Alertkin,
I have the photos of the Mercedes in the shop at Nightingale Road, Derby in 1914... and the new crankshaft we made for it as the original was not good enough! The basic concept was useful to Rolls but it was a much improved engine that superficilly looked like the Mercedes that emerged... but that is a story for another time. The highly beneficial collaboration between Ford in the UK and RR Deby is a story that shows how Hives was a willing leader in setting that up... the shadow factory at Trafford... where the Temple to retail now sits... came on stream extremely quickly... another story..Note nearly 100 Ford personnel were at Derby to understand and prepare drawings for the mass-produced Merlin, as distinct from the craft-produced Derby ones, and the batch produced Crewe ones.. ideal for reacting to German improvements in their engines and then rolling out in larger numbers. Hopefully this story will get published under the working title of 'Oliver's Merlins' soon...
So my conversations with Jim Boal and others about working with P&W in the 40s does not necessarily support the general view that has grown up over the years.
The Conway story started out in Oct 1946 with the start of the BJ 45 and as power requirements increased so iterations (Oct 47, Apr 48) took place around the basic BJ45 configuration. The actual RB.80 designation was a later development... but many pundits assume that because the B stands for Barnoldswick then that is where the design was done. In fact the RB became the general Rolls prefix when design office finally moved to Derby mid-1948 and the Barlic design project register continued to be used. The Avon had started at Derby and then transferred to Barlic only in 1947 to be moved back... due to the appalling performance and the need to get all of Derby's knowledge into solving its problems. The final iteration of the BJ 45 bypass principle was Oct 1948 when it was given the designation RB.80.
The bypass concept originated in RR when Griffith continued to think about jet propulsion he started at Farnborough (as we have discussed elsewhere in the thread)
Griffith recounted his bypass activities:
"The first RR scheme exhibiting the bypass principle was CT56, which was done by DE [Don Eyre] in 1940. This was, of course, a multi-spool type. My own first thoughts on the subject were late in 1939, but as DE had not joined me then. ...In 1946, came a two-spool scheme whose compressors were cooked up from the Avon and Tweed compressors. A paper based on this was submitted to the TJR Sub-Committee of the ARC about November or December 1946."
...tbc
