The Unsung Hero of Masters of the Air: The Wright R-1820 Engine
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- Опубликовано: 4 июн 2024
- Dive deep into the heart of the aircraft that shaped the skies of World War II in our latest video, "The Unsung Hero of Masters of the Air: The Wright R-1820." As we explore the pivotal role of Wright Aeronautical's R-1820 engine, we uncover the untold stories of innovation, resilience, and engineering brilliance that powered the legendary B-17 bombers and other critical aircraft.
Join us as we trace the journey of the R-1820 from its inception to its critical contributions on the front lines. Discover how this engine not only propelled the Allied forces to new heights but also laid the groundwork for the advancements in aviation technology that followed.
🛩️ Subscribe and fly back in time with us as we celebrate the engines and the minds behind them that helped secure the Allies' victory. Share your thoughts, stories, or any fascinating facts you know about the R-1820 or other WWII aviation technologies in the comments below. Let's keep the legacy of these incredible machines and their creators alive.
#MastersOfTheAir #WWIIHistory #AviationLegends #R1820Engine #WrightAeronautical #B17Bomber #EngineeringVictory 
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Dude... I'm so happy you respawned after your fatal fighter sim crash. You had me worried 👍
I was a USMC C-117D crew chief back in the 70’s. Great engine and drank about 1 gallon of oil per hour in flight.
How many gallons could it hold in total?
I spent nearly all my DC3 Civil Airline flying behind a couple of those R1820's (1,600 hours). Our Hostess came up one day & said a passenger said there was oil leaking on the wing & we said when it stops come up again & tell us. (Each engine had 22 imperial gallons of oil)
What kind of oil were they running in them by that time? It's to my understanding that during WW2 they still used castor oil in US aircraft engine's although that may be wrong, but if they did I'd image by the 60's and 70's they'd have switched to petroleum based oils that'd been developed to handle the conditions that only castor oil could for years, I guess there was something about temperature and the altitudes the engine's operated at that castor oil could handle that petroleum based one's couldn't back then.
Never need an oil change.
@@billolgaau That's over 29 gallons (US), so my guess is that the Oil Tank would hold either 29.5 or 30 US Gallons (US gallon =128 Fluid Ounces & Imperial gallon = 160 fluid ounces)
I have a little nit to pick with you: the R-1820 Cyclone was only used in some versions of the Grumman Wildcat; it wasn't the only engine used for that type. Most Wildcats used the P&W R-1830 Twin Wasp radial.
Had some time behind the R-1820 in the T-28B and C and the Grumman C-1. The engine was rated at 1500 hp in the E-1 and 1420 hp, as I recall, in the T-28 and C-1/S-2. The 1350 hp 1820 in FM-2 combined with 500# weight reduction enabled the "wilder Wildcat" to compete with the Zero. FM-2 ace Joe McGraw said that their mechanics "tweaked" the engine to pull more than 1350 hp.
Although not mentioned in the narrative, the R-1820 was used in the H-34 series of Sikorsky (S-58) helicopters. I did notice one engine which I believe was an R-1820 pictured as would be mounted in a Sikorsky helicopter. It was also used in the Pisecki/Vertol H-21. I was schooled on the H-19 and H-34 helicopters in the early '60's at the start of my 22 years in Army Aviation.
I used to sit with my Dad in a Sikorsky S58 to run it between stints of cold weather when I was a kid...it was awesome hearing that old girl bark and cackle, the smell of the smoke and avgas...ahhh...I had a great childhood.😊
What always amazes me about the common histories of the world wars, is just how much of the things that really helped win it for the Allies, the engines, the men, and the raw industrial might, gets swept under the rug in favor of talking points. Many of which aren't even always right. People focus so much on the battles and the "Grand Strategy". They forget that none of that happens with out some really smart people, building really reliable equipment, and the public getting behind both those smart people and the men who have to go out and do the unthinkable using it.
An excellent video highlighting an absolute tank of an engine, that very much could.
You will want to read "Engineers of Victory" by Paul Kennedy. The entire book is about these achievements in WWII
The americans were lightyears behind in technology, compared to the germans with their rockets and jet-engines. The allies won because they produced more B17's than the germans produced flak-shells...
The germans wereinnovative. The americans were masters in optimization and mass scale production. I recollect the story of the RR Merlin engine, when RR handed over the blueprints to Packard: "We cannot produce this crap with these tolerances". Packard had to redesign the whole engine.
Look for the documentary series on RUclips called War Factories. The entire focus is on the industrial complex of the various countries.
@@frutt5kSome of the things you mention are true, but as a bigger picture the Germans lost because they had a madman as an absolute leader and bit off a lot more than they could chew. Although with a few things going just a little bit differently they could have ended up controlling all of Europe and a good chunk of Asia.
@@johnstudd4245 The madman was a minor factor. Consider the map of germany. In europe, germany is a big country. Compared to the US, it is half the size of Texas... Ger had no oil wells. Every chemical was based on coal.
Lack of ores and oil, they didn't stand a chance with a country that was 30 times bigger with 10 times the industrial capacity AND rich in minerals and oil.
When the madman was the president of the USA, he would have won.
Was an Airframe guy on Grumman CS2F Trackers, until they were retired from Canadian service, and got trained on the Wright 1820 engine, right up to doing Ignition analyzer training to assess and troubleshoot the mags system.
As the 'good' Avgas started to become harder to source, and more expensive, those poor buggers got downgraded, downgraded, and downgraded some more, until I think they were down over 400 HP from peak, between timing changes and other adjustments.
The Canadian Tracker was mostly used for Maritime Sovereignty, and Fishery Patrols in it's final years.
I still shudder at the smell of Aircraft Wax (the solvent that we ended almost every day with, wiping oil off the Trackers before they were put to bed in the Hangars).
One small correction:
Each Magneto powered a single spark plug per cylinder head, between the pair of Magnetos both spark plugs were powered.
This is a safety feature even in today's piston powered aircraft engines! (If you loose a magneto, the cylinder still would fire and you lost only a little bit of power...)
I may have misspoke! Thanks
@@flightdojo A common misunderstanding, hence my stating that it is a small correction....
I wonder if we'll ever go over to 1 magneto and one electronic ignition system for improved performance.
The Grumman FM-2 Wildcat had a 1350HP R-1820 engine, made the Wildcat quite a decent aircraft even after 1942.
I found your channel trying to learn more about the air war after starting Masters or the Air. Watched just about every video & was bummed to finish & see you "stopped" uploading. Happy your back, you're really good at this
You have a great channel but that thumbnail is very unique to say the least.
The propellers on the bomber are challenging.. I won't call it a B-17
and a hybrid radial inline looks to belong in a U-copter ..
Either way. great video and information. very unique advertising
..yeah..a radial/inline...
I love these engine episodes because I love learning about how stuff was made back then. The engines were fully designed by people not computers so they were not perfect
Consider this the truck im driving a Kenworth K200 has a completely computer designed 15 litre road transport engine. More thsn 2 years ago this completely brand new truck had a bespoke fitting of new design engine. There was a sister Kenworth some months later delivered and as of this week that truck on top of many other failures has just broken its crank. Because of the failures and ongoing issues this truck was meant to have the field test engine removed in 4 weeks, but was bought forward 4 weeks because of the crank failure. It will have its originally intended Cummins X15 refitted which will probably take a month. My truck has been more reliable but is on its 3rd engine with 700,000 km/s and currently at about 830,000. It also will have it's Cummins X15 refitted which was always intended however has caused much inconvenience at times and long days
Good video but that thumbnail... looks like a deisel ship engine with a radial engine bolted to it and a bunch of random gearbox components slapped on
but it's provocative!! It gets the people going!
@@flightdojo fair enough I suppose it just threw me off at first
I saw that AI image and had to take a double take
Finally a new Flight Dojo video
thanks! sometimes life gets in the way. I'm glad to be back.
I love these American radial engines that played a massive role in winning ww2, air cooled radials are just fantastic reliability, simplicity, and still works even with a cylinder blown out and will get you back home, all the American aircraft i love were powered by these fantastic radials and i wouldn't fly in anything else especially in a war.
Would love to see a video on the P&W R-1830, another workhorse radial engine of the early war.
I cannot get enough of this channel, thank you so much! Great visuals, great narration and the ambient music on this video really suits the content without overwhelming everything 😊
always happy to see another post by this channel! I find the history and the mechanical engineering behind this so fascinating!
Thank you for making this informative and entertaining video.
Good point! I forgot that it powered the SBD Dauntless Dive Bomber!
Very good, thanks so much.
Awesome video. Thank You !!!
This was awesome. Thank you
Thank you sir, great story here
What kind of engine is on the still clip at the intro? Looks like ai drew a radial with a v crankcase behind it.
It was an attention grabbing technique tbh, but after an overwhelming audience input about it, it has since been changed to the usual style.
Another great video, if not quite as in-depth as some of your others. If you ever get the chance and/or there is enough info out there - a deep dive into the BMW 800 series radial would be much appreciated!
We had the R1820 on the USCG HU-16s.
Absolutely amazing 😊 thank you so much 🎉
anytime! thanks for stopping by.
Love this video, and how technology trickled down motorcycles
My personal favorite airplane engines during WW2 is the RX-7-FD and the R3350 radial airplane engines. Unless the main connecting rod was destroyed. A rotary engine could lose 2 or 3 cylinders. Then still make it back to base. All WW2 airplane engines are okay. The Merlin Engine was given and still is given as the best WW2 airplane engine. Just one Bullet in the crankcase or radiator on the Merlin Engine and it didn’t take long for engine failure to happen
A clip of the Martin XPB2M-1 Mars prototype. being launched in Middle River, MD at the Glenn L Martin plant which is not Martin State Airport. In 2007, Coulson Aviation in Canada purchased the Hawaii Mars and the Philippine Mars and and converted them into the worlds largest fire bombers in the world, helping to save forests in Canada, more effective and costly to operate than jet powered planes. It is a shame when Glenn Martin died, the company lost it's direction trying new things but developing new aircraft was not happening. Martin's last aircraft produced was manufacturing the Canberra twin engine jet bomber. The Museum never had the funds to purchase and display a B-26 but has at least 2 B-57 Canberra and a very rare Martin 404 airliner, the truly first successful commercial airliner. It was quickly displaced by 4 engine airliners and Martin had nothing in development to compete. The Museum was trying to acquire one of the 2 Mars from Coulson but the negotiations stopped. The Philippine Mars was supposed to be ferried to the National Naval Air Museum in Pensacola, FL, and in 2022 Coulson was wanting $5M for the Hawaii.
Pardon me if I'm wrong, but I believe that each mag would have fired "one" plug per cylinder therefore the redundancy. Great channel by the way.
I believe you are right as the magnetos failed often. Not every flight, but in a squadron, every few missions one failed. Since engines turn or people swim...
It is still the case in general aviation engines today : 2 plugs in a cylinder, each ignited by a different magneto for safety ...
I've been told this engine had modest production issues compared to the Pratt&Whitney equivalent (the Wasp I believe it is.)
The engines would tick, tap, and rattle warming up and cooling off. Not an issue in flight, but there was a noticeable difference between the rattle-trap Cyclone, and the smooth purr of the Wasp typified by having a B-17 and a B-24 side-by-side.
Once again, not a performance issue, but a detail the Cyclone left out probably because Studebaker didn't see any reason to correct it, while P&W kept after such details.
I had no idea about this. Thanks!
@flightdojo so the story goes from "The Forgotten Fifteenth" by Barrett Tillman, that Curtis Wright sent the production of the Cyclone to Studebaker. The car maker wasn't accustomed to aircraft tolerances (which after a lifetime working with aircraft parts, this rings a bit hollow) so the engines leaked oil. It was so bad there was something of a fire hazard under the B-17s and in their engine nacelles. But these were kids raised in the 30s, so they just took it in stride as a known issue. I understand a B-17 went through, and still goes through, 50 gallons of 40W oil per flight.
Does this make it a bad engine? Not for the times. The PW Wasp was less of an issue in this regard, but the B-24 was easier to shoot down.
What you stated is absolutely correct creating very reliable engines! In my opinion they also built the powerful Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone but it was rushed in production for "political reasons" the most common cause of maintenance headaches and catastrophic failures was the engines. Although the Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone radial engines later became a trustworthy workhorse in large piston-engined aircraft, early models were beset with dangerous reliability problems including overheating.This problem was not fully cured leading to the death of many crewmembers. Sad indeed....
The biggest issue that caused all the problems with the R3350 engine early on had nothing to do with the engine, the problem is that the pilots were running them incorrectly and causing induction fires in them during take off.
When the prototype B29 crashed into that meat packing plant the pilot flying it was Boeing's chief test pilot, unfortunately when he died not only did there go every single bit of experience when it came to flying the B29 there also went the man who would have written the pilots manual for it, being the chief test pilot writing that manual would have been one of his duties, in essence the early pilots were simply experienced B17 and B24 pilots who were put in the cockpits and wished good luck essentially, the only literature on flying the plane was a hastily written manual by people who were guessing.
To complicate matters and what caused myths about the R3350 engine and fires that persist even to this day was Truman's committee that led the investigation into the crash of the prototype B29 blaming the fire on the engine and calling them fire prone, later investigations showed that it was a leaky fuel filler cap that leaked fuel all over the engine that caught fire.
What caused engine fires early in the B29's service was it's poorly designed supercharger, the Army wanted Wright to have GE design the supercharger for the engine but as mentioned in this video Wright had started designing their own superchargers, they may have got it right on the R1820 but they seriously screwed up the R3350's supercharger, between it's poorly designed elbow that fuel had a tendency to pool up in especially during idling and it causing fuel to be poorly distributed to the cylinders during idling the engine had a tendency to backfire into the intake manifold if a pilot advanced the throttles too quickly from an idle when one would start it's take off role, people erroneously claim that the R3350 engine case's were made of magnesium, they were not, just as Wright switched the R1820 engine from aluminum to forged steel engine case's as mentioned in this video they also switched the R3350 engine from it's original design of having magnesium case's to forged steel early in it's development before any engine's were even mounted in an aircraft, they hadn't even left the test bench yet, since there wasn't much left of the early crashed B29's everyone was accusing the R3350 engine of just bursting into flames during flight because of the Truman committee incorrectly blaming the crashed B29's engine from self igniting, this is exactly what led to the B29's fire suppression system to be redesigned and improved although unknown to everyone at the time it was actually unnecessary because the real engine fires were induction fires that happened inside the intake manifold from pilots advancing the throttles too quickly from an idle, even the best extinguisher system in the world won't put out a fire that's inside of an engine, the inside of an intake on a supercharged engine is the kind of environment that fire does very well in, once started from a backfiring cylinder it quickly spread upstream to the supercharger with all that fuel pooled up in it's elbow, it was the magnesium housing of the supercharger that once it was on fire couldn't be extinguished, not the engine case's as the long standing myth continues to claim was the issue.
The first assignment that Hap Arnold gave to Paul Tibbets to take care of in regards to the B29 was to come up with a proper pilots manual and a proper training program for pilots, once Tibbets taught them to slowly advance the throttles off an idle, especially one's sitting on a runway in the hot air on a Pacific Island waiting it's turn to take off the number of engine fires dropped dramatically, in the meantime a direct injection system for the fuel was being developed to eliminate induction fires but ultimately it really wasn't necessary, just slowly advancing the throttles off idle in increments was all that was needed, the pilots simply couldn't run the B29's engine's during take off the way they were used to doing it in the other bombers they'd flown.
Induction fires weren't unique to the R3350 engine, all the supercharged WW2 aircraft engine's could have induction fires if handled incorrectly, there's a wartime pilots training film here on RUclips starring Arthur Kennedy, who after the war starred in many Hollywood films such as Bend Of The River with Jimmy Stewart and Lawrence Of Arabia, that plays a B17 instructor teaching a trainee pilot how to fly a B17, during the procedures that the pilots do at the end of the runway before taking off such as the mag checks and cycling the turbo's to check they have oil flowing through them he warns against doing one of the tests in the wrong order or it could start an induction fire.
As you pointed out the vast majority of the problems with the B29 was it's being rushed into service, it was the most advanced and most complex machine on the planet at the time and had a development program that should have taken 5 years compressed down into just over 2 years, but it wasn't for political reasons, they needed to get it operational and into the war because at that point the US didn't have a bomber with the range to strike Japan, many think it was because it was the only bomber capable of dropping the atomic bomb which it was but before that it was needed to start bombing Japan conventionally, the time had come to take the war to the Japanese and the B29 was the only aircraft capable of that.
@dukecraig2402 very interesting info, thank you! It is good to remember that the Wright-3350 Duplex Cyclone radial engines had a serious issue with the massive exhaust system that was running in front of the engine that was never really solved...
@@paoloviti6156
No, the exhaust ports on all the cylinders, front bank and rear bank, all point rearward, each cylinder has an individual pipe that comes out of it, on the front bank each one goes in between two of the cylinders on the rear bank to a collector ring (manifold if you will) on the B29's application, the rear cylinders have short pipes that go to the collector ring, from there an exhaust pipe goes to the turbo for each engine housed in each engine's nacelle.
The post war turbo compound engine's had exhaust pipes just the same but instead of going into a collector ring the pipes from 6 cylinders will merge into one of the three fluid coupled turbo's, there's a large flat metal ring that goes around the front cylinders that each one bolts to to keep cylinder flex to a minimum, it's essentially a big round brace that might be mistaken for an exhaust collector.
Another problem that basically didn't exist with the engine's but everyone thought did that caused the redesign of the engine's air flow baffles, they were supposed to direct hot air coming off the front cylinders in between the rear cylinders and allow only cool air from the front to hit the rear cylinders, what no one realized until the war was almost over is that the company that was given the assignment to produce the cylinder head temperature guages had never made them before the war, they were producing them for all 4 of the B29 plants, unbeknownst to anyone they were incorrectly calibrating the guages and as a result the engine's were running about 100° F hotter than what the guages were reading, so in the flight manual when the guages were showing it was time to open the cowl flaps it was already too late for the cylinders to effectively cool and their temperature would continue to rise, the situation was blamed on the early baffle design and mostly on the engine themselves, it was easy for people to believe the engine's just naturally ran too hot given the Truman committee had incorrectly said the engine's were fire prone along with the problem with induction fires not being correctly identified early on which helped everyone believe the engine's naturally ran too hot and had a tendency to burst into flames all on their own, the redesigned extinguisher system, the redesigned cowling, redesign baffles and the development of direct injection for the R3350 were all basically unnecessary, they all worked better than their original counterparts but the reality is the problems associated with the early designs of them were actually the fault of the types of engine fires being misidentified and faulty cylinder head temperature guages showing the engine's as being 100° cooler than they actually were, all of it can be traced back to it's rushed development, there were so many problems trying to get the B29 into production the president of Boeing had a heart attack one day and dropped dead where he stood, I've read books about it's development and initial production problems and they read like Shakespeare tragedies.
Best motor they made to bad the r2600 and the early 3350 had trouble
10:10 1820 out of a Sikorsky S-58 helicopter
Did the 1820 have a two speed supercharger?
Is that thumbnail some kind of AI artwork? It shows what looks like a V12 with a radial stuck on the front.
AI misinformation.
A real picture of the R 1820 would be better.
Otherwise a very informative video.
I really enjoy this content, but to me, the narration is sped up way too much. I know I can slow it down, but then it sounds as if mr Dojo is on drugs. Please! I understand the complications of yt audience not liking longer videos and all that. But put a little trust in the strength of your content and slow down..
not rex's garage but thanks for the comparison. I tend to narrate quickly but will keep in mind that some would like me to slow down a bit.
I agree...
I am terribly sorry for mixning up the channels. Now corrected. My apologies :(
Look at the thumbnail. One engine has a 4 blades prop another 3. Come on AI. And the spacing between the engines.
Didn't hire to DEI quotas back then.
A limited fighter engine by 1939
Your IA generated B17 is a nightmare ....
But it got your attention
Gotta love AI. Couldn’t click onto the bait fast enough!
Lol. That’s not what this is
@11:40. The B17 did not form the backbone of the bombing campaign over Europe. That would be the Lancaster, and by a considerable margin. Not counting the Mosqueto which would take the same bomb load to Berlin at the B17, but with only 2 crew, not 10. The Mosqueto would do it at 1.5 times the speed with only 2 engines and not 4. The B17 was and is a great bomber, but let's not get carried away...
But how about listen to the man say backbone of the AMERICAN bombing campaign so how about facts not bluster!!!!
Fine
Save yourself next time
@kennethhamilton5633 no, he said allied. The video is very well done and the talk about this engine really is worth listening to, as it is a fabulous piece of engineering. The only issue I have is that the narrator says that the B17 was the backbone of the allied bombing campaign over Europe, and it wasn't.
The USAAF could put 3000 aircraft up for a raid in total, which is pretty amazing.
‘Round the Clock to me implies two backbones.
Thanks for your excellent hard work and try to ignore the ungrateful shameless whingers. They should ask for their money back.
Wtf. Why the A.I. thumbnail engine 😂😂
you're right, we changed it
I subscribed anyhow. ❤
What sort of crap thumbnail for this video?
it was an experiment gone poorly, changed
Your AI-produced thumbnail is crap. No Internet points for you.
its been changed! thanks for your input.
just wtf is that cursed AI-generated thumbnail. what's happened to the #4 prop and why is the engine bolted to an inline engine block. just pay a damn artist to make your thumbnail
You buying?
Please stop using AI art for anything, thumbnails especially. It is so lazy
We changed it thanks to input from the audience. Thanks!
It was used in the Grumman Tracker and the Sykorsky S58 C model helicopter
Got a chance to work on the R-1820 while in the Navy. AIMD at NAS Pt Mugu doing QEC buildups in 1979 and With NARU, NAS Memphis on their US-2B.