B-17 ENGINE BUILD-UP WORLD WAR II FLYING FORTRESS CREW TRAINING FILM 78224
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- Опубликовано: 18 июн 2016
- Presented by the Army Air Forces, in cooperation with Boeing Aircraft Co., this is a WWII era, black and white movie created to educate the crew chief and mechanics who maintain the engines in the Boeing B-17F aircraft. (The aircraft was powered by four Pratt & Whitney R-1690 Hornet radial engines, each producing 750 hp (600 kW) at 7,000 ft (2,100 m).) The men are introduced, and we meet the crew chief. An engine is removed, 1:27. The men make adjustments to the engine and the magneto harness is installed, 2:24. The inner cylinder shields are installed, 2:50. The silica gel plugs are replaced, 3:02. The elbow terminal is attached to the dummy plug, 3:20. Many plugs are inserted into the engine, 4:00. Thread lubricant is applied to the engine fittings, 4:24. Oil pressure fittings are installed, 4:31. Air seals are secured, 5:07. Feeder lines are tightened, 5:23. The breather tube is inserted into the crank case, 5:31. The connection for the air-seal ring is prepped and secured, 5:53. The starter is installed, 6:45. The supercharger in-fitting is installed, 7:08. The check valve is replaced, 8:03. The cowling is attached, 8:33. The prop pressure line is prepared and attached, 9:25. The prop governor is installed, 9:48. Pressure and external oil supply lines are checked, 10:44. Pitch control line is attached to the prop governor, 11:37. The generator is installed, 12:53. Fuel pumps are installed on all four engines, 13:30. Thermocouple is installed, 13:51. Glycol pump is adjusted, 15:00. Vacuum pump is installed, 15:30. Magneto blast tubes are adjusted, 16:02. Mounting bolts are drawn tight, 17:35. The booster-plex is attached to the magnetos, 18:27. Plug terminal is soldered, 19:09. Fuel lines are secured, 19:51. Vacuum lines are secured, 20:15. The mechanics make their final adjustments, 21:15.
The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is a four-engined heavy bomber developed in the 1930s for the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC). Competing against Douglas and Martin for a contract to build 200 bombers, the Boeing entry (prototype Model 299/XB-17) outperformed both competitors and exceeded the air corps' performance specifications. Although Boeing lost the contract (to the Douglas B-18 Bolo) because the prototype crashed, the air corps ordered 13 more B-17s for further evaluation. From its introduction in 1938, the B-17 Flying Fortress evolved through numerous design advances, becoming the third-most produced bomber of all time, behind the four-engined B-24 and the multirole, twin-engined Ju 88.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD and 2k. For more information visit www.PeriscopeFilm.com 
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Instead of going to a mechanic, I decided to save some money and do the work on my B-17 myself. This video helped tremendously. You really can DIY just about anything these days with RUclips!
That sir is what RUclips is good for! Good luck on your DYI B-17! :-)
I wish someone would post a video like this for my B-36!
😂🤣😅😉👍
My dad smiled a lot, his crew called him Lindy, as they felt he resembled Lindbergh and who happened to be one of his heroes. My father especially loved his ground crew in the 95th Bomb Group out of Horham, England. Surviving 35 missions abroad 12 different B-17s was not easy at all. In fact it was darn hard, the odds against you completing your full 25...then it was 30 and finally it was 35 was odds against you.. He mentioned often about these great guys, 'the ground crew' Tough guys, willing to work 20 30 hours straight to get a ship ready for the next days missions. Fixing every small thing that went wrong on a mission, maintaining and rebuilding blown out engines, patching and replacing wings from massive flak barrages and shredded fuselages from 109 (etc) Luftwaffe attacks and on and on. He would not have made his 35 without their careful eyeballing every detail. And yes, doing all this in the dead of winter, at night, all night, in rain and wind and all the other weather conditions of the English countryside could dish out. He loved the mechanics and one reason he followed in aeronautics for the rest of his life. Worked at Lockheed for 40 years. Here he is smiling in 1944, as I recall so well. Lindy taught me a lot about life and his experiences in the war sat heavy on him and Love and Peace to you dad. Fly the trail of the clear blue forever. markerickson.com/Family_History/Ernest_Erickson/r1-1.html
Great story - teamwork, skill, commitment and hard work. Respect to your Dad and all his colleagues 🇺🇸
Many thanks for the comments on the heroics of all aircrew, and for posting the link to your family history!
What a nice thing to say and share with us. Thanks!!!
Mark, my dad (F.X. Shamrell) was a crew chief/waist gunner in the 95th (Block B) 336th Squadron, at Horham. His planes were" Pretty Baby" and "Grermlin's Sweetheart". Have his yearbook and lots of pictures of him replacing engines and damaged metal and plexiglass while working at the "hardstands".
Even though he sometimes worked as a mechanic all night on the planes because of tremendous attrition in late 43/early 44, he still was on 13 missions and some food supply missions. He talked most about Regensburg, Dresden and the First Daylight Raid on Berlin! He did a milk run to Russia > Italy > back to UK.
If you watch the NBC Video "All the Fine Young Men", his picture is just after the 2:00 min. mark taken after they got back from the Regensburg Mission - "We got our asses kicked by the Luftwaffe". In the video they are removing the top turret gunner who later died. My dad had given him morphine. (Notice the blood spatters on his jacket and face.))
In 1995 I took him to the Pima Air Museum in Tuscon and he was like a little kid again in the B-17 display hangar. He ended up leading one of the guided tours for a group of students from England. I watched in awe as his long - term memory kicked in and he was rattling off: Fuel load, bomb load, 50 cal. load, spark plug gap settings, carb jetting specs, crankcase oil capacity, oil location of armored oil reservoirs for each engine, how the oxygen system worked, tire pressure main/tail, etc.
They were truly the Greatest Generation
Mike Shamrell
Wickenburg, AZ
Bought a book written by a pilot in the 95th BG! “The Lucky Bastard Club” by Eugene Fletcher. Mailed it to him to sign and he was kind enough to send me the addresses of his remaining crew members so I could ship the book back and forth getting their signatures. Then, in 1995, met most of them at their reunion in Spokane. Damn nice men each and everyone. Still have the book, the memories and the utmost respect for them all. Sad to think they’re all gone now. Thanks for your link to the history! Really great stuff!
Narrator Robert Taylor taught many Navy pilots to fly.
This propulsion machining work is astounding. I was a machinist starting 2 days out of high school. During my time, I went from manual lathes and mills to full tilt CNC 4 axis machining centers, using computers to program a toolpath. I am in awe that the WW2 machinists could mass produce the gears, splines, and engines required just using technologically simple manual lathes and mills. One moments in-attention will scrap the part you may have spent days machining. This was truly the Greatest Generation. The ability to build better aircraft, fighters and bombers than Germany, primarily won WW2. Study the complexity of the Merlin engines, and you will understand what an accomplishment it was.
I still have my grandfathers dog tags in my room on my lamp. He was at pearl harbor when it went down. He told me i didnt put out my cigarette and chuged my beer because he was scared shitless. I wear his dog tags whenever im going through some shit, he still helps me out.
Being a mechanic in real life isn't the greatest job, but imagine how great of a job it would be when the alternative is actually fighting a war.
Our planes(C124 Globemaster) had the P&W R4360 28cylinder engines. They were a work of art. God help you if you had to do a spark plug change on a cold winter day. That was 56 spark plugs per engine x 4 engines. 224 plugs total. They were a sight to behold when they started up!
Mike, I understand that the B-36 was a nightmare....the aircraft had 336 plugs and I understand that the procedure required a test run with a heat probe “ magic wand” to check for firing on each cylinder....with the mechanic in front of the propeller. Must have been no fun at all at Elmendorf.
As an aircraft owner, it always amazes me how the weight of engine, its thrust (pull) on the airframe and the torsional stress of it's rotating mass (crankshaft & propeller) are all handled by only four bolts connecting the engine mount to the airframe.
Yes I agree , I keep one nut in my tool box for a cone bolt ( one of three ) that holds the JT8 engine to the airframe of a 727 aircraft. So I can show people, if they aren't an A&P they probably don't believe me , but that's ok . I keep it for memories sake . First aircraft I worked on , 26 years A&P .
All that was designed on paper, and the math on a slide rule.... If we had those engineers now.....
Da Ke I’m seeing that, guys smoking pipes and wearing horn rimmed glasses wearing wing tips, LOL thought I’d add to your description
And they probably knew what hand tools were and how to use them. They designed all these great airplanes with that method.
...they would have to learn a lot of new stuff or go working in a museum. 😀
We would have X-wing fighters today
Check out "The Secret Horsepower Race: Western Front Fighter Engine Development" by Calum E. Douglas. Basically every "modern" and "high tech" ic engine tech was developed during this time period . Variable Valve Timing , Direct Injection, compound supercharging , nitrous oxide injection just to name a few. Heck the Toyota F1 program just figured out the Nazi crank balancing methodology in the early 2000's lol
I fixed my lawnmower thanks to this video !! Thanks
Such a weight on their shoulders...all those crewmen's lives in their hands. Salute to the maintenance crews. The other amazing part is the people who designed these things and made them work.
@Romulus III Oh. So if it were a single-engine fighter, then I should not "chill out"? Or...you mean that they could do crappy maintenance because they have 4 engines, therefore the chill out factor is higher?
All people participating in this film are true heros, alongside with those responsible for the archive so that we could see it now in perfect condition and learn from it.
As a kid I went through the entire Air force recip program at Whichita, then flight engineer at Minneapolis then C-141a flight engineer at Altus Oaklahoma Then finshed up on C-5s at Newburg NY run qualified for 15 years 27yrs total It was great I miss those days
Art , Pinky and Chuck ...well done fella's !
I love the narration!
Atta boy! =)
Golly gee, that was a swell film.
Atta Boy.
Say.... Don't make with the Air, SEE!!
I was surprised at how small of a package the engine really is!
I can imagine someone from the DoD going to Sears to buy the tools needed at all the flight stations. 10,000 breaker bars, 10,000 open wrench sets, 10,000 pliers, etc,etc. Being a diesel mechanic myself,with training on high performance piston aircraft engines, I can understand the quality of work involved.
A lot of precision that got screwed up when the flack started, not to mention machine guns and cannons. I salute those who served.
Looks like a fun build, imagine everything new and clean...In reality this is a lot of very hard work, usually out in the weather.
blancolirio still hot and covered in oil
Nagyon kemény munka volt ezeket a gépeket javítani, karban tartani. Kinn a szabadban minden évszakban. Valamikor tank szerelő voltam a seregben. Nagyon nehéz munka. Kinn dolgozni.
The real conditions were often far from ideal. There’s an amazing amount of complexity with the installation of that R-1820 Wright Cyclone on a B-17 Flyingfortress. They didn’t even touch on the exhaust driven turbocharger and all the plumbing involved with that and the inter coolers.
Whial snipers are shooting at you or boomers overf head
My father more than likely had to watch this movie back in the day. He was a radial engine mechanic for B-17's all through WWII. It seems like a lot of the parts they had to put on, could have been installed at the factory. Cool look back!
Remember the limited parts availability in wartime.
What fun would there been in that? Yeah, and my Father was a Crew Chief and Flight Engineer on B-29s and KC-97s...history...
Weren’t the reusable components and parts from the old engine being exchanged over to the new engine? You would not discard parts that were functioning on the old engine. Just like a new engine for an automobile today-you switch over the good external components to the new engine.
well hot diggitty dog! Now I can fix this B-17 engine that I wanted to put on my pontoon boat!!! thank you!
There is an engine like this on display at Tulsa Air & Space Museum. There are breaker points and condensers on every cylinder!
The hands that won the war.
Nice tools they have there! The tool sets supplied with Packard built Merlins were also quite coveted and were often “lost” before spare engines reached the squadrons! A chap I worked with still had a tool set that, as a kid, he pinched from a B17 that crash landed near Chelmsford in the war!
Man check out that fool proof torque wrench..
Makes me want to be an aircraft mechanic...wait, I am one!
I did 985, 1340, 1830, 2800.
incredible engineering and design. Due to time pressures, these planes went from concept to design to manufacture sometimes in just over a year. Imagine all of the parts had to be built to spec. It blows mind mind.
There is a great video somewhere on Yt about the building of the radial engine manufacturing plant. It's insane what they made and how fast it happened!!!
Check here on Periscope's channel.
The hand drill is epic.. 👍
This is really cool. I'm an engines guy. In grad school I had a thesis advisor, Thomas E. Murphy, who helped with the design and testing of these beauties back in WW2. He had great stories.
Imagine the smell of a new b17 engine right our of the box oh jebus
This was great. My father was a Crew Chief and Flight Engineer on B-29s and KC-97s. As a boy I heard a lot from him about engine build-up...now I got to see it... I know that those engines are R-3350s and R-4360s not R-1820s but still..I also listened to a whole lot of other stories as well...never to be forgotten...
Magnificent stuff.
I love at the end how they all went to work on Chuck's hoop
In the Navy we called this the Quick Engine Change buildup or QEC.
I was surprised to see it wrapped in plastic film. I was expecting greased or wax paper.
That stand sure beats working on the ground on top of a couple tires.
Jay Reiter sounds like someone that’s been there
Crew chiefs didn't look much different through the 1980s when I enlisted. I chose jets because the last recips in the Air Force (O-2s) were on their way out but those big recips had to be fun (for the right person's idea of fun) to wrench. This video gives an idea how complex recip engines were.
Flying in those days was dangerous (most don't know the US lost nearly as many aircraft to crashes in CONUS as lost in combat!) as aircraft were quite primitive however impressive the actual execution of their designs may have been. Proper maintenance and repair minimized that massive attrition.
The designers, engineers, crews. It all blows my mind.
Worked on Radials , never that clean , all the baffles chaff from the vibration to a razor edge. Exhaust hardware seised from the heat .Constantly chasing leaks . Access to accessory section very limited when installed on aircraft and usually in an environment thats either very cold or very hot with mosquitos and black flies.
This is so cool to watch.
Thank you for posting this.
Glad you enjoyed it! Subscribe and consider becoming a channel member ruclips.net/video/ODBW3pVahUE/видео.html
The generator, which is bolted to the rear of the engine, has a data plate fitted to the body of the generator. During a bombing raid over Germany, a B17 was hit by flak and a another B17 got hit by debris. Later when inspected, the generator data plate was found embedded in it. The engine when hit, must have exploded, imagine the impact?
"- Hey dude, where do this washer goes on?"
"- Damned, sarge, let's remove it all again!!!"
That was very pleasant to watch.
What a enormous amount of work and work ahead to install
I dived on a B17, some20 years ago, on 70 meters depth. Engines looked like they were replaced few years back. Whole plane looked like it was sunk few years back. But it got hit by flak in 44
Janez Jonsa , where did you dive at? I’m hoping to get too Truk next year.
@@Paul-45-70 Adriatic. Check island Vis in Croatia. There's at least 2 diving centers making that spot available.. They require technical trimix licence. Some Padi bullshit aowd wont take you there. You need to plan it well in advance. But if you can convince them you're old school and can dive 70m responsably on air, they might let you go.
Its anything but an easy dive. Worth every minute.
images.app.goo.gl/o4iwwDkBJ5UYvZbu6
That is soooo cool and crazyly awesome on how this is built and how the build process goes on and from 1 tiny bolt, to this giant monster engine system! I love seeing and watching aircraft engines and the build processes of them too and it's just sooo incredible
i love it !
As IMPRESSIVE as this was... It still blows my mind when I think this Engine was fed with a CARBURETOR!! 😲😲😲
If ANY Engine type needed Fuel Injection - it was a Radial.
It may have brought our Boys home all shot up, but I'd bet it regularly had problems with uneven cooling and Mixture.
Those carbs had superchargers which were more efficient than mere eng/manifold vaccum operation.
@@ralphh.2200 I totally agree. But Physics still has small issues with at least the 6 Inverted Cylinders on the bottom.....
Again, Agreed about Forced Induction. I'm a Race Engine Builder, and now dealing with the incredible Pressures the the Fort used to - upwards of 24-27psi!! (So I don't know how to translate to Bar. I apologise)
Point is, I sometimes get uneven Cylinder Pressure on the From the two most Forward Cylinders, under 5-7 G lateral Acceleration. Not dangerous, but blatantly obvious. No explanation whatsoever
@@CarminesRCTipsandTricks Point taken...carbs still needed the heat jockeyed...this was aside from icing issues...inverted carb mounting supposedly reduced slipstream gremlins but had they direct injection it would have been sweet flying with less baby sitting those carbs...I was a racing engine builder-old school- Chev short block era...pre EFI...we had only iffy results with the TB types...an odd fact: C-87 (Transports ,mind you)Libs had weaker superchargers than did the B-24s...guess it was more important to hammer down post-bombs away-than to hoist a payload of lumber.
A RADIAL ENGINE such as this a pornography to all male gear heads like us !
I'm a female mechanic / shipbuilder. My grandfather was infantry and my Uncle "Wild Bill" was a bombardier on a B-17 crew during WW2. I'm fascinated by the history and technology. My grandpa used to tell me stories about the war, I only wish I had him around to ask questions now that I'm older!
Ok men, we’ve 15 engines to prep today, so we’d best get busy.
My torque wrench has always been my feel on my normal wrenches 🔧, never had any problems.
Fasteners all have different gear ratios as it were. Your just trying to match the surface metal not bend , break it.
The hard work of ground crews, no aircraft fly without them, good work Sarge!
Imagine the engineering genius that went into these aircraft.
Think vibrational stress at 30,000 feet.
that's a lot of " atta-boy! “
my uncle was an ace airplane engine mechanic during the war. started as a line mechanic, then an instructor, then sent to Princeton University to teach engineers how to design something that could be maintained in the field. yes he was at Almagordo and worked on the engines for the Enola Gay. He remembered the countless hours of hand lapping all those valve covers for any engine that was flown over the ocean. Some stories I cant repeat here.
Right...
I suspect he also told you he was present at the Potsdam Conference as an adviser to President Truman.
WHOA! Pinky didn't torque down the right hand ball strainer. Guys, pull your heads out. It's nothing but an oversized margarita machine.
OK so which one of "Art", "Pinky" and "Chuck" owed the Sarge money for a loan between paydays, at the "usual" rate of interest?
Probably the one he didn't send on dangerous jobs.
Cuando veremos la serie de los pilotos de los B-17. MASTER OF THE AIR en nuestras pantallas ???
I'm surprised they don't often mention a torque tightening spec! You'd think with all that vibration that the right tightness would be important.
You were watching tik kok vids while they were using a torque wrench then?
@@theravedaddy Flipping through it again, I see about 8 times that Pinky is using a ratchet, and just 1 time they're using a torque wrench.
Most of those fasteners were safety wired to prevent bolts from vibration
@@edpinkerton7947 That doesn't negate using a torque wrench.
Torque "feel" is hard to teach but once acquired works surprisingly well with torque wrenches primarily needed for matching loads on patterned fasteners and for delicate fasteners. However a torque wrench is more desirable so the casual ways of the old days went away (and maintenance-related crash rates declined!)
USAF maintenance practice changed considerably since then so today you'd see a torque wrench used on anything it can reach. There are always some fasteners buried in engine bays that torque wrenches don't reach but they're normally on clamps etc that every mechanic quickly acquires correct "feel" for.
That engine has slightly less parts than an Alfa Romeo V6!🤣
...but your only counting the outside stuff. All for fun! Alfa V-6 FTW. Nice reference. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/20061105_Alfa_Romeo_166_3-11_v6.jpg
Reminds me of my engine days…..
That'a boy!
Mel 's an amateur ventriloquist in his spare time, btw.
All done without torque wrenches.
They just had that feeling
Maybe you should google ww2 torque wrenches?
I hope the induction drain tube is mighty secure
So easy on a engine stand. Now try with it on wing and at night in the South Pacific.
All of this is the pre mounting prep work for a factory fresh crate engine. It would and could not be done on wing. The work has to be done before mounting. Plus they had lights and scaffolding to work 24/7 for engine swaps etc.
@@hyperluminalreality1 With respect ! I hear what you are saying. In real life the items you see the crew installing are repairable or replaceable on the the aircraft. Carb's starters and gen. were replaced all the time on wing.
6:59.."Whenever possible, I use new gaskets when installing accessories" What! This is an aircraft engine. How could one possibly take the risk of putting used gaskets anywhere on it.
in the field when a new one is not available...
.....you mean they didn't trace and cut them from a pizza box ??
In New Guinea where they probably were salvaged from a wreck or possibly made on the spot from gasket material.
Movie: Hand me that fitting Pinkie. Here you are Ott.
Reality: Gimmie that F**king fitting Pinkie. Hold your horses a$$hole.
Atta boy!
Good thing none of these people were Black.
YESSSSSSS
It's time to install, what? Everything....
Why is all this stuff not finished at the factiory then shipped as a unit to install on the plane.? Engine run up and all?
Different applications might require different accessory's, and in the field the accessory's are reused...
1 down, 50,000 to go.
the old military did the technical work nowadays its the civilians, and the military people only do the flunkey work
Are you certain the engine in your description (P&W 1690) was installed in the B-17F?
Atta-boy!
Jet engines are so simple in comparison.
I thought the B-17 was powered by Wright 1830 radial engines.
how long would all this take in real time if an engine needed to be replaced under field conditions?
At 18:30 is that the mag pressurization lines from the supercharger ?
Why isn't all this stuff just assembled on the engine in the factory and all put in one crate?
Good question...but I'm sure there is a reason to do with logistics behind it.
In later eras it was and engine shipment evolved along with what engine shop did to received engines before sending them to the flightline for installation. Modern practices were simply not thought of UNTIL they were thought of.
Some parts like the prop speed governor that would gum up if on the engine for first run due to the type of oil, and if you're swapping an engine out at a base, there's a compromise between fitting new parts to the new engine in advance, or transferring existing parts from the old engine that you're in the process of removing.
Atta-boy
Watched the whole thing anticipating start-up, but didn’t happen :(
Remember girls and boys,,, This is all ANALOG. Think about it. Thanks for the video.
Keep in mind the huge logistic train behind those guys.
I joined the military to be a aircraft mechanic , I wish I was alive back then to work on these aircraft
Sarge turned the drill in the wrong direction when he tried to make the second drain hole at 2:41.
he switched to a left hand drill bit off camera lol
That was to confuse Nazi spies watching along.
I always thought they used the Wright Cyclone ?
Mel?!? Melllllll?!? MELLLLLLL!!!
I don't understand why this is called a "build up." It was already built, and is being readied for installation.
It's funny, they recorded this. But NASA forgot how they got to the moon!!!
Back when you could rely on someone to do their job with no supervision.
the crew chief is the supervision.
No, back in the day MANY maintenance-related crashes and Class A mishaps happened. People were not magically better mechanics then or now. As USAF maintenance control improved we lost far fewer airframes and people to mistakes. Increasingly precise maintenance documentation and inspection sign-offs improved accountability.
@@obfuscated3090 I have a friend that went to school to be a pilot mechanic 20 years ago. Wound up being a factory mechanic instead. He did mention the amount of legal signatures and paperwork involved with being an aircraft mechanic. I just always assumed it was standard practice. Especially because when a car breaks down, you pull to the side of the road. When an aircraft breaks down, it crashes. To me, it made sense that there would be redundancies and extra precautions. But to be fair, history has indicated increase in precautions, is a result of increase in casualties. So I see what you mean.
No checklist?
Wouldn't want to meet pinky in a dark alley
Torque wrench?! Just tighten 'till they strip then back 'em off half a turn.
Entirely too many parts to fail, wtf were they thinking? and why were these engine not ready to run shipped from Boeing?
Almost 80% of all that work could have/should have been done at the factory, before the engine was ever put in it's box for shipping. Think about how much time would have been saved on engine swaps esp. at forward deployed bare-bones airfields, esp. in the South Pacific.
During WWII, many manufacturers retooled their production lines, switching from civilian to military production. A couple of examples: Union Switch and Signal, retooled from making railway signal gear to producing M1911 .45 caliber Colt pistols. The radar equipment for later versions of the B-24 Liberator bomber was manufactured by Betty Crocker! The engine shown in this training film was obviously manufactured by IKEA.
@@frankroberts9320 Couldn't be IKEA- the crew didn't use any Allen keys.
It could have been, but if all you needed was an engine, then the other parts would be manufactured and installed unnecessarily. If you could reuse components, then that was better for logistics and kept the cost down. It's no different today, if you ordered an engine for your car you won't get the fuel or cooling system with it- it's just the engine unit.
B 17 could pickup alot more weight than 5,000 pounds of bombs. They could gross weight of 73,000 pounds. Empty weight is 33,000 pounds. Long range of 3,300 gallons of fuel
These engines had to be taken by rail to either coasts, loaded onto Liberty ships, sent to whatever port in the Pacific/Europe, and then usually trucked to whatever newly opened bare bones airfield. Hence the 'pickling oil' because these engines were packed knowing they had a long, difficult journey to the front lines and stored for who knows how long. All the components have a service life, so having the factory install them was just asking for some of them to get broken or develop problems from being stored in, say, the wet cargo hold of a ship going through a storm in the English Channel or Atlantic. It's not like we had any shortage of support personnel either, like the Luftwaffe developed in the later stages.
Attaboy
I wonder what it was like to live during the apex of civilization? This societal decline stuff really blows
Amen
What metals, alloys did they use back then? Any titanium?
Ti? Goodness no. This aircraft is a solid ten years before Ti.
I think watching paint dry would be just as exciting!
The wonder about those guys lives whatever became of them? I I wonder where that engine is Whatever happened to it
The fortress later crashed over Hamburg and its engine was melted to make VW Beetle for the US market.
By now, they have all died.
Well, it had a 40% chance of ending up in the French or German countryside, or, if it survived that, being recycled after the war. Very small chance of being in a museum or flying around in one of the few frames still airworthy. But you never know!
stephane sonneville B
Why not do all these tasks before shipping the engine?
The same basic engine might be installed in several different models of aircraft.
Ford could learn a thing or two about quality from this film.
Yes, I took apart my Ford and rebuilt it.
Too many problems and rattling.
Ford built the best Wright 1820s. More power was produced.
Consumer vehicles built to aircraft standards would be nice, but they'd also be unaffordable. The Fords of that era were quite maintenance intensive and didn't go long between overhauls (I've worked on old cars too and had a 1948 flathead V8 Ford F-1).
get the lead out !