FAA WW2 Radial Fighters

Would it be feasible to advance development of the Perseus 100? Or was this based on purely wartime experience with the Hercules?
First of all, I don't have much information on how developed an engine the Perseus 100 was, except that it was a Perseus with Centaurus cylinders, and was only rated with 100 octane fuel, where regular Perseus were only rated with 87 octane. While the Perseus was sized as a replacement for Mercury, the Perseus 100 was sized like a Pegasus. The reason the Perseus was not rated for higher octane might have been that nobody was using it, and development stopped. Nobody used the Perseus 100.
 
Thing is - how good was his crystal ball? But, IMO, going for poppet valve big radials would've brought the classic equivalents of the Hercules and Centaurus some years earlier.
Bristol was already making poppet valve big radials in the 1930s, including the Mercury (825 hp by 1935) and Pegasus (965 hp).

G2058.jpg

http://www.aviationarchive.org.uk/Gpages/html/G2058.html

These poppet valve Bristols were used in a few monoplane fighters and strike aircraft as well as the older-type aircraft shown above.

640px-Fokker_D.XXI_Soesterberg.jpg

Fokker_D.XXI

The only step not taken, AIUI was to make a multi-bank poppet valve motor, not a step requiring ASBs.
 
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Bristol was already making poppet valve big radials in the 1930s, including the Mercury (825 hp by 1935) and Pegasus (965 hp).

Sorry for misunderstanding - in my, admitedly arbitrary metrics, the big radials were those engines of 35-55 liters, where Hercules and Centaurus fit, and Mercury and Pegasus don't.

The only step not taken, AIUI was to make a multi-bank poppet valve motor, not a step requiring ASBs.

Here I agree with you.
 
One thing that Bristol had, that Armstrong-Siddeley two-rows never had was licensed production. Italian and Japanese companies produced some Lynx and Cheetah clones, but nary a Jaguar or a Tiger. It has already been mentioned that Alfa-Romeo double-rowed the Pegasus with a failed engine. By a more serpentine and circuitous route, Gnome-Rhone also two-rowed a Bristol engine, resulting in the engine that Alvis wanted to clone. The Bristol Titan was a five cyl engine that was license-built in France, and ended up out-selling the British units. G-R tired of paying fees, and modified and modified, resulting in the 14K. They stopped paying fees in 1930. So there's another two-row Bristol, coming home.
Another engine manufacturer that is a miss is Wolseley, a car company that built the V-8 Hispano in WWI. In 1933, they decided to get into the biz with Zodiac engines, beginning with the Aries, and planning bigger, but not two-row engines. They wrapped up the show a few years later, unable to compete with the little A-S Cheetah and Lynx. Could a two-row Wolseley Pisces have been a contender?
I have mentioned that development on Perseus had halted for lack of application, but will add that Taurus development was also curtailed, mostly due to reputation. In fact, tooling had gone to aid Napier Sabre development. In fact, it was found, and patented, that a centerless grinder with a worn out grinder was perfect for making sleeves. Serendipity. I found this out, because an American sub-contracter's start of production was delayed when they had to send their tools to England. Also, the major problem with Taurus failure was the Maneton Clamp on the crankshaft, which was subsequently double-bolted, and patented, by Roy Fedden, providing the fix, but without finding new users.
 
Flight magazine in February 1945 refers to the Perseus 100 as the Bristol New Perseus with 1,175bhp for take off. This was in relation to the early Bristol 170 Freighter at the stage before deciding to use Hercules and where the front clamshell doors were to allow a lorry to back up it's bed to transfer the load onto the aeroplane rather than with a ramp to drive a 3 ton lorry straight in.
 
As a comparison of poppet vs. sleeve valve engines, are there any sleeve valve engines still in commercial service today?

Here in Canada we have P&W or Curtiss-powered DC-3, DC-4, DC-6 and C46 aircraft in commercial service, as shown on the program Ice Pilots, but no Hercules or Centaurus outside of museums.

img_66081.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Pilots_NWT#Aircraft_featured

Of course this may be a function of the massive number of war surplus Douglas aircraft available vs. sleeve valve powered Handley Page Hastings, Hermes, Nord Noratlas, Vickers Valetta, etc.

Nevertheless, I do like the look of the poppet valve Hastings, though 19 aircraft lost in accidents from a fleet of 151 seems high.

478886310_98437f9cd3_z.jpg
 
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Er. Sleeve valve Hastings I think you will find. As a toddler I flew from London to Singapore in a Hermes in the mid 1950's.
images.jpg
 
Oh in the Fleet Air Arm the prospects are grim
if the landing's p*** poor and the pilot can't swim.

(or to quote my dad (ex RAF) Brumm Brumm splash)
 
Perhaps (and this needs a sanity check)...

F5/34 is accepted as a colonial fighter with original engine. CAC or (my preferred second POD because I've not come across it yet) Hindustan Aircraft is established earlier, initially to assemble knock down kits and eventually to produce complete Gloster Gyrfalcon I's.

A navalised version replaces the Sea Gladiator, perhaps a year later. Additional weight prompts investigation of a Taurus engined version.

Proposed use of the Taurus in three frontline aircraft - Gyrfalcon, Albacore and Beaufort - encourages faster development and resolution of reliability problems.

Haven't looked at timescales, but is this feasible?

(And I can imagine some knock-on effects. More time, money and production effort spent on Taurus. Hercules produced as OTL but with parallel improvements resulting in an earlier equivalent of the Hercules 734. This powers an slightly earlier Sea Fury, which is closer to a Hellcat than a Bearcat. Centaurus is stillborn as Frank Owner persuades Roy Fedden that there is a place for early development of gas turbine engines and a later Sea Fury variant flies with a Bristol Theseus. So many butterflies!)
 
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And speaking of segues, what if Hermes had some of these on deck in the Indian Ocean.

................................................................................

That 4-bladed propeller on "Crtical Mass" means that racing Sea Fury has been re-engined with an American radial engine: either a P&W R4360 or Curtiss R3350.

Re-engining is driven by two factors. First, shortages of original Centaurus engines and secondly demands for more horsepower.
Twin-row, R3350 engines enjoyed long careers on USAF and RCAF transports and bombers.
Four-row, R4360 engines were only installed in USAF bombers and transports and were such maintenance hogs that civilian airlines avoided them.
 
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