The king returns! I absolutely love these engine deep dives. There's tons of documentaries on every single aircraft but none on the powerplants. Thanks!
@@flightdojo We'll all good fans of yours. Any time I see one of these come out, I have to watch them as well. I'm not even into engines - I'm a huge computer nerd/builder/programmer. I just love the specs, data numbers, and presentation. Going to get a snack for this one. Always worth the view.
The griffon was still on operational aircraft when I joined the RAF in 1987 - admittedly as a stopgap after the failure of the Nimrod AEW project. It was finally retired only when the E-3 was procured. In 1991.
Not a word about the aircraft in which it served for decades after WW2 - the Avro Shackleton in its Marine Reconnaissance and also it's Airborne Early Warning variants. Four mighty Griffins in each aircraft, with patrols extending for over 10 hours. That is engineering.
Excellent professional video best by far of all the videos I have watched about the Griffon. Very impressed with the extent and detail of research you carried you and the archive video thoroughly enjoyed it thank you well done
The Griffon ( mk 101 ) was also used in the RAF Marine Branch, TE Lawrence etc. They were fitted in the 68ft HSL boats. Two engines converted to Marine use fitted in the boats and using Mathaway gearboxes. They ran on 130 octane fuel and the boats carried 2220 gallons n 5 Tanks. RTTL 2757 at RAF HENDON is the last example of these boats and on which I served as a Deckhand, then later as an Engineer.
This engine was later used in Unlimited Hydroplane racing and tractor pulls! The engine that said 'Budweiser' was from the Unlimited Hydroplane boat racing!
I think you failed to mention how the Rolls Royce engineers generally kept the same frontal area of the Griffon compared to the Merlin, a lot more displacement for a minor increase in frontal area, and hence a minor increase drag on the aircraft. Otherwise a very good video!
Sounds off. They kept the length down, but they moved cam etc. drives to the front to reduce crank twist effect on timing. So, the overhead drive gears are at the front of the valve covers, which is why humps were added to the cowling. I do agree that their efforts were remarkable, as an engine of 30% greater capacity could be used in airframes designed for a Merlin. My impression is that the Griffon was cleaner (no external oil lines) and more bulletproof, but its 'tuning' (like cam profiles) was not as agressive as that in the Merlin. I would love to know what a Griffon could do with such a profile.
Maths is a bit casual sometimes, 37 litres is actually 37 percent bigger than 27 litres and the cube root of 37 is only 11 percent bigger than the cube root of 27 so the Griffon would hardly be expected to be vastly bigger than the Merlin. Obviously if a linear dimension is doubled the volume becomes 2 x 2 x 2 or Eight Times bigger. Maths is similar to math.
Griffon was developed expressly for the FAA, yet once it entered production, it was diverted to the RAF for, well, Spitfires. As a consequence, once the Pacific Fleet was formed, the primary aircraft of the FAA were US-made Corsairs, Hellcats, and Avengers, with a sprinkling of Barracudas, which were forced to use underpowered Merlins. OK, some Griffon-powered Fireflies (why a 2-person fighter?) were also used. From what I have read, the Griffon was, indeed, a good engine. Contrast with the Napier Sabre, which was much more powerful engine but was plagued with difficulty in trying to transition from the "skilled craftsman" to the "assembly line" mode of production, and in the end was used for only two production aircraft types.
Why a 2-person fighter? Doctrine, of course. Pre-war FAA doctrine was that naval fighters were there to protect the fleet from bombers. The bombers were meant to be spotted and intercepted by long-range 2-seat fighters; the second seat was for a navigator to help guide the pilot. Range was prioritized over maneuverability. Hence, the long line of crappy 2-seaters in the FAA. Reality overwhelmed FAA doctrine once the war started and it became obvious that single seat fighters were an absolute necessity. The range of enemy fighters increased, as did the firepower of enemy bombers. The FAA scrambled to fix the deficiency but, having eschewed home-built single-seaters, they were forced to take whatever they could get from the Americans - namely the Wildcat/Martlet. These served until the end of the war, alongside the crappy 2-seaters to which the FAA clung bitterly.
@@jamesdalton2014 maybe they were right, the US lost a significantly higher percentage of planes to navigation issues & that includes the USN. Mind you this maybe because US training focused more on other things, like for example formation flying, I don’t know.
@@mickvonbornemann3824 Ah, yes... formation flying - the air force equivalent of parade ground drill. It looks nice but, it's absolutely useless in combat. It makes the cake-eaters all warm and fuzzy though. But, your point about training is spot on. Better training and more of it leads to fewer accidents. unfortunately, it always takes time for peace-time forces to learn the lessons of war.
@@mickvonbornemann3824 you crank out thousands you are going to lose more than if you only crank out hundreds. The quality of the pilots inevitably go down. Has nothing to do with learning to fly in formation which by the way EVERY AIR FORCE TEACHES
@@johnhallett5846 Other air forces were not pretending that they could create a formation with so many guns pointing in all directions that it could repel enemy attacks. Flying in large formations assumes the enemy does't have efficient AA.
By 1942, RR was working on the Merlin 100 series engine with some much improved systems. NAA Schmued visited RR at that time and started planning the P-51H around it. By 1944 it was being bench tested WEP at 2640 HP and 135" MP. It powered the deHavilland Hornet. It was perhaps a better solution for fighters than the Griffon.
Correct. NAA performed the preliminary design to accomodate the Griffon, then became aware of the Merlin 100 engine development in 1942 for the P-51 (lightweight fighter) giving 2200 HP.
It's very interesting that 4-Cycle piston motors pretty much reached their highest development (DOHC 4 valves/cylinder, fuel injection, etc.) in the GP race cars of the late 1930's and aircraft engines of WW2...80 Years Ago. Messerschmitt BF 109's had a significant advantage in maneuvers thanks to fuel injection before allies adopted it over carburetors
For clarity, using the measurements which were already common in Europe at the time of manufacture, the Rolls Royce Merlin was a 27 litre engine, and the Griffon was a 36 litre engine.
the contra-rotating props on later spitfires, as well some other naval aircraft takes prop torque out of the equation, but you would still get a tendency to roll from the crankshaft counterweights at full power - as far as i know (I'm a model maker, not a pilot, so ...)
The Griffon as used in the Shackleton was amazing. They'd take off, do an air display, depart for a 24hr patrol, return to the air show to do a repeat display the for 2nd day, and then depart to land for the first time in 24hr +.
A friend of mine has an old 1975 Rolls-Royce mk1 silver shadow car and despite being nearly 50 years old the old engine still starts first turn of the key, so it obviously hasn't even begun to wear out yet, there's obviously no serious loss of compression and it's not burning oil either, and it even still started first time with half of it's spark plugs knackered, even with the air filter all clogged up full of crap so it could hardly breathe! and it even still started first time with the firing order wired all wrong! How about that, that's how good Rolls-Royce engines are, real world class British engineering.
@@TheManFrayBentos Why? I'm genuinely interested. I thought it was just because SBAC was standardizing prop rotation, so engines developed afterwards began to comply.
Contra rotating props helps the torque effect I believe, no personal experience of course. The two props cancel each other out and only the rotation of the engine itself is producing the rotational forces …..
i think he stated that the propellor rotates in the opposite direction to the crankshaft - so the moment or torque from the crank is opposing the torque from the prop blades, cancelling out some of the effect. - but it pulled the aircraft to the right instead of the left when applying full throttle during takeoff, so converting from a mkIX to a mkXII the pilot needed to apply the opposite ruder pedal during takeoff to avoid a ground loop, digging a wingtip into the runway thats my understanding of what was said - but I may be wrong
@@stevesoutar3405 The internal workings of the reduction gearbox does not cancel any torque. That would be like pulling yourself up by your boot straps, physically impossible.
Amazing how the Merlin is so revered & it was an amazing engine but it wasn't a patch on the DB600 series engine used by the Germans in their BF109 as this was fuel injected with a fuel management system that allowed the fuel mixture to be varied according to its operational ceiling. The Merlin had carburetors that starved the engine of fuel when thrown into inverted dives etc.
A great deal of myth surrounding DB600 series. It was not the be-all and end-all. RR knew full well about fuel injection and its pros/cons. They decided the cons outweighed the pros. Don't forget it was not the EFI we now but a purely (and typically German complex) mechanical system that had high fuel consumption and quite poor mixture control (webbaroo hype aside). RR determined that the cooling effect on the fuel/air charge caused by the carburettor reduced the need for intercooling. As to the negative gee cut-out issue look up 'Miss Shilling's Orifice' that went a long way to resolving the issue while the pressure fed carb was being developed. also bear in mind that the Merlin achieved comparable HP to the DB600's through both engine's production runs while being considerably smaller displacement (Merlin 27L, DB600 34L)
The DB600 series would not have survived in carburetted form because of the compromises needed in design to cope with the German lack of strategic materials. The hydro-mechancial ECU was needed to stop the thing detonating to destruction. RR did not go for single point fuel injection due to a major mistake by the person tasked with evaluating it versus carbs. He was responsible for the loss of a lot of pilots. Both sides made mistakes, but in the German case the mistake was starting the war in the first place when economic warfare favoured the Allies.
*During the battle of Britain the Merlin must have been the most welcome sound of all. It must have been the sound of fighting back, the sound connected to the fighting spirit, the sound of Britain's finest hour, many hopes must have been pinned on it, my vote goes to Merlin. The sound of the Griffon signified domination and power later in the war.*
Two propellers Each rotating opposite directions. Zeroing the torque traction. The author first said the second propeller going in the opposite direction.
@6:44 having the Griffon's crankshaft rotate in the opposite dire tion to the Merlin did NOT alleviate the problem of the torque steer (in fact , with it's increased capacity and longer stroke, it was actually worse than on the Merlin) - it was the fitment of contra-rotating propellers on certain marks of the Griffon that did.
At 6:40ish, the direction of propeller rotation makes no difference to the magnitude of the torque reaction effect, just the direction. Another couple of important points. Even thought the griffon displaced 37% greater volume producing nearly 50% more power it wasn't much heavier and the frontal area was only about 4.2% greater.
As an automobile mechanic I Marvel at the complexity and amount of Parts on one of these engines. And I think how hard the maintenance would be and how much attention to detail you would have to have to work on one of these plus I bet they had 300 places where they could leak oil, yikes!
The Griffon was a development of the Rolls Royce R engine of 37 litres that powered the Schneider trophy Supermarine aircraft and enabled Britain to keep the trophy for 3 straight wins, the Supermarine Schneider float plane achieved 400mph in early 1930's. The Merlin was a much smaller capacity at 27 litres
The R engine was a master and slave type engine with a down draft carburettation system. The Griffon had a fork and blade crankshaft in common with the Merlin. The R and Griffon shared the same cubic displacement but the Griffon was not developed from the R. The Merlin and Griffon were both developed in parallel from the Kestrel.
Seeing people give likes to a silly and utterly ignorant anti-contribution is exasperating. It contributes towards and encourages posting lazy or trolling nonsense.
The Napier Sabre engine used on the Hawker Typhoon was producing 2300 hp by 1940 - the Typhoon was the only plane capable of taking on the Focke-Wulf 190 in 1941. The Sabre VIII produce 3000 hp and the Sabre E.122 produced 3500 hp.
@@anthonyjackson280 Spitfire IX in 1941? I don't bloody think so. As I said, the 1941 Mark V's were outclassed by the Focke-Wulf. It was dangerous work, but the Typhoon was the only plane capable of facing the FW190 until the Mark IXs were rolled out in late summer 1942.
Problem was that Napier had terrible quality control in 1940, which wasn't fixed till they were taken over by EE who told them to stop playing silly Bulgarians with superchargers and fix the production problems. It wasn't till 1944 that they were reliable, and they were still too complex and fragile.
The Napier Sabre was notoriously unreliable and killed many test pilots and operational pilots. Bristol was strong armed into providing Napier with their patented process for sleeve valves. Then there were all the problems with the Typhoon "interceptor" design. By 1944 the new Merlins were bench tested WEP at 2640 HP.
@@bobsakamanos4469 That is the nature of warfare - the English Electric Lightning was the finest interceptor ever made, but it terrified its pilots. The RAF needed the Sabre in 1941, not 1944. The Sabre IIB produced 2200 hp in 1941, with variants steadily increasing in power - by 1946 the E.122 produced 3500 hp.
I just read some of my friends family books, and his Uncle Martin flew Hurricanes, one other plane, and Typhoons. He told me one had shell shock when they took off. He did not know if he was coming back. He did not have a high opinion of those that faked it. Martin was a very strong man, working in a foundry stacking engine blocks. I do not know how he fit in a Hurricane.
Was the Griffin more reliable than the Sabre. I know the Sabre was a dog in the early days of the Typhoon, but maybe the bugs were sorted out by the time the Firefly was in production.
The fleet air arm wanted a 36 litre before the war the Merlin was 27. Well packaged equipment meant it fitted in the same package a real surprise for the Axis. The Merlin was up-powered and countered the FW 190 the Griffon outclassed it.
I haven't looked it up but my guess is that instead of the crankshaft and prop rotating in the same direction they used gearing so the crankshaft and prop were counter-rotating thus eliminating some of the gyroscopic effects.
@@johnwiles4391 It doesn't really make sense though as the Merlin(And many many other engines with a reduction gear) also did have the crank and prop rotate in different directions.
The only thing I can figure is that he got confused with the Griffon models whcih had coaxial contra-rotating twin propellers whcih would reduce torque. But what he actually said is complete nonsense.
“The Firefly’s wing folding design made it suitable for carrier operations.” Seriously? The ONLY reason the Firefly had a folding wing was that it was designed AS a carrier based aircraft!
After the car, you could buy a lot of these engines at scap dealer prices. A number of Drag Racers and even street Hot Rods tried to use these enormous engined with varing results. Unfortunately the mass of the engines made it difficult first, to get the power to weight ratio of A HEMI on Nitro..then also it was difficlut to get enough weight over the rear wheels. So most aero engine dragsters got top MPH honors but not the really Low e.t.'s to make top eliminator.....
Torque was greater with the Griffon, and did not help the Seafire control during take-off. All of the left turning issues with the Merlin Seafire were present with the Griffon Seafire, except that they were right turning forces (P-factor, precession, slipstream, torque, adverse yaw). Only the contra-rotating props on the post war Seafire 47 eleminated those adverse forces.
How does spinning the engine the other way to anything to counteract torque? Are you saying there was a gearbox between crankshaft and prop that reversed the drive direction?
It absolutely doesn't. That's complete nonsense. Some Griffons had twin coaxial contra-rotating propellers, that arrangement *did* counteract torque effects. Maybe the narrator got got confused by that. But you're right, simply changing a single prop to turn the other way doesn't counteract torque at all, it just makes it act in the opposite direction.
I have to say that the later Spitfires where Spitfires in name only. I'd be interested to see the parts commonality between something like a 22 and a 5 or 9.
I would atleast have an accompanied video that shows the arc of development and issues The drama of ww2 aviation is the challenges of intense development programs Taking borderline desperate risks to claw performance out of these powerplant
Why does the Griffon sound so much different than the the Merlin? They are both 60deg V12's. The Merlin sings while the Griff snarls, you can almost hear each individual cyl fire. Firing order? The fact it rotates in the opposite direction? I would sure like to know.
Per Graham White, firing order was different, and the the cam profiles were very different. In most mature form: Merlin had 70-deg overlap, 288 degress of duration to Griffon's 28-deg overlap and 248 degrees of duration. Basically, Merlins use 'race cams.'
Far more reliable and better very high altitude performance, the terrible Sabre development shambles meant that Napier never developed a two stage supercharger. Sodium cooled exhaust valves made sleeve valves not really worth all the trouble.
This video contains a number of mistakes which unfortunately would take pages of text to correct. The Griffin did evolve from the Rolls Royce R engines and in 1933 a de-rated version of the 'R' engine called the Griffin was built and tested. Problems with vibration and the need to develop the Merlin resulted in this early Griffin soon being shelved. The later 1938 Griffin being almost a completely new design. However, valuable information regarding component manufacturing and strength were learned from the first engine and used to make the Merlin more reliable. Although the Griffin was a development of the 'R' engine the 'R' was itself a development of the the Rolls Royce Buzzard which first ran in 1928. All of these engines had the same stroke and bore and the same vibration issues. At time point 6:50 it is claimed that the direction the propeller turned by a Griffin aided take-off on an aircraft carrier. This is totally wrong as the torque from the Griffin engine actually forced the aeroplane over to the right which on a British carrier was directly towards the funnel and Island. A problem not resolved until contra-rotating propellers were fitted to Spitfires and the engine down-rated on Fairey aircraft.
It took a long time for Rolls-Royce to get to fuel injection, several years after the German engines. This report said that this was modern innovation. But in reality, it was several years late.
Totally different concepts although often mistakenly quoted in RUclips comment sections. British and US aircraft engine manufacturers never rated the diesel type direct injection systems used in German engines believing them to result in inefficient fuel/air mixtures. Later Rolls Royce engines still used Carburetors for a far more efficient and accurate mixture control…they simply used metered pumping of fuel into the carburettor rather than the earlier Venturi type SU carburettors.
@@annoyingbstard9407 There was no carburettor in the single-point injection system used in British engines, there was a throttle body but no venturis etc., the fuel was sprayed directly into the eye of the supercharger. Hives was credited with saying that the charge air temperature reduction due to the evaporation of the fuel in the carburettor was of more advantage than what direct injection gave. Hmmm, the fuel gets vaporised at some point, it would require considerable work to determine any advantages on either side Ricardo had recommended the study of direct injection in the 1920s but little work was done. Bristol did considerable work (quite good work) on both port injection and direct injection in the 30s but this went nowhere as resources were focused on other design elements. In the end, the British got away with it but they really should have brought in single-point injection much earlier. There were some other advantages to NOT having fuel in the induction system, but R-R got around them. No one really understood combustion well enough to make direct injection a game changer, except in fringe engines such as the R-R Crecy where it allowed stratified charge, a crucial requirement of that two stroke engine. Fuel metering in the direct injection systems was very good but it would take many more years to start to come to grips with combustion chamber design which was compromised in the German engines as they had to fit the four valves, two spark plugs, and the injector in the head of an under-square engine. Although the designers took into account swirl and to a lesser extent tumble, nobody had a handle on squish until Honda started using squish plateaus around the exhaust valves in their racing bikes from the early 60s, followed by the Aubrey Woods engine at Weslake for Ford that ended up as the Gurney Weslake engines and then, of course, Keith Duckworth at Cosworth.
I would love to know how Aichi was able to eventually get 1700hp out of the Atsuta (DB601a) which is what DB was getting out of the 603 a much larger displacement motor. Did Aichi out engineer DB with their own system?
While the Griffon made production, it was NOT the most powerful WW2 era engine. For pure piston engines, the Lycoming XR-7755 made 5000 HP in prototypes (2 built) , the Pratt and Whitney R-4360 among production engines made 4360 in it's -51 model (though only 3800 for the most powerful "completed during the war" version). The Griffon MIGHT have been the most powerful "V-12" of World War 2, but was a weakling comparatively at "barely over" 2400 HP for it's most powerful version.
The Griffon was a great engine, but it came too late to make a difference to WW2. I would put it fourth after the Merlin, the Bristol engines, and the Napier Sabre out of the British engines.
And now it's a combat jet. Kind full circle, 50 years after the Griffon powered one of the finest piston engine fighters it gave the name to one of the finest pre stealth fighters.
Can anyone explain how turning the opposite way reduced the need to deal with engine torque? Counter-rotating props, sure, but turning the other way just means the pilot's other leg gets tired on takeoff. I suspect the writer got turning the other way mixed up with counter rotating props that some Griffons were equipped with but, from the photos, not most.
Direction of rotation has no impact on the torque, it only changes its application and the way the pilots had to counteract the torque effects (left or right rudder pedal). Coutra-rotating propellers does cancel the torque effect, as two props rotates the opposite way, then the only reaction is longitudinal thrust. Action always equals reaction, simple physics.
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
The king returns! I absolutely love these engine deep dives. There's tons of documentaries on every single aircraft but none on the powerplants. Thanks!
Thanks for tuning it!! I’ve got a plan to keep up the video output.
@@flightdojoawesome ❤ really looking forward to it.
@@flightdojo We'll all good fans of yours. Any time I see one of these come out, I have to watch them as well. I'm not even into engines - I'm a huge computer nerd/builder/programmer. I just love the specs, data numbers, and presentation.
Going to get a snack for this one. Always worth the view.
Have you already seen "Greg's planes and automobiles" channel?
@@bernhardjordan9200 Ha! Thanks for letting me know. I've got it subscribed and will check it out. Looks like another gem.
Great presentation. Even greater to see you back with a new video
Thank you kindly!
Nice to see you back!
The griffon was still on operational aircraft when I joined the RAF in 1987 - admittedly as a stopgap after the failure of the Nimrod AEW project. It was finally retired only when the E-3 was procured. In 1991.
Avro Shackleton ??? ;)
Thank you - a fine engine placed very well into it's place in history. The Merlin was a superb engine but the Griffon is very overlooked.
My favourite Allied engine! I will never forget the roar of the four of these on a Shackleton.
The detail in these engines is amazing
Another excellent video !!
Please keep them coming
Not a word about the aircraft in which it served for decades after WW2 - the Avro Shackleton in its Marine Reconnaissance and also it's Airborne Early Warning variants. Four mighty Griffins in each aircraft, with patrols extending for over 10 hours. That is engineering.
A great search/EW/patrol airplane.
Excellent professional video best by far of all the videos I have watched about the Griffon. Very impressed with the extent and detail of research you carried you and the archive video thoroughly enjoyed it thank you well done
Loving your content, bro! Thank you!
Hooray!! The king has returned!
Love your videos! Glad to see you’re back!
I had the good fortune to work at the factory on Nightingale Road, Derby which produced the Merlin and Griffon during the 70’s.
A great video and thanks for all the research you put into your videos. It's greatly appreciated.
I was just checking the other day if you had posted anything recent. Such a surprise see this pop up right after!
Welcome back, thankyou.
Just found your chanel, I love the focus of the chanel, and I wish I found you all sooner. I was amazed by the 2 stroke engine from the other video.
The Griffon ( mk 101 ) was also used in the RAF Marine Branch, TE Lawrence etc. They were fitted in the 68ft HSL boats. Two engines converted to Marine use fitted in the boats and using Mathaway gearboxes. They ran on 130 octane fuel and the boats carried 2220 gallons n 5 Tanks. RTTL 2757 at RAF HENDON is the last example of these boats and on which I served as a Deckhand, then later as an Engineer.
❤ both The Merlin & Griffon Engines . The Spitfire with the Contra Rotation Props was my Favourite
This presentation rocks. Nicely done.
He back!!! I'm glad to see you back and ok brother!
A proper engine. Great to see you back.
Love these videos. Wish you could post 5 a day!
Excellent video !
Superb video, thank you.
He lives....
Edit.
I always love your videos
Great voice to listen to like Sir David Attenborough
Really appreciate your work man
Thank you! I really appreciate the voice comment 😂
Fascinating & Fantastic, Thank You 👍
Excellent as always
This engine was later used in Unlimited Hydroplane racing and tractor pulls! The engine that said 'Budweiser' was from the Unlimited Hydroplane boat racing!
That Was Great! I Really Enjoy WW2 Aviation History. Thank You. (Like #424 - Comment #54)
Excellent video thanks
Great to see new video!
great video. those 13 minutes went by so fast!
Hey good to see you back.
Excelent, thank you 👍
I think you failed to mention how the Rolls Royce engineers generally kept the same frontal area of the Griffon compared to the Merlin, a lot more displacement for a minor increase in frontal area, and hence a minor increase drag on the aircraft.
Otherwise a very good video!
Sounds off. They kept the length down, but they moved cam etc. drives to the front to reduce crank twist effect on timing. So, the overhead drive gears are at the front of the valve covers, which is why humps were added to the cowling. I do agree that their efforts were remarkable, as an engine of 30% greater capacity could be used in airframes designed for a Merlin. My impression is that the Griffon was cleaner (no external oil lines) and more bulletproof, but its 'tuning' (like cam profiles) was not as agressive as that in the Merlin. I would love to know what a Griffon could do with such a profile.
Maths is a bit casual sometimes, 37 litres is actually 37 percent bigger than 27 litres and the cube root of 37 is only 11 percent bigger than the cube root of 27 so the Griffon would hardly be expected to be vastly bigger than the Merlin. Obviously if a linear dimension is doubled the volume becomes 2 x 2 x 2 or Eight Times bigger.
Maths is similar to math.
I miss the Sckakelton aircraft, maybe the last piston aircraft in the Royal navy that had the Griffon
Spectacular machine, I don't think the crews missed it though, those props made for fatigue problems.
They were all RAF as far as I know in all roles.
The Shackleton was never in the Royal Navy it was only ever in the Royal Air Force!
Yes! Dojo is back!
Flawless !
Griffon was developed expressly for the FAA, yet once it entered production, it was diverted to the RAF for, well, Spitfires. As a consequence, once the Pacific Fleet was formed, the primary aircraft of the FAA were US-made Corsairs, Hellcats, and Avengers, with a sprinkling of Barracudas, which were forced to use underpowered Merlins. OK, some Griffon-powered Fireflies (why a 2-person fighter?) were also used.
From what I have read, the Griffon was, indeed, a good engine. Contrast with the Napier Sabre, which was much more powerful engine but was plagued with difficulty in trying to transition from the "skilled craftsman" to the "assembly line" mode of production, and in the end was used for only two production aircraft types.
Why a 2-person fighter? Doctrine, of course. Pre-war FAA doctrine was that naval fighters were there to protect the fleet from bombers. The bombers were meant to be spotted and intercepted by long-range 2-seat fighters; the second seat was for a navigator to help guide the pilot. Range was prioritized over maneuverability. Hence, the long line of crappy 2-seaters in the FAA.
Reality overwhelmed FAA doctrine once the war started and it became obvious that single seat fighters were an absolute necessity. The range of enemy fighters increased, as did the firepower of enemy bombers. The FAA scrambled to fix the deficiency but, having eschewed home-built single-seaters, they were forced to take whatever they could get from the Americans - namely the Wildcat/Martlet. These served until the end of the war, alongside the crappy 2-seaters to which the FAA clung bitterly.
@@jamesdalton2014 maybe they were right, the US lost a significantly higher percentage of planes to navigation issues & that includes the USN. Mind you this maybe because US training focused more on other things, like for example formation flying, I don’t know.
@@mickvonbornemann3824 Ah, yes... formation flying - the air force equivalent of parade ground drill. It looks nice but, it's absolutely useless in combat. It makes the cake-eaters all warm and fuzzy though.
But, your point about training is spot on. Better training and more of it leads to fewer accidents. unfortunately, it always takes time for peace-time forces to learn the lessons of war.
@@mickvonbornemann3824 you crank out thousands you are going to lose more than if you only crank out hundreds. The quality of the pilots inevitably go down. Has nothing to do with learning to fly in formation which by the way EVERY AIR FORCE TEACHES
@@johnhallett5846 Other air forces were not pretending that they could create a formation with so many guns pointing in all directions that it could repel enemy attacks.
Flying in large formations assumes the enemy does't have efficient AA.
By 1942, RR was working on the Merlin 100 series engine with some much improved systems. NAA Schmued visited RR at that time and started planning the P-51H around it. By 1944 it was being bench tested WEP at 2640 HP and 135" MP. It powered the deHavilland Hornet.
It was perhaps a better solution for fighters than the Griffon.
return of the king
Even NAA evaluated putting the Griffon in the P-51. I had a NAA line drawing of this configuration, but need to find it again.
Correct. NAA performed the preliminary design to accomodate the Griffon, then became aware of the Merlin 100 engine development in 1942 for the P-51 (lightweight fighter) giving 2200 HP.
It's very interesting that 4-Cycle piston motors pretty much reached their highest development (DOHC 4 valves/cylinder, fuel injection, etc.) in the GP race cars of the late 1930's and aircraft engines of WW2...80 Years Ago. Messerschmitt BF 109's had a significant advantage in maneuvers thanks to fuel injection before allies adopted it over carburetors
For clarity, using the measurements which were already common in Europe at the time of manufacture, the Rolls Royce Merlin was a 27 litre engine, and the Griffon was a 36 litre engine.
Books published by Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust are well-worth looking at. There is a number of books on Merlin and Griffon.
lt is an awesome engine.....Thank you Flight Dojo
Old F-4 pilot Shoe🇺🇸
Starts at 3:00
6:45 Er... Okay...? Are you sure you were not confusing things with contra-rotating prop or anything?
the contra-rotating props on later spitfires, as well some other naval aircraft takes prop torque out of the equation, but you would still get a tendency to roll from the crankshaft counterweights at full power - as far as i know (I'm a model maker, not a pilot, so ...)
The Griffon as used in the Shackleton was amazing. They'd take off, do an air display, depart for a 24hr patrol, return to the air show to do a repeat display the for 2nd day, and then depart to land for the first time in 24hr +.
Um, and how did they do that exactly????
A friend of mine has an old 1975 Rolls-Royce mk1 silver shadow car and despite being nearly 50 years old the old engine still starts first turn of the key, so it obviously hasn't even begun to wear out yet, there's obviously no serious loss of compression and it's not burning oil either, and it even still started first time with half of it's spark plugs knackered, even with the air filter all clogged up full of crap so it could hardly breathe! and it even still started first time with the firing order wired all wrong! How about that, that's how good Rolls-Royce engines are, real world class British engineering.
Changing the direction of rotation does not help with torque, it just means things turn the other way,
Certainly helps with torque reaction, though.
@@TheManFrayBentos Why? I'm genuinely interested. I thought it was just because SBAC was standardizing prop rotation, so engines developed afterwards began to comply.
Contra rotating props helps the torque effect I believe, no personal experience of course. The two props cancel each other out and only the rotation of the engine itself is producing the rotational forces …..
i think he stated that the propellor rotates in the opposite direction to the crankshaft - so the moment or torque from the crank is opposing the torque from the prop blades, cancelling out some of the effect. - but it pulled the aircraft to the right instead of the left when applying full throttle during takeoff, so converting from a mkIX to a mkXII the pilot needed to apply the opposite ruder pedal during takeoff to avoid a ground loop, digging a wingtip into the runway
thats my understanding of what was said - but I may be wrong
@@stevesoutar3405 The internal workings of the reduction gearbox does not cancel any torque. That would be like pulling yourself up by your boot straps, physically impossible.
Amazing how the Merlin is so revered & it was an amazing engine but it wasn't a patch on the DB600 series engine used by the Germans in their BF109 as this was fuel injected with a fuel management system that allowed the fuel mixture to be varied according to its operational ceiling. The Merlin had carburetors that starved the engine of fuel when thrown into inverted dives etc.
A great deal of myth surrounding DB600 series. It was not the be-all and end-all. RR knew full well about fuel injection and its pros/cons. They decided the cons outweighed the pros. Don't forget it was not the EFI we now but a purely (and typically German complex) mechanical system that had high fuel consumption and quite poor mixture control (webbaroo hype aside). RR determined that the cooling effect on the fuel/air charge caused by the carburettor reduced the need for intercooling. As to the negative gee cut-out issue look up 'Miss Shilling's Orifice' that went a long way to resolving the issue while the pressure fed carb was being developed. also bear in mind that the Merlin achieved comparable HP to the DB600's through both engine's production runs while being considerably smaller displacement (Merlin 27L, DB600 34L)
The DB600 series would not have survived in carburetted form because of the compromises needed in design to cope with the German lack of strategic materials. The hydro-mechancial ECU was needed to stop the thing detonating to destruction.
RR did not go for single point fuel injection due to a major mistake by the person tasked with evaluating it versus carbs. He was responsible for the loss of a lot of pilots.
Both sides made mistakes, but in the German case the mistake was starting the war in the first place when economic warfare favoured the Allies.
Why focus on the 1940 version of the Merlin carburetor, while the US was still drinking martinis and building vehicles in Germany.
*During the battle of Britain the Merlin must have been the most welcome sound of all. It must have been the sound of fighting back, the sound connected to the fighting spirit, the sound of Britain's finest hour, many hopes must have been pinned on it, my vote goes to Merlin. The sound of the Griffon signified domination and power later in the war.*
How exactly would reversing the direction of rotation of the engine reduce torque effects?
Two propellers
Each rotating opposite directions. Zeroing the torque traction. The author first said the second propeller going in the opposite direction.
@@625shapiro What about the engines torque???
@@will7itsThat would have some effect too, but the propeller’s effect is much greater due to its greater diameter and mass.
@6:44 having the Griffon's crankshaft rotate in the opposite dire tion to the Merlin did NOT alleviate the problem of the torque steer (in fact , with it's increased capacity and longer stroke, it was actually worse than on the Merlin) - it was the fitment of contra-rotating propellers on certain marks of the Griffon that did.
At 6:40ish, the direction of propeller rotation makes no difference to the magnitude of the torque reaction effect, just the direction. Another couple of important points. Even thought the griffon displaced 37% greater volume producing nearly 50% more power it wasn't much heavier and the frontal area was only about 4.2% greater.
It stayed in frontline RAF service long after the dawn of the jet age. The shakleton was retired in 1991.
As an automobile mechanic I Marvel at the complexity and amount of Parts on one of these engines. And I think how hard the maintenance would be and how much attention to detail you would have to have to work on one of these plus I bet they had 300 places where they could leak oil, yikes!
The Griffon was a development of the Rolls Royce R engine of 37 litres that powered the Schneider trophy Supermarine aircraft and enabled Britain to keep the trophy for 3 straight wins, the Supermarine Schneider float plane achieved 400mph in early 1930's. The Merlin was a much smaller capacity at 27 litres
The R engine was a master and slave type engine with a down draft carburettation system. The Griffon had a fork and blade crankshaft in common with the Merlin. The R and Griffon shared the same cubic displacement but the Griffon was not developed from the R. The Merlin and Griffon were both developed in parallel from the Kestrel.
Seeing people give likes to a silly and utterly ignorant anti-contribution is exasperating. It contributes towards and encourages posting lazy or trolling nonsense.
The Napier Sabre engine used on the Hawker Typhoon was producing 2300 hp by 1940 - the Typhoon was the only plane capable of taking on the Focke-Wulf 190 in 1941. The Sabre VIII produce 3000 hp and the Sabre E.122 produced 3500 hp.
Spitfire IX took care of FW-190. Typhoons did not have the required service ceiling.
@@anthonyjackson280 Spitfire IX in 1941? I don't bloody think so. As I said, the 1941 Mark V's were outclassed by the Focke-Wulf. It was dangerous work, but the Typhoon was the only plane capable of facing the FW190 until the Mark IXs were rolled out in late summer 1942.
Problem was that Napier had terrible quality control in 1940, which wasn't fixed till they were taken over by EE who told them to stop playing silly Bulgarians with superchargers and fix the production problems. It wasn't till 1944 that they were reliable, and they were still too complex and fragile.
The Napier Sabre was notoriously unreliable and killed many test pilots and operational pilots. Bristol was strong armed into providing Napier with their patented process for sleeve valves. Then there were all the problems with the Typhoon "interceptor" design. By 1944 the new Merlins were bench tested WEP at 2640 HP.
@@bobsakamanos4469 That is the nature of warfare - the English Electric Lightning was the finest interceptor ever made, but it terrified its pilots. The RAF needed the Sabre in 1941, not 1944. The Sabre IIB produced 2200 hp in 1941, with variants steadily increasing in power - by 1946 the E.122 produced 3500 hp.
I just read some of my friends family books, and his Uncle Martin flew Hurricanes, one other plane, and Typhoons. He told me one had shell shock when they took off. He did not know if he was coming back. He did not have a high opinion of those that faked it. Martin was a very strong man, working in a foundry stacking engine blocks. I do not know how he fit in a Hurricane.
I made contact, it was the Tomahawk, the UK version of the p-40.
Yay dojos back!
Was the Griffin more reliable than the Sabre. I know the Sabre was a dog in the early days of the Typhoon, but maybe the bugs were sorted out by the time the Firefly was in production.
The fleet air arm wanted a 36 litre before the war the Merlin was 27. Well packaged equipment meant it fitted in the same package a real surprise for the Axis. The Merlin was up-powered and countered the FW 190 the Griffon outclassed it.
The Griffon remained in active service into the late eighties in the Avro Shackleton.
How does direction of rotation affect torque quantity?
I haven't looked it up but my guess is that instead of the crankshaft and prop rotating in the same direction they used gearing so the crankshaft and prop were counter-rotating thus eliminating some of the gyroscopic effects.
For a single-rotation prop - it doesn't.
@@stumccabe Well, I hadn't thought of that and it does make sense.
@@johnwiles4391 It doesn't really make sense though as the Merlin(And many many other engines with a reduction gear) also did have the crank and prop rotate in different directions.
The only thing I can figure is that he got confused with the Griffon models whcih had coaxial contra-rotating twin propellers whcih would reduce torque. But what he actually said is complete nonsense.
Finally! 🙂
“The Firefly’s wing folding design made it suitable for carrier operations.”
Seriously?
The ONLY reason the Firefly had a folding wing was that it was designed AS a carrier based aircraft!
3:21 The Griffon was 37 litres and the Merlin was 27 litres. Nobody in the UK uses cubic inches.
Charming limeyness. Packard saved Britain.😂
After the car, you could buy a lot of these engines at scap dealer prices. A number of Drag Racers and even street Hot Rods tried to use these enormous engined with varing results. Unfortunately
the mass of the engines made it difficult first, to get the power to weight ratio of A HEMI on Nitro..then also
it was difficlut to get enough weight over the rear wheels.
So most aero engine dragsters got top MPH honors but not the really Low e.t.'s to make top eliminator.....
Torque was greater with the Griffon, and did not help the Seafire control during take-off. All of the left turning issues with the Merlin Seafire were present with the Griffon Seafire, except that they were right turning forces (P-factor, precession, slipstream, torque, adverse yaw).
Only the contra-rotating props on the post war Seafire 47 eleminated those adverse forces.
Four were used to power the Avro Shackleton ASW and AEW aircraft, all with contraprops.
How does spinning the engine the other way to anything to counteract torque? Are you saying there was a gearbox between crankshaft and prop that reversed the drive direction?
It absolutely doesn't. That's complete nonsense. Some Griffons had twin coaxial contra-rotating propellers, that arrangement *did* counteract torque effects. Maybe the narrator got got confused by that. But you're right, simply changing a single prop to turn the other way doesn't counteract torque at all, it just makes it act in the opposite direction.
I have to say that the later Spitfires where Spitfires in name only. I'd be interested to see the parts commonality between something like a 22 and a 5 or 9.
I would atleast have an accompanied video that shows the arc of development and issues
The drama of ww2 aviation is the challenges of intense development programs
Taking borderline desperate risks to claw performance out of these powerplant
Why does the Griffon sound so much different than the
the Merlin? They are both 60deg V12's. The Merlin sings while the Griff snarls, you can almost hear each individual cyl fire. Firing order? The fact it rotates in the opposite direction? I would sure like to know.
Per Graham White, firing order was different, and the the cam profiles were very different. In most mature form: Merlin had 70-deg overlap, 288 degress of duration to Griffon's 28-deg overlap and 248 degrees of duration. Basically, Merlins use 'race cams.'
If you think it's butter... but it's not. It's, Griffon! lol
How does it compare to the Napier Sabre; especially the later, improved versions?
Far more reliable and better very high altitude performance, the terrible Sabre development shambles meant that Napier never developed a two stage supercharger. Sodium cooled exhaust valves made sleeve valves not really worth all the trouble.
This video contains a number of mistakes which unfortunately would take pages of text to correct.
The Griffin did evolve from the Rolls Royce R engines and in 1933 a de-rated version of the 'R' engine called the Griffin was built and tested. Problems with vibration and the need to develop the Merlin resulted in this early Griffin soon being shelved. The later 1938 Griffin being almost a completely new design. However, valuable information regarding component manufacturing and strength were learned from the first engine and used to make the Merlin more reliable.
Although the Griffin was a development of the 'R' engine the 'R' was itself a development of the the Rolls Royce Buzzard which first ran in 1928. All of these engines had the same stroke and bore and the same vibration issues.
At time point 6:50 it is claimed that the direction the propeller turned by a Griffin aided take-off on an aircraft carrier. This is totally wrong as the torque from the Griffin engine actually forced the aeroplane over to the right which on a British carrier was directly towards the funnel and Island. A problem not resolved until contra-rotating propellers were fitted to Spitfires and the engine down-rated on Fairey aircraft.
Nice video but you missed the best plane the engine was ever put on the mighty AVRO Shackleton and that beauty soldiered on till the 1990’s
The Griffon engine is a beast.
It took a long time for Rolls-Royce to get to fuel injection, several years after the German engines.
This report said that this was modern innovation. But in reality, it was several years late.
Totally different concepts although often mistakenly quoted in RUclips comment sections. British and US aircraft engine manufacturers never rated the diesel type direct injection systems used in German engines believing them to result in inefficient fuel/air mixtures. Later Rolls Royce engines still used Carburetors for a far more efficient and accurate mixture control…they simply used metered pumping of fuel into the carburettor rather than the earlier Venturi type SU carburettors.
@@annoyingbstard9407 There was no carburettor in the single-point injection system used in British engines, there was a throttle body but no venturis etc., the fuel was sprayed directly into the eye of the supercharger.
Hives was credited with saying that the charge air temperature reduction due to the evaporation of the fuel in the carburettor was of more advantage than what direct injection gave. Hmmm, the fuel gets vaporised at some point, it would require considerable work to determine any advantages on either side
Ricardo had recommended the study of direct injection in the 1920s but little work was done. Bristol did considerable work (quite good work) on both port injection and direct injection in the 30s but this went nowhere as resources were focused on other design elements.
In the end, the British got away with it but they really should have brought in single-point injection much earlier.
There were some other advantages to NOT having fuel in the induction system, but R-R got around them.
No one really understood combustion well enough to make direct injection a game changer, except in fringe engines such as the R-R Crecy where it allowed stratified charge, a crucial requirement of that two stroke engine.
Fuel metering in the direct injection systems was very good but it would take many more years to start to come to grips with combustion chamber design which was compromised in the German engines as they had to fit the four valves, two spark plugs, and the injector in the head of an under-square engine. Although the designers took into account swirl and to a lesser extent tumble, nobody had a handle on squish until Honda started using squish plateaus around the exhaust valves in their racing bikes from the early 60s, followed by the Aubrey Woods engine at Weslake for Ford that ended up as the Gurney Weslake engines and then, of course, Keith Duckworth at Cosworth.
… AND pressure carburettors feeding into the supercharger intake is NOT single point fuel injection.
Does Jay Leno have a Griffon engine?
and additional...if you ever visited a tractor pull .......best sound
Fell at the first hurdle. When did WWII start? September 39. When was the Griffon designed? design started April 1938.
I would love to know how Aichi was able to eventually get 1700hp out of the Atsuta (DB601a) which is what DB was getting out of the 603 a much larger displacement motor. Did Aichi out engineer DB with their own system?
The nazi 605 was the ‘improved’😂 109 engine. The enormous heavy 603 was used in planes like the He 219 _Uhu._
While the Griffon made production, it was NOT the most powerful WW2 era engine.
For pure piston engines, the Lycoming XR-7755 made 5000 HP in prototypes (2 built) , the Pratt and Whitney R-4360 among production engines made 4360 in it's -51 model (though only 3800 for the most powerful "completed during the war" version).
The Griffon MIGHT have been the most powerful "V-12" of World War 2, but was a weakling comparatively at "barely over" 2400 HP for it's most powerful version.
The Griffon was a great engine, but it came too late to make a difference to WW2. I would put it fourth after the Merlin, the Bristol engines, and the Napier Sabre out of the British engines.
Pratt and Whitney R-4360 "Corncob": Am I a joke to you?
Please include metric measurements 🙏🙏
Napier & Sabre engines fitted on typhoon &.tempest were also.comparible with Griffin engine.
Unreliable Sabres.
Only at lower levels.
The Griffon
was a mythical flying dragon 0:06
And now it's a combat jet.
Kind full circle, 50 years after the Griffon powered one of the finest piston engine fighters it gave the name to one of the finest pre stealth fighters.
You left out the postwar history of the Griffon the Avro Shackleton.
Can anyone explain how turning the opposite way reduced the need to deal with engine torque?
Counter-rotating props, sure, but turning the other way just means the pilot's other leg gets tired on takeoff.
I suspect the writer got turning the other way mixed up with counter rotating props that some Griffons were equipped with but, from the photos, not most.
Direction of rotation has no impact on the torque, it only changes its application and the way the pilots had to counteract the torque effects (left or right rudder pedal).
Coutra-rotating propellers does cancel the torque effect, as two props rotates the opposite way, then the only reaction is longitudinal thrust.
Action always equals reaction, simple physics.
A fine engine, to be sure, but not even in the league of Pratt and Whitney R-2800s and Wright R-3350s
And it lived on in hydroplane racing, as "Miss Budweiser" attests. 😂
"Advancement" => "Advance"