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

[edwest4]

Another aside if I may. Google was sued by authors for copyright infringement. I post the following only to substantiate my claim:

Authors Guild v. Google Settlement Resources Page - The Authors Guild

October 28, 2008. On this page, we've gathered documents and links that will be of interest to authors and others regarding this settlement.

www.authorsguild.org

In the present, I continue to find infringing websites that have illegally copied, and offer for sale, books produced by the company I work for.

On a prominent website, the history of my company is given, complete with glaring inaccuracies. But, since any idiot has access, at least one attempt by a person within my company to remove those inaccuracies has resulted in unnamed pesons simply putting them back. The internet can be used for bad ends in terms of muddying the waters between fact and fiction.

 

[steelpillow]

On a prominent website, the history of my company is given, complete with glaring inaccuracies. But, since any idiot has access, at least one attempt by a person within my company to remove those inaccuracies has resulted in unnamed pesons simply putting them back.

If that happens to be Wikipedia, drop me a PM with the page name and I will see what I can do.

 

[edwest4]

Thank you for your kind offer. This matter can only be handled internally.

 

[Calum Douglas]

Just like to make a big shout of thanks to everyone on this thread who has:

1) Bought a copy
2) Pointed out errors/typos
3) Made suggestions
4) Made encouraging noises
5) Made reasoned critique

We`ve nearly sold 5000 copies, which is well over double what I assumed would be the total lifetime sales of the book.

My editor @newsdeskdan also deserves a lot of credit, due to his own work on WW2, his contribution has been more significant than that of just any old "editor", also
to Mortons for signing me up.

The greatest credit must however go to a select few Archive curators (you know who you are), who went far beyond the call of duty and basically threw me the keys and said "go wild", and literally just left me to it with a camera for weeks on end. The primary reason this book is any good is because of the huge volume of documents I managed to copy.

 

[pravg]

I'm afraid this will be another British minded book. I hope to be wrong.

If you wish to have a full answer for that you will have to define VERY SPECIFICALLY what the phrase "british minded" means to you.

For example, if I were German and I critisised the British Air Ministry, would that be regarded as a "german minded" book,
even if I were correct in my point ?

Given that I speak German, used to live and work there (as a piston engine designer) and am on good personal terms with the son of the chief designer of Daimler-Benz, places
me in a difficult position, any compliments I make towards Germany can be regarded as trying to please Germans, and being British, any comments
I make lauding the achievements of Britain can be regarded as jingoism; and any critisism I make of Americans could be regarded as
trans-atlantic sour-grapes.

I can promise that the book exposes scullduggery, fraud, deception and incompetence in fairly equal measure between all nations,
but the key to who won, was how this was dealt with and at which positions of influence these problems manifested. That was the
deciding factor. (a rather horribly paraphrased answer, but the proper explanation is 220,000words long )

FYI, I am currently also preparing the technical memoirs of Professor Dr-Ing Karl Kollmann, dated 1947 for publication, this was given
to me personally by his son to translate to English. No other person in the world has this document in their posession, so I consider
myself, unapologetically, to be in a suitable position to point out errors in German policy and to explain why they occured.

The book contains scathing critisism for British pre-war technical policy, and delivers astonishingly candid views on American failings, written
by a very famous engineer in 1942 (again, never previously pubished). Never for the purpose of creating controversy gratuitously, but
because it is impossible to explain what happened and why, without understanding the errors made.

Just received your book. Amazingly complete. One of the most interesting books on engine development I have read. Living in Munich and having been a member of the Royal aeronautical society over there, I searched for similar information in the early 1980's but never got that far as you. Congratulations!

 

[Calum Douglas]

I'm afraid this will be another British minded book. I hope to be wrong.

If you wish to have a full answer for that you will have to define VERY SPECIFICALLY what the phrase "british minded" means to you.

For example, if I were German and I critisised the British Air Ministry, would that be regarded as a "german minded" book,
even if I were correct in my point ?

Given that I speak German, used to live and work there (as a piston engine designer) and am on good personal terms with the son of the chief designer of Daimler-Benz, places
me in a difficult position, any compliments I make towards Germany can be regarded as trying to please Germans, and being British, any comments
I make lauding the achievements of Britain can be regarded as jingoism; and any critisism I make of Americans could be regarded as
trans-atlantic sour-grapes.

I can promise that the book exposes scullduggery, fraud, deception and incompetence in fairly equal measure between all nations,
but the key to who won, was how this was dealt with and at which positions of influence these problems manifested. That was the
deciding factor. (a rather horribly paraphrased answer, but the proper explanation is 220,000words long )

FYI, I am currently also preparing the technical memoirs of Professor Dr-Ing Karl Kollmann, dated 1947 for publication, this was given
to me personally by his son to translate to English. No other person in the world has this document in their posession, so I consider
myself, unapologetically, to be in a suitable position to point out errors in German policy and to explain why they occured.

The book contains scathing critisism for British pre-war technical policy, and delivers astonishingly candid views on American failings, written
by a very famous engineer in 1942 (again, never previously pubished). Never for the purpose of creating controversy gratuitously, but
because it is impossible to explain what happened and why, without understanding the errors made.

Just received your book. Amazingly complete. One of the most interesting books on engine development I have read. Living in Munich and having been a member of the Royal aeronautical society over there, I searched for similar information in the early 1980's but never got that far as you. Congratulations!

Thanks !

One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the information was not declassified until recently. Not of course due to any actual national security considerations, but probably just that either they had a "fixed" period of classification or that they were only released after someone wrote angry letters protesting how stupid it was that they were not released. Because of this, it was in fact, absolutely impossible to write this book prior to about 1972 (when all the AIR-40 files of British Air Intelligence were released), so basically anything written before then is (through no fault of the authors of the time) so incomplete as to be useless. In fact some of the files I used were "closed" until 1991, if you can believe it.

In addition, an even bigger consideration, is technical. I would never have been able to write this without the RLM stenographic record digitised with OCR onto PDF. This is about 100,000 pages of 35mm microfilm, about 35% of the characters were recondnisable to the OCR software on scanning. So basically I could do keyword searches of these pages and find all the critical discussions, and also track the dates when certain specific problems were discussed, or when certain persons were present in meetings.

Maybe even 15 years ago this would have been impossible for a private individual (it cost me a lot of money even now).

One can easily imagine how any other researcher/author would just have given up without such digital resources. I was the first person to ever have these records digitised and OCR scanned, so its not surprising that your attempts in the early 80`s did not succeed. At the time I would also have failed.

 

[Trident]

That is some interesting perspective Calum - still working my way through the book, and I find your participation here an enlightening complement to it for comments like this!

 

[steelpillow]

I'm afraid this will be another British minded book. I hope to be wrong.

I think your best indicator of this is that THERE ARE NO SPITFIRES ON THE COVER. Your fears are groundless. The book is wholly preoccupied with the technology and its history, as revealed through recently-opened original sources. And many of those are German voices.

 

[Hood]

I think your best indicator of this is that THERE ARE NO SPITFIRES ON THE COVER. Your fears are groundless. The book is wholly preoccupied with the technology and its history, as revealed through recently-opened original sources. And many of those are German voices.

The Tempest is in the lead though, with those pesky Jerries and Yanks trailing behind the product of Camm and Halford's genius! (I jest of course!)

As I have said before, this is a remarkably even-handed book, every side gets their fair share of praise and criticism. In any case the reader can assess all the evidence presented and make up their own minds.

 

[pravg]

I'm afraid this will be another British minded book. I hope to be wrong.

If you wish to have a full answer for that you will have to define VERY SPECIFICALLY what the phrase "british minded" means to you.

For example, if I were German and I critisised the British Air Ministry, would that be regarded as a "german minded" book,
even if I were correct in my point ?

Given that I speak German, used to live and work there (as a piston engine designer) and am on good personal terms with the son of the chief designer of Daimler-Benz, places
me in a difficult position, any compliments I make towards Germany can be regarded as trying to please Germans, and being British, any comments
I make lauding the achievements of Britain can be regarded as jingoism; and any critisism I make of Americans could be regarded as
trans-atlantic sour-grapes.

I can promise that the book exposes scullduggery, fraud, deception and incompetence in fairly equal measure between all nations,
but the key to who won, was how this was dealt with and at which positions of influence these problems manifested. That was the
deciding factor. (a rather horribly paraphrased answer, but the proper explanation is 220,000words long )

FYI, I am currently also preparing the technical memoirs of Professor Dr-Ing Karl Kollmann, dated 1947 for publication, this was given
to me personally by his son to translate to English. No other person in the world has this document in their posession, so I consider
myself, unapologetically, to be in a suitable position to point out errors in German policy and to explain why they occured.

The book contains scathing critisism for British pre-war technical policy, and delivers astonishingly candid views on American failings, written
by a very famous engineer in 1942 (again, never previously pubished). Never for the purpose of creating controversy gratuitously, but
because it is impossible to explain what happened and why, without understanding the errors made.

Just received your book. Amazingly complete. One of the most interesting books on engine development I have read. Living in Munich and having been a member of the Royal aeronautical society over there, I searched for similar information in the early 1980's but never got that far as you. Congratulations!

Thanks !

One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the information was not declassified until recently. Not of course due to any actual national security considerations, but probably just that either they had a "fixed" period of classification or that they were only released after someone wrote angry letters protesting how stupid it was that they were not released. Because of this, it was in fact, absolutely impossible to write this book prior to about 1972 (when all the AIR-40 files of British Air Intelligence were released), so basically anything written before then is (through no fault of the authors of the time) so incomplete as to be useless. In fact some of the files I used were "closed" until 1991, if you can believe it.

In addition, an even bigger consideration, is technical. I would never have been able to write this without the RLM stenographic record digitised with OCR onto PDF. This is about 100,000 pages of 35mm microfilm, about 35% of the characters were recondnisable to the OCR software on scanning. So basically I could do keyword searches of these pages and find all the critical discussions, and also track the dates when certain specific problems were discussed, or when certain persons were present in meetings.

Maybe even 15 years ago this would have been impossible for a private individual (it cost me a lot of money even now).

One can easily imagine how any other researcher/author would just have given up without such digital resources. I was the first person to ever have these records digitised and OCR scanned, so its not surprising that your attempts in the early 80`s did not succeed. At the time I would also have failed.

Many thanks for your explanations which show that digitalisation opens new worlds of information. Nevertheless I praised myself lucky to have at my disposal the technical library of the European Patent Office and that of the Deutsches Museum, just opposite where I worked. Of course I found many interesting documents but In view of the gaps even more questions arose. Your book closes many of these gaps. Having not yet finished reading the book I noticed the reference to an early detonation sensor system developed at the Farnborough laboratory ( pages 67 and 68). Unfortunately the description is not sufficiently clear about the functioning. Earlier systems worked with magneto restriction sensors but here a piezo sensor is involved. Do you have more information?

 

[Calum Douglas]

Many thanks for your explanations which show that digitalisation opens new worlds of information. Nevertheless I praised myself lucky to have at my disposal the technical library of the European Patent Office and that of the Deutsches Museum, just opposite where I worked. Of course I found many interesting documents but In view of the gaps even more questions arose. Your book closes many of these gaps. Having not yet finished reading the book I noticed the reference to an early detonation sensor system developed at the Farnborough laboratory ( pages 67 and 68). Unfortunately the description is not sufficiently clear about the functioning. Earlier systems worked with magneto restriction sensors but here a piezo sensor is involved. Do you have more information?

All that Griffith said is reproduced in the book. However, using a circuit diagram from IG Farben labs at the same sort of time (1942) I would make the following "best guess"

Here we have an amplifier circuit for piezo sensor used to detect knock, the Thyratron vacuum valve is shown as: "S1/0,2" (right hand side about 1/3 down the page). In this amplifier circuit, when detonation occurs, the system can be "tuned" such that at the prescribed input level, the current in the Thyratron collapses when knocking starts. Here, you can see they register this audibly (below and to the right of the valve), marked: "Lautsprecher". I would speculate (possibly incorrectly), that the electric eye Griffith mentions, may be used instead of a loud speaker, by looking AT the Thyratron itself, to register the variation in glow. Its possible that such a method might allow for more control in understanding the variation in the current, however, I am really just guessing there and I`m uncertain why you would bother with the eye when you can just (presumably) also just connect those terminals to a CRT based oscilloscope.

However, I have never built a valve amplifier, or used a Thyratron valve, so I would bow to the opinion of a proper electrical engineer on this matter.

 

[edwest4]

Regarding declassification, there are rules. One document I recently ran across was classified for 100 years. Later, the classification date was changed. Those in charge of classified information are immune to complaints. In the US, one President signed an order to accelerate declassification and it was applied to some documents. For others, nothing changed. When it comes to technology, those in charge of sensitive material do not want the current enemy or potential enemies getting their hands on anything that might be useful.

Calum, I do appreciate your posting the IG Farben document. It opens up additional research possibilities. IG Farben was the world's largest chemical cartel at the time and it would make sense that such electronic equipment would be used by them. However, the particular diagram shows the use of electronics a bit more sophisticated than I expected for the year in question.

 

[pravg]

Many thanks for your explanations which show that digitalisation opens new worlds of information. Nevertheless I praised myself lucky to have at my disposal the technical library of the European Patent Office and that of the Deutsches Museum, just opposite where I worked. Of course I found many interesting documents but In view of the gaps even more questions arose. Your book closes many of these gaps. Having not yet finished reading the book I noticed the reference to an early detonation sensor system developed at the Farnborough laboratory ( pages 67 and 68). Unfortunately the description is not sufficiently clear about the functioning. Earlier systems worked with magneto restriction sensors but here a piezo sensor is involved. Do you have more information?

All that Griffith said is reproduced in the book. However, using a circuit diagram from IG Farben labs at the same sort of time (1942) I would make the following "best guess"

Here we have an amplifier circuit for piezo sensor used to detect knock, the Thyratron vacuum valve is shown as: "S1/0,2" (right hand side about 1/3 down the page). In this amplifier circuit, when detonation occurs, the system can be "tuned" such that at the prescribed input level, the current in the Thyratron collapses when knocking starts. Here, you can see they register this audibly (below and to the right of the valve), marked: "Lautsprecher". I would speculate (possibly incorrectly), that the electric eye Griffith mentions, may be used instead of a loud speaker, by looking AT the Thyratron itself, to register the variation in glow. Its possible that such a method might allow for more control in understanding the variation in the current, however, I am really just guessing there and I`m uncertain why you would bother with the eye when you can just (presumably) also just connect those terminals to a CRT based oscilloscope.

However, I have never built a valve amplifier, or used a Thyratron valve, so I would bow to the opinion of a proper electrical engineer on this matter.

View attachment 654981

Many thanks for the response! I'll study the case further and give my opinion later.

 

[Zoo Tycoon]

All that Griffith said is reproduced in the book. However, using a circuit diagram from IG Farben labs at the same sort of time (1942) I would make the following "best guess"

Here we have an amplifier circuit for piezo sensor used to detect knock, the Thyratron vacuum valve is shown as: "S1/0,2" (right hand side about 1/3 down the page). In this amplifier circuit, when detonation occurs, the system can be "tuned" such that at the prescribed input level, the current in the Thyratron collapses when knocking starts. Here, you can see they register this audibly (below and to the right of the valve), marked: "Lautsprecher". I would speculate (possibly incorrectly), that the electric eye Griffith mentions, may be used instead of a loud speaker, by looking AT the Thyratron itself, to register the variation in glow. Its possible that such a method might allow for more control in understanding the variation in the current, however, I am really just guessing there and I`m uncertain why you would bother with the eye when you can just (presumably) also just connect those terminals to a CRT based oscilloscope.

However, I have never built a valve amplifier, or used a Thyratron valve, so I would bow to the opinion of a proper electrical engineer on this matter.

View attachment 654981

An electrically minded friend with a passion for valve based electrickery, told me it looks more like a piece of lab based equipment, noting it runs on European mains voltage, and would need constant manual tuning to keep up with a bunch of constantly changing parameters.

Hope this helps.

 

[steelpillow]

An electrically minded friend with a passion for valve based electrickery, told me it looks more like a piece of lab based equipment, noting it runs on European mains voltage, and would need constant manual tuning to keep up with a bunch of constantly changing parameters.

Yes, this is surely a piece of lab kit and not something to go in an operational fighter. The loudspeaker especially would serve little purpose in the noisy cockpit!
The thyratron is basically a gas discharge tube, a high-current fluorescent light, with a grid type control electrode in the middle. The rest of the circuit is just a frequency-selective high-gain AC amplifier to feed that grid a strong enough signal.
But it's a long time since I did this stuff for a living and valves were rare even then, so I am unsure whether the knock signal will be reducing or increasing the current and consequent light output. The DC bias set via P3 controls the overall brightness, while the AC knock signal controls the flickering and it will alternate brighter/dimmer at the frequency of the knocking. This is too fast to see but, because the thyratron is highly nonlinear around the discharge threshold and there may be some hysteresis effect (on and off thresholds differing), either the brightening or the dimming will dominate. But I am not sure which.

 

[pravg]

Many thanks for your explanations which show that digitalisation opens new worlds of information. Nevertheless I praised myself lucky to have at my disposal the technical library of the European Patent Office and that of the Deutsches Museum, just opposite where I worked. Of course I found many interesting documents but In view of the gaps even more questions arose. Your book closes many of these gaps. Having not yet finished reading the book I noticed the reference to an early detonation sensor system developed at the Farnborough laboratory ( pages 67 and 68). Unfortunately the description is not sufficiently clear about the functioning. Earlier systems worked with magneto restriction sensors but here a piezo sensor is involved. Do you have more information?

All that Griffith said is reproduced in the book. However, using a circuit diagram from IG Farben labs at the same sort of time (1942) I would make the following "best guess"

Here we have an amplifier circuit for piezo sensor used to detect knock, the Thyratron vacuum valve is shown as: "S1/0,2" (right hand side about 1/3 down the page). In this amplifier circuit, when detonation occurs, the system can be "tuned" such that at the prescribed input level, the current in the Thyratron collapses when knocking starts. Here, you can see they register this audibly (below and to the right of the valve), marked: "Lautsprecher". I would speculate (possibly incorrectly), that the electric eye Griffith mentions, may be used instead of a loud speaker, by looking AT the Thyratron itself, to register the variation in glow. Its possible that such a method might allow for more control in understanding the variation in the current, however, I am really just guessing there and I`m uncertain why you would bother with the eye when you can just (presumably) also just connect those terminals to a CRT based oscilloscope.

However, I have never built a valve amplifier, or used a Thyratron valve, so I would bow to the opinion of a proper electrical engineer on this matter.

View attachment 654981

Being aware of the laboratory instruments for detecting knock in engines (see https://core.ac.uk/reader/4399502 for a nice overview of what was the state of the art in 1938) a system for cockpit use in a WWII airplane was unknown to me. I have not found it in any pictures in documents showing the Spitfire cockpit layout (see https://orbx-user-guides.storage.go...ations-a2a-spitfire-pro-user-guide-a3ae72.pdf or https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/...uals/Dunkirk_Spitfire_manual.pdf?t=1537258460).
But perhaps the latest models or other planes could have had such an option. Who knows more?
Coming to a knock indicating system for cockpit use as described by Dr Griffith, it is said to have a piezo-electric pick-up, a thyratron tube and an “electric eye”, which would indicate the severity of detonation (see page 67 of the book).
There is no mention that the thyratron tube is used as the indicator. However, what is said on page 68 of the book appears to be the logical consequence of an arrangement in which the intensity of thyratron glow is determined by a phototube. This is somewhat different than what was usually done because in the laboratory devices the thyratron output was mostly directed to a crt screen.
The first question arises as to why a phototube is used because the output signal of the thyratron could also be used as a control signal, for example for some optical dashboard indicator. In so far there is also no information about what is done with the phototube output signal, in particular in what manner the pilot is informed about the knocking engine.
The second question is why one would use a thyratron (essentially a very fast one-way switch). Perhaps it was necessary to be able to respond to the fast succession of piezo-sensor knock pulses? Or are the non-linear properties, referred to by steelpillow, in conjunction with the phototube of some importance?
In this respect a further question arises as to how such a system would be applied to a multi-cylinder engine, in particular the V-12 Merlin engine? That appears to be a further step away from the laboratory instruments which concern 1-cylinder engines. It may well be that that proved to be a burden too high.
Many thanks for the “Schaltbild zum Klopfmessgerät”!
I also think it works in the manner as explained by steelpillow and is essentially a laboratory device. However, I am not sure what sound effect is heard when the engine starts knocking and what function the “Ladestrom” plug has.
As regards the surprising sophistication of the electrical arrangement dated 1942 it should not be forgotten that these sorts of electrical circuits were held secret and publication was only many years later.

 

[steelpillow]

I am not sure what sound effect is heard when the engine starts knocking and what function the “Ladestrom” plug has.

The sound would be a raw buzzing at the knock frequency. Assuming one cylinder starts up first, that would be half the RPM, perhaps around 1200 Hz or two octaves above middle C.

The ladestrom connector is an output of some kind, possibly a test signal for setup and calibration. It appears to be short-circuited with a wire link during regular operation.

 

[Calum Douglas]

If anyone is sad enough to actually claim to want to read it I might upload it to my website. This is fairly interesting as it relates to electronic differentiation made to measure pressure acceleration (i.e. to get a more clearcut sign of detonation than looking at the pressure time curve).

 

[Hobbes]

I am not sure what sound effect is heard when the engine starts knocking and what function the “Ladestrom” plug has.

The sound would be a raw buzzing at the knock frequency. Assuming one cylinder starts up first, that would be half the RPM, perhaps around 1200 Hz or two octaves above middle C.

The ladestrom connector is an output of some kind, possibly a test signal for setup and calibration. It appears to be short-circuited with a wire link during regular operation.

Ladestrom = charge current

 

[steelpillow]

I have been slow on the uptake (memories took a bit of rummaging for). First of all, a "magic eye" in this context is the light-emitting tube itself. The idea of a receiving optical sensor is a red herring. The thyratron is the magic eye.

I am not sure what ... function the “Ladestrom” plug has.

The ladestrom connector is an output of some kind, possibly a test signal for setup and calibration. It appears to be short-circuited with a wire link during regular operation.

Ladestrom = charge current

Google translate is not one's best source for technical translation. The exact transliteration would be "charging current", as "laden" is a verb; the noun is "aufladung". However, in different contexts a given term may translate in different ways. Here, the signal is pure AC with no DC component (there is a blocking capacitor), so it cannot mean the conventional kind of charging. With the link in place as drawn, the only thing being "charged" is the speaker. That does not carry any sensible translation, so one must look at the possible uses for the connector. Hence my ambivalence.
I have now realised that this could be an input connector, through which a test signal would be injected to tickle up the thyratron's cathode and check it is working. Still not sure about that.

If anyone is sad enough to actually claim to want to read it I might upload it to my website. This is fairly interesting as it relates to electronic differentiation made to measure pressure acceleration (i.e. to get a more clearcut sign of detonation than looking at the pressure time curve).

Makes sense. The sharp, energetic leading edge of the knock vibration would be its most noticeable characteristic and the easiest to pick out from the background noise. But I'll decline the long read, my head is too full of other things these days.

 

[Calum Douglas]

For those of you with serious engineering interest, I will be part of the expert panel of presenters at the Siemens 22nd Internal Combustion Engine Conference on 7th May, which concentrates on computational fluid dynamics and engine simulations. I will be presenting my thoughts on the most valuable aspects of WW2 military aero engine thermal management techniques (basically cooling systems and the impact on knock limits). Other presenters will be from Ferrari and similar contemporary institutions. This is not a one-off, Siemens Digital Industries sponsor me as a software partner. Note, this is intended for practising professional engineers, and is NOT a historical presentation. I imagine several members on here are qualified enough to enjoy the content however.

I am presenting for 40minuites beginning at 10:10am EST.

Siemens Virtual ICE Conference 2021

Internal combustion engine; automotive powertrain.

www.plm.automation.siemens.com

 

[Basil]

View attachment 655073

If anyone is sad enough to actually claim to want to read it I might upload it to my website. This is fairly interesting as it relates to electronic differentiation made to measure pressure acceleration (i.e. to get a more clearcut sign of detonation than looking at the pressure time curve).

Calum, an upload would be great.

 

[Basil]

View attachment 655073

If anyone is sad enough to actually claim to want to read it I might upload it to my website. This is fairly interesting as it relates to electronic differentiation made to measure pressure acceleration (i.e. to get a more clearcut sign of detonation than looking at the pressure time curve).

In the US there were similar developments in the field of engine knock detection for aircraft engines. Attached is a patent from Honeywell from 1946:

US2523017A - Detonation detector system - Google Patents

And a another:

US2508996A - Detonation indicator - Google Patents

 

[Zoo Tycoon]

Maybe of interest to readers;-

Napier Secret Report on Annular Radiators fitted to Hawker Tempest Oct 1945 | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Napier Secret Report on Annular Radiators fitted to Hawker Tempest Oct 1945 at the best online prices at eBay! Free delivery for many products.

www.ebay.co.uk

A bit too much for me at present but it needs to good home.

Original Napier documents of this period are rare.

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

135 pounds for 8 pages of report... that's a bit expensive

 

[WJPearce]

135 pounds for 8 pages of report... that's a bit expensive

Yup. I've been watching it for a while, and they have not budged on the price.

 

[Calum Douglas]

135 pounds for 8 pages of report... that's a bit expensive

Yup. I've been watching it for a while, and they have not budged on the price.

This report was also basically published in shortened form by FLIGHT magazine. 25th July 1946.

Sadly I think FLIGHT has decided to delete their online archive, the wonders of our new
digital information age at work.

I have no sympathy for sellers of documents like that for such a price, sheer greed when
the Institute of Mechanical Engineers in London has a big Napier archive, and
the asking price for those 8 pages is more than the cost of joining them.

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

This report was also basically published in shortened form by FLIGHT magazine. 25th July 1946.

Sadly I think FLIGHT has decided to delete their online archive, the wonders of our new
digital information age at work.

I have no sympathy for sellers of documents like that for such a price, sheer greed when
the Institute of Mechanical Engineers in London has a big Napier archive, and
the asking price for those 8 pages is more than the cost of joining them.


View attachment 656282

 

[Schneiderman]

A few lines missing but otherwise OK (the product of a long boring morning with nothing to do )

 

[WJPearce]

Thank you all!

 

[spicmart]

This report was also basically published in shortened form by FLIGHT magazine. 25th July 1946.

Sadly I think FLIGHT has decided to delete their online archive, the wonders of our new
digital information age at work.

I have no sympathy for sellers of documents like that for such a price, sheer greed when
the Institute of Mechanical Engineers in London has a big Napier archive, and
the asking price for those 8 pages is more than the cost of joining them.


View attachment 656282

A few lines missing but otherwise OK (the product of a long boring morning with nothing to do )

May I post these attachments elsewhere?

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

Sadly I think FLIGHT has decided to delete their online archive, the wonders of our new
digital information age at work.

I think they decided to 'monetize' it. It wasn't done very well (compare AWST), but for free it was fine, so I think they wanted to make it better and then charge for access.

 

[Schneiderman]

May I post these attachments elsewhere?

Its just a assembly of images taken from ebay so no problem

 

[spicmart]

May I post these attachments elsewhere?

Its just a assembly of images taken from ebay so no problem

Thanks. The Napier Annular.pdf as well?

 

[Calum Douglas]

Hi Everyone,
For the very serious engine fans, I`m co-presenting a quite interesting in-progress report on an attempt to recreate
the DB601 dual-fuel sparkless combustion system ("Ringverfahren") I talk about in my book - at the Siemens Digital
Industries engine conference.

I will be presenting a very short overview of the original workings, then Professor Fontanesi (head of Gruppomotori at
modena University) will present an update on the challenges we`ve faced trying to recreate this system in CFD as a
computer model. The chemistry challanges are significant, especially when involving TEL doped fuels.

There are a lot of speakers, but to simplfy matters, I`m on first and Professor Fontanesi 2nd.

Anyone can register, free here:

European ICE Conference 2021

Watch the recordings of the European ICE Conference 2021 to learn about the latest insights on in-cylinder CFD simulation.

www.plm.automation.siemens.com

 

[Calum Douglas]

I`ve added a bit of material to my website, which I might expand upon in time. At the moment just an article on the Strategic Oil Bombing Campaign, and
a bit on fuel octane testing.

The Strategic Oil Bombing Campaign - Calum Douglas

© Calum E. Douglas, 27th July 2021. The bombing of Germany continues to elicit a great deal of controversy. The views range from “All is fair in love and war, what did Germany expect?” through to: “The Allies lost the moral high-ground by intentionally obliterating civilian areas, the means are...

www.calum-douglas.com

Engine Fuel Octane Ratings – A Short History – Calum Douglas

 

[Dagger]

Nice info.

As a chemical engineer with 30 years experience in design of petroleum and petrochemical processes I have never understood why it took so long for the western allies to decimate the German fuel production.
Nothing is simpler than knocking out a plant filled with combustible hydrocarbons: some bombs to open up some piping and equipment, followed a little later by some incendiary devices to set them ablaze.
It should have been priority number one from day one yet it took until 1944 before it really became serious.

 

[Calum Douglas]

Nice info.

As a chemical engineer with 30 years experience in design of petroleum and petrochemical processes I have never understood why it took so long for the western allies to decimate the German fuel production.
Nothing is simpler than knocking out a plant filled with combustible hydrocarbons: some bombs to open up some piping and equipment, followed a little later by some incendiary devices to set them ablaze.
It should have been priority number one from day one yet it took until 1944 before it really became serious.

Yes its a bit of a mystery, one possibility is that despite the (mostly) excellent intel on German fuel stocks, I think there is reasonable evidence that
they thought Germany was getting a bit more fuel than they actually were from Roumania. They WERE supposed to get quite a bit from them
but it never really got anywhere near what the arrangement was supposed to provide. So, its possible that for a time, they suspected that putting the
hydrogenation plants out of action would have been very bad, but not perhaps fatal for Germany.

However there are also some aspects of that prognosis which dont make a lot of sense, for example they clearly DID know how important the
plants were as they were trying to knock them out during the Battle of Britain. So I`m still not really sure, there are probably several very
large archive files I`d need to read to get the real story on that one (but its been impossible to get anything from any archives for 18months,
so there you go, but at least Kew has "tentatively" reopened now, but IWM remains as far as I can see, moribund - from a research perspective).

 

[Hobbes]

You make an interesting point:

Electricity would seem an obvious choice, however, there were a phenominal number of plants involved in electricity generation in wartime Germany (around a hundred major facilities). So this is in fact, very difficult to wipe out.

These days, a country's grid is very interconnected. Take one plant offline, and others will try to provide the shortfall. Take a few offline, and a cascade will ensue where plants or interconnects get overloaded and go offline to protect themselves. You can see the effect in the 2003 blackout in the North-East US.
IDK how this was in WW2 Germany. If the grid is interconnected, you could induce a cascade failure, in an isolated grid you'd put one city in the dark.

Also, power plants contain a number of items that are large and difficult to replace, like the turbines and transformers. These have long lead times to produce.

So I suspect a coordinated attack on, say 10 plants in one night would have been devastating. Even taking out one plant a night for a few weeks would have caused real problems for the Germans. Perhaps they expected wartime industry to have its own generators, meaning a grid attack would impact mostly civilians?

 

[PMN1]

On the attacks on the German electricity supply, this from Brute Force: Allied Strategy and Tactics in the Second World War – John Ellis

P218/219

The other main missed opportunity was the German electricity grid. Even at the beginning of the war there was no surplus electric energy in Germany – indeed, 10 and sometimes 30 per cent reductions in supply were quite common – and efforts during the war to increase supply proved unavailing (it was impossible either to build the plants, redistribute or increase coal supplies, or build hydro-electric facilities (79 per cent of power stations burnt coal and the rest were water-powered)). As these efforts grew more and more desperate, greater demands were placed on the grid. This grid was extremely vulnerable – as had been sensed by the Americans very early, when the AWPD-1 Plan made electric power the prime target in Germany – in that only 0.2 tons of bombs per acre could knock out a generating station for up to 3 months, whilst 0.4 tons could nullify it for up to a whole year. Moreover, any station knocked out would represent an immediate loss to the system for which it was impossible to compensate, given the simple but crucial fact that electricity cannot be stored. There were in Germany 8,257 generating station in 1939, but most were of little consequence, with only just over 100 providing 56.3 per cent of all current generated and a further 300 bringing that percentage up to 81.9. The location of these plants was known, as was the relative ease with which electric generating (and transmission) equipment could be seriously damaged, much of it being of a fragile nature. If just 5 of these plants had been put out of action, the German system would have suffered a capacity loss of 8 per cent; if 45 had been destroyed the loss would have been 40 per cent: and if 95 had been taken out a more than 50 per cent deficit would have resulted. The very survival of the German war economy would then have been in doubt; for Speer later testified that the loss of around 60 per cent of capacity would have brought German industry to a standstill (Transformer stations were also extremely vulnerable, since blast alone was sufficient to wreck transformers for good. A German document written in 1944 reckoned that two or three nights’ concentrated attacked on only 30 transformer stations could ‘paralyse decisively the German power grid (USSBS, The Effects of Strategic Bombing on the Germany Economy). An ideal ancillary target would have been the four factories that produced most of the high-tension transformers).


In the event, however, the power grid was almost totally ignored by the bombers; Eighth Air Force expending only 316 tons of bombs (0.05 per cent of the total dropped) and Bomber Command only 532 tons (0.07 per cent). One cannot help but feel that the following remark by a German observer questioned by the USSBS, though it only applies to one city, permits and extrapolation concerning the whole German war economy; ‘If the Allied airmen had concentrated on knocking out the two big power stations in the outskirts of Berlin, the city would be just as dead as it is now after months of heavy bombing of the entire city.’