Is early Griffon engine too boring and tedious?

Just Leo

In 1932, a Rolls Royce racing engine based on a Buzzard bomber engine powered a seaplane that won a trophy for the RAF, sponsored by a lady who later starved to death because a king succumbed to hormones. In 1933, an uninspired attempt to unrace the "R" engine ended in failure, possibly because the Royal Navy expressed an interest, but failed to leave a glass slipper. There was so much to do, and so little time. The Merlin PV engine was one. A Peregrine had to be developed and built, but it was found to be resistant to up-rating. A twinned version of that same engine also failed to accept attempts at achieving higher ratings, and also succumbed to the stress of bearing failure due to lack of adequate oil cooling and volume. In 1939, the Navy nudged the R-R boys about their engine again, but Merlins were the priority. Of course, the Griffon was destined to produce as much, and ultimately much more power that the Vulture engine that had priority at one time, as well as increased simplicity and reliability. Spitfire XIIs, powered by Griffon were found to be the answer to low-flying FW-190 intruders, after a while.

The questions: What are the chances of an early Griffon?

What are the applications for an early Griffon?

What is the impact of an early Griffon?
 

Astrodragon

Just Leo said:
In 1932, a Rolls Royce racing engine based on a Buzzard bomber engine powered a seaplane that won a trophy for the RAF, sponsored by a lady who later starved to death because a king succumbed to hormones. In 1933, an uninspired attempt to unrace the "R" engine ended in failure, possibly because the Royal Navy expressed an interest, but failed to leave a glass slipper. There was so much to do, and so little time. The Merlin PV engine was one. A Peregrine had to be developed and built, but it was found to be resistant to up-rating. A twinned version of that same engine also failed to accept attempts at achieving higher ratings, and also succumbed to the stress of bearing failure due to lack of adequate oil cooling and volume. In 1939, the Navy nudged the R-R boys about their engine again, but Merlins were the priority. Of course, the Griffon was destined to produce as much, and ultimately much more power that the Vulture engine that had priority at one time, as well as increased simplicity and reliability. Spitfire XIIs, powered by Griffon were found to be the answer to low-flying FW-190 intruders, after a while.

The questions: What are the chances of an early Griffon?

What are the applications for an early Griffon?

What is the impact of an early Griffon?
Click to expand...

You know more about the first question than I do :)

As to the others..
The FAA has an orgasm at the thought that they can actually give their projected planes the power they were intended to have.

The Manchester might fly with two Griffons - if its developed early, would they bother with the Vulture?

I could see a Griffon-powered Tornado and Typhoon.

It depends a bit on how early is early, of course.

But I don't know of any huge technical reason why it couldn't come early.
 

Just Leo

Astrodragon said:
I could see a Griffon-powered Tornado and Typhoon.

It depends a bit on how early is early, of course.
Click to expand...

I was thinking along the lines of the Griffon Hurricane, and a Hawker Henley that has a small margin of speed over the Bf-109 at low altitude, with an internal bomb load. Just thinking, of course.
 
oldironside

oldironside

Just Leo said:
Is early Griffon engine too boring and tedious?
Click to expand...

Don't let them get to you, man.

Could we be talking about an adequately powered Barracuda around in time to chase the Bismarck? I can't find a link at the moment, but I'm sure I read somewhere that a bunch of Swordfish tried to attack the Tirpitz in the North Sea, but couldn't actually catch her up because of an atrocious head wind. Add 100mph to the torpedo bomber's top speed and it could be a different thing.

I like the idea of the Griffon Henley, but have the deflating feeling that if you give that to the RAF all you will get is the world's most powerful target tug.
 

sonofpegasus

Possibly with an Earlier sorted Griffon the Blackburn B-20 flies earlier and even if the prototype still crashes due to airelon flutter the aircraft enters service in time for the BoTA. That would give the Condors and even the Ju 88's something of a shock:D
 

Deleted member 1487

Minimal due to it being a development of the Merlin engine, but with special additions that only came from developing the Merlin plus other research:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Griffon
Compared with earlier Rolls-Royce designs, the Griffon engine featured several improvements which meant it was physically only slightly larger than the Merlin, in spite of its 36% larger capacity of 37 litres (2,260 cu in).[3] One significant difference was the incorporation of the camshaft and magneto drives into the propeller reduction gears at the front of the engine, rather than using a separate system of gears driven from the back end of the crankshaft; this allowed the overall length of the engine to be reduced as well as making the drive train more reliable and efficient.[7][nb 2] The Griffon was the first Rolls-Royce production aero engine to use a hollow crankshaft as the means of lubricating the main and big end bearings, providing a more even distribution of oil to each bearing.[7] In another change from convention, one high efficiency B.T.H-manufactured dual magneto was mounted on top of the propeller reduction casing;[8] earlier Rolls-Royce designs using twin magnetos mounted at the rear of the engine.[9]
Click to expand...

Frankly the DB603 had more chance of an earlier introduction than the Griffon. British piston aero-engine development was pretty cutting edge, leaving little room to move things up. This is the equivalent to the Jumo 213 relative to the Jumo 211, that is it was a develop of Merlin and didn't AFAIK have a project like the Jumo 222, sapping engineering and financial resources, holding it back.

Personally were it possible I wouldn't find it tedious, but based on my engine threads apparently people aren't as onboard for earlier technical developments; then again, being an British development, you might get more interest, but I don't see how it can be moved up given the limited British financial resources that were being put into R&D at the time and the technical hurdles that needed to be passed to get an OTL Griffon early. Read "The Paladins" to get a read on RAF history as far as finances go:
http://www.amazon.com/Paladins-Soci...d=1399316393&sr=1-1&keywords=the+paladins+raf

Changing that in a POD would require major political and economic changes in Britain in the 1930s and probably would end up changing WW2 far beyond the scope of a technical thread, but would make you initial question of usage moot until the resulting changes are worked out.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

sonofpegasus

I beg to differ slightly, if RR stop the Vulture earlier, say when the first Griiffons are running in November 1939 and the MAP und Lord Beaverbrook do not put the engine on hold in May/ June 1940 it may IMHO be reasonable to advance the in service dates by a year or even 18 months without entering into ABS territory.
 

Deleted member 1487

sonofpegasus said:
I beg to differ slightly, if RR stop the Vulture earlier, say when the first Griiffons are running in November 1939 and the MAP und Lord Beaverbrook do not put the engine on hold in May/ June 1940 it may IMHO be reasonable to advance the in service dates by a year or even 18 months without entering into ABS territory.
Click to expand...

How many other developments happened in the meantime? When the DB603 was put on hold it did benefit somewhat from the developments on the DB601. While I agree that nothing is going to make up for lost time, there are some major developments that went into the Griffon that were going to take some time regardless of where those lessons are learned (i.e. Merlin or Vulture). Also the Merlin would suffer as a result if you don't put the Griffon on hold, so what happens there? Merlin developments lost 6 or more months? Plus keep in mind that when the Griffons started actually flying in 1942 they needed time to get the kinks worked out; it wasn't very popular, given that only 8000 or so were made between 1939-1955. Also why would the RAF want to stop developing the Vulture? The early Griffon wasn't working so well, while the Vulture seemed to be the wave of the future, very much paralleling the Jumo 222 vs. 213 issue; the difference is that the 213 had better performance early on than the Griffon.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Just Leo

oldironside said:
Well, the only thing to do is to

1: pick yourself up

2: dust yourself off and

3: tell whoever the hell they are to go forth and multiply.
:D
Click to expand...
I was somewhat taken aback when Realist01 released his "Germany could win" thread with only a book-for-sale as an argument, and without any response to questions. I have never read Tooze, nor Overy, and am ill disposed to do so, and I'm less likely to read a book suggested by Realist01, who seems to have unleashed three threads and gone. I wonder how book sales went. Anyway, the joy of arguing seems to be gone.

Re:Griffons. It is difficult to determine the exact date at which hurdles can be jumped. The production of ethylene glycol by an American company that later killed some Indians spurred the development of pressurized cooling systems, but Rolls used it undiluted at first, and it seemed to leak, and it was flammable. 30/70 mix was adopted in 1940, and this problem would be shared and solved for all R-R engines. Certainly, the problem of variable-pitch propellers wasn't addressed until 1940. Another problem was metallurgy. A large celestial body placed more nickel than you can shake a stick at smack dab in the Sudbury basin. These veins were bled for the benefit of the allies in WWII, including Rolls, and they blended and smeared the stuff all over the place. Brightray was a trade name for the smeared nickel chrome. Austenite has nothing to do with "Little Women". Whenever I hear of stellite, I always think of Marlon Brando in "Streetcar Named Desire". Germany, on the other hand, came up a nickel short on alloys. You can pick up a lot of quotes on Wiki, but Rolls built a 2400 hp "R" engine in 1931, and it isn't that big a stretch to surmise that they could move an accessory drive and move a magneto in a few years, adopt a pressurized cooling system and adapt to 100 octane fuel. Now, if they could only add a Bendix-Sromberg pressure carb sooner, it would be peachy.

I don't know the significance, but Audi was using undiluted Ethylene Glycol into the 1970s before they finally resorted to 50/50.
 

SactoMan101

How about a Griffon-powered Boulton Paul Defiant? Imagine a Defiant with an 1,850 bhp Griffon VI engine and two Hispano 20 mm cannon in the turret--it could have been a nasty platform against the Ju 88 and He 111. With the Griffon 65 engine, the Defiant would have reached nearly 400 mph top speed, easily fast enough to take on most German bombers.
 

Just Leo

SactoMan101 said:
How about a Griffon-powered Boulton Paul Defiant? Imagine a Defiant with an 1,850 bhp Griffon VI engine and two Hispano 20 mm cannon in the turret--it could have been a nasty platform against the Ju 88 and He 111. With the Griffon 65 engine, the Defiant would have reached nearly 400 mph top speed, easily fast enough to take on most German bombers.
Click to expand...

The Great War Bristol Fighter, or Brisfit, was a two-man fighter-bomber with a flexible defensive Lewis gun and a fixed forward-firing Vickers synchronized gun operated by the pilot. Accepted dogma was to rely on the defensive gun for defense, using the basic logic that it can fire in many directions. In operations, German Albatross fighters swatted the Brisfits from the skies in large numbers, imparting the a/c with the reputation of being a loser. Subsequently, pilots took the initiative to attack, using the fixed armament, rather than dying like ducks in a shooting gallery. The reputation changed, the aircraft became a success, and it continued in service long after the war. There's a lesson there, and it has become standard doctrine for fighter pilots that flying defensive is what happens just before you lose.

While I believe devoutly that a single-stage two-speed Griffon of 1,735 hp could have been in service by the BoB, because all the technology was available, or should have been available, the man who was instrumental in the two-stage supercharger, Mr Hooker, wasn't. Furthermore, I believe your performance estimate to be optimistic, and the viability of the fitment of 2 HS404s in the BP turret to be a bit of a stretch. Do you work for the Air Ministry?
 

Just Leo

Incidentally, I was dabbling in the history of nitriding, and my battered brain is still hurting. Rolls Royce used it extensively, and it was critical to the success of sleeve-valve engines, and Packard had to learn the techniques to make Merlins. However, a couple of Germans developed a technique of plasma nitriding before the war. According to history, it was gleefully accepted by German industrialists, and according to history, it didn't see widespread use because it was complicated, expensive and of questionable reliability. No mention of the fact that suitable alloys for treatment weren't available. Furthermore, Dr. Bernhardt Berghaus, the pivotal co-inventer, was Swiss, and returned to Zurich, or was German and "fled the nazis" to Zurich, or something else again. Post-war, he was the subject of an investigation of considerable depth involving the use of Switzerland to handle nazi finances. He was called an enterpreneur. I'm not sure what that means, but he did become an industrialist, if I understand the term, when he formed the Klockner Group. Then, it became tedious.

I was doodling a Hawker Henley, with early Firefly Griffon, but I stopped when I got to the rear cockpit. Boy, it's ugly. I drew a Miles M-20 with Gloster F5/34 wing instead.
 

Some Bloke

I'd read this. With less perceived need for Merlins there might be an earlier derating for Tanks meaning that the Cavalier enters service, no farting about reinventing the wheel with the Cromwell and we might have a Comet or even Challenger equivalent seeing combat. Maybe also earlier modsforaltitude perfomance meaning that Britain has a plane that can compete with the Mustang.

Timeline! Timeline! Timeline!
 

pdf27

I've done this in A Blunted Sickle, but only in so far as the Griffon doesn't get put on hold in late 1940 when the Battle of Britain panic was on. At that point they gave up quite a lot of future advantage with the Griffon for a small present advantage in Merlin production/development (switching engineers over from one project to another is always quite inefficient as it takes them quite a while to get up to speed, and the new project rarely has the ability to use them at their full capacity for some weeks or months). That gives you production Griffons in early 1941. It's pretty hard to see them much earlier than that however - the generation of aircraft designed around the Vulture really didn't fly in prototype form until late 1940, if the Griffon emerges much earlier it probably becomes something of a curiosity and a racer engine.
 

Astrodragon

Just Leo said:
I was somewhat taken aback when Realist01 released his "Germany could win" thread with only a book-for-sale as an argument, and without any response to questions. I have never read Tooze, nor Overy, and am ill disposed to do so, and I'm less likely to read a book suggested by Realist01, who seems to have unleashed three threads and gone. I wonder how book sales went. Anyway, the joy of arguing seems to be gone.

Re:Griffons. It is difficult to determine the exact date at which hurdles can be jumped. The production of ethylene glycol by an American company that later killed some Indians spurred the development of pressurized cooling systems, but Rolls used it undiluted at first, and it seemed to leak, and it was flammable. 30/70 mix was adopted in 1940, and this problem would be shared and solved for all R-R engines. Certainly, the problem of variable-pitch propellers wasn't addressed until 1940. Another problem was metallurgy. A large celestial body placed more nickel than you can shake a stick at smack dab in the Sudbury basin. These veins were bled for the benefit of the allies in WWII, including Rolls, and they blended and smeared the stuff all over the place. Brightray was a trade name for the smeared nickel chrome. Austenite has nothing to do with "Little Women". Whenever I hear of stellite, I always think of Marlon Brando in "Streetcar Named Desire". Germany, on the other hand, came up a nickel short on alloys. You can pick up a lot of quotes on Wiki, but Rolls built a 2400 hp "R" engine in 1931, and it isn't that big a stretch to surmise that they could move an accessory drive and move a magneto in a few years, adopt a pressurized cooling system and adapt to 100 octane fuel. Now, if they could only add a Bendix-Sromberg pressure carb sooner, it would be peachy.

I don't know the significance, but Audi was using undiluted Ethylene Glycol into the 1970s before they finally resorted to 50/50.
Click to expand...

I'd recommending reading Tooze, its not dry, but a fascinating look into some of the realities of the limits of Nazi war production.

With an early Griffon, those 2-man FAA fighters could have been competitive.

Could the Mosquito take a Griffon? I always wondered why it only ever used the Merlin.
 

Aber

Some Bloke said:
I'd read this. With less perceived need for Merlins there might be an earlier derating for Tanks meaning that the Cavalier enters service, no farting about reinventing the wheel with the Cromwell and we might have a Comet or even Challenger equivalent seeing combat. Maybe also earlier modsforaltitude perfomance meaning that Britain has a plane that can compete with the Mustang.

Timeline! Timeline! Timeline!
Click to expand...

Any idea whether a de-rated Peregrine would have been suitable for tanks?
 

Just Leo

Some Bloke said:
Maybe also earlier modsforaltitude perfomance meaning that Britain has a plane that can compete with the Mustang.
Click to expand...

The Air Ministry had a doctrine that long range fighter aircraft cannot compete with short range a/c. The Mustang combined a British engine with a NACA laminar flow airfoil with maximum thickness where the fuel tanks are located, imparting the miracle of range. Many features of the Mustang were designed to impart maximum effectiveness from the Meredith effect radiator. Meredith was English. The effect was real. The Spitfire utilized some of the effect. Some models of the Bf-109 used some of the effect. The Mustang was designed around the effect, from the supercharger intake under the nose to the wheel well doors which opened AND closed on each cycle to impart smooth flow to the stand-off radiator intake. The Spitfire had no wheel well doors over half the wheel. and the supercharger intake of the Mustang was used for a handful of Seafire 47s, last of the Spitfire line. The Mustang was never designed to take the Griffon, but boys will be boys.

MustangS.png
 

Just Leo

Astrodragon said:
I'd recommending reading Tooze, its not dry, but a fascinating look into some of the realities of the limits of Nazi war production.

With an early Griffon, those 2-man FAA fighters could have been competitive.

Could the Mosquito take a Griffon? I always wondered why it only ever used the Merlin.
Click to expand...

I might try Tooze if I can get one. My reading list of late has been epic disaster.

The performance of a Griffon Fulmar could compare to an early Firefly, which is more competetive but decidedly not epic.

Like all history, I have read that the Griffon version was considered, but I've also read that De Havilland was dead set against it. The Mossie was decidedly not forgiving of a shift in center of gravity. Two-stage Merlins made it nose-heavy, and the last nightfighter with a heavy British radar was deemed unflyable. The Mossie was also overly sensitive on elevators, and the factory fix was to add a note to the pilot's handbook, "care must be taken".
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top