aviation gasoline. The addition of ethyl fluid in very small amounts to gasoline is so beneficial that no modern aircraft is operated without it. It was made from tetraethyl lead and ethylene dibromide, and production of the former was limited to only five plants in Axis Europe, two in Germany, two in Italy and one in Occupied France. Only the products of their own and one Italian plant were ever available to the Germans, and these were barely adequate to supply the tetraethyl lead for their needs. Plans to construct two new plants in Germany and to expand production of the others never materialised. Ethylene dibromide was supplied by only a single plant in Germany. The USSBS points out that production of aviation fuel was thus ultimately dependent upon four plants, the location and purpose of each of which was known. The Survey crisply concludes: ‘These plants were not bombed, although the equipment and the processes used were such as to make then highly vulnerable to air attack … A major opportunity in the Allied air offensive against oil was unexploited.
 
My second WW2 aviation book has been made available for pre-order from "The American Society of Mechanical Engineers" (ASME)

It is the translated technical memoirs of a German WW2 aviation engine designer at Daimler-Benz, who specialised in compressor development. (Dr Kollmann), his son provided me with his fathers papers and I translated them during research for my first book "The Secret Horsepower Race". Dr Gülen (gas turbine expert at Bechtel Corp.) assisted me by providing a "bridge" between the German theory from WW2 and modern methods. We`ve added a lot of extra material to increase the utility of Dr Kollmann`s
original text (which is indented to distinguish it). Kollmann was promoted to the position of Chief Designer at DB in late 1944, this is not a personal memoir, it has no commentary on the war, or dogfights, its a translation of a highly respected German engineer`s treatise on some of the engineering methods of design he employed at DB when designing the superchargers for the DB600 series engines, and also contains his thoughts on some other compressor types. It his highly mathematical and is only for the really serious enthusiast with a fair degree of technical background (its also not an academic paper, so you do not need a doctorate or even a degree to appreciate it)

Link to pre-order below:


If you are very serious about your WW2 aero engine technology and understanding what techniques a German engineer actually used at the time, I do not think there is an equivalent book in English to this one.

(Official 'blurb' below)

"By Karl Kollmann, Calum E. Douglas, and S. Can Gülen

This book is a unique blend of history, technology review, theoretical fundamentals, and design guide. The subject matter is primarily piston aeroengine superchargers - developed in Germany during the Second World War (WWII) - which are centrifugal compressors driven either by the main engine crankshaft or by an exhaust gas turbine. The core of the book is an unpublished manuscript by Karl Kollmann, who was a prominent engineer at Daimler-Benz before and during the war.

Dr. Kollmann's manuscript was discovered by Calum Douglas during his extensive research for his earlier book on piston aeroengine development in WWII. It contains a wealth of information on aerothermodynamic and mechanical design of centrifugal compressors in the form of formulae, charts, pictures, and rules of thumb, which, even 75 years later, constitute a valuable resource for engineering professionals and students.

In addition to the translation of the original manuscript from German, the authors have completely overhauled the chapters on the aerothermodynamics of centrifugal compressors so that the idiosyncratic coverage (characteristic of German scientific literature at that time) is familiar to a modern reader. Furthermore, the authors added chapters on exhaust gas turbines (for turbo-superchargers), piston aeroengines utilizing them, and turbojet gas turbines.

Drawing upon previously unpublished material from the archived German documents, those chapters provide a concise but technically precise and informative look into those technologies, where great strides were made in Germany during the war. In summary, the coverage is intended to be useful not only to history buffs with a technical bent but also to the practicing engineers and engineering students to help with their day-to-day activities in this particular field of turbomachinery."

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And reading it will be hefty too.

As Calum said: It is highly mathematical and is only for the really serious enthusiast with a fair degree of technical background.

I would not have a problem reading it as I am already familiar with the theory of compressors and turbines due to my profession, but it is probably too much and too dry for the average visitor of this forum, even if the price were within their budget.

Let's hope that in the near future Calum will make a 100 page simplified version out of it with less mathematics and a lot of graphs and nomograms so that most visiters on this forum can understand the performance of the supercharger as a function of different variables. A bit like the booklet "The Performance of a Supercharged Aero Engine" by Stanley Hooker, Harry Reed and Alan Yarker.
 
And reading it will be hefty too.

As Calum said: It is highly mathematical and is only for the really serious enthusiast with a fair degree of technical background.

I would not have a problem reading it as I am already familiar with the theory of compressors and turbines due to my profession, but it is probably too much and too dry for the average visitor of this forum, even if the price were within their budget.

Let's hope that in the near future Calum will make a 100 page simplified version out of it with less mathematics and a lot of graphs and nomograms so that most visiters on this forum can understand the performance of the supercharger as a function of different variables. A bit like the booklet "The Performance of a Supercharged Aero Engine" by Stanley Hooker, Harry Reed and Alan Yarker.

I have been considering writing something which is a set of fully worked design examples of various engine bits using WW2 techniques, as a sort of book for 1st/2nd year engineering students. If I do get around to that, I suppose it will probably serve the purpose you mention.

I attach some sample pages, as that is probably the best way of you deciding if the book is for you, or not.
(the text below is Kollmann`s origonal, obviously just translated and tidied up). Essentially, everything up to page 241
is a Kollmann`s, and everything after is mine & my co-authors' work.

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There is also a fair bit of totally new material added by myself and Dr Gülen, I added a brief history
of some of the notable DB engines at the end (maybe a couple of pages on about ten, there is
some overlapping material with The Secret Horsepower Race, but some totally new as TSHR concentrates
on operational types so there are a few small bits which are added here elaborating on some of the
experimental engines (some photos of the DB621 for example). There is also a bit on DB jet engines
which we added.

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Above my education level and the price is to be honest way to high too. Having said that, looking around t'internet thingy, it is not that bad compared to some of the technical publications available. If it is useful for work I reckon the price is not bad. All in my very humble opinion but everything is expensive in the latter days of covid terror.
 
"latter days of covid terror"? What does that mean? Please refrain from spreading The Voice of Terror. I have been buying specialist books for decades and the prices were going up long before "the terror." I work in book publishing. I read the trade press. It is sheer nonsense to blame book prices on a virus. So, the books I want start at 50 Euros up to 100. This is not an isolated incident. And I have paid over 180 Dollars US for low press run, formerly classified reports.
 
Its an academic publisher, all their books are in this range, personally, I`d like it to have been £40 GBP, but nobody who
sells books in that price range would publish such a text (Schiffer Publishing didnt even REPLY to my proposal for them
to publish "The Secret Horsepower Race", if you can believe it; let alone something like this).

I could of course have just self published it, but there are a lot of compromises with that route (no referrees provided, probably not hardback, probably wont get into any major libraries, probably wont be bought by any university libraries etc etc).

Personally I think all academic publishing prices are far too high, but thats how they operate, so there you go. I had no
influence or control whatsoever on the final price, other than grudgingly accepting black-and-white print as they
said Colour would have been even more expesive by a fair margin.

I dont think covid has any impact on this (although it has certainly laid waste to the entire global museum and archive system
as far as I`ve been able to ascertain from my own experiences trying to get access in Germany and the Uk, but thats another
story !)
 
Covid did have an impact: the shift from shopping in person to mail order has increased demand for cardboard, which forced the price of paper to go up. The price of shipping went up due to increased demand (container price went through the roof) which is a factor if you have your books printed in China/India.
 
Covid did have an impact: the shift from shopping in person to mail order has increased demand for cardboard, which forced the price of paper to go up. The price of shipping went up due to increased demand (container price went through the roof) which is a factor if you have your books printed in China/India.

What? Do you have a source for that? One of my jobs is to price boxes. Your information is not accurate. The price of paper was going up long before the virus. And long before the virus, a money grab was created. A creature called Dimensional Weight. It was adopted by the US Postal Service, UPS and FedEX. What is it? Say you have a large but light item that must go in a large box. If that box exceeds certain dimensions, even though it weighs say 11 pounds, it will be charged a lot more. The solution? One is to switch to carrying and shipping small items or to break an order down to fit into two smaller boxes to avoid paying for Dimensional Weight.

And before the virus, retail stores were getting product shipped to them in boxes.

Paper prices have gone up across all 4 decades I've been in the business. Postage goes up every year. UPS rates go up every year - long before the virus.

The latest from China is this. There is a container shortage. In the United States there is a shortage of truck drivers and a shortage of rail cars and semi-trailer frames. The greedy made it a point to print books cheap in China. I have many examples. They flooded the market with cheap to print books that could give them a greater profit margin. The U.S. needs to rethink the subject of making things in the USA. Big Business does not like one thing: a lot of employees demanding a lot of money. So go where labor is paid less, the product is good to very good quality and watch the money roll in.

The U.S. needs a Strategic Infrastructure Initiative - right now. There is a semiconductor/chip shortage right now. Why? The claim - and I don't believe it - is that the auto industry underestimated demand and did not keep proper track. That is silly. You need chips and you are not following this closely? And where are the chips made? Malaysia. And Japan. There was a mysterious fire at a Japanese chip making facility not long ago. Meanwhile, one wealthy investor is talking about buying up chip makers and "consolidating" the industry. The same thing was happening to book and magazine printers in the United States. The wealthy companies bought the smaller companies, shrinking the number of independent printers. In one case, a meger was about to go through between two large companies. It was blocked by the U.S. Justice Department.
 
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Sell a password protected PDF. Publishing cost is that of an internet connection and a file downloading service and delivery is as fast as the buyer's internet connection. Advantages: Don't kill trees. Delivery time in minutes. Quick payment and settlement of transaction. No cost to return and replace damaged books.

Just sell the information over the internet. Eliminate the cost of printing, storing, shipping, and handling physical books and their associated price fluctuations caused by the sorry state of the world.

Another digital book and magazine advantage: I can carry a large part of my library with me on my tablet and read them wherever I am in the world.
 
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Sell a password protected PDF. Publishing cost is that of an internet connection and a file downloading service and delivery is as fast as the buyer's internet connection. Advantages: Don't kill trees. Delivery time in minutes. Quick payment and settlement of transaction. No cost to return and replace damaged books.

Just sell the information over the internet. Eliminate the cost of printing, storing, shipping, and handling physical books.

Guess what? The number of printed books is increasing. People prefer printed books. That's a fact. The industry trade press confirms this. I have a handful of things as PDFs but I'm tired of staring at screens: A computer screen, a TV screen and a book reader screen.

The Disadvantages are this. The fool's errand regarding access. 'I don't need a publisher or an agent. I can do what I want.' Yes, and then what happens? Thousands of people publish books that are not fit to read. The average reader is confronted by a flood of sub-standard reading material. This is no longer a needle in a haystack but finding a 'good' drop of water in the ocean. Some writers believe that since they sold a handful of copies that they are now professional writers.

On a popular print on demand site which I won't name, I was allowed to see some pages from a fantasy book. I've been a book editor for 40 years and I saw every common mistake made in those pages. There was also a forum. The author wrote: "Why isn't my book selling?"
I didn't tell him since I have dealt with other authors whose work was just like his. Amateurs need detailed guidance. I've tried to help but they lack understanding. When I tell them the pacing is off, the dialogue is off, that character development is weak or other specific things, I get a deer in headlights look. Those concepts are foreign to them. They can't fix those problems since they don't understand how.
 
Several posters said they would like to have Calum's book, but couldn't afford it. Calum explained that the high price was under the control of the publisher and the cost of making and distributing physical books. He said that what he got from the publishers would not cover his expenses in researching and writing his book.

Calum said: "I`d like it to have been £40 GBP, but nobody who sells books in that price range would publish such a text."

I offered a solution to cut the cost of getting the information from the author to the reader by changing from the traditional publishing and distributing of physical books and their associated built in high costs to the distribution of digital books where you send the information through the internet with its associated instant payment and delivery like any other digital media.

I have plenty of physical books and magazines, possibly 10,000+ lbs. of them. Problem is that they take up a lots of room, weigh a lot, are difficult to sort through, require a controlled environment to not deteriorate, and are vulnerable to insect predation, water, and fire. My library of digital books has no physical size or weight, is accessible on any of my devices anywhere and in darkness, and even if I lose one of my devices, they are backed up in the cloud.

I like all books, but given the choice between an expensive physical book and a much less costly and immediately delivered digital book, I will take digital.
 
That's your choice. Somehow, physical books are still preferred. Publishers can charge what they like but it is based on some real world factors. An academic publisher maintains his reputation by making sure the book goes through a proper review not just by book editors but also by people who have the necessary knowledge of the subject matter. It would not look good if a book of a technical nature got out that had mistakes not caught by the publisher. Editors and technical consultants need to be paid.

I see no advantage in "the cloud." It is simply a money-making reason for computer storage farms to store large amounts of data, whether it is text, photos or live-action video. It has to be paid for. It exists to make money. The owners of the various cloud services need to provide some guarantee that the stored "data," a wrong term, does not get corrupted or lost. Should newer computers become available, there would have to be some guarantee of a perfect transfer of data.

I have been collecting books for decades and happen to know that the storage requirements are not that stringent. I have bought books dating to the late 1800s in perfectly readable condition. I have been to poorly heated used bookshops with books arranged in a haphazard way. I know of the storage conditions of even some collectible books and magazines. Books bought from original owners that were kept in basements or garages.

I have no desire to pay for a device or service to read. A physical book is just fine. I'm sure the various devices are affected by fire and water. And if there is no power, then nothing to read.
 
Covid did have an impact: the shift from shopping in person to mail order has increased demand for cardboard, which forced the price of paper to go up. The price of shipping went up due to increased demand (container price went through the roof) which is a factor if you have your books printed in China/India.

What? Do you have a source for that? One of my jobs is to price boxes. Your information is not accurate. The price of paper was going up long before the virus. And long before the virus, a money grab was created. A creature called Dimensional Weight. It was adopted by the US Postal Service, UPS and FedEX. What is it? Say you have a large but light item that must go in a large box. If that box exceeds certain dimensions, even though it weighs say 11 pounds, it will be charged a lot more. The solution? One is to switch to carrying and shipping small items or to break an order down to fit into two smaller boxes to avoid paying for Dimensional Weight.

And before the virus, retail stores were getting product shipped to them in boxes.

I don't remember where I read it, so no source for that.

Dimensional weight is a recognition of the fact that shipping can be volume-limited as well as weight-limited. It's a reaction to the habit of online stores to standardize box sizes. I lost count of the number of huge boxes containing 1 tiny item I've received over the past few years. Characterizing that as a money grab is a cheap shot.

Before the virus, retail stores were getting product shipped to them in boxes
Surely you see the difference between shipping a large box containing 100 items and shipping 100 boxes containing 1 item each?
 
Its an academic publisher, all their books are in this range, personally, I`d like it to have been £40 GBP, but nobody who
sells books in that price range would publish such a text (Schiffer Publishing didnt even REPLY to my proposal for them
to publish "The Secret Horsepower Race", if you can believe it; let alone something like this).

I could of course have just self published it, but there are a lot of compromises with that route (no referrees provided, probably not hardback, probably wont get into any major libraries, probably wont be bought by any university libraries etc etc).

..............................
Was Mortons not interested, in view of the success of your TSHR book; or did they find the new book to academic?

It seems that this new book is mainly intended for the academic world, with the focus on libraries and students.
I fear that was a wrong choice.

Science and technology have moved on in the past 80 years. Students want to learn about the latest design philosophy for superchargers/turbochargers, not how it was done in the old days. Only twenty years later some of them will get interested in the history of it all.
It's no different in other engineering disciplines, like design of planes, trains and automobiles. Students want to look ahead, not back. It's only years later, when they become hobbyists, that they start looking back.

The price is now indicated as $149 but that is excluding sales tax, use tax, shipping. I have no idea what is meant by use tax, but I guess that the total price for an EU buyer could be $200 or 170 euros incl. shipping.
That's not peanuts for the average aviation hobbyist.
Will the book also be sold via well known webshops?

The problem with prices of this kind of special interest books is: the pricier the book the less copies will be sold, and because not many copies are expected to be sold the price per copy has to be high to cover all the costs.
It's a vicious circle.

The book published by ASME is indicated as a Print On Demand, so I don't see the difference if you had published it yourself as a POD.

In the Netherlands we have a well known aviation author, Theo Wesselink, who already for years self publishes his books (hardcovers with a dust cover) using POD. This is his website: https://dutchavia.nl/ where you see his books. Some webshops also sell them. All his books are written in dutch, so you may never have heard of him. He wrote a 4 volume standard work on the Fokker F.VII, covering not only the dutch planes (volume 1) but also the planes used in the rest of the world (3 volumes). I find it rather stupid that he wrote this masterpiece in dutch, but who am I.
I can't comment on the quality of the POD printing as I have none of his POD books, not because I think they are not good, but simply because I have only a superficial interest in the aviation covered by his books.

The above is not meant as criticism on the quality of the book itself, but I fear it is targeting the wrong audience: academics instead of hobbyists. As an author I would rather sell many copies, via many webshops, at an affordable price than a few high priced copies that end up in libraries and are read by very few, but who am I.
 
It's simply not a general interest book, its very much a specialist text. Callum isn't intending to get rich selling it, its a bit of engineering history that should be preserved. That purpose is best served by an academic publisher.
 
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Its an academic publisher, all their books are in this range, personally, I`d like it to have been £40 GBP, but nobody who
sells books in that price range would publish such a text (Schiffer Publishing didnt even REPLY to my proposal for them
to publish "The Secret Horsepower Race", if you can believe it; let alone something like this).

I could of course have just self published it, but there are a lot of compromises with that route (no referrees provided, probably not hardback, probably wont get into any major libraries, probably wont be bought by any university libraries etc etc).

..............................
Was Mortons not interested, in view of the success of your TSHR book; or did they find the new book to academic?

It seems that this new book is mainly intended for the academic world, with the focus on libraries and students.
I fear that was a wrong choice.

Science and technology have moved on in the past 80 years. Students want to learn about the latest design philosophy for superchargers/turbochargers, not how it was done in the old days. Only twenty years later some of them will get interested in the history of it all.
It's no different in other engineering disciplines, like design of planes, trains and automobiles. Students want to look ahead, not back. It's only years later, when they become hobbyists, that they start looking back.

The price is now indicated as $149 but that is excluding sales tax, use tax, shipping. I have no idea what is meant by use tax, but I guess that the total price for an EU buyer could be $200 or 170 euros incl. shipping.
That's not peanuts for the average aviation hobbyist.
Will the book also be sold via well known webshops?

The problem with prices of this kind of special interest books is: the pricier the book the less copies will be sold, and because not many copies are expected to be sold the price per copy has to be high to cover all the costs.
It's a vicious circle.

The book published by ASME is indicated as a Print On Demand, so I don't see the difference if you had published it yourself as a POD.

In the Netherlands we have a well known aviation author, Theo Wesselink, who already for years self publishes his books (hardcovers with a dust cover) using POD. This is his website: https://dutchavia.nl/ where you see his books. Some webshops also sell them. All his books are written in dutch, so you may never have heard of him. He wrote a 4 volume standard work on the Fokker F.VII, covering not only the dutch planes (volume 1) but also the planes used in the rest of the world (3 volumes). I find it rather stupid that he wrote this masterpiece in dutch, but who am I.
I can't comment on the quality of the POD printing as I have none of his POD books, not because I think they are not good, but simply because I have only a superficial interest in the aviation covered by his books.

The above is not meant as criticism on the quality of the book itself, but I fear it is targeting the wrong audience: academics instead of hobbyists. As an author I would rather sell many copies, via many webshops, at an affordable price than a few high priced copies that end up in libraries and are read by very few, but who am I.

The story of the finding of the manuscript, the translation, the subsequent addition to the material with a co-author, he publishing deals and discussions are complicated; and much of it is not something for public airing.

Dozens of authors have had publishing deals cancelled or indefinetly mothballed during the last 18months due to the general
"stuff" which we all know about. The conversations with one editor we had were stopped after we got an email saying he`d lost his job; one reviewer in the USA of The Secret Horsepower Race said it was a miracle such a book had even been published at all in present circumstances, let alone a book like this one above.

Publishing something yourself is fine if it just involves you, the author, and your own interest - but when you have a co-author who is a pretty serious industry expert, and three other technical reviewers on offer (one a very famous German engineer & turbojet expert), life gets more complicated.

Yes most technical students dont care about history, and are not interested in exploring the engineering fundamentals upon which their studies are based. Those students will become the average "middle of the road" engineers, a few very good students DO seek extracurricular study on principles, and those particular students will benefit from the book.

The goal here was knowledge preservation, and it has been achieved.
 
Once again: I don't question the quality of the book, or your good intentions.
It's just a pity that most aviation hobbyists will never see this new book, especially not if it will not be sold via the familiar webshops.


In march I read on another forum that you had plans to publish yet another book, together with Can Gülen, about German Turbojets of the 30`s and 40`s.
Is that project still alive?
If so it would be nice if you would open a new topic here for that book to keep us up to date with the progress.
 
Once again: I don't question the quality of the book, or your good intentions.
It's just a pity that most aviation hobbyists will never see this new book, especially not if it will not be sold via the familiar webshops.


In march I read on another forum that you had plans to publish yet another book, together with Can Gülen, about German Turbojets of the 30`s and 40`s.
Is that project still alive?
If so it would be nice if you would open a new topic here for that book to keep us up to date with the progress.

I am in full agreement with you that in an ideal world, I would like the price to have been perhaps four times less.

The jet engine book is alive but very much in early stages of planning exactly what it will cover, right now we`re not sure if another book on the Jumo 004 is really a big contribution, so we`re toying with looking at the more crazy side of German "non piston" powerplant developments as an altenative strategy. Sadly its wholly dependant on travel to Germany and German archives opening, as I`m only writing it if I have enough proper original archive materials. Right now its unclear when that will be possible, however, I think at some stage things should relax a bit. Once that occurs, I`ll open a new topic as you suggest.
 
Covid did have an impact: the shift from shopping in person to mail order has increased demand for cardboard, which forced the price of paper to go up. The price of shipping went up due to increased demand (container price went through the roof) which is a factor if you have your books printed in China/India.

What? Do you have a source for that? One of my jobs is to price boxes. Your information is not accurate. The price of paper was going up long before the virus. And long before the virus, a money grab was created. A creature called Dimensional Weight. It was adopted by the US Postal Service, UPS and FedEX. What is it? Say you have a large but light item that must go in a large box. If that box exceeds certain dimensions, even though it weighs say 11 pounds, it will be charged a lot more. The solution? One is to switch to carrying and shipping small items or to break an order down to fit into two smaller boxes to avoid paying for Dimensional Weight.

And before the virus, retail stores were getting product shipped to them in boxes.

I don't remember where I read it, so no source for that.

Dimensional weight is a recognition of the fact that shipping can be volume-limited as well as weight-limited. It's a reaction to the habit of online stores to standardize box sizes. I lost count of the number of huge boxes containing 1 tiny item I've received over the past few years. Characterizing that as a money grab is a cheap shot.

Before the virus, retail stores were getting product shipped to them in boxes
Surely you see the difference between shipping a large box containing 100 items and shipping 100 boxes containing 1 item each?

Unless you provide credible references I remain skeptical of your claims. I have been involved in warehouse operations. Dimensional Weight was created out of thin air. Yes, I know the difference between 100 items in one box as opposed to 100 boxes. My point stands that prices have gone up every single year before the current crisis. Postage, boxes and rate increases from other shipping companies. That point should be plain to anyone. Wall Street demands growth, meaning profits. Finding ways to squeeze more profits out of companies like UPS and FedEX are drivers - long before the crisis.
 
As someone who has been studying Luftwaffe technology and operations for a long time, people do publish books primarily to preserve knowledge. For posterity, as one researcher on another site put it. And I have seen many books quickly increase in price once they are no longer available from the publisher and booksellers. You can get the book on the so-called secondary market for a lot more.

Some think that publishing electronic files is the answer. That totally ignores the fact that human beings do the research, spend money on that research and devote 5, 10 or more years to complete their research as best as they are able. Recently, two highly regarded book series were delayed by the discovery of new material. Where did it come from? No answer was given.

I have been in book publishing for 40 years and this is all I do to make a living. Some think there's 'no money in it.' If that were true then I'd stop seeing new and upcoming books about the Second World War and books covering highly specific aspects of it. I'd be out of a job right now because of the current health crisis. My employer expertly navigated the situation by identifying things that needed to be done and doing them. By managing every aspect of the book production process and expanding the number of printers we use and gaining valuable information along the way. It can be done.
 
so we`re toying with looking at the more crazy side of German "non piston" powerplant developments as an altenative strategy
So things like the steam turbine powered ideas?
Anything that was nuts.:p (I think steam stuff is very much in that category)

(My co-author has a fetish for detonation engines, so they`ll probably be heavily featured (I have some quite good scientific files on those from WW2 Germany))
 
"latter days of covid terror"? What does that mean? Please refrain from spreading The Voice of Terror. I have been buying specialist books for decades and the prices were going up long before "the terror." I work in book publishing. I read the trade press. It is sheer nonsense to blame book prices on a virus. So, the books I want start at 50 Euros up to 100. This is not an isolated incident. And I have paid over 180 Dollars US for low press run, formerly classified reports.
Everything has gone up in price across the board, my reference is to every manager I have spoken to refer covid and it's effects as the cause of these rises. I do not subscribe to the over reaction of a lot of people out there. It is serious and no doubt. I cannot have the vaccine due to health problems so I assure you I take it seriously but taking precautions reduces the risk considerably. My expenses in the super market have gone up by about 20% which is not Scotch mist. Fuel prices? Take a good look around. If I am guilty of spreading the voice of terror I cannot see where or how. Take a pinch of humour with it mate, you'll do better.
 
so we`re toying with looking at the more crazy side of German "non piston" powerplant developments as an altenative strategy
So things like the steam turbine powered ideas?
Anything that was nuts.:p (I think steam stuff is very much in that category)

(My co-author has a fetish for detonation engines, so they`ll probably be heavily featured (I have some quite good scientific files on those from WW2 Germany)
The coal-powered ramjet (ahem) has a certain fascination for me...

Chris
 
As long as you have a coal crusher at the front and a gassifier in the middle. NO, not a Beverley.
 
FYI, the publisher and I have mututally decided to release an e-book version of The Secret Horsepower Race. It will be a few weeks until its prepared, and I do not know what the price-point will be yet (although it will obviously be significantly cheaper)

As sales have past the largest peak (now 7400-ish) and as I`ve been asked several times recently if there will be an e-book version, we`ve decided to do it, although it means it will be pirated almost immidiately too, but we`re probably at the stage where risk/reward on that is acceptable.

I`ll update the thread when its ready and price etc is known.
 
What a sad state of affairs when something is "pirated almost immediately." I've seen it with the books the company I work for publishes.
 
FYI, the publisher and I have mututally decided to release an e-book version of The Secret Horsepower Race. It will be a few weeks until its prepared, and I do not know what the price-point will be yet (although it will obviously be significantly cheaper)

As sales have past the largest peak (now 7400-ish) and as I`ve been asked several times recently if there will be an e-book version, we`ve decided to do it, although it means it will be pirated almost immidiately too, but we`re probably at the stage where risk/reward on that is acceptable.

I`ll update the thread when its ready and price etc is known.
An ebook makes economic sense and ought to limit piracy as much as anything.

Piracy is only a threat to books that are overpriced or in limited supply. As long as your ebook is reasonably priced and available, it should saturate your remaining market by gathering in any would-be readers who were deterred by the high cost of the initial print version. Most readers prefer a publisher's copy at a decent price to an illegitimate version--at least if they do not feel (reasonably or unreasonably) that they are being gouged. Readers that will only read a book if it is free probably would not have bought (or even read) the book anyway. So you lose nothing from them. ANd pirates gain nothing.

In the US, extensive piracy--the sale of unauthorized copies of a copyrighted book--has traditionally been interpreted as a symptom of an artificially high price or an artificially limited press run, both of which are technically abuses of copyright. Academic publishers used to be notorious for this, particularly those based in the UK. US music and movie companies still are. The price of every commodity falls naturally until it approaches the cost of producing it. Copy right laws recognize this. Thy do not guarantee a publisher, much less a lowly author, a price that will cover the cost of a book. They only guarantee that the author and his/her publisher will be able to supply all of the demand for the book, without competition from third parties, and will thus be able to get as much profit from it as a free market would allow.

A copyright is a monopoly, legally sanctioned and limited to varying degrees by the laws of various jurisdictions. But it is not exempt from economic reality. In practice, a monopoly of this kind only works as long as the publication is made available in a quantity that will meet the demand and at the equivalent of a fair market price. If copies aren't available or are priced significantly higher than their cost of production, price throttles demand. At that poin, the free market takes over and competitors pirate the book.

Pirates do not get to sell books for free. In any given period, they have the same means of reproduction and distribution available to legitimate publisher and thus the same approximate costs. They also lack the resources, expertise, and production sophistication of a legitimate publisher. So, pirates can only thrive when they can dramatically undercut the publisher on price, and that can only happen if the publisher's prices are significantly higher than the true cost of production.

This is now generally the case. Digital composition, typesetting, and distribution have radically reduced publication costs without, for the most part, significantly reducing the cost of publications or increasing authors' royalties. This has the effect of unsustainably increasing short-term profits at the expense of volume, revenue, and long-term industry health.
 
What an incredible bit of nonsense. Piracy, right now, consists of copying ebooks and printed books. There is no "philosophy" behind it aside from getting something for nothing. In pre-internet days, my company got calls from large volume copying companies where a person would walk in with one of our books and want to copy the whole thing. We never said yes to such a blatant copyright violation.

Price has nothing to do with it. Like the Black Market except it can also be a single individual who would rather make a pirated copy. He may or may not be interested in making additional copies to sell. The publisher should legally be free of piracy. My company contacts anyone who copies our books illegally and offers them for download. They are obligated under law to take those copies off their site even if they are charging nothing.

The rest of the above is rubbish.
 
A small update, the German language version will be released next year, probably something like October 2022. The translation has begun in ernest. One nice thing about that version is that obviously all the quotes from German documents can be printed in their original form, we wont "double translate" my translation back to German again.

The Italian version is more advanced in progress, and is currently in final proof reading stage, I would hope it will be available from about March 2022 onwards. The Italian version is significantly longer than either the German or English versions, as for their market the Italian publisher decided that making it a "no-compromose enthusiasts" book was the best way, and so we have not shrunk down any of the images, or cut any text. So its absolutely MONSTROUS, literally the size of a telephone book, 600 pages A4. We did not cut very much text during making the Mortons version, maybe 1%, which was mostly trimming down a few huge sections of the RLM stenographic conference discussions, some of which I`d got a bit too enthusiastic about reproducing in large contigous blocks without cuts. Nothing spellbindling important was removed, but if you enjoy those discussions, the Italian version will probably be a small improvement.

Anyway, there you go!
 
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Calum, perhaps I missed it on the first read in the book, but I wonder why the DB 605 diving rpm limit was so low? According to RRHT books, the Merlin's maximum momentary diving rpm was 3600 rpm and according to Whitney the later models of the V-1710 safely tolerated over 4000 rpm. Yet according to the DB 605 manual, there was only 2 % tolerance over the 2800 rpm limit. Thus if 2856 rpm (2800 + 2 %) was even momentarily exceeded, the manual says that engine must be sent to the factory.
 
Calum, perhaps I missed it on the first read in the book, but I wonder why the DB 605 diving rpm limit was so low? According to RRHT books, the Merlin's maximum momentary diving rpm was 3600 rpm and according to Whitney the later models of the V-1710 safely tolerated over 4000 rpm. Yet according to the DB 605 manual, there was only 2 % tolerance over the 2800 rpm limit. Thus if 2856 rpm (2800 + 2 %) was even momentarily exceeded, the manual says that engine must be sent to the factory.
The answer is probably to be found in my translation of Kollmann`s memoirs.

See page 109:

=========
Experience indicates that, in high-speed dives and at low compressor airflow rates, elevated compressor temperatures
are encountered. Due to this experience, with light-alloy impellers of half-open design, it is normal for
the safe temperature limit of the material (180 to 200°C) to result in a practical limitation of around 380 m/s for
the impeller tip speed. If the impeller is manufactured from magnesium alloys, this limit is lower still.

=========

It is possible that the Rolls-Royce alloys for the supercharger impellers MAY have had slightly superior mechanical properties at high temperatures. But this is to an extent, guesswork. I would need to make quite a time consuming investigation to answer this fully... it is also possible that this potential temperature increase (in combination with the "interesting" problems with valves and spark plugs) might have induced detonation or pre-ignition. It is also possible that oil supply may have been a factor, or even the bearings.
 
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The jet engine book is alive but very much in early stages of planning exactly what it will cover, right now we`re not sure if another book on the Jumo 004 is really a big contribution, so we`re toying with looking at the more crazy side of German "non piston" powerplant developments as an altenative strategy. Sadly its wholly dependant on travel to Germany and German archives opening, as I`m only writing it if I have enough proper original archive materials. Right now its unclear when that will be possible, however, I think at some stage things should relax a bit. Once that occurs, I`ll open a new topic as you suggest.

Back in the eighties, Allison engines in Indianapolis, which is now a division of RR, was still trying to develop coal powered jet engines. I'm just saying, if you're looking for some information on the crazy German ideas, I'm sure they have info from the German research into coal powered jet engines.
 

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