This video reminds me of a time I really gave myself a fright. I was instructing autorotations in a H269 helicopter with a lycoming 360. I’d come off a mountain into a valley and rolled off the throttle on my student at 8000ft. It was very cold the CHT dropped from around 300deg to below the scale in the few minutes it took to descend. It certainly was more than the 50deg/minute. I realised before the bottom and very gingerly applied power to let it warm before full throttle. I always did wonder how close that cylinder head was to cracking. Lesson learned after that half way down I’d apply some power before removing. That did wonders and the CHT drop was no where near as severe. One marble from luck jar into experience…
@@jaym8027I also saw that, the aircraft they were in gas a turbine engine so no danger of shock cooling. Unfortunately practise autorotations are fairly high risk. There is a lot going on and it’s easy for students to make mistakes. It’s a common accident profile while people are learning to Pilot. It’s also necessary to learn. Tragic outcome
@@chrisbeauchamp5563 I was gonna say a funny thing and then I read the replies and holy shit. I was out with a bestie having drinks and just having an all out good time. Goes to show hor precious life is.
When I was a skydive pilot shock cooling was definitely a concern. We would monitor cylinder head Temps all the way up and carry some power in the descent to keep Temps up
It is only a few weeks ago that my father complained about how one off the by then few Motor Engine Certified Pilots left in the local Glider Club - regularly destroyed the Engines on their Tow-Plane .... Simply because he almost chrash-dived it down immediately after Glider-Release (I can't remember exactly what the maneuver is called). They would MUCH prefer to use ANY other pilot (if available) than him - but more often than not - it was him or no Flying that day 😞 Any other Pilot flying the plane (or the Piper Cub they had before) had any Incident's in the Engine Log, for the plane => It did have to be really bad for things to go wrong. I'm sure that the Problem increases with the Diameter of the Cylinderhead - as the stresses increase with size and the BMW was a Really BIG Engine ...!!!
Yup when I was glider towing with air cooled engines we used to always do powered on descents to reduce shock cooling. Not an issue with Rotax powered as the water cooling provided more stable temp changes. Just a bit less power but depending what you are towing it can work out ok.
Shock cooling is definitely a thing from my experience. I used to be a member of the Canterbury Gliding Club, which operated a Piper Pawnee PA-25-235 (which I have flown as Tow pilot on occasion and often flew behind in a glider). Earlier on with the aircraft, the club went through an alarming period of cracking cylinders (including fairly new cylinders) and it was of significant safety concern not to mention expense. A procedural change was made where by: after the glider released the tow plane would NOT reduce throttle but would nose down to increase airspeed (the Pawnee is incredibly draggy so exceeding VNE is not normally an issue), which would cool the cylinders at a slower rate than if you throttle off. You would leave the throttle wide open until base leg. It made for quite fun flying and completely eliminated the cylinder cracking problem.
Thanks. I was expecting an avalanche of people from the "shock cooling is a myth" crowd, but they haven't shown up. It seems that most pilots with experience in this are in my camp. In fact if anything, more of them are like you and that indicates that shock cooling is a bigger factor than I realized.
Glider pilot here. Our club have specific procedures to bring the towplane down as cooling down too fast caused few cilinder damages. Once the source was identified, the problem was successfuly resolved.
Did sky dives for a while in a 182. Procedure was close engine vents, prop full forward and power to like 15 i think. Then spiral down. I was told if engine was put to idle it would cool to fast and could crack cylinder. Keeping the engine at some power kept it from getting too cold. A nice spiral kept decent in the yellow and if down right you could exit the spiral down on final to land and save time
Even water-methanol VAPOR injection can make a big difference on an engine. Around 15 years ago (until some idiot on his cell phone, late for his tee time at the golf course t-boned me), I had a 1987 Mercedes Benz 300DT sedan, with the 6 cylinder inline turbocharged diesel, with the fixed T3 turbo. The previous owner had bought it new, but was getting too old to keep up with the maintenance on it. He'd only put 130K miles on it in nearly 20 years, and apparently most of that at low speeds. The exhaust system was loaded with soot - the first time I tried a hard acceleration in it, it put out a cloud of soot that would have done a coal-fired locomotive proud, entirely blocking my view in the rear view mirror for a few seconds - and causing the poor sod that was behind me in a brand new Ford Mustang, with his windows down, and had been tailgating me for the past 2 or 3 miles, to literally stop dead in the road, and then stay a healthy distance behind me the rest of the way to work. The engine had bad injector nailing from all the built up carbon and gunk in the engine, as a result of the oil mist being sucked in via the crankcase vent ahead of the turbo, and the previous owner's infrequent and low speed driving. After doing a thorough cleaning of the intake system and manifold, I installed a crankcase ventilation filter to capture the oil mist. After that, not wanting to go to the trouble and expense of installing a liquid water-methanol injection system - and wanting to avoid any possible liquid impingement on the turbocharger - downstream of the oil mist filter, I installed a "bubbler" container. About a half-gallon in size, filled with cheap water-methanol windshield wiper fluid, it routed the crankcase vent gases to the bottom of the container, which then bubbled up thru the washer fluid, evaporating the water-methanol mixture, which then got sucked into the intake system ahead of the turbo. It also had the added benefit of condensing out any oil mist the filter had missed. After little more than a month of doing my daily 40 mile round trip commute to work, it suddenly dawned on me than the injector nailing had completely disappeared - and once off idle, the engine was running quieter than many gasoline powered vehicles I'd driven - and even in my mixed driving commute, it was pushing close to 30 MPG average fuel economy.
The A4 I always thought as a stopgap between the A3 and A5 - thanks for adding to my knowledge - so NOW I wanna get started on that amazing ZM Fw190A-4 1/32 kit...
Regarding metallurgy, I've only recently discovered that German 1944/45 armor was prone to shattering due to lack of strategic metals. The same strategic metals in shortage, were used in aero engines (piston & jet.)
This is very exaggerated, honestly bordering on myth at this point. Sources are conflicting with each other, and one period British document made that claim without any testing but simply as an educated guess, from finding out Germans lacked one element of armor that they [*British] considered essential, while it turned out to be untrue since Germans found an equivalent replacement for it (IIRC it was about vanadium), that British didn't realise was possible back then. On top of that, evaluations of armor plates of all major nations reveal varying quality and unequal batches in each case, so much that it's problematic to deduce whether changes in quality of armor plates specifically in case of Germany came from lack of certain components or was simply matter of average quality fluctuations that affected every other nations' armor production. Reduction in production quality in WWII Germany is very apparent in many areas, but I'd always treat statements of it affecting such vital aspects which would logically be prioritised, with a very big grain of salt. Judging by statements of some of internet experts one would think all their stuff was falling apart the moment it left factory, and Allies were dumbasses to even fight them and lose hundreds of thousands of brilliant men's lives instead of just waiting for every German machine to break by itself...
Yup. In Normandy, the US captured some Panther tanks and ran tests to see how various Allied guns fared against the armor. The results were different for each of the three tanks used in one particular test, indicating that Germany was no longer able to consistently produce top quality armor. I don't know how much of that was from the strategic metals shortage vs, production processes, though.
1944 armor quality was still good. However with Finland doing the "Italian Job" (switching sides in a war), there was no further access to vanadium (?). 1945 armor COULD be of lesser quality. These "battlefield tests" never tell the whole story. In what condition was the target, was it widely intact or was it already burnt out ? Unfortunately, metallurgy is a bit too complicated for the YT comment section. Was it a lack of alloys ? Was it rushed production and/or slave labour affecting quality ? Russia had very similar issues UNTIL 1944; they tended to over-harden their steel, which makes it brittle, even more so around the welding seams (which were a nightmare to begin with ...).
@@jfess1911 not to. mention lots if wartime manufacturing was by forced labor- you'd hardly get high quality work. And let's not forget the really top notch craftsmen may well have been conscripted as grunts in the army
When I flew the Navajo Chieftain I was taught to not drop more than 2 inches per minute on descent. I saw the eerie glow of those pipes through the exhaust vents. When I towed gliders we came down in a 60 degree slip/bank with the power at 1/3rd power to prevent shock cooling.
Same with the 182 i did jump pilot flying with. Fulll power in the climb, once level and coming on the drop run, power to like 15-18, adjust the prop for cruise and just hold level to let the engine cool for about a minute. After jumpers out, engine vents closed, prop full forward, power to 15 and diving turn in the yellow. If done right you could cicle back and spiral down so you exit the decent already on final for landing.
Thank you Greg! Your videos always go to parts, and depth, where no other aircraft videos go. The Fw 190 has always stuck me as the leanest and most purposeful design of that era.
I really like Gregs videos. Well researched, well put together and very clearly spoken. I love the detail, no fuss, just coherent, relevant and useful facts. Subscribed.
Well done, as usual, Greg. As far as I know, Dad never came close to flying an FW-190 of any variant, but the importance of water-methanol injection can be judged from VF-19's operational history. They went to the trouble of swapping out every single F6F-3 they had that lacked that feature on the PW-2800. That is, they traded airplanes with another squadron on Maui in early 1944 (the other squadron would have time to re-equip before beginning its combat tour) so that every VF-19 Hellcat was equipped with water-methanol injection when their combat tour began in July, 1944. If there's an edge available, it's foolhardy not to take advantage of it.
Even with w/m it could not match the 2 speed 2stage supercharger of the Merlin The FW190 could not match the climb or the service ceiling All radials of WW2 had that problem.
@@jacktattis Indeed. I thought the 8th AF solved the FW190 problem by increasing operating altitude from 25,000ft. to 30,000ft, which no air-cooled FW190 could reach.
@@jacktattis If they made a plane as fragile as the Spitfire, sure they could. Besides, there are plenty of radial-equipped aircraft that could match it in a climb - the Ki-44-II had a lot of power in a very small airframe, its only downside being a single stage 2 speed supercharger. And since radials are about 1/3rd lower in weight, cost, and materials used to a comparable displacement inline, they certainly could fit a compact 2 stage system.
@@reinbeers5322 That fragile Spitfire could reach Mach 0.89 every day Those US buses best was Mach 0.80 and that was the P51 . Gee what happened ?The Ki 44 3690
Please Support This Channel: www.patreon.com/GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles Paypal: mistydawne2010@yahoo.com This is a short video, but it had to be made in order to progress with the 190 Anton series. I needed to explain why Focke-Wulf couldn't just use MW-50 to bump power up in the A-8 to make it competitive in performance with the Mustang. That took 17 mins, so here you go.
Enjoyed the video Greg- very instructive. A little off topic; saw your video on Turbo Compound engines a month or so back - never heard of this before. Why is it not common practice for auto manufacturers, particularly high end specialists ? Ideal for something like a Mustang (car, not the P51!). Hope you're back in the air sometime soon.
-Just want to contribute a few things. The German green dyed fuel often called C3 was not a monolithic type. The Germans improved it from the 94/115 rating from around late stage Battle of Britain in 1940 on some Me 109E7 to about 96/125 then 97/130. The RON/PN numbers come from allied fuel intelligence of shot down German aircraft or jettisoned drop tanks and can be found in the Fischer-Tropsch archives. The 96/125 fuel started to be detected by the British in 1942 and they predicted a powerful new engine was about to enter service. Note the improvements were mainly in rich response. This engine turned out to be the BMW801 with modifications. "Increased Boost" involved injecting rick mixture with the standard direct injection system was used on A series fighters only and "Rich Mixture" injection into the eye of the supercharger was used on FW-190F ground attack aircraft below 1000m only. Latter the two systems were combined. -The follow on engine for the BMW 801D was the BMW 801E. This engine never entered service but some of the technologies entered service on the BMW 801TS and TH which were D2 engines with E technologies. These engines pushed the BM801 into the 2050hp range. Once of the technologies was vacuum caste heads. Vacuum casting reduces the size and number or metallic structural defects or inclusions. This would have allowed higher boost levels and I believe allowed the TS and TH higher compression ratio. -There was a story, whether true or not, of I think Austrian Ace Oskar Bosch in a Fw 190A9 evading P-51D at low level by engaging his "Ribbentrop" MW50 system at low level. Possibley a 2200hp even 2350 engine with this. -The vacuum caste heads seem to have finally allowed water injection combined with desperation and the possible need to operate with only B4 fuel or 87 octane. -Google is no longer any good. So much has disappeared I once could easily find.
Always makes my day when one of your videos pops up and then you just added a cherry on top mentioning the Swordfish at the end, this is why I always listen all the way you never quite know what else will get thrown in there.
Good info as always Greg. It is stunning to me that Goering and the RLM knew about MW50 in 1938 and couldn't/didn't get it into service until 1942. Who at the RLM was in charge of failing to get 15% more horsepower out of the Luftwaffe's engines for FIVE freakin' years?
MW50 was a complication, and required engine development to a degree of refinement they couldn't fit into their factories at first, then they needed wartime production volumes, then you need a reliable supply of MW50 to front line units, frankly a water injection solution alone would have been less effective, but also been more readily available given the terrible logistics of the German system. we can make clean water, even distil some ourselves and use the hot water to make hot drinks. But needing a specialist mix of wood alcohol and water without impurities to feed our flying machines to go into combat? Better off staying in the bunker till the supply truck arrives.
Hubris was a big factor in decision making until late '41. Remember, through '41, Germany was winning everywhere; and there was a strong attitude that what was already in production was often sufficient, especially because service needs demanded no production slowdowns. There is a lead time required to get needed upgrades to squadrons, and that's largely why you don't see MW50 until '42. 1942 is the year that doomed the Axis, with almost everything starting to go wrong. But, in '41, even the Allies would have told you the Axis were winning.
Increased engine attrition (?) and no imminent need. This war wasn't going to last beyond 1941; that's the plan anyway ... Besides, in 1939/40 Daimler-Benz couldn't keep up with demand; Messerschmitt cranked out Emils faster than DB produced engines. Really no need for further complications.
The book The Secret Horsepower Race by Calum E. Douglas might be a good reference in answering that question. It boils down to poor decision making in how they handled things. They could really have benefited from a relatively easy way to boost horsepower given their shortages of certain metals and high octane fuel. Methanol isn't hard to make, neither is distilled water, especially compared to high octane fuel from coal and exhaust valves that can take high temperatures with a very limited supply of certain metals.
Also very good at sinking well defended battleships in harbour by being capable of night carrier operations, outclassing a lot of airforces fighter defences. Sometimes high technology is a biplane with a high quality watch and an early war airborne radar.
What I appreciate with these high quality content videos is - besides the technical knowledge - the structure. One of the best examples might be the p-39-video: A question, a hypothesis, arguments, counterarguments, conclusion. And so many details, very often regarding practical issues which cannot be found on paper & blueprints, but stem from actual service accounts (e. g. the noise & negative impact on combat effectiveness while having to fight with an open canopy). Rationality without "vibing" or being biased. It is actually sad, that Greg's academic approach feels so refreshing to listen to in comparison to so many other YT-creators who simply have no comparable professionalism and... for the lack of another word... qualification. One immediately realize that Greg absolutely knows what he is talking about.
Oh how much I love the Fairey Swordfish, Greg. Luckily I watched right to the end of the video. The plane that disabled the Bismarck, launched from the ill-fated aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal. Reportedly, HMS Ark Royal was the third ship that was home to "Unsinkable Sam", the black and white cat who survived the sinking of the Bismarck, the destroyer HMS Cossack, and HMS Ark Royal.
Funny coincidence: whenever Greg signs off his videos, it reminds me of my pastor (also named Greg). Whenever I'd get a phone call from Pastor Greg, he'd sign off with, "Goodbye and may the Lord bless you." So now, Captain Greg's video outros always makes me mentally fill in the "may the Lord bless you" part, and then immediately get subverted. Lol
Swordfish! When I was towing gliders a typical flight was full throttle at 52 mph up to 3000' AGL, then glider release after which we'd reduce throttle to 2000 rpm, rack over into a 90 degree bank with full up elevator trim and stick pulled back and spiral down to pattern altitude. We did it this way to minimize shock cooling while getting down quickly to pick up the next tow. Super fun flying. Greg, have you considered upping the available Patreon levels? I feel the value I get from your channel exceeds the meager price you charge we patreons. I'd happily pay more. Thanks and I really hope you're back doing what you love just as soon as possible.
The severe bank trick was something that I learned to use in the WWII air-combat Sim SVGA Air Warrior to get my B-17 back to the ground quickly from the altitude I made the bombing run at while not exceeding the 190-knot speed the pilot's manual said was the limit before the cockpit glass blew in.
Thanks jaym, I am considering it. I'm reconsidering a lot of things now that I can't fly in real life for a while. I may add some super level that involved a live chat once a month or something like that.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles Doesn't matter how good an aircraft is. Only the most experienced and highly-skilled aircrew can fly to the limit of a plane's envelope. By 1944, most of the skilled German aircrew were already dead. Imagine a learner-driver in NASCAR. A skilled driver in a Prius might be faster.
Hi Greg, I love your videos this is another great one. On the shock cooling of the engines of parachute and glider towing aircraft you said "they often go from full power in the climb to idle decent and an immediate landing without problems from shock cooling". Ive done parachuting and I do glider towing, that is not how we handle our engines. We would expect cracked cylinder heads if we did that. Im flying a Piper Pawnee with a Lycoming IO540 engine. After the full power climb we leave the power up high and fly straight and level for one minute to allow the engine temperature time to stabilise before beginning the descent. We descend in a high power dive at high airspeeds. The engine revs are at 2450 in the descent (max permitted engine revs is 2550.) this keeps the rate of cooling below 25*F/minute.
If I recall correctly from Calum's book, the later 190A9 with a prospective 801F was expected to use MW50. Although the 801F benefited from research in the 801E in terms of strengthen components to handle higher power in boost and stress from MW50 usage. Assuming they were able to reengineer the 801 to minimize possible shock cooling problems as well. To imagine what the 190's could have been if such issues were ironed out earlier and more powerful 801's available. An informative video Greg.
When I met the parachute 'plane pilot at Coffs Harbour, we discussed this. I was curious why he always came down under power. He pointed out that they were often cracking heads in their early days until they stopped doing un-powered descents. During summer, that plane never stopped every weekend. In summer, the temperature at the airport would be 27-29c. At 10,500ft it was -3c. That plane was easily doing 6-8 runs a day.
@Greg's Airplanes and Automobiles - re. your closing comments about the impact of the Swordfish on the ability of the Germans to transport stuff across the Mediterranean (either northbound or southbound!), it reminds me of the relief of the siege of Chattanooga. Despite coming under great presure from politicians in Washington, General Grant point-blank refused to reinforce the garrison in Chattanooga unless and until he'd established a reliable supply route into the city. As he said, putting more men into the city without extra supplies of food and ammunition would simply have forced the commander to surrender Chattanooga that much sooner! Only when Once Brig. Gen. William F. "Baldy" Smith, chief engineer of the Army of the Cumberland, had established a supply route (called the 'Cracker Line') into the city did the Union forces attack. As is so often the case in wars throughout history, logistics have often proved to be not just of great importance, but sometimes to dictate the outcome of a battle - or even a war.
I totally agree with your, metallurgy idea. The Germans were on the back foot with supplies of minerals to alloy steel as they started the war. It evidently showed up here in 42, then as the war drew on the tank armor became very brittle as they lacke Chromium, Vanadium and Manganese to make it less brittle. I had not heard anything about piston engined aircraft but had read about the jet turbine blade issues. Thank you for this informative video.
They also had a lack of experienced pilots at that point. Youy could have given them the MiG-21 and it would have made no difference in the outcome of the war.
I think wasn't just the effect of alloying elements but machine tools and alloying elements for cutting steals. As far as I understand it Pratt & Whitney (a machine maker by origin) made the R-2800 cylinder heads by forging them from billet stock and then precision gang sawing the ultra fine cooling fins and machining the head. BMW was casting the whole head in one piece. At some point BMW went from casting the head to precision casting it in a vacuum. (I think this technology was developed for the never to be used BMW801E but some of it was incorporated into the BMW 801TS and TH which were D2 with some E technologies, these 1944 engines apparently had not only higher compression ratios but were more suitable for MW50 (possibly introduced in 1945 as the Ribbentrop system). -I'm no metallurgist but I know vacuum casting reduces the number and size of the strength reducing inclusions and crystalline defects while forging forces them out of the metal. Machining was just not an option for mass production the Germans. They didn't have enough machine tools and they didn't have the elements for the cutting steels (particularly tungsten). They tried to forge, cast, press and weld everything. Anything but machining. To an extent the US machine tool industry based around Cincinnati and Milwaukee 'won the war'. To be frank I think not even Curtiss Wright could match Pratt and Whitney in machining. Napier had no chance to make the Sabre work without American Machine tools to machine the sleeve valves.
Another interesting development of the Fw 190 was the proposed DB 603 powered version, known as the Fw 190 C. Initial calculations indicated a speed increase of 50 km/h compared to the Fw 190 A series fitted with the air-cooled, 14-cylinder BMW 801 radial engine, as well as a lower flight weight. A wartime Daimler Benz document showing airspeed for the Fw 190 C V16 documents the outstanding performance of the DB 603 A engine mounting a G-type supercharger. Thus equipped, the V16 in 1943 achieved speeds of 570 km/h at low level and 722 km/h at a height of 8500 m and it only needed B4 type fuel. Galland and many leading German fighter pilots were in high praise of the aircraft and wanted a production run, even Kurt Tank requested the RLM to commit to this. Yet Generalfeldmarschall Milch scuppered further development. Fortunately Focke-Wulf had learned much from its development with an inline V12 engine in the Fw 190 airframe, which would assist in the future D-9.
Really interesting stuff. . The contrast between the “lycoming” engines and the more open air engine set ups at lower altitudes is really compelling. . .with these hot rod engines firing up and then cooling down rapidly you can imagine more wear and tear
OMG... OK. Well, the Swordfish was definitely not the best torpedo bomber of the war, if that's what you mean. Was the Swordfish used in a very effective manner and was it fortunate to have impacted many aspects of the war? Absolutely! However, to say it doesn't rank in the discussion for best torpedo bomber of the war is not disrespect for it. It's just fact.
Greg’s choice of photo for Swordfish is a good one. In all these years I never knew how big the plane actually was. Doing a Wikipedia search, I also learned that “string bag “ refers to the shopping bags that were used at the time. “Let’s see, what shall we get for the evening’s festivities? Torpedoes, bombs, rockets or mines?”
@@clarkenoble I'd argue swordfish Very cheap no strategic material Super easy to fly fewer non combat deaths Radar made it deadly. It was easy to modify to add radar Could be used in extreme weather cases (north sea,arctic)
@muskepticsometimes9133 My friend, you are making a great argument for most "economical" or most "adaptable" obsolete torpedo bomber. None of these are traits for "best" torpedo bombers of the war. It was just the best that they had at the time because it was all they had! Ha! The Avenger would later also do most of those jobs from the small jeep carriers escorting convoys during the Battle of the Atlantic. A torpedo bomber's job is to put torpedoes on targets...enemy ships. The Swordfish had its day in the limelight, but it lacked the ability to survive in a high threat environment simply due to a lake of performance. Aside from Toranto, it could never be used in any of the key battles of the war that involved torpedo bombers. I seriously doubt in many battles, it would have made it to the target. If you replace the B5N Kate, TBD Devastor, or TBM Avenger with the Swordfish at places like Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal, Phillipine Sea, etc it's fate would make that of the TBDs at Midway look merciful. I think we need to put our sentimental feelings for the old Stringbag aside when having these types of discussions. There's a reason the British Pacific Fleet didn't load up with Swordfish before embarking to fight the Japanese. Ha! Anyway, if it's first in people's hearts, I can understand why.
The higher the octane the less volatile the fuel is. High octane fuel is great for air cooled engines because it prevents pre-ignition caused by hotter running engines. So with that said, higher octane actually means less power rather than more power. However, putting high octane in your car doesn’t make it faster, it’s quite the opposite, especially if the engine isn’t designed for it in regards to MPG, ping and power. Great video Greg!
@@kenneth9874 This is true for engines designed specifically to operate like that. However, it’s a detriment to engines not designed to operate under high compression/temperatures. The octane is only added to prevent pre ignition of hotter running, higher compression engines. The octane in of itself doesn’t provide more power.
@@privatepilot4064 it enables the engine to make more power, there's a reason the octane level were increased during the war.....it's called making more power.
@@kenneth9874 I’m not disagreeing with you, but it will not make more power in engines that are not designed for it. The reason they increased the octane in WW2 was because of the high performance engines which needed the octane to prevent pre ignition, particularly in aircraft engines. Octane prevents pre ignition which means the fuel was igniting before the engine was in its optimal power stroke because of high compression. Similar to how a diesel ignites fuel. This causes knocking and loss of power, but only in high compression engines that are not utilizing octane. (That’s why a diesel always sounds like it has a knock, because it ignites fuel with high compression). Octane prevents this by making the fuel less volatile. The reason higher octane fuel is used in high performance cars (and often thought of as 'better' fuel) is high performance cars run high compression engines and need a fuel less likely to ignite from the compression energy. They produce more power because they burn more fuel not because the fuel is more energy dense. With that in mind, if you have an older vehicle that normally burns 87 octane and you develop a knock, it’s most likely from deposits that have built up in the cylinder reducing the cubic inch capacity and causing its compression to increase. In this case a high octane fuel would reduce or eliminate the knocking.
We saw shock cooling cracks primarily in TCM O-200 engines due to student pilots NOT practicing throttle disciple and the design of the cylinder head casting. The O-200(and pretty much all TCM engines that use this and similar cylinder head casting design) is a much lighter casting than a comparable Lycoming cylinder head casting. Less material in critical areas of the casting equals more tendency for shock cooling cracking. Student pilots were leaving the engines at full power, even when in the pattern for touch and go landings, then jerking the throttle back to idle when turning final. The result? Cracked cylinders. The Lycoming O-320s in Cessna 172s didn’t have this problem. We saw cracked cylinders on the GTSIO-520s on Cessna 421s but never saw a cracked cylinder on the Navajo C and Chieftains we operated on Part 135.
I fly IL2 Battle of stalingrad on my PC and remember a German guy on our squad who was virtually unbeatable. He always flew a vertical fight and his energy management was impressive.
I remember shock cooling was on our minds when driving a DC-3 down final at ORD. Glad you addressed this. Big radials are more susceptible to shock than Cessna motors.
I remember giving a “One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand" _engine warming_ power application 😉in my commercial general flight test’s forced landing exercise with a government examiner. He passed me and liked my forced landing approach.
@@givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935 yep, goose the engine a little bit to make sure it'll be there when you need it. 😀. I was a terrible pilot after I got my private, until I started flying at another airfield, converted drag strip. Had a new flight instructor who insisted that I fly every approach is though it was a engine failure. A few years and 1,000 hours later, I had a real live no joke engine failure over the Great Dismal Swamp, and ended up walking away uninjured and with minor damage to the airplane.
@@fredkitmakerb9479 Finals with half flap and closed throttle should bring you to the runway unless you are starting off too low. The 3 degree PAPIs are a siren drawing in single G.A. planes to their potential doom.
@@shawnmiller4781 I read about the longer cowling as a cure cooling issues a long time ago. I did a little dig now and the reasons for the longer cowling are all over the place now. Some say is for vibration issues, other say is armament related and then the temperature issue. I don't know in who to believe.
An important difference between the BMW radials and most other air cooled engines is the engine driven cooling fan. This provides cooling airflow that is linked as much to engine rpm as to airspeed or power settings. This could go some way to explaining the difficulties. I was involved in operating light aircraft abut also Corvair cars. The opposed air cooled flat six shared some things with the aircraft engines. One problem we had with Corvairs was when people took the thermostatically controlled cooling damper doors off to try and improve cooling. This could lower cylinder head temperature under highway driving but was bad in hilly driving. You would run at 80% power up a long hill and the head temperature would get well over 300 F degrees and then reach the summit. Throttle goes to idle but rpm stays the same and cooling remains the same. Head temperature goes from 320 F degrees to less than 200 F in just a handful of minutes. In the Corvair the result was loose valve seats. The stress that high rate of cooling provides needs to be managed carefully and a fan forced cooling system only makes it more critical because cooling is directly linked to engine rpm and not throttle position or speed. Add MW-50 and that may have been one straw too many.
Germany had problems with metallurgy during the war. I know the armor used for Panthers and Tigers had problems with their armor plating cracking under the impact of rounds when they were engaged with Allied tanks. Very good video Mr. Greg!!
Also the ME262 engines had turbine blade film cooling because that would save them from having to use war critical steel alloys. Necessity really is the mother of invention.
I’m afraid we did encounter shock cooling leading to cracked cylinders on our Lycoming powered glider tug aircraft. We have several tugs at Lasham in the U.K. originally it was full power take off and climb to 2000’ or more, followed by closed throttle and rapid descent to land, then doing it again. I believe the problem was cured by throttling back gently and descending with power slightly still on. This allowed slower cooling.
Wow! Great timing, as I am currently starting to fly the A-1 in the game I'm playing online. I've already "unlocked" the A-4, but wanted to step "back" to the A-1. After this, I'll pass on that idea. Great way to start the day!
@@UncannyValleyGirl1337 Nope, there's more. Three more variants of the A-5 are also available, with the /U2, /U12, and /U14 modifications respectively. There's also the A-8, and its ground attack variant F-8.
Nice video on what might have been if MW-50 would have been extensively used on FW-190 A series. Regarding shock cooling, you mentioned piston skydiving aircraft descending on idle power after releasing the skydivers. I used to be a skydiving aircraft pilot, flying mostly Cessna 182s equipped with normally aspirated Continental O-470 engines. Aware and mindful of engine shock cooling, our standard operating procedure was descend maintaining around 15" manifold pressure and 2200 RPM all the way to finals, while keeping a close eye on cylinder heat temperature. We never ever descended on idle power.
Hi Greg, First I want to say this is not to nitpick, but hopefully to add a useful data point. Unless I am mistaken, the glider port shown in your video around 8:21 is Caesar's Creek Soaring Club near Waynesville, Ohio. I grew up at that airport. My father was the instructor of the year (for most instructor flights, as this was a volunteer run club) in 1985 and 1986. I was lucky enough to start flying there around 10 years of age and soloed at 14. I was part of the 3rd Saturday crew for many years. The club was very safety conscious and also meticulous about maintenance. From the morning safety briefings prior to any day's flight operations, I can report that the policy for tow planes was to never idle after a tow, but to perform a controlled descent at specified power settings and a specified descent duration. (I had actually asked about this as a snot nosed kid, because it seemed like they could speed up the launch rate if they landed quickly) Now, I can't say if the policy was to avoid cracked cylinder heads or if there was other benefit to their required slower descent cycles. Huge fan. Thanks for all of your work. If any viewers happen to be near southwestern Ohio, please visit the club and get a ride. It is an amazing place. 100% volunteer run and you'll meet characters there with some incredible aviation history.
Thanks, good post. I had no idea what glider port that was, I just used a picture that was free use. Quite a few people have said that they do worry about shock cooling in glider tow planes. That backs up what I'm saying about shock cooling, although I didn't realize it was that easy to do at low altitude. There are those who argue against the existence of shock cooling: www.avweb.com/ownership/shock-cooling-time-to-kill-the-myth/
A big off-topic thanks! As a private pilot, I read a lot about shock cooling, though it was not a problem for me, given the low altitudes I flew at. I did wonder a lot about why shock cooling didn't seem to be a problem for radial-engine fighters when they dove from high altitudes during combat. Your explanation here helped me to understand that it simply wasn't a concern; though the regular short-term maintenance and short expected lifetime of WWII engines in combat may also have been factors as well.
WW2 fighter engines had inspection and maintenance done at such tight intervals that they would catch the problems before they got too serious, usually...
As soon as you mentioned metallurgy Greg, I thought we need a reference from Calum Douglas as he would have the researched that exact topic for his book. Then when you mentioned him and now I’m waiting for him to add a comment.
I flew Chieftains for Amflight in the late 1980's. You provided a spot on description of how we were trained to incrementally reduce MP during descents. We were also trained not to push the props forward, i.e. RPM, during the landing approach unless a go around was necessary.
My father was a B-24 pilot in the 15th, mid '44 till end of the war. He had much experience with 109 and 190 attacks. The 109s would bounce and scatter the formations. Then the 190s would charge in, often ten abreast, head-on. Dad said, without doubt - even worse than devastating flak - 190s chewing thru aircraft was by far the scariest thing he ever experienced.
Yeah i was comparing A-8s performance with preceeding other Anton variants to find what made Fw-190 A-8 slower .Also found out data for Fw-190 Aa-3 model which we Turks used. Wished my country didnt scrap them to use their metal in industrial equipment...Or not being conservative bigots they are like rednecks in US... Edit: I have a wet dream that with some 150 octane fuel and magic Fw-190 A-9 could reach 680 kph...but no evidence except il2 1946 stats
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles I was comparing A-8 s performance to preceeding 801D engined ones to find out which part of A-8 caused most drag and slowed plane down. And still cant understand how 2200 PS engine on A-9 cant make it past 680 kph...
Metallurgy was what jumped to mind for me the moment you said micro-cracking. Cast materials tend to have a lot of fracture issues with their poor grain structure and steels will certainly not help thermal shock loads with the poor conductivity. That's improved somewhat with modern material science but with WW2 aircraft it's definitely something I'd be wary of. Granted I am a little surprised MW50 has the capacity to create that level of shock loading but if they're spraying enough of it that could certainly be the case. But overall the difference between old steels, imperfections, and old heat treatments might be the reason why people believe it to be a myth when using even semi-modern steels and treatments. I'd be interested if its even possible to find precisely which alloy and treatments were used in the engine or if that's lost to time. I assume it should be fairly easy to find how much MW50 is used per cycle to calculate the precise thermal drop?
Yussss. Awesome video greg. I wa taught 1 inch per minute bringing back any turbo charged engine power, non turbo it not so critical in my view with lower CHT overall. You just have to look through the cowling vents in cruise at night to know there is some serious heat going on with glowing orange exhaust manifolds 😂 Navajo guy here
It's nice to hear from some others who actually flew these things. I thought I would get an onslaught of people saying "shock cooling isn't real" but it hasn't happened.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles > I thought I would get an onslaught of people saying "shock cooling isn't real" but it hasn't happened. which in itself is a shock! cool!
I saw one guy say that, sounds like a legit concern and it makes sense. I'm guessing you could harden (enbrittle) the metal without it actually failing though it may then be prone to failure. @@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles
In gliding, lycomings are treated very gently and shock cooling is the reason. Power is kept in after glider release despite the fuel burn and longer turn round time. I was learning to fly gliders at Husbands Bosworth when they converted their Chipmunks to lycomings and immediately started cracking cylinder heads.
Greg you are spot on with the shock cooling! I got 4 years flying out of Bethel Alaska. Shock cooling was a big thing there. Especially in the winter. What's funny is we had a -34 below zero cut off. Only reached it once. But it was more because of door handles breaking off and tires sticking to the ground. Many use the same power settings as you would for any other flight. Yet we would definitely pull power back starting about 8 miles out, pulling 1 inHg every minute. Once our airspeed gets down to around 100 kts or below. You can quit worrying so much about shock cooling anymore. By using flaps if needed. I tended to drag the airplane in so I usually had power on, even in slowing down. Back in 1984, the first time I was there. They would idle the continentals in the wintertime, in the 207's to like 300 or 400 RPMs. You have to pull hard back on the throttle to get it to do this. One of the airport we landed was only winter time and it was on ice. Whenever we flew the big round engines we always treated them as if it was wintertime.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles when you say "Nightmare" I definitely know you flew in Bethel Alaska! I flew for Herman's Air for the 84,85 season. Came back in 99 to 02 and flew for Grant. I imagine we both have a lot of stories to talk about lol!
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles hey Greg, something you may have heard about. That there was an airplane that had a oral warning device installed in it that became known as a bit** detector! Did you ever hear anything like that?
Greg, being a FS flier of the big piston airliners, all the pilot notes talk about slow reductions in power when initiating a descent from cruise to prevent engine damage.
Interesting video as always Gregg, I definitely don’t mind this format along side your other more documentation focused content. As an engineer it is always fun to look at the what-ifs.
Germany was having other metallurgical issues towards the end of the war, particularly in the quality of their tank armour. It was a shortage of the necessary alloys.
I spark tested some old armour plate when I worked at a foundry and it was horrible quality. They could have found workarounds but fir some reason they didnt
German Armour used nickel to prevent spalling. Often face hardened carbon steal Armour was as good at stopping penetration but the spall generated would be as deadly as a penetration. Nickel was also a critical element in gas turbines due to its resistance to heat creep. The Nimonic 80 used in British gas turbine came out of a nimonic 75 used in valves seats of engines.
So much to run with on these earlier variants 42' 43' it's a Great period. As it seems both sides sacrificed a lot of weight and pure performance in the name of top speed and multi role capability. Adding 600lbs is no small thing, but it was similar for the later 51 and 47 variants aswell given a meager 2 or 3 hundred hp gain. Not sure why they'd bother trying to push the anton to failure with mw50 just to have a supercharger geared to run out of puff at 21,000 ft but maybe they had other gearing. Calum also has a video referring to a special unit of Antons lead by Galland using nos. It took the brits almost a year to figure out what the bottles were even though the German code word for it was laughing gas. Great work again Greg.
Well this video has called in question some of my memories as now I'm going to have to dig out my old books about the Focke Wulf to find out if it says they used Nitrous Oxide for performance-enhancing!!! 🤔
Hi greg, love the video and the channel as a whole. I'm mildly disagree with your assertion at the end of the video that The invasion could have been delayed until June of 45, I absolutely agree that better performance out of the Anton could have delayed allied air superiority, but I disagree in terms of the scope of that delay. If anything, air superiority is probably delayed by a month or two until German pilot losses forced the issue either way. A more capable fighter piloted by amateurs is still vulnerable. I think we would have seen some major adaptations from the allies, including maybe a willingness to put the better propellers on the p38 and maybe delay the p-51, because it was unproven and existing fighters weren't fairing so well. The p-38 was the hot ticket at the moment, and while I definitely think the Air corps wouldn't have wanted to interrupt production, that might have pushed them over the edge. I could see the p80 being delayed so that Lockheed could focus on setting up the p38k line.
The Luftwaffe caused the USAAF huge losses in 1943. They would have been far worse with a 2300 hp A5, or at least I think so. Furthermore, the US fighter pilot attrition would have been much higher. Obviously it can't be proven either way but I think I can make a case that the Luftwaffe would have held out four months longer, which is all it would have taken.
In the old game Chuck Yeager's Air Combat, which I was addicted to at the time, an FW-190 A-4 was one of two flyable aircraft of the WWII era, the other being a P-51D. The plane's description admitted something among the lines of "performance at altitude was poor, especially in the A-4 ground attack variant", and I've never quite forgiven the developers for choosing that specific variant then. Back then I could basically count the pixels above the horizon on my crt monitor to find a suitable steady climbing angle: the P-51 had considerably more pixels to spare than the A-4.
Pushing D-Day back to June, 1945, would have meant, at best, the Cold War front line would have been the Rhine. At worst the English Channel. Catching up with you Greg always a treat.
I remember dye checking many Continental/ Lycoming cylinders for cracks in my late teens. Being air cooled these engines don’t have a thermostat like water cooled engines so they would be more susceptible to thermal shocking.
Thanks Greg. Always love your videos and I had to sign up to patreon to support you. I have learned so much about cars and aircraft... I thank you sir.
Hi Greg, fuel cooling was a thing in the non water injected PW2800. The F4U is running an AFR of 9:1 at takeoff power, about as rich as you can go, without putting the fire out. I’m doubting the A4 would have had the boost to be a super fighter at B17 altitudes, but they did fix that, with the Dora
Some should tell ford engine designers and cooling system designers about shock cooling. Especially with the issues with various small turbo engines and highly stressed truck engines. More attention needs to be paid post engine shutdown and large speed differences on high performance engines. I mention Ford as a Ford retiree but past Chrysler engines such as the 2.7 n/a V6 suffered sludging issues possibly related shock or flash cooling. This is an interesting issue that goes across other engineering systems. It seems cross functional team concepts work not only intra discipline but inter discipline systems. Thanks very much for this video post. Any auto people who see this video should pass the issues and ideas up the line. Thanks again.
Greg - Why dismiss the A-3 & A-4 as a dogfighter? With the FW 190, JG2 and JG 26 attained air superiority over RAF over Kanal Front in 1942. Only the Mark IX restored an advantage but there weren't many until early 1943. The FW 190A remained formidable with good pilots, particularly at low to middle altitudes in all theatres, except vs VVS top fighters in late 1944 and 1945. MW50 would have been nice on more FW 190s in 1943/44 but it was still a handful from sea level to slightly above FTH - fighter to fighter. The P-47C and early Ds before the -11 and WI were at a disadvantage in 'dogfighting' (save marginal speed advantage) below bomber altitudes all the way to the deck - in acceleration, climb, turn and roll. Usually one of those will be useful. Zemke and others capitalized on high altitude advantages to initiate attacks in dives but usually (survivors) did not stick around for maneuver fighting against FW 190As or 109s. WI and paddle blade for the P-47D helped (but not enough) in acceleration and climb but still not a superior 'dogfighter' against either 109 or 190 The Spit IX & Subsequent was the consistent FW 190 killer at all altitudes when pilot skill was equal but there were crossover points where the FW 190A had a speed and Hp/wt advantage. More application of MW50 would have improved FW 190 advantages but not to extent of threatening the Allies gain of air supremacy first half 1944.
@@Arnechk - I wonder what Greg considers 'top 10'. Dogfighter is very limiting. Top 'air superiority' fighter implies capabilities in full war fighting envelope - which would eliminate low/medium altitude type fighters not capable of contesting higher altitude fighter threats. Wing Commander Brown considered FW 190 second only to the Spitfire.
Thanks Greg as always!!! I was wondering why didn't the Luftwaffe just retrofit most of the Antons with MW50 especially early on. Also why haven't the the BMW801 engine got more advanced supercharger systems.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles again Greg thanks alot!! I still remember years ago (pre patreon days if not mistaken) that I requested the FW190 video, and you gave it not long after that!
@@LuqmanHMI'd assume that if they tried using smaller amounts of MW50 and Greg was aware, then he would have definitely made us aware of that. He's great at including all of those little details.
I always love Greg's long form, very technical breakdowns (where he also cites more sources per video than many aviation channels combined 🤣) But also throughly enjoyed this more speculative style "what if" style of presentation, I know it may cause certain people to get angry about being angry, but I find it very intriguing and hope for further similar style "thought experiments, but based on using existing technologies and somewhat realistic feasibility" if that makes sense... So basically just more great content 😉👍 Thank's Greg!
Thanks Berry. I may do an occasional what if video. I do want to talk about how German could have knocked England out of the war in 1940, but it's going to generate a lot of heat.
I used to work in an engine shop and saw cracked cylinders all the time. Not only the turbo and supercharged ones but even the little ones like 0320 and 0200.
yeah Greg as usual i am mind blown of your research and attention to detail and as always when you cover my favorite plane i am as giddy as a kid getting his first toy car,,, it is rare i learn new stuff about these things this is really good content ,,,i am gonna hit that patreon up thanks
The mechanical computer allowing the pilot to focus on the fight is, too me, a huge advantage over the competition. It gets my nod for the best of the war. Looks like it was too little, too late.
An interesting little video. The '190 was excellent at low to medium altitude, and the RAF struggled with the Spit'V's for several months at low to medium altitudes. The articles from that period in the Tee Emm make interesting reading....! However the '190 was never great at altitude - certainly not the heights that the USAAF heavies normally operated at. Once the Spit'IX's appeared, the game was up as it was more than a match for the '190 within the Spit'IX's operational range. Once the P51's appeared, the '190's really struggled. A video looking into why the '190 struggled at the higher altitudes would be interesting. I was always led to believe it was a combination of poor fuel and supercharging - but I don't have a definitive answer, though the '190's fairly high wing-loading may have also been a factor. The design of the TA152 perhaps hints at the steps taken to resolve the 190's shortcomings.
The German found that the MW50 didn't work desirable enough on 190A. Besides the potential corrosion or cracking problems in the cylinders, to use the MW50 also required tuning the BMW engine into a lean mixture way for some reasons. This led to a situation where when the MW50 was not applied, the engine output would be lower and overheating might occur. On the other hand, the C3 injection worked almost flawlessly, it could increase the power to 2060ps at around sealevel without any significant changes or problem. The C3 injection was introduced to the frontline around July 1943, and it developed into the Erhöhte Notleistung, increased emergency power, in July 1944, which could be also applied at the second gear altitude.
This is more or less the correct story. The BMW 801D2 is not an engine limited to 1700hp. As the Germans increased the rating of C3 fuel from about 94/115 to 96/125 and finally 97/130 along with probably spark plug improvements allowed increased engine boost ratings. As you can see the rich rating increased mainly. The upgraded C3 fuels started to come in from 1942 as allied fuel intelligence noted (see Fischer-Tropsch Archives). Two boost systems were introduced in 1943. The first system was called "increased boost" which which produced a rich mixture that was injected via the normal injection system on fighter aircraft. Rich mixture injection into the eye of the supercharger was introduced only on ground attack aircraft. Latter the two systems were combined. Long story short the BMW 801D2 ended up a 1900hp engine before being replaced by the BMW801TS and BMW801TH.
Born too late to participate in The War
Born too early to explore the stars
Born just in time to enjoy Greg's videos
Do your own research
This video reminds me of a time I really gave myself a fright. I was instructing autorotations in a H269 helicopter with a lycoming 360. I’d come off a mountain into a valley and rolled off the throttle on my student at 8000ft.
It was very cold the CHT dropped from around 300deg to below the scale in the few minutes it took to descend. It certainly was more than the 50deg/minute.
I realised before the bottom and very gingerly applied power to let it warm before full throttle.
I always did wonder how close that cylinder head was to cracking.
Lesson learned after that half way down I’d apply some power before removing. That did wonders and the CHT drop was no where near as severe.
One marble from luck jar into experience…
A couple of pilots were killed yesterday in Ireland while practicing autorotations. Haven't seen any more info than that as of yet. God rest them.
@@jaym8027I also saw that, the aircraft they were in gas a turbine engine so no danger of shock cooling.
Unfortunately practise autorotations are fairly high risk. There is a lot going on and it’s easy for students to make mistakes. It’s a common accident profile while people are learning to Pilot. It’s also necessary to learn.
Tragic outcome
@@chrisbeauchamp5563 I was gonna say a funny thing and then I read the replies and holy shit. I was out with a bestie having drinks and just having an all out good time. Goes to show hor precious life is.
@@Glove513 lol, that is funny. The cool down used to seem to take ages.
Cold days warm up was even worse trying to get the oil in the green.
@@chrisbeauchamp5563 Same thing applies to the R22. Same engine unless your H269 is injected vs. carbureted, IO360 vs. O360.
When I was a skydive pilot shock cooling was definitely a concern. We would monitor cylinder head Temps all the way up and carry some power in the descent to keep Temps up
It is only a few weeks ago that my father complained about how one off the by then few Motor Engine Certified Pilots left in the local Glider Club - regularly destroyed the Engines on their Tow-Plane .... Simply because he almost chrash-dived it down immediately after Glider-Release (I can't remember exactly what the maneuver is called).
They would MUCH prefer to use ANY other pilot (if available) than him - but more often than not - it was him or no Flying that day 😞
Any other Pilot flying the plane (or the Piper Cub they had before) had any Incident's in the Engine Log, for the plane => It did have to be really bad for things to go wrong.
I'm sure that the Problem increases with the Diameter of the Cylinderhead - as the stresses increase with size and the BMW was a Really BIG Engine ...!!!
Yup when I was glider towing with air cooled engines we used to always do powered on descents to reduce shock cooling. Not an issue with Rotax powered as the water cooling provided more stable temp changes. Just a bit less power but depending what you are towing it can work out ok.
Shock cooling is definitely a thing from my experience. I used to be a member of the Canterbury Gliding Club, which operated a Piper Pawnee PA-25-235 (which I have flown as Tow pilot on occasion and often flew behind in a glider). Earlier on with the aircraft, the club went through an alarming period of cracking cylinders (including fairly new cylinders) and it was of significant safety concern not to mention expense. A procedural change was made where by: after the glider released the tow plane would NOT reduce throttle but would nose down to increase airspeed (the Pawnee is incredibly draggy so exceeding VNE is not normally an issue), which would cool the cylinders at a slower rate than if you throttle off. You would leave the throttle wide open until base leg. It made for quite fun flying and completely eliminated the cylinder cracking problem.
Thanks. I was expecting an avalanche of people from the "shock cooling is a myth" crowd, but they haven't shown up. It seems that most pilots with experience in this are in my camp. In fact if anything, more of them are like you and that indicates that shock cooling is a bigger factor than I realized.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles ??? Have these people never warped a hot pan by putting cold water on it?
I know of a glider club that went to water cooled V8s in their Pawnees to combat shock cooling at low altitudes
Glider pilot here. Our club have specific procedures to bring the towplane down as cooling down too fast caused few cilinder damages. Once the source was identified, the problem was successfuly resolved.
Did sky dives for a while in a 182.
Procedure was close engine vents, prop full forward and power to like 15 i think. Then spiral down.
I was told if engine was put to idle it would cool to fast and could crack cylinder.
Keeping the engine at some power kept it from getting too cold. A nice spiral kept decent in the yellow and if down right you could exit the spiral down on final to land and save time
Even water-methanol VAPOR injection can make a big difference on an engine.
Around 15 years ago (until some idiot on his cell phone, late for his tee time at the golf course t-boned me), I had a 1987 Mercedes Benz 300DT sedan, with the 6 cylinder inline turbocharged diesel, with the fixed T3 turbo.
The previous owner had bought it new, but was getting too old to keep up with the maintenance on it. He'd only put 130K miles on it in nearly 20 years, and apparently most of that at low speeds. The exhaust system was loaded with soot - the first time I tried a hard acceleration in it, it put out a cloud of soot that would have done a coal-fired locomotive proud, entirely blocking my view in the rear view mirror for a few seconds - and causing the poor sod that was behind me in a brand new Ford Mustang, with his windows down, and had been tailgating me for the past 2 or 3 miles, to literally stop dead in the road, and then stay a healthy distance behind me the rest of the way to work.
The engine had bad injector nailing from all the built up carbon and gunk in the engine, as a result of the oil mist being sucked in via the crankcase vent ahead of the turbo, and the previous owner's infrequent and low speed driving.
After doing a thorough cleaning of the intake system and manifold, I installed a crankcase ventilation filter to capture the oil mist.
After that, not wanting to go to the trouble and expense of installing a liquid water-methanol injection system - and wanting to avoid any possible liquid impingement on the turbocharger - downstream of the oil mist filter, I installed a "bubbler" container.
About a half-gallon in size, filled with cheap water-methanol windshield wiper fluid, it routed the crankcase vent gases to the bottom of the container, which then bubbled up thru the washer fluid, evaporating the water-methanol mixture, which then got sucked into the intake system ahead of the turbo.
It also had the added benefit of condensing out any oil mist the filter had missed.
After little more than a month of doing my daily 40 mile round trip commute to work, it suddenly dawned on me than the injector nailing had completely disappeared - and once off idle, the engine was running quieter than many gasoline powered vehicles I'd driven - and even in my mixed driving commute, it was pushing close to 30 MPG average fuel economy.
??
I Unterstand half of it but my Lada can hold with your Mercedes. Lada has Vodka vapor injection (depends on quality of Vodka)
Sod is bad, right?
@@MsBartuc 🤣🤣🤣
@@hooter63unfortunate in that context….
The A4 I always thought as a stopgap between the A3 and A5 - thanks for adding to my knowledge - so NOW I wanna get started on that amazing ZM Fw190A-4 1/32 kit...
Regarding metallurgy, I've only recently discovered that German 1944/45 armor was prone to shattering due to lack of strategic metals. The same strategic metals in shortage, were used in aero engines (piston & jet.)
This is very exaggerated, honestly bordering on myth at this point. Sources are conflicting with each other, and one period British document made that claim without any testing but simply as an educated guess, from finding out Germans lacked one element of armor that they [*British] considered essential, while it turned out to be untrue since Germans found an equivalent replacement for it (IIRC it was about vanadium), that British didn't realise was possible back then. On top of that, evaluations of armor plates of all major nations reveal varying quality and unequal batches in each case, so much that it's problematic to deduce whether changes in quality of armor plates specifically in case of Germany came from lack of certain components or was simply matter of average quality fluctuations that affected every other nations' armor production.
Reduction in production quality in WWII Germany is very apparent in many areas, but I'd always treat statements of it affecting such vital aspects which would logically be prioritised, with a very big grain of salt. Judging by statements of some of internet experts one would think all their stuff was falling apart the moment it left factory, and Allies were dumbasses to even fight them and lose hundreds of thousands of brilliant men's lives instead of just waiting for every German machine to break by itself...
Yup. In Normandy, the US captured some Panther tanks and ran tests to see how various Allied guns fared against the armor. The results were different for each of the three tanks used in one particular test, indicating that Germany was no longer able to consistently produce top quality armor. I don't know how much of that was from the strategic metals shortage vs, production processes, though.
1944 armor quality was still good. However with Finland doing the "Italian Job" (switching sides in a war), there was no further access to vanadium (?). 1945 armor COULD be of lesser quality. These "battlefield tests" never tell the whole story. In what condition was the target, was it widely intact or was it already burnt out ?
Unfortunately, metallurgy is a bit too complicated for the YT comment section. Was it a lack of alloys ? Was it rushed production and/or slave labour affecting quality ?
Russia had very similar issues UNTIL 1944; they tended to over-harden their steel, which makes it brittle, even more so around the welding seams (which were a nightmare to begin with ...).
So you just watched that video, huh?
Groundbreaking discovery bud.
Just messing with you;)
@@jfess1911 not to. mention lots if wartime manufacturing was by forced labor- you'd hardly get high quality work.
And let's not forget the really top notch craftsmen may well have been conscripted as grunts in the army
Sorry to hear about your medical flight status Greg, but appreciate the video as always
Thanks Buddy, this is my aviation life now, well this and sims. With some luck I should be back to real flying in 6 months.
Get well soon.
When I flew the Navajo Chieftain I was taught to not drop more than 2 inches per minute on descent. I saw the eerie glow of those pipes through the exhaust vents. When I towed gliders we came down in a 60 degree slip/bank with the power at 1/3rd power to prevent shock cooling.
Good points Max. I'm glad to see most people agree with me that shock cooling is a thing.
Same with the 182 i did jump pilot flying with.
Fulll power in the climb, once level and coming on the drop run, power to like 15-18, adjust the prop for cruise and just hold level to let the engine cool for about a minute.
After jumpers out, engine vents closed, prop full forward, power to 15 and diving turn in the yellow. If done right you could cicle back and spiral down so you exit the decent already on final for landing.
Thank you Greg! Your videos always go to parts, and depth, where no other aircraft videos go. The Fw 190 has always stuck me as the leanest and most purposeful design of that era.
I really like Gregs videos. Well researched, well put together and very clearly spoken. I love the detail, no fuss, just coherent, relevant and useful facts. Subscribed.
Thank you.
Well done, as usual, Greg. As far as I know, Dad never came close to flying an FW-190 of any variant, but the importance of water-methanol injection can be judged from VF-19's operational history. They went to the trouble of swapping out every single F6F-3 they had that lacked that feature on the PW-2800. That is, they traded airplanes with another squadron on Maui in early 1944 (the other squadron would have time to re-equip before beginning its combat tour) so that every VF-19 Hellcat was equipped with water-methanol injection when their combat tour began in July, 1944. If there's an edge available, it's foolhardy not to take advantage of it.
Even with w/m it could not match the 2 speed 2stage supercharger of the Merlin The FW190 could not match the climb or the service ceiling All radials of WW2 had that problem.
@@jacktattis Indeed. I thought the 8th AF solved the FW190 problem by increasing operating altitude from 25,000ft. to 30,000ft, which no air-cooled FW190 could reach.
@@jacktattis If they made a plane as fragile as the Spitfire, sure they could. Besides, there are plenty of radial-equipped aircraft that could match it in a climb - the Ki-44-II had a lot of power in a very small airframe, its only downside being a single stage 2 speed supercharger.
And since radials are about 1/3rd lower in weight, cost, and materials used to a comparable displacement inline, they certainly could fit a compact 2 stage system.
@@reinbeers5322 Even in Japan they could just beat the P51D in Climb rate but not in height almost 5000ft less . And forget about beating the Spitfire
@@reinbeers5322 That fragile Spitfire could reach Mach 0.89 every day Those US buses best was Mach 0.80 and that was the P51 . Gee what happened ?The Ki 44 3690
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This is a short video, but it had to be made in order to progress with the 190 Anton series. I needed to explain why Focke-Wulf couldn't just use MW-50 to bump power up in the A-8 to make it competitive in performance with the Mustang. That took 17 mins, so here you go.
Enjoyed the video Greg- very instructive. A little off topic; saw your video on Turbo Compound engines a month or so back - never heard of this before. Why is it not common practice for auto manufacturers, particularly high end specialists ? Ideal for something like a Mustang (car, not the P51!).
Hope you're back in the air sometime soon.
-Just want to contribute a few things. The German green dyed fuel often called C3 was not a monolithic type. The Germans improved it from the 94/115 rating from around late stage Battle of Britain in 1940 on some Me 109E7 to about 96/125 then 97/130. The RON/PN numbers come from allied fuel intelligence of shot down German aircraft or jettisoned drop tanks and can be found in the Fischer-Tropsch archives. The 96/125 fuel started to be detected by the British in 1942 and they predicted a powerful new engine was about to enter service. Note the improvements were mainly in rich response. This engine turned out to be the BMW801 with modifications. "Increased Boost" involved injecting rick mixture with the standard direct injection system was used on A series fighters only and "Rich Mixture" injection into the eye of the supercharger was used on FW-190F ground attack aircraft below 1000m only. Latter the two systems were combined.
-The follow on engine for the BMW 801D was the BMW 801E. This engine never entered service but some of the technologies entered service on the BMW 801TS and TH which were D2 engines with E technologies. These engines pushed the BM801 into the 2050hp range. Once of the technologies was vacuum caste heads. Vacuum casting reduces the size and number or metallic structural defects or inclusions. This would have allowed higher boost levels and I believe allowed the TS and TH higher compression ratio.
-There was a story, whether true or not, of I think Austrian Ace Oskar Bosch in a Fw 190A9 evading P-51D at low level by engaging his "Ribbentrop" MW50 system at low level. Possibley a 2200hp even 2350 engine with this.
-The vacuum caste heads seem to have finally allowed water injection combined with desperation and the possible need to operate with only B4 fuel or 87 octane.
-Google is no longer any good. So much has disappeared I once could easily find.
Always makes my day when one of your videos pops up and then you just added a cherry on top mentioning the Swordfish at the end, this is why I always listen all the way you never quite know what else will get thrown in there.
What a lovely way to spend the morning. Thank you as always, Greg.
Good info as always Greg. It is stunning to me that Goering and the RLM knew about MW50 in 1938 and couldn't/didn't get it into service until 1942. Who at the RLM was in charge of failing to get 15% more horsepower out of the Luftwaffe's engines for FIVE freakin' years?
MW50 was a complication, and required engine development to a degree of refinement they couldn't fit into their factories at first, then they needed wartime production volumes, then you need a reliable supply of MW50 to front line units, frankly a water injection solution alone would have been less effective, but also been more readily available given the terrible logistics of the German system. we can make clean water, even distil some ourselves and use the hot water to make hot drinks. But needing a specialist mix of wood alcohol and water without impurities to feed our flying machines to go into combat? Better off staying in the bunker till the supply truck arrives.
Bureaucracy as usual in a socialist/etatist country....
Hubris was a big factor in decision making until late '41. Remember, through '41, Germany was winning everywhere; and there was a strong attitude that what was already in production was often sufficient, especially because service needs demanded no production slowdowns. There is a lead time required to get needed upgrades to squadrons, and that's largely why you don't see MW50 until '42.
1942 is the year that doomed the Axis, with almost everything starting to go wrong. But, in '41, even the Allies would have told you the Axis were winning.
Increased engine attrition (?) and no imminent need. This war wasn't going to last beyond 1941; that's the plan anyway ... Besides, in 1939/40 Daimler-Benz couldn't keep up with demand; Messerschmitt cranked out Emils faster than DB produced engines. Really no need for further complications.
The book The Secret Horsepower Race by Calum E. Douglas might be a good reference in answering that question.
It boils down to poor decision making in how they handled things. They could really have benefited from a relatively easy way to boost horsepower given their shortages of certain metals and high octane fuel.
Methanol isn't hard to make, neither is distilled water, especially compared to high octane fuel from coal and exhaust valves that can take high temperatures with a very limited supply of certain metals.
I am endlessly impressed by the depth of research in your videos, Captain
Well done Swordfish.
Always loved that plane thanks to watching the classic 1960 film "Sink the Bismark!" on "Family Classics" as a kid!
Also very good at sinking well defended battleships in harbour by being capable of night carrier operations, outclassing a lot of airforces fighter defences.
Sometimes high technology is a biplane with a high quality watch and an early war airborne radar.
The mighty Stringbag.
Just a cameo today!
Swordfish. Fighter so effective that it can remove enemy airplanes before they are even build.
What I appreciate with these high quality content videos is - besides the technical knowledge - the structure.
One of the best examples might be the p-39-video: A question, a hypothesis, arguments, counterarguments, conclusion.
And so many details, very often regarding practical issues which cannot be found on paper & blueprints, but stem from actual service accounts (e. g. the noise & negative impact on combat effectiveness while having to fight with an open canopy).
Rationality without "vibing" or being biased. It is actually sad, that Greg's academic approach feels so refreshing to listen to in comparison to so many other YT-creators who simply have no comparable professionalism and... for the lack of another word... qualification.
One immediately realize that Greg absolutely knows what he is talking about.
Oh how much I love the Fairey Swordfish, Greg. Luckily I watched right to the end of the video. The plane that disabled the Bismarck, launched from the ill-fated aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal. Reportedly, HMS Ark Royal was the third ship that was home to "Unsinkable Sam", the black and white cat who survived the sinking of the Bismarck, the destroyer HMS Cossack, and HMS Ark Royal.
Funny coincidence: whenever Greg signs off his videos, it reminds me of my pastor (also named Greg). Whenever I'd get a phone call from Pastor Greg, he'd sign off with, "Goodbye and may the Lord bless you." So now, Captain Greg's video outros always makes me mentally fill in the "may the Lord bless you" part, and then immediately get subverted. Lol
Swordfish! When I was towing gliders a typical flight was full throttle at 52 mph up to 3000' AGL, then glider release after which we'd reduce throttle to 2000 rpm, rack over into a 90 degree bank with full up elevator trim and stick pulled back and spiral down to pattern altitude. We did it this way to minimize shock cooling while getting down quickly to pick up the next tow. Super fun flying.
Greg, have you considered upping the available Patreon levels? I feel the value I get from your channel exceeds the meager price you charge we patreons. I'd happily pay more.
Thanks and I really hope you're back doing what you love just as soon as possible.
The severe bank trick was something that I learned to use in the WWII air-combat Sim SVGA Air Warrior to get my B-17 back to the ground quickly from the altitude I made the bombing run at while not exceeding the 190-knot speed the pilot's manual said was the limit before the cockpit glass blew in.
Thanks jaym, I am considering it. I'm reconsidering a lot of things now that I can't fly in real life for a while. I may add some super level that involved a live chat once a month or something like that.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles sorry to hear about the flying... don't wish to pry but naturally curious what's up?
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles Doesn't matter how good an aircraft is.
Only the most experienced and highly-skilled aircrew can fly to the limit of a plane's envelope.
By 1944, most of the skilled German aircrew were already dead.
Imagine a learner-driver in NASCAR. A skilled driver in a Prius might be faster.
@@FredScuttle456 Perhaps, but a better aircraft two years earlier would certainly contribute to not losing those skilled airmen.
Today will be a good day, new Greg content to consume :)
First thing in the morning too! 🎉
No not really
The FW-190A3/A4 has long been my favorite axis fighter.
Another Hit!😊
And I'm a scale model builder & am on a Fw 190F-8 right now so these images are timely...
Kits these days are too expensive. Sad.
Hi Greg, I love your videos this is another great one.
On the shock cooling of the engines of parachute and glider towing aircraft you said "they often go from full power in the climb to idle decent and an immediate landing without problems from shock cooling". Ive done parachuting and I do glider towing, that is not how we handle our engines. We would expect cracked cylinder heads if we did that.
Im flying a Piper Pawnee with a Lycoming IO540 engine. After the full power climb we leave the power up high and fly straight and level for one minute to allow the engine temperature time to stabilise before beginning the descent. We descend in a high power dive at high airspeeds. The engine revs are at 2450 in the descent (max permitted engine revs is 2550.) this keeps the rate of cooling below 25*F/minute.
Very good then. That supports my argument that shock cooling is real.
If I recall correctly from Calum's book, the later 190A9 with a prospective 801F was expected to use MW50. Although the 801F benefited from research in the 801E in terms of strengthen components to handle higher power in boost and stress from MW50 usage. Assuming they were able to reengineer the 801 to minimize possible shock cooling problems as well. To imagine what the 190's could have been if such issues were ironed out earlier and more powerful 801's available.
An informative video Greg.
Babe wake up the 3am Gregs video just dropped
18 pm 😄 gn
"...and thus he spoke his final words before the early morn incident..." =)
@@aurelius4610 It was ~2230 down here!
Imagine having a woman who’d enjoy Greg’s work as much as we do.
Then you woke only to find your lady already awake watching a Greg video in the other room with her boyfriend.
When I met the parachute 'plane pilot at Coffs Harbour, we discussed this. I was curious why he always came down under power. He pointed out that they were often cracking heads in their early days until they stopped doing un-powered descents. During summer, that plane never stopped every weekend. In summer, the temperature at the airport would be 27-29c. At 10,500ft it was -3c. That plane was easily doing 6-8 runs a day.
@Greg's Airplanes and Automobiles - re. your closing comments about the impact of the Swordfish on the ability of the Germans to transport stuff across the Mediterranean (either northbound or southbound!), it reminds me of the relief of the siege of Chattanooga. Despite coming under great presure from politicians in Washington, General Grant point-blank refused to reinforce the garrison in Chattanooga unless and until he'd established a reliable supply route into the city. As he said, putting more men into the city without extra supplies of food and ammunition would simply have forced the commander to surrender Chattanooga that much sooner!
Only when Once Brig. Gen. William F. "Baldy" Smith, chief engineer of the Army of the Cumberland, had established a supply route (called the 'Cracker Line') into the city did the Union forces attack. As is so often the case in wars throughout history, logistics have often proved to be not just of great importance, but sometimes to dictate the outcome of a battle - or even a war.
You're always there to rekindle my love for the Anton! Great video
Thanks Greg, very interesting.
9:40 RAAF Wagga, that's only 240km from Canberra.
I had a coworker in Tokyo from Wagga... "the town so nice they named it twice" and the "home of sportsmen."
I totally agree with your, metallurgy idea. The Germans were on the back foot with supplies of minerals to alloy steel as they started the war. It evidently showed up here in 42, then as the war drew on the tank armor became very brittle as they lacke Chromium, Vanadium and Manganese to make it less brittle. I had not heard anything about piston engined aircraft but had read about the jet turbine blade issues. Thank you for this informative video.
They also had a lack of experienced pilots at that point. Youy could have given them the MiG-21 and it would have made no difference in the outcome of the war.
I think wasn't just the effect of alloying elements but machine tools and alloying elements for cutting steals. As far as I understand it Pratt & Whitney (a machine maker by origin) made the R-2800 cylinder heads by forging them from billet stock and then precision gang sawing the ultra fine cooling fins and machining the head. BMW was casting the whole head in one piece. At some point BMW went from casting the head to precision casting it in a vacuum. (I think this technology was developed for the never to be used BMW801E but some of it was incorporated into the BMW 801TS and TH which were D2 with some E technologies, these 1944 engines apparently had not only higher compression ratios but were more suitable for MW50 (possibly introduced in 1945 as the Ribbentrop system).
-I'm no metallurgist but I know vacuum casting reduces the number and size of the strength reducing inclusions and crystalline defects while forging forces them out of the metal. Machining was just not an option for mass production the Germans. They didn't have enough machine tools and they didn't have the elements for the cutting steels (particularly tungsten). They tried to forge, cast, press and weld everything. Anything but machining. To an extent the US machine tool industry based around Cincinnati and Milwaukee 'won the war'. To be frank I think not even Curtiss Wright could match Pratt and Whitney in machining. Napier had no chance to make the Sabre work without American Machine tools to machine the sleeve valves.
Another interesting development of the Fw 190 was the proposed DB 603 powered version, known as the Fw 190 C. Initial calculations indicated a speed increase of 50 km/h compared to the
Fw 190 A series fitted with the air-cooled, 14-cylinder BMW 801 radial engine, as well as a lower flight weight. A wartime Daimler Benz document showing airspeed for the Fw 190 C V16 documents the outstanding performance of the DB 603 A engine mounting a G-type supercharger. Thus equipped, the V16 in 1943 achieved speeds of 570 km/h at low level and 722 km/h at a height of
8500 m and it only needed B4 type fuel. Galland and many leading German fighter pilots were in high praise of the aircraft and wanted a production run, even Kurt Tank requested the RLM to commit to this. Yet Generalfeldmarschall Milch scuppered further development. Fortunately Focke-Wulf had learned much from its development with an inline V12 engine in the Fw 190 airframe, which would assist in the future D-9.
Really interesting stuff. . The contrast between the “lycoming” engines and the more open air engine set ups at lower altitudes is really compelling. . .with these hot rod engines firing up and then cooling down rapidly you can imagine more wear and tear
At the end when you said about the plane stopping the med shipping. I was like "Bloody Stringbags."
In "best torpedo bomber" video Greg disrespected the stringbag
OMG... OK. Well, the Swordfish was definitely not the best torpedo bomber of the war, if that's what you mean.
Was the Swordfish used in a very effective manner and was it fortunate to have impacted many aspects of the war? Absolutely! However, to say it doesn't rank in the discussion for best torpedo bomber of the war is not disrespect for it. It's just fact.
Greg’s choice of photo for Swordfish is a good one. In all these years I never knew how big the plane actually was. Doing a Wikipedia search, I also learned that “string bag “ refers to the shopping bags that were used at the time. “Let’s see, what shall we get for the evening’s festivities? Torpedoes, bombs, rockets or mines?”
@@clarkenoble I'd argue swordfish
Very cheap no strategic material
Super easy to fly fewer non combat deaths
Radar made it deadly. It was easy to modify to add radar
Could be used in extreme weather cases (north sea,arctic)
@muskepticsometimes9133 My friend, you are making a great argument for most "economical" or most "adaptable" obsolete torpedo bomber. None of these are traits for "best" torpedo bombers of the war. It was just the best that they had at the time because it was all they had! Ha! The Avenger would later also do most of those jobs from the small jeep carriers escorting convoys during the Battle of the Atlantic.
A torpedo bomber's job is to put torpedoes on targets...enemy ships. The Swordfish had its day in the limelight, but it lacked the ability to survive in a high threat environment simply due to a lake of performance. Aside from Toranto, it could never be used in any of the key battles of the war that involved torpedo bombers. I seriously doubt in many battles, it would have made it to the target. If you replace the B5N Kate, TBD Devastor, or TBM Avenger with the Swordfish at places like Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal, Phillipine Sea, etc it's fate would make that of the TBDs at Midway look merciful.
I think we need to put our sentimental feelings for the old Stringbag aside when having these types of discussions. There's a reason the British Pacific Fleet didn't load up with Swordfish before embarking to fight the Japanese. Ha!
Anyway, if it's first in people's hearts, I can understand why.
The higher the octane the less volatile the fuel is. High octane fuel is great for air cooled engines because it prevents pre-ignition caused by hotter running engines. So with that said, higher octane actually means less power rather than more power. However, putting high octane in your car doesn’t make it faster, it’s quite the opposite, especially if the engine isn’t designed for it in regards to MPG, ping and power. Great video Greg!
Higher octane allows more power through greater boost or compression being allowed
@@kenneth9874 This is true for engines designed specifically to operate like that. However, it’s a detriment to engines not designed to operate under high compression/temperatures. The octane is only added to prevent pre ignition of hotter running, higher compression engines. The octane in of itself doesn’t provide more power.
@@privatepilot4064 it enables the engine to make more power, there's a reason the octane level were increased during the war.....it's called making more power.
@@kenneth9874 I’m not disagreeing with you, but it will not make more power in engines that are not designed for it. The reason they increased the octane in WW2 was because of the high performance engines which needed the octane to prevent pre ignition, particularly in aircraft engines. Octane prevents pre ignition which means the fuel was igniting before the engine was in its optimal power stroke because of high compression. Similar to how a diesel ignites fuel. This causes knocking and loss of power, but only in high compression engines that are not utilizing octane. (That’s why a diesel always sounds like it has a knock, because it ignites fuel with high compression). Octane prevents this by making the fuel less volatile. The reason higher octane fuel is used in high performance cars (and often thought of as 'better' fuel) is high performance cars run high compression engines and need a fuel less likely to ignite from the compression energy. They produce more power because they burn more fuel not because the fuel is more energy dense. With that in mind, if you have an older vehicle that normally burns 87 octane and you develop a knock, it’s most likely from deposits that have built up in the cylinder reducing the cubic inch capacity and causing its compression to increase. In this case a high octane fuel would reduce or eliminate the knocking.
Great video! Head cracking makes perfect sense, especially given the problems Germany was having with production.
We saw shock cooling cracks primarily in TCM O-200 engines due to student pilots NOT practicing throttle disciple and the design of the cylinder head casting. The O-200(and pretty much all TCM engines that use this and similar cylinder head casting design) is a much lighter casting than a comparable Lycoming cylinder head casting. Less material in critical areas of the casting equals more tendency for shock cooling cracking. Student pilots were leaving the engines at full power, even when in the pattern for touch and go landings, then jerking the throttle back to idle when turning final. The result? Cracked cylinders. The Lycoming O-320s in Cessna 172s didn’t have this problem. We saw cracked cylinders on the GTSIO-520s on Cessna 421s but never saw a cracked cylinder on the Navajo C and Chieftains we operated on Part 135.
I fly IL2 Battle of stalingrad on my PC and remember a German guy on our squad who was virtually unbeatable. He always flew a vertical fight and his energy management was impressive.
I remember shock cooling was on our minds when driving a DC-3 down final at ORD. Glad you addressed this. Big radials are more susceptible to shock than Cessna motors.
I remember giving a “One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand" _engine warming_ power application 😉in my commercial general flight test’s forced landing exercise with a government examiner. He passed me and liked my forced landing approach.
@@givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935 yep, goose the engine a little bit to make sure it'll be there when you need it. 😀. I was a terrible pilot after I got my private, until I started flying at another airfield, converted drag strip. Had a new flight instructor who insisted that I fly every approach is though it was a engine failure. A few years and 1,000 hours later, I had a real live no joke engine failure over the Great Dismal Swamp, and ended up walking away uninjured and with minor damage to the airplane.
@@fredkitmakerb9479 Finals with half flap and closed throttle should bring you to the runway unless you are starting off too low. The 3 degree PAPIs are a siren drawing in single G.A. planes to their potential doom.
I don't remember you mentioning in the video, but the reason the A-5 had a longer engine cowling was related to cooling issues in the A-4.
Interesting I would have thought that would be used to improve control effectiveness by increasing the arm
@@shawnmiller4781 I read about the longer cowling as a cure cooling issues a long time ago. I did a little dig now and the reasons for the longer cowling are all over the place now. Some say is for vibration issues, other say is armament related and then the temperature issue. I don't know in who to believe.
An important difference between the BMW radials and most other air cooled engines is the engine driven cooling fan. This provides cooling airflow that is linked as much to engine rpm as to airspeed or power settings. This could go some way to explaining the difficulties. I was involved in operating light aircraft abut also Corvair cars. The opposed air cooled flat six shared some things with the aircraft engines. One problem we had with Corvairs was when people took the thermostatically controlled cooling damper doors off to try and improve cooling. This could lower cylinder head temperature under highway driving but was bad in hilly driving. You would run at 80% power up a long hill and the head temperature would get well over 300 F degrees and then reach the summit. Throttle goes to idle but rpm stays the same and cooling remains the same. Head temperature goes from 320 F degrees to less than 200 F in just a handful of minutes. In the Corvair the result was loose valve seats. The stress that high rate of cooling provides needs to be managed carefully and a fan forced cooling system only makes it more critical because cooling is directly linked to engine rpm and not throttle position or speed. Add MW-50 and that may have been one straw too many.
The fan cooling was only a significant factor at low speeds, at high speed it spun freely.
Germany had problems with metallurgy during the war. I know the armor used for Panthers and Tigers had problems with their armor plating cracking under the impact of rounds when they were engaged with Allied tanks. Very good video Mr. Greg!!
Also the ME262 engines had turbine blade film cooling because that would save them from having to use war critical steel alloys. Necessity really is the mother of invention.
I’m afraid we did encounter shock cooling leading to cracked cylinders on our Lycoming powered glider tug aircraft. We have several tugs at Lasham in the U.K. originally it was full power take off and climb to 2000’ or more, followed by closed throttle and rapid descent to land, then doing it again. I believe the problem was cured by throttling back gently and descending with power slightly still on. This allowed slower cooling.
Wow! Great timing, as I am currently starting to fly the A-1 in the game I'm playing online. I've already "unlocked" the A-4, but wanted to step "back" to the A-1. After this, I'll pass on that idea. Great way to start the day!
What game? My natural assumption would be WarThunder if it was that I assume you'd have just said it.
yeah the A-1 and A-4 are in war thunder
The three 190A variants available in WarThunder are the A-1, A-4 and A-5, so that would make sense.
@@UncannyValleyGirl1337 Nope, there's more. Three more variants of the A-5 are also available, with the /U2, /U12, and /U14 modifications respectively. There's also the A-8, and its ground attack variant F-8.
Nice video on what might have been if MW-50 would have been extensively used on FW-190 A series. Regarding shock cooling, you mentioned piston skydiving aircraft descending on idle power after releasing the skydivers. I used to be a skydiving aircraft pilot, flying mostly Cessna 182s equipped with normally aspirated Continental O-470 engines. Aware and mindful of engine shock cooling, our standard operating procedure was descend maintaining around 15" manifold pressure and 2200 RPM all the way to finals, while keeping a close eye on cylinder heat temperature. We never ever descended on idle power.
Hi Greg,
First I want to say this is not to nitpick, but hopefully to add a useful data point.
Unless I am mistaken, the glider port shown in your video around 8:21 is Caesar's Creek Soaring Club near Waynesville, Ohio. I grew up at that airport. My father was the instructor of the year (for most instructor flights, as this was a volunteer run club) in 1985 and 1986. I was lucky enough to start flying there around 10 years of age and soloed at 14. I was part of the 3rd Saturday crew for many years.
The club was very safety conscious and also meticulous about maintenance. From the morning safety briefings prior to any day's flight operations, I can report that the policy for tow planes was to never idle after a tow, but to perform a controlled descent at specified power settings and a specified descent duration. (I had actually asked about this as a snot nosed kid, because it seemed like they could speed up the launch rate if they landed quickly)
Now, I can't say if the policy was to avoid cracked cylinder heads or if there was other benefit to their required slower descent cycles.
Huge fan. Thanks for all of your work.
If any viewers happen to be near southwestern Ohio, please visit the club and get a ride. It is an amazing place. 100% volunteer run and you'll meet characters there with some incredible aviation history.
Thanks, good post. I had no idea what glider port that was, I just used a picture that was free use. Quite a few people have said that they do worry about shock cooling in glider tow planes. That backs up what I'm saying about shock cooling, although I didn't realize it was that easy to do at low altitude. There are those who argue against the existence of shock cooling: www.avweb.com/ownership/shock-cooling-time-to-kill-the-myth/
A big off-topic thanks! As a private pilot, I read a lot about shock cooling, though it was not a problem for me, given the low altitudes I flew at. I did wonder a lot about why shock cooling didn't seem to be a problem for radial-engine fighters when they dove from high altitudes during combat. Your explanation here helped me to understand that it simply wasn't a concern; though the regular short-term maintenance and short expected lifetime of WWII engines in combat may also have been factors as well.
WW2 fighter engines had inspection and maintenance done at such tight intervals that they would catch the problems before they got too serious, usually...
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles Yeah, inspection by a professional maintenance team after every flight is really nice!
As soon as you mentioned metallurgy Greg, I thought we need a reference from Calum Douglas as he would have the researched that exact topic for his book. Then when you mentioned him and now I’m waiting for him to add a comment.
I flew Chieftains for Amflight in the late 1980's. You provided a spot on description of how we were trained to incrementally reduce MP during descents. We were also trained not to push the props forward, i.e. RPM, during the landing approach unless a go around was necessary.
Thanks man.
My father was a B-24 pilot in the 15th, mid '44 till end of the war. He had much experience with 109 and 190 attacks. The 109s would bounce and scatter the formations. Then the 190s would charge in, often ten abreast, head-on. Dad said, without doubt - even worse than devastating flak - 190s chewing thru aircraft was by far the scariest thing he ever experienced.
I look at Greg’s subscriber numbers and think. - why isn’t this six billion? Everybody has to learn this stuff!
Because he loses objectivity and runs off the rails when it comes to the P-47.
@@darrellid And others He hates liquid cooled engines
Greg, your videos are great. I appreciate your knowledge and calm delivery.
I've long regarded the FW180 a very capable fighter to face off with P 51's. Glad your covering this.
Great upload. The amount of time and effort your put into these videos is definitely appreciated.👍
Its weird i have just researched fw 190 A-4 performance and Greg uploaded this video.
What are the odds? That's an unusual version to be researching.
Yeah i was comparing A-8s performance with preceeding other Anton variants to find what made Fw-190 A-8 slower .Also found out data for Fw-190 Aa-3 model which we Turks used. Wished my country didnt scrap them to use their metal in industrial equipment...Or not being conservative bigots they are like rednecks in US...
Edit: I have a wet dream that with some 150 octane fuel and magic Fw-190 A-9 could reach 680 kph...but no evidence except il2 1946 stats
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles I was comparing A-8 s performance to preceeding 801D engined ones to find out which part of A-8 caused most drag and slowed plane down. And still cant understand how 2200 PS engine on A-9 cant make it past 680 kph...
The venerable swordfish. Glad it's appreciated. Thanks Greg
I have been both entertained and educated! Thank you again, Greg!
Nice video! I don't mind you speculating. You are very clear on the fact that you are speculating here, and your speculating seems plausible.
Well done
On of my favorite variants of this beautiful aircraft
I like how jg2 used this variant in Tunisia to great effect
Metallurgy was what jumped to mind for me the moment you said micro-cracking. Cast materials tend to have a lot of fracture issues with their poor grain structure and steels will certainly not help thermal shock loads with the poor conductivity. That's improved somewhat with modern material science but with WW2 aircraft it's definitely something I'd be wary of. Granted I am a little surprised MW50 has the capacity to create that level of shock loading but if they're spraying enough of it that could certainly be the case. But overall the difference between old steels, imperfections, and old heat treatments might be the reason why people believe it to be a myth when using even semi-modern steels and treatments.
I'd be interested if its even possible to find precisely which alloy and treatments were used in the engine or if that's lost to time. I assume it should be fairly easy to find how much MW50 is used per cycle to calculate the precise thermal drop?
Great to.see u uploading more.WW2 vids, love you address the FW 190 A4
9:20 I spent nearly three years of my life at that place, RAAF School of Technical Training, 1982-1984
Yussss. Awesome video greg. I wa taught 1 inch per minute bringing back any turbo charged engine power, non turbo it not so critical in my view with lower CHT overall. You just have to look through the cowling vents in cruise at night to know there is some serious heat going on with glowing orange exhaust manifolds 😂 Navajo guy here
It's nice to hear from some others who actually flew these things. I thought I would get an onslaught of people saying "shock cooling isn't real" but it hasn't happened.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles > I thought I would get an onslaught of people saying "shock cooling isn't real" but it hasn't happened.
which in itself is a shock! cool!
I saw one guy say that, sounds like a legit concern and it makes sense.
I'm guessing you could harden (enbrittle) the metal without it actually failing though it may then be prone to failure.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles
Great job Greg! Always ready for more FW 190 content.
Excellent program again, thanks.
In gliding, lycomings are treated very gently and shock cooling is the reason. Power is kept in after glider release despite the fuel burn and longer turn round time. I was learning to fly gliders at Husbands Bosworth when they converted their Chipmunks to lycomings and immediately started cracking cylinder heads.
Greg you are spot on with the shock cooling! I got 4 years flying out of Bethel Alaska. Shock cooling was a big thing there. Especially in the winter. What's funny is we had a -34 below zero cut off. Only reached it once. But it was more because of door handles breaking off and tires sticking to the ground. Many use the same power settings as you would for any other flight. Yet we would definitely pull power back starting about 8 miles out, pulling 1 inHg every minute. Once our airspeed gets down to around 100 kts or below. You can quit worrying so much about shock cooling anymore. By using flaps if needed. I tended to drag the airplane in so I usually had power on, even in slowing down. Back in 1984, the first time I was there. They would idle the continentals in the wintertime, in the 207's to like 300 or 400 RPMs. You have to pull hard back on the throttle to get it to do this. One of the airport we landed was only winter time and it was on ice.
Whenever we flew the big round engines we always treated them as if it was wintertime.
Oh God, you're giving me nightmare flashbacks. I did my time in Bethel in the 207s back in 89'.
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles when you say "Nightmare" I definitely know you flew in Bethel Alaska!
I flew for Herman's Air for the 84,85 season. Came back in 99 to 02 and flew for Grant.
I imagine we both have a lot of stories to talk about lol!
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles hey Greg, something you may have heard about.
That there was an airplane that had a oral warning device installed in it that became known as a bit** detector!
Did you ever hear anything like that?
Greg, being a FS flier of the big piston airliners, all the pilot notes talk about slow reductions in power when initiating a descent from cruise to prevent engine damage.
Thanks, and that's exactly right. Those are big supercharged engines cruising fast in cold air.
Thank you, good info, and yet another hint from the universe to build my 1/48th A-4!
Interesting video as always Gregg, I definitely don’t mind this format along side your other more documentation focused content. As an engineer it is always fun to look at the what-ifs.
Germany was having other metallurgical issues towards the end of the war, particularly in the quality of their tank armour. It was a shortage of the necessary alloys.
I spark tested some old armour plate when I worked at a foundry and it was horrible quality. They could have found workarounds but fir some reason they didnt
German Armour used nickel to prevent spalling. Often face hardened carbon steal Armour was as good at stopping penetration but the spall generated would be as deadly as a penetration. Nickel was also a critical element in gas turbines due to its resistance to heat creep. The Nimonic 80 used in British gas turbine came out of a nimonic 75 used in valves seats of engines.
So much to run with on these earlier variants 42' 43' it's a Great period. As it seems both sides sacrificed a lot of weight and pure performance in the name of top speed and multi role capability. Adding 600lbs is no small thing, but it was similar for the later 51 and 47 variants aswell given a meager 2 or 3 hundred hp gain. Not sure why they'd bother trying to push the anton to failure with mw50 just to have a supercharger geared to run out of puff at 21,000 ft but maybe they had other gearing. Calum also has a video referring to a special unit of Antons lead by Galland using nos. It took the brits almost a year to figure out what the bottles were even though the German code word for it was laughing gas. Great work again Greg.
I flew the c402c in Montana for Cape Air and we could see our turbos glowing red hot while cruising.
Cape Air, some real flying there.
Well this video has called in question some of my memories as now I'm going to have to dig out my old books about the Focke Wulf to find out if it says they used Nitrous Oxide for performance-enhancing!!! 🤔
Hi greg, love the video and the channel as a whole. I'm mildly disagree with your assertion at the end of the video that The invasion could have been delayed until June of 45, I absolutely agree that better performance out of the Anton could have delayed allied air superiority, but I disagree in terms of the scope of that delay. If anything, air superiority is probably delayed by a month or two until German pilot losses forced the issue either way. A more capable fighter piloted by amateurs is still vulnerable.
I think we would have seen some major adaptations from the allies, including maybe a willingness to put the better propellers on the p38 and maybe delay the p-51, because it was unproven and existing fighters weren't fairing so well. The p-38 was the hot ticket at the moment, and while I definitely think the Air corps wouldn't have wanted to interrupt production, that might have pushed them over the edge. I could see the p80 being delayed so that Lockheed could focus on setting up the p38k line.
The Luftwaffe caused the USAAF huge losses in 1943. They would have been far worse with a 2300 hp A5, or at least I think so. Furthermore, the US fighter pilot attrition would have been much higher. Obviously it can't be proven either way but I think I can make a case that the Luftwaffe would have held out four months longer, which is all it would have taken.
In the old game Chuck Yeager's Air Combat, which I was addicted to at the time, an FW-190 A-4 was one of two flyable aircraft of the WWII era, the other being a P-51D. The plane's description admitted something among the lines of "performance at altitude was poor, especially in the A-4 ground attack variant", and I've never quite forgiven the developers for choosing that specific variant then.
Back then I could basically count the pixels above the horizon on my crt monitor to find a suitable steady climbing angle: the P-51 had considerably more pixels to spare than the A-4.
Pushing D-Day back to June, 1945, would have meant, at best, the Cold War front line would have been the Rhine. At worst the English Channel. Catching up with you Greg always a treat.
I remember dye checking many Continental/ Lycoming cylinders for cracks in my late teens. Being air cooled these engines don’t have a thermostat like water cooled engines so they would be more susceptible to thermal shocking.
Thanks Greg. Always love your videos and I had to sign up to patreon to support you. I have learned so much about cars and aircraft... I thank you sir.
Hi Greg, fuel cooling was a thing in the non water injected PW2800. The F4U is running an AFR of 9:1 at takeoff power, about as rich as you can go, without putting the fire out.
I’m doubting the A4 would have had the boost to be a super fighter at B17 altitudes, but they did fix that, with the Dora
Thanks.
Excellent video thank you 👍
This sounds crazy but this is my all-time favorite aircraft. All time!
ImechE has a really good presentation on engines and metallurgy during ww2
Some should tell ford engine designers and cooling system designers about shock cooling. Especially with the issues with various small turbo engines and highly stressed truck engines. More attention needs to be paid post engine shutdown and large speed differences on high performance engines. I mention Ford as a Ford retiree but past Chrysler engines such as the 2.7 n/a V6 suffered sludging issues possibly related shock or flash cooling. This is an interesting issue that goes across other engineering systems. It seems cross functional team concepts work not only intra discipline but inter discipline systems. Thanks very much for this video post. Any auto people who see this video should pass the issues and ideas up the line. Thanks again.
Greg - Why dismiss the A-3 & A-4 as a dogfighter? With the FW 190, JG2 and JG 26 attained air superiority over RAF over Kanal Front in 1942. Only the Mark IX restored an advantage but there weren't many until early 1943. The FW 190A remained formidable with good pilots, particularly at low to middle altitudes in all theatres, except vs VVS top fighters in late 1944 and 1945. MW50 would have been nice on more FW 190s in 1943/44 but it was still a handful from sea level to slightly above FTH - fighter to fighter.
The P-47C and early Ds before the -11 and WI were at a disadvantage in 'dogfighting' (save marginal speed advantage) below bomber altitudes all the way to the deck - in acceleration, climb, turn and roll. Usually one of those will be useful.
Zemke and others capitalized on high altitude advantages to initiate attacks in dives but usually (survivors) did not stick around for maneuver fighting against FW 190As or 109s. WI and paddle blade for the P-47D helped (but not enough) in acceleration and climb but still not a superior 'dogfighter' against either 109 or 190
The Spit IX & Subsequent was the consistent FW 190 killer at all altitudes when pilot skill was equal but there were crossover points where the FW 190A had a speed and Hp/wt advantage.
More application of MW50 would have improved FW 190 advantages but not to extent of threatening the Allies gain of air supremacy first half 1944.
I think he meant the handling characteristics "on paper".
@@Arnechk - I wonder what Greg considers 'top 10'. Dogfighter is very limiting. Top 'air superiority' fighter implies capabilities in full war fighting envelope - which would eliminate low/medium altitude type fighters not capable of contesting higher altitude fighter threats. Wing Commander Brown considered FW 190 second only to the Spitfire.
Thanks Greg as always!!! I was wondering why didn't the Luftwaffe just retrofit most of the Antons with MW50 especially early on. Also why haven't the the BMW801 engine got more advanced supercharger systems.
Hopefully this video will answer the question about MW-50.
Also did they tried to spray smaller amounts of MW50, for example, to get max power of 1950hp instead of 2100hp?
@@GregsAirplanesandAutomobiles again Greg thanks alot!! I still remember years ago (pre patreon days if not mistaken) that I requested the FW190 video, and you gave it not long after that!
@@LuqmanHMI'd assume that if they tried using smaller amounts of MW50 and Greg was aware, then he would have definitely made us aware of that. He's great at including all of those little details.
@@Jbroker404 understood, that fine level of details would be difficult to find
I always love Greg's long form, very technical breakdowns (where he also cites more sources per video than many aviation channels combined 🤣) But also throughly enjoyed this more speculative style "what if" style of presentation, I know it may cause certain people to get angry about being angry, but I find it very intriguing and hope for further similar style "thought experiments, but based on using existing technologies and somewhat realistic feasibility" if that makes sense... So basically just more great content 😉👍 Thank's Greg!
Thanks Berry. I may do an occasional what if video. I do want to talk about how German could have knocked England out of the war in 1940, but it's going to generate a lot of heat.
I used to work in an engine shop and saw cracked cylinders all the time. Not only the turbo and supercharged ones but even the little ones like 0320 and 0200.
Thank you, Greg! Great video, as always.
Great work,info as always Greg. Thank you
Nice pic of the RAAF Base Wagga apron there.
Great info as always greg! Thx!
yeah Greg as usual i am mind blown of your research and attention to detail and as always when you cover my favorite plane i am as giddy as a kid getting his first toy car,,, it is rare i learn new stuff about these things
this is really good content ,,,i am gonna hit that patreon up thanks
The mechanical computer allowing the pilot to focus on the fight is, too me, a huge advantage over the competition. It gets my nod for the best of the war. Looks like it was too little, too late.
Never knew the A-4 had MW-50. Very cool.
An interesting little video. The '190 was excellent at low to medium altitude, and the RAF struggled with the Spit'V's for several months at low to medium altitudes. The articles from that period in the Tee Emm make interesting reading....! However the '190 was never great at altitude - certainly not the heights that the USAAF heavies normally operated at. Once the Spit'IX's appeared, the game was up as it was more than a match for the '190 within the Spit'IX's operational range. Once the P51's appeared, the '190's really struggled. A video looking into why the '190 struggled at the higher altitudes would be interesting. I was always led to believe it was a combination of poor fuel and supercharging - but I don't have a definitive answer, though the '190's fairly high wing-loading may have also been a factor. The design of the TA152 perhaps hints at the steps taken to resolve the 190's shortcomings.
The German found that the MW50 didn't work desirable enough on 190A. Besides the potential corrosion or cracking problems in the cylinders, to use the MW50 also required tuning the BMW engine into a lean mixture way for some reasons. This led to a situation where when the MW50 was not applied, the engine output would be lower and overheating might occur. On the other hand, the C3 injection worked almost flawlessly, it could increase the power to 2060ps at around sealevel without any significant changes or problem. The C3 injection was introduced to the frontline around July 1943, and it developed into the Erhöhte Notleistung, increased emergency power, in July 1944, which could be also applied at the second gear altitude.
This is more or less the correct story. The BMW 801D2 is not an engine limited to 1700hp. As the Germans increased the rating of C3 fuel from about 94/115 to 96/125 and finally 97/130 along with probably spark plug improvements allowed increased engine boost ratings. As you can see the rich rating increased mainly. The upgraded C3 fuels started to come in from 1942 as allied fuel intelligence noted (see Fischer-Tropsch Archives). Two boost systems were introduced in 1943. The first system was called "increased boost" which which produced a rich mixture that was injected via the normal injection system on fighter aircraft. Rich mixture injection into the eye of the supercharger was introduced only on ground attack aircraft. Latter the two systems were combined. Long story short the BMW 801D2 ended up a 1900hp engine before being replaced by the BMW801TS and BMW801TH.