Talk:Rolls-Royce Merlin

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Need to introduce somehow that is was used in the Mosquito and the Lancaster too. And Fairey Battle. And Boulton-Paul Defiant. Indeed there should be a comprehensive list of ALL aircraft types using the Merlin.

JidGom 11:50 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

And if anybody actually knows from where Roy Chadwick conjured up 4 Merlins during a time of National shortage.

Contents 1 The article contains Rubbish 2 SpaceX Merlin engine 3 leave it alone? 4 Other uses 5 Griffon engine 6 Packard 7 Removed Parapgrah 8 Automobile use 9 Caburettor vs Fuel Injection

[edit] The article contains Rubbish

The article claims that the Air Ministry considered two aeroplanes for development in 1936, the Hurricane and the Spitfire. The Air Ministry did no such thing. They did absolutely diddly squat about upgrading the British fighter fleet at that time mainly because they remained convinced that war would never happen. Tommy Sopwith of the Hawker Aircraft Company developed the Hurricane fighter entirely as a private venture exercise much as he had the foresight to see that Britain needed something significantly better than she had. The company records clearly show (and I worked at the Kingston plant that made them (but not at the time!)), that no contract from the Air Ministry was received for the aircraft's development. The air ministry only placed a production contract in 1936 (the development had taken place before this) only once the capabilities had been demonstrated in the air. It is remarkable that development was completed so quickly. Most aircraft project take at least six years from the first line being drawn to something actually flying.

The Harrier "jump jet" (US: AV8B) was also similarly developed by Hawker entirely as a private venture, but not to met any perceived National emergency. Hawker were short of work and had a necessity to retain its expert engineering staff, and the P1127 aeroplane (which later evolved into the Harrier via the Kestral) not only retained the expertise, but allowed the company to develop some new expertise. During the development, financial aid was forthcoming from the US Marine Corps, who could see a role for the aeroplane.

The Spitfire was also started (later than the Hurricane) as a private venture by Supermarine, but funding from the Air Ministry came very quickly as they were awakening to the potential disaster that would befall Britain if she didn't have any modern fighters. Production also started in 1936, but due to the greater comlpexity of the aeroplane, far fewer numbers were available by the Battle of Britain than the Hurricane.

86.132.203.236 16:50, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Good points. The way forward is to go through the article (and related articles) citing references for every statement. See Wikipedia:Footnotes. The foresight of the Hawker Aircraft Company and it's heroic achievements are an important topic and it would be great to have an article. PeterGrecian 09:39, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] SpaceX Merlin engine

I propose moving Merlin engine to Merlin engine (aircraft) and creating in its place a disambiguation page, which includes Merlin engine (aircraft) and Merlin engine (rocket). SpaceX named its new rocket engine Merlin. Since a lot of pages already link to Merlin engine, it will take some work to do a proper move. However, I don't have time to do this today, so if you have time and inclination, then have at it.

Dschmelzer 19:07, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] leave it alone?

How about we leave this page alone, and include a disambig notice at the start of the page? Only needs its own disambig page when there are lots of terms with the same name, rather than 2. Mat-C 04:06, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Other uses

The use of the Merlin as an aircraft engine is its original intent and unarguably its most significant role However, ignoring the history of its automotive and marine roles is ignoring several decades of its history when these were far more significant uses. Cleveland and Reno were only 4 days of the year.

Bring back the automotive section and create a section that includes Unlimited Hydrofoil (where you couldn't win without a Merlin until modern turboshaft came along) and offshore racing. A link to Miss Budweiser would be a good start.

[edit] Griffon engine

How about adding a link to the successor of the Merlin, the Rolls Royce Griffon?

Except the Rolls-Royce Griffon was the successor of the Rolls-Royce Buzzard and Rolls-Royce R. Perhaps you might like to put something in Rolls-Royce Aircraft Piston Engines which is intended to be an overview of the developments ? PeterGrecian 14:10, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Packard

I understand from private but reliable sources that Packard greatly improved the maintainability and that their changes were incorporated in subsequent British versions. I am not sure that I should add this now. Does anyone else of information bout this? Origenally, it was derived from a racing engine and used only within a few miles of the factories. David R. Ingham

[1] When the first of the Packard-built Merlins arrived in Britain, the engineers at Rolls-Royce stripped it down and were amazed to find that the production-line built Packard engine, far from being as bad as they expected it to be for component tolerance, was actually better. Up until then, RR Merlins were hand built, every face being finished off by hand and this time-consuming process placed great strain on the production cabability of the skilled workforce involved in the manufacture of these engines. The Packard engine changed all this, although there were still some at RR who remained unconvinced of the quality of the American engine, produced as it was by a largely unskilled and semi-skilled female workforce. They were to be proved wrong on all counts.

The early Packard-built Merlins suffered from crankshaft failures, to the extent that a RR Engineer was sent over to investigate the cause. He discovered that workers in the forging shop where the crankshafts were made were emptying their half-finished bottles of Coca-Cola into the quenching tank, used for quenching the crankshafts after they had been heat-treated. This made the water slightly acidic, which then caused micro-etching of the metal. After this practice was stopped the crankshaft failures ceased. Ian Dunster 19:01, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Do you have a source for that? I mean, it doesn't make much sense to me. Why would someone do that? It's not just a matter of the stupidity of it. Why would you pour out perfectly good Coke? Bottles of Coke back then were 6.5 ounces. You don't half-finish 6.5 ounces and then look for a place to pour the rest out. I find the idea of people doing that regularly to be pretty hard to believe. TomTheHand 22:32, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

OK - give me a few days to remember where I read it (I've got the book/magazine with it in somewhere) and I'll post the info here: Ian Dunster 00:58, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

The Packard story is a myth for sure. RR had seen plenty of mass produced Merlins long before Packard got involved. RR mass-produced Merlins at Hillington - semi-skilled workers, lots of single-purpose machine tools - and Ford at Trafford Park, both from 1940. It reads like an mangling of the (?) apocryphal tale of the Ford engineer visiting RR and telling his counterpart that they cannot be expected to build Merlins using RR drawings. "Are our tolerances too fine for your people old chap ?", asks the RR engineer condescendingly. "No," says the Ford engineer, "they're not bloody fine enough". Angus McLellan 23:21, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

My mistake - it was con-rod failures and it was the cutting-oil tank they were pouring Coke into:

"Before the skew-gear problem arose, it seemed that the cause of failures were always comparatively easily traceable to specific flaws in the manufacture or operation; perhaps the most bizarre was with some of the earlier Packard Merlins, when cracks were found in their con-rods. An immediate investigation revealed that there was no deviation in the accepted practice for fabricating these parts. However, it transpired that factory workers, when quenching their thirst with Coca-Cola, emptied the un-consumed liquid into the cutting oil tank. The acidity then etched the surface of the rods and under certain conditions the chemical reaction created minute flaws. The buffing and polishing was then completed in a highly professional manner, and the technique swaged the metal in such a way that the resulting microscopic cracks could not be seen with the naked eye. When I first saw the Packard Merlin, I was most impressed by the quality of its exterior and the superb finish—it might have been prepared for a showroom rather than to be rushed into battle encased in the cowling of a Spitfire or Lancaster."

From the The Deafening Silence article by Alex Henshaw in the February 1984 issue of Aeroplane Monthly.

I seem to remember reading a more detailed piece about it somewhere else but can't recall where - perhaps it's just my memory playing tricks as I've just realised the magazine is 21 years old! Ian Dunster 19:31, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for posting the source. It still strikes me as rumor being passed off as fact, though, like a very real example of how "there were still some at RR who remained unconvinced of the quality of the American engine, produced as it was by a largely unskilled and semi-skilled female workforce." It simply doesn't make any sense. Apart from how illogical the premise is, Coke isn't even very acidic; you couldn't etch forged steel with pure Coke, let alone a little bit of Coke in your cutting oil. Coke wouldn't mix with oil, either. TomTheHand 20:51, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

RR prejudice against semi-skilled women doesn't ring true anyhow - RR like all British manufactureres in the war empoyed woen for many jobs "Hillington Rolls Royce plant near Glasgow in 1943. Here, out of a workforce of 20,000, 39 percent were women and only 4.5 percent were skilled men" GraemeLeggett 08:39, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Forgot to add, cutting oils are used as emulsions. The oil is the lubricant and the water cools the cutting head.GraemeLeggett 09:00, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Evidence of prior mass-production of the Rolls-Royce Merlin:- "... the preponderance of unskilled labour at Glasgow rendered the factory particularly reliant on up-to-date production methods and mechanisation. Machine tools were arranged and set for single-purpose operations, and the factory was planned on a flow production basis, with the minimum of rehandling." (Ritchie, Sebastian Industry and Air Power. The Expansion of British Aircraft Production, 1935-1941, Frank Cass, 1997, p135) Rolls-Royce Glasgow was operational by February 1941. (ibid, p135 & p144) Angus McLellan 23:39, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Removed Parapgrah

Howdy, all. I removed this paragraph because it didn't really seem to fit in well with the rest of the article. However, since it was so wholesale, I wanted to at least leave it here in case anyone wanted to do anything with it.

This information is not a myth, as has been asserted by another poster. It came to the writer directly from a Rolls-Royce engineer who was directly employed by the factory to supervise in-field repairs and rebuilds at various RAF bases during the Battle of Britain and after. I worked with this man for several years in the early 70s, and he was a fund of inside information that didn't find its way into the history books. Anybody who doubts this can contact me directly at dhenderson@iol.ie

Cheers. Madmaxmarchhare 15:35, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Automobile use

I think the Automobile use section does not fit well with the rest of the article. How about a separate Rolls-Royce Merlin Powered Automobiles article and a link to it in the Other uses for the engine section ? PeterGrecian 12:07, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps it's large enough for an article of it's own. By the way, I read an article about someone in Australia that used two cylinders from a Merlin engine to make the world's largest V twin motorcycle, but I haven't found anything using google yet. Update: I managed to find something [1][2][3]// Liftarn

[edit] Caburettor vs Fuel Injection

I was hoping to read more about the issues the Merlin had with the use of the Caburettor in negative-G conditions vs the Fuel Injected german engines - in particular, how the problem was finally solved. I have seen it mentioned a few times that the Luftwaffe escaped further engagement over the channel during the BoB simply by diving away.

Especially in the section comparing the Merlin to other engines, would some information regarding this be appropriate?

See Miss Shilling's orifice: no, it's not porn :). Probably should be linked from this article though. Mark Grant 12:23, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Heh. Great minds think alike! I just did exactly that. --Guinnog 12:31, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

The usual solution to a German fighter suddenly diving before the introduction of the negative-G carburettor was a half-roll and an inverted dive, i.e., pulling back on the stick and following the enemy aircraft upside-down but now pulling positive-G. This ameliorated the effect of negative-G on the engine but obviously the pilot had to have the presence of mind (or training) to do this.

BTW, If you look at any contempory film of a Spitfire or Hurricane doing a roll you will usually see a noticeable puff of smoke from the exhausts as the aircraft becomes inverted - that's the engine coughing as the fuel flow momentarily stops. Ian Dunster 12:05, 4 September 2006 (UTC)