Chrysler Aircraft Engines
This book gave me a sore neck; you can only shake your head side to side so many times before something gives! In 1940, a meeting took place between the President of Chrysler Corporation and the US Treasury Secretary, which led to Chrysler being offered the opportunity to build the Rolls-Royce Merlin, under contract, for the US. After Chrysler engineers had examined a disassembled and complete Merlin, they decided they could do better. The Merlin was a proven design which had and still was distinguishing itself in the skies over Britain. Chrysler had zero experience in building and designing aero engines, but were given a contract to design a high-performance, liquid cooled engine. Is your head shaking from side to side in amazement yet?Chrysler Aircraft Enginestells the saga of the development and testing of Chrysler's XI-2220 V-16 cylinder aero engine from the 1940 meeting (more than 18 months before Pearl Harbor and the official entry of the US into World War II), to the termination of the project in January 1946, some months after cessation of hostilities.The writing is factual, extensively researched, and copiously end-noted. I have no issue with this as the author presents verifiable facts, omits any conjecture, and reserves any of his own observations to a separate Conclusions chapter. If anything, his matter of fact delivery caused me even more amazement and head shaking as the story unfolded, though your mileage may vary. The story, like the engine, is complex, so the author has separate chapters which concentrate on a single aspect each:The project, politics, and contractual detailsTechnical aspects and development of the V-twin, and single cylinder test enginesDevelopment, testing, and technical description of the V-16 prototypesDetails of the XP-47H flying test bed for the engine.This approach means the same chronological ground is covered four times, and even though it requires some redundancy, I found that it worked excellently well. In fact, given the amount of ground to be covered, I don't think there could be a better way to tell the story. The engine itself is far from "conventional" in many aspects. Essentially, it is two inverted V-8s joined in the middle by a pinion gear that engages a bull-gear to the long prop shaft located between the V. This resulted in an engine over 10 feet long (3 meters), able to fit into a circle 34 inches (86 cm) in diameter. Engine lovers will certainly appreciate the detail of the construction, and how Chrysler identified and overcame development issues.Fortunately, the world was saved from the XI-2220 (and it's like in the US and Britain) by the gas turbine. As several other aero engine writers have explained, the piston engine had reached its limit where demands for more power resulted in unsustainable and unreliable complexity.I hope I've not given the impression this is a dry, academic read; it most certainly is not. The author has told a complicated story in a highly factual and detailed way which kept me reading far more avidly than I'd have thought it would. Buyers get on-line access to 1,600 pages of material used to produce the book, plus extra material not included in the book. Recommended to all who appreciate aero engine engineering and history: five stars. --Model Engine News: April 2013