Absolutely amazing the amount of physical labor, metal crafting machinery and precision that went into WWII aircraft engine production. You would never see this today; not enough people want to work, and everyone has a college degree (I don't; former Air Force Crew Chief) and most people today don't know how to get their hands dirty. These men and women were truly the greatest generation!
You are all so rite ! You don't realize how rite you all are ! Now I believe that You all are beginning to realize why President Kennedy was murdered.. He is certainly a national hero..let's not Forget about that..look back on our History as a great nation..and you will Begin to see that Drugs are being used Against our potential greatness..of Corse being Americans we have embraced Hard drugs with our usual Gusto..too bad !! Drugs and drug addictions are speedily destroying the Infrastructure of the nation..just what They all want..all the cadre of foreign Leaders and dictators are gleefully Watching the collapse of the fiber of America..we are so cooperative in Cutting our own throats that it's become comical..only we shouldn't be Laughing..there's nothing to laugh about..this aircraft engine assembly Video looks pretty sanitary .don't see Many dirty hands..and ime sure that A lot of the characters portrayed don't .all have college degrees ..does a college degree make it that you can't Or won't work ? Maybe it's that doing Highly skilled work for a salary that is Not realistic is the problem..if you can't Make a living working how can you Raise enough money to Live ? In my opinion if my opinion is at all Valuable..we should completely re vamp the whole entire nation into Mobilization..set it up that everyone Is regarded as highly valued and wanted and necessary..put everyone to Work in some capacity or other.. A more military type of society more Disiplin..without any loss of personal Freedoms..a fresh new government That is free of corruption and mis use Of power and authority over people America and All Americans are entitled And deserve to have their self esteem And their dignity restored to them.. Let's not fall into the pungie pits all Prepared for Americans by our many Enemies foreign and domestic... We have suffered great losses at the Hands of these Foreign invaders.. It's up to the American people to put A stop to what is happening to the USA Today...Americans..it's time for a change of leadership quality's within our government..how is it that organized crime has found it's way into Our own government? They sure don't Have any business there ! Their the ones who were responsible for the Death of JFK. Among others..it's time To clean house. So let's get together and get Busy ....
Not very accurate. Consider the difference in motivation between then and now. Todays workers are not building a life for their children like they did back then, nor are they highly motivated by wartime. The middle class they built has been destroyed today by corporate greed and government corruption changing laws to suit the rich. Todays workers are wage slaves treated like shit. Why would they want to make someone else rich while earning pennies?
As a retired aircraft technician these films are absolutely fascinating and informative, a brilliant look back in time to a period when speed was of the essence but without affecting quality,safety, and performance. Thanks for sharing these wonderful and historic archive films. 👍😀🇬🇧🏴
I pass through northern New Jersey on a regular basis. All of the great manufacturers have long departed. G.M., Ford, Singer Sewing machines, to name a few, all gone.
@Possumlove I take it there were some B-29s malfunctioned as a result of this? I thought they just made engines. They made chairs too? B-29s equipped with chairs. Thats wild. I guess they would be safer than bar stools though.
@Possumlove I dunno. Did you actually watch this video? They basically went through it step by step all the procedures. QA inspects everything assembled. Then when those parts are assembled onto other parts, QA assures them again. When they're complete, theyre ran for (I think he said 12 hrs? ) Disassembled and reassembled if everything looks good. If any part looks bad, that whole engine is diassembled and every part reinspected from the start. These are not chairs. The people working there are not just Billy bobs that have beefs with their boss, and pacify themselves by gettin smashed after work. These are gov't contracts they're filling. Most of those people went to years of school to do exactly what they were doing in the video. They dont bring their personal lives to work, and they certainly dont take it home with them. Now, you can say that stuff about Lockheed Martin and Boeing and others now, but thats my point to begin with. Pride has gone. And as result, we have some crappy 737s not holding up. This video was made in a time where a mans word meant something. 1940's ethics and morals. Not 1990s snowflakey shit.
I had an old friend named Otto Dietrich that designed and patented a planetary gear setup for "feathering" (varying the pitch), of the props for Curtis Wright. He also patented the mechanism for steering a caterpillar tractor with your feet, leaving your hands free to operate your loader, etc.. Otto had many patents to his credit. He worked with design at Curtis Wright in St Louis Mo. up to and during WW2. A really great guy! He helped my father and uncle at times with technical know-how in their toolroom and inspection areas. A very humble fellow, for someone as accomplished as he!
@@thepoodlebitesthepoodleche1914, Visit any successful job shop, (lrg. industrial repair etc.), and you will find that spirit alive and well! It's plain old gotta be right, or its not, and you've probably lost a customer. Independent machine shops are peopled with some of the most systematically intelligent men, and a few women, that I know!
And now, heavy equipment are joystick controlled. Took some getting used to, but really nice. I'm a union operating engineer. We're having trouble finding young people who want to learn our trade and we're getting older. Not enough people to take our place.
@@TheBandit7613, I applied three years in a row out at the 449 in Central Illinois! Couldn't get in dangit! Now I'm 50 and not young blood anymore, but would go learn still if I thought I had a chance! My uncle was an Operator out of Springfield area for 40 sumthin years! He ran a crane on a flatbed railcar, backhoes, etc.! He worked those cranes with one dang eyeball the whole time! How the hell Uncle Russel did that is amazing to me still! :)
Amazing. This is how we won the peace. I was a Machinist in the sixties and seventies. We have stopped building things today. I pray we will be able to win again. It still takes skilled hands.
My father worked for Curtiss Wright in Paterson 1941-1948 and his description of how the valve guides and seats are assembled into the cylinder heads was exactly as this film describes.
It seems certainly true when they say: _"They don't build em like they used to"._ The amount of checking, inspections, and quality control is quite remarkable. They actually disassemble a brand new engine to check for improper wear? That is amazing attention to detail. Thanks for sharing. 😎👌🏼
This was before computers and robotic assembly....that was decades away. Somehow I don't see that same level of precision and accuracy being executed in a factory in, say, China...
It’s called quality control to catch any inferior product from getting past the assembly and then passed on to airmen whose lives depended upon the end result.
Curtiss-Wright was headquartered here in Buffalo, NY from 1929 through WWII. Glenn Curtiss founded his first plant here in 1916 before he merged with Wright Aeronautics. There were two plants in Buffalo which produced over 9,000 P-40s, and another plant which was a metal processing plant. Include the Bell Aircraft plant and over 23,000 planes were produced in Buffalo for the war effort.
The instant the war ended, all of these huge factories and the Pratt and Whitney plants were closed. The jobs were gone. All of the engines, machine tools, buildings and parts were abandoned. None of this massive production was needed anymore. There were plenty of completed engines and parts for commercial airline use, for many years to come. The amount of treasure just thrown away is staggering.
Kittelizer PW was just as good, maybe better !!!! R1830 R2000 R2800 and the R4360 !!!! wright produced the R1820, R2600 and then the R3350 that just about defeated the B29 program. The R3350 was rushed to production without enough finishing and testing/development work !!!!
@@AngryHybridApe Not really !!!! You cannot rush a development on an engine as new and complicated as the R3350 !!! Why during the war little new war material was designed and developed, not enough time !!! !There was a war to fight !!!!
@@AngryHybridApe Probably not !!! You do know Studebaker built most of the Wright R1820's for the B17 don't you ??? Chrysler built most of the R3350's for the B29, Ford Dearborne built R2800 plus the B24, Jeeps trucks tank engines. Chevrolet, oldsmobile Buick Cadillac all built others aircraft engines. and Packard built the RR Merlin for the Brits 37,000+ of them and 18,000 for the USAAF along with 14,000 M2500 Pt boat engines for the navy !!!
My grandfather worked in the saint Louis plant. He was the acquisition room chief. He got the parts in and to the right department. He never was more satisfied in employment. It was probably the feeling of contributing to the war effort .
Awesome film!!! I have seen. #2 Permatex and carefully placed sewing thread used to assure oil leaks on these round engines are kept to a minimum. Amazing machines & tooling were used to create these machines... Precision and attention to detail were trademarks of these craftsmen & craftswomen. Hats-off to the folks who rebuild these machines... Especially the people who do the Jugs, with the one piece head & cylinder castings... Great film!!!
I was always appreciative of the great accomplishments of throwing up immense factories to supply war materiel but until watching this didn't realize the more important miracle. To create a huge building is nothing. But those buildings had to be filled with thousands of precision milling machines and other tools, had to be supplied by foundries of many sorts, and had to be backed up by complex distribution networks - what an effort to get the job done at such a scale and in so little time. The depth of the effort to coordinate and build this manufacturing giant boggles the mind. And those people, at whatever level they were working at just did the job - couldn't happen today. The amusing thing was the narrator. At times he spoke so fast I thought he was an auctioneer, at other times he sounded like he was broadcasting commentary on the Kentucky Derby. Gotta love those old style voice overs.
What I think of is the IQ of the engineers. I've always admired them, and even though I can draw an engine, in full detail, I would never take away the noteworthiness of such great minds.
Well said Luther. Such commentary makes me think of my Dad, a man with no college education, but an understanding of airflow unrivaled by any modern engineer. Watched him design a racing muffler on a cocktail napkin, then make it, then test it on his home made flow bench, then see them installed and make an increase of 8cfm in exhaust scavenging and a reduction of 5db of noise. All it takes is a want and need to do something, one or the other is not enough by itself.
We're inundated with World War 2 films of battlefield heroism, and rightly so too, as a record of the difficulties humans face in such a conflict. However, it's quite amazing to see these old visual records resurface to balance the books a little, to show the enormous behind-the-scenes investments of money and labour, inventiveness and great skills required to build military hardware.
Nicely stated. This is just some amazing attention to details. Nothing was left to chance. Thank god these people existed at this time. They saved us all.
It’s crazy how they were able to make these engines considering 40 years prior we were riding horses. Without the digital computer era they had to make everything by hand and analog machines. If you really dig deep into the technology of the time it was actually pretty astonishing how advanced we were. Many technology’s we used back then we still use now the only difference is now it’s digital. For instance the code machines of ww2 were these very complex machines with many moving parts that would require an entire team to design, then training to the people using them and you would also need training to fix them well now we wouldn’t need an actual machine of any kind we would only need one person to design an app to do the same exact thing and the people using it would need no training to use it. Everyone back then needed to be smart and now you just need a handful of people to be smart so the rest of the world can have a simple. Look at a coin mechanism or a coke machine from a long time ago they had so many moving parts, Tons of switches and now we have a couple small sensors, tiny circuit board. But if you take that 80 year old coke machine and just clean it up it will still work just fine but a 10 year old coke machine now won’t have a chance of working again. Back then all of the analog stuff had to be built well, everything had to be built well. It was a normal thing for people to work hard and produce quality products but now with all the digital technology we don’t work as hard as our grandparents had to we have computers and machines do the hard work for us. It’s only going to get worse as time goes on. As time goes on people will get lazier and lazier as we make machines do all the work for us.
My father worked at Curtiss Wright in Wood Ridge and Wallington. My uncle worked at the plant in Fairfield, New Jersey. My father was a polisher there and my.uncle was a grinder..
Analog technology is capable of delivering even finer resolution/tolerance in machining. It is just a matter of how much time, money, and effort are available to do so. The first computers were analog devices that used the rotation of cams, Spindles, and differential gears in order to calculate the product of very complex equations. Often products that were precise to within one-billionth of a part of the whole. Our most precise gunnery computers were built in such a fashion, and even modern fire-control computers sometimes use similar analog mechanics for portions of their operations. Digital computers could also be created with similar mechanical processes, but it was much less precise than the analog technologies. It was not until the advent of the transistor that digital computing could even hope to begin to compete with Analog Computing. As late as the 1980s, the US military was still using analog computing for its equipment. The Fire Control computers for the F-14 were analog electronics (instead of mechanical), as were many Ballistic Missiles. The machine-tools we see in this video were constructed with similar mechanical computation methods. Which is how they managed to create the advances in machining and complexity of components that gave such a massive increase in power over older machining methods that required purely human methods.
no other nation could withstand our industries...was impressed with the quality and dedication to building these marvelous machines..the one engine needed no gaskets due to the incredivle tolerances..impressive..and these folks surely were a big factor in the War..
Great promotional video for Curtiss-Wright engines. Really shows how dedicated Americans produced aircraft engines in record numbers during wartime. Many workers back then felt it was their patriotic duty to do their part for the war effort. Not sure if we will ever see this anytime in the foreseeable future. Theres way to much government red tape, corruption and greed in today's world unfortunately.
In every rocket, aeroplane ,and car manufacturing documentry I hear only this same beautiful voice of the legend Mr lowel Thomson , without his voice this documentties are like body without a soul
I'm so positively surprised by the fact that you guys can express so well in the comments. Spelling is good too, as far as I could see. In Sweden, where I come from, we've clearly lost the ability to write and spell correctly. There are, however, many of us who wonders what went wrong. Jeez...
Those were really exciting times for millions of people working in war related industries where everyone's work counted and women were for the first time involved in major industrial production in these clean efficient factories building the new modern marvels of their day!
I worked at the Evendale (Cincinnati) Ohio plant from 1966-1977. It became a GE Jet Engine plant during the Korean War. I worked with some ladies that were there during the Wright Aircraft days. They told me that building 800 was the first building built after WWII started and was constructed from scratch and completed within 9 months. At that time, it was the world's largest one floor building by square feet. Also, The Mill Creek Expressway (now I-75) was also built from downtown Cincinnati to Evendale within 9 months primarily to provide easy routing to the Evendale Wright Aircraft plant.
I grew up just a town over and had my first business in Sharonville just down the road from GE and the Ford plant. I remember the day a step ladder was left in the test cell and ingested by an NX engine.
My grandfather worked at the Wright plant from the late 20s till the mid to late 40s and when he passed away in the mid nineties we were going through his attic and found his work shirts he wore as a machinist. There are about 8 of them and most look like the one the guy in the video was wearing with the big WRIGHT logo on the back and his name on the front packet area. They are some thick quality shirts and this is before the era of screen printing so it’s all embroidered on. These engines were meticulously made and the machine work borders on artwork. I think that was my grandfathers happiest time in his life because he spoke of it all the way up till his death. So I’m proud to have a small piece of history from that manufacturer even if it’s a few shirts. But I have wondered over the years if the parts for those engines are so valuable today , I wonder what a shirt is worth that a man wore while building these engines. Don’t think I could sell my grandfather’s memory off like that but it still makes you wonder.
I grew up just a few miles from the Cincy (Evendale) plant and I never knew it was built as a Wright plant. It was a GE jet engine plant then. Great video, thanks
As WWII history "nut" Father with 9 Uncles that served and Father in law, who all served and came home; I've heard many stories and have built a nice WWII library. These just round out my uderstanding and appreciation of their service. All have now past on but not forgotten.
I did think about that and had to educate myself as to what analog or digital technology is. Although mostly everything has gone digital I'm not sure I understand how digital is better. Different yes, takes up less space, yes but better? Still can't see that clearly. I'm floored to see this video. The precision demonstrated here is stunning. Speaking of the analog vs digital it is said that the Saturn 5 engines (Apollo Rocket) could not be built today because there isn't anyone left with the skills those men had. I presume that would be "analog" skills. I'm not sure we are actually advancing. How do you see that?
@@pedrogonzales9202 Analog manufacturing techniques are sometimes slower but are NOT inferior. The biggest advantage of digital technology is that it makes record keeping and automation easier- and perhaps repeatability. But the *precision* limits are the same for both.
Craig Wall you have putted in plain English the difference between analog production and the digital production but as you stated correctly there is no real difference and the limits and tolerance are exactly the same. The real difference is that the parts of the engine is electronically machined whilst each component, if analog, is almost done by hand but otherwise in both cases it is assembled by hand. It is almost incredible that the workers of the Wright factories, but also any engine factories, has managed to produce so many engines composed of thousands of partsv! I am really impressed.....
Love our channel? Help us save and post more orphaned films! Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/PeriscopeFilm Even a really tiny contribution can make a difference.
Before someone proved it possible to cast those thin cooling fins, they all had to be machined. Many believed casting fins was imposible. Casting the fins instead of machining saved thousands of hours of production time.
The greatest generation. It scares me how our culture, population and government is not capable of this today. Greed, corruption, enormous government red tape, lack of common sense and laziness would prevent it.
Sad, but true. The response of all Americans in WW2 truly made them the Greatest Generation, from the fighting man down to the factory workers. I doubt we could do this today.
Glad you enjoyed it. Love our channel? Help us save and post more orphaned films! Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/PeriscopeFilm Even a really tiny contribution can make a difference.
My father worked at the Paterson plant not sure which number but it was final assembly. My mother worked in the secretary dept preparing all the paperwork that went with each engine . Massive amounts because each engine was fully tested before shipping out . She remarked that there could be no typos or white outs on Navy engines, but the Army didn’t bother with that precision lol .
Where did it all go, such intelligence, drive, and self respect. Such power applied towards home would have produced the greatest society ever. It's like, a high caliber of man was born and left. Their numbers dwindling severely by the 1960's and all but gone by the 1980's.
I would enjoy watching a young person (Gen Z) work in these factories and attempt to produce that which was done in the 40s. It would be truly entertaining. The skill exhibited here would be difficult to replicate as workers seemed to be dedicated to the product and not themselves.
I was watching a video about Pratt and Whitney and they had a multitude of test cells for their engines and they drove generators while they were testing the engines which saved them 25,000$ a month in electricity. This was during ww2 when the factory was running 24-7 and they were making a rediculous amount of engines per month for the B29 I believe fascinating video. It’s amazing to see how efficient those factories were during the war and the amount of airplanes that were built in the 4 years we were involved in it.
@@billlewis9362 sorry I had mixed two comments Pratt and Whitney was the factory that was saving 25000 a month by using the engines power during testing their engines.
Amazing technology. I never knew the tolerances were so close and the precision so exacting (4 millionth of an inch!) in these Wright engines. This documentary illustrates the vast industrial power of the USA that many Axis leaders knew would ensure their eventual downfall.
The gage blocks used to calibrate the measuring instruments were accurate to 4 millionths. The instruments were accurate to 20-25 millionths which allowed them to make engine components that were accurate to 100 millionths. And that only applies if it’s all done at 68+/-2 degrees F..
@@txkflier But still......can't say you're splitting hairs because hairs were split LONG AGO when speaking of tolerances such as this!! Temperature was ALWAYS kept the same, ditto with humidity. Thats why precision optic labs are located underground if possible-rock steady temperature. But no my friend, they got repeatable results MUCH tighter than 100 millionths, which would TECHNICALLY be called a ten-thousandth. Ford 1920's Model T's fuel injectors were ground to 3-5 millionths of an inch clearance in order to get a proper aerosol of fuel to mix with air. Saw it in an old timey documentary just like this one. To get that clearance Ford had to use diamond faces for turning. Gave a trippy light effect in old black and white because while spinning or standing still, you couldn't tell unless the lathe chuck was spinning because it was a PERFECT little long mirror.
Oswald and Eustace Short , ( the Short brothers, or Shorts) having come to an arrangement with the Wrights, became the first company to manafacture aeroplanes ( the Wright flyer) for sale.
While CAD has provided an incredible leap in design and manufacturing I think it’s had an unexpected effect. Look back at the aircraft that are still flying that were designed with slide rules and gut instinct. When designing an object the engineer would design it to a spec and add some fudge factor to it. Your wing might have a need to not exceed say 28psi the engineer would design it to 150% of load and then throw in some additional fudge factor so now the wing will actually stand up to a 45psi load. If the pilot thinks it is rated for 28psi he probably won’t exceed 30psi loading. This additional load factor now enables the wing to survive anything thrown at it and lasts much longer. For example look at the B-52, DC-3, USN P-3. These aircraft were hand calculated and still flying many decades beyond their initial life expectancy. Now look at a modern aircraft. Need a wing to stand 28psi? Tell the CAD software you need it to build it with that spec. No additional beefing up because you know it will stand up. But there’s nothing left in case of exceedance. Anytime it’s stressed you’ve taken more life off the wing. My basis for these thoughts? 40 years in aviation from actual flying to being in the factory floor inspecting new aircraft.
Today’s piston engines are checked using oil analysis. After running them on a test stand, an oil sample is taken and tested using a mass spectrometer. If metal is found in the sample, the type of metal will indicate which component of the engine has failed. If the oil sample passes the test, the engine is good to go..
They tore each engine down after the first test to check problems, then rebuilt again? Wow. Did they do that with the R-3350 too? I read where it had bad overheating problems, etc, in the rush to get in service on the B-29.
No wonder Lindbergh chose the Weight J5 Whirlwind for the Spirit of St Louis, he visited the factory and saw the after test tear down and knew that engine would not fail. It didn't.
But, did you know his J-5-C had a cracked lifter after his flights in Europe? The Navy aircraft mechanics discovered the problem during run-up after the Spirit was reassembled stateside. Or how about the cracked wing attatch point? Talk about Lucky!
This film must have been made before the C-W plant in Wood-Ridge, New Jersey was built because it was not mentioned. I worked in the Wood-Ridge plant in the late '80's. By then C-W was mostly just holding real estate, and the plant was rented out as an industrial park to different companies. The old-timers that had worked at C-W during and after WW2 said it had been built in 1942, in about 6 weeks. That plant had been built to produce R-3350 18-cylinder Cyclones for the B-29.
Hi! My name is Vincent. Yes, my father worked there for at least 32 years and was a polisher there. He worked at the plant in Wood-Ridge and now it has a lot of different companies in there. The address was 1 Passaic Street and he also worked in Wallington.
Just to add, my Uncle from.Paterson worked at the Fairfield plant on Fairfield Road. That was still going until the early 90's and my uncle retired after 47 years of service. The old building where they used to test out the engines is still there on New Dutch Lane in Fairfield. Curtiss- Wright owned all that property where the airport is and also the big office building on Fairfield Road in Fairfield. They knocked down the plant in Fairfield and only kept the office part. They built a huge warehouse which was owned by Middle Atlantic Products but I think it is something else now.
my pop worked there on final assembley on those big motors. said they were assembled using castor oil. no sneezing coughing or farting allowed. lived at 81 wood st until 8/1969
We designed the motors after finding out what to do with/to the metal on each piece of the motor, someone built the machines to mill the parts, someone built the tools to check them to make sure they were in spec. And this is for most EVERY piece involved. It boggles the mind and I have a totally different view of what we did to "ramp up production" in WWII.
I doubt you are aware of how bad the Curtiss Wright company was. Their R-3350 was very unreliable and it took entirely to long to get the bugs out. Things like swallowing exhaust valves and bursting into flames. Aircrew died as a result. Their SB2C Helldiver was inferior to the Douglas SBD it replaced and was hated by pilots. They spent the war building the obsolete P-40 while trying to come up with a replacement. They failed. So they were convinced to build the Republic P-47 under license. Build quality was so poor none saw combat. And then there was the wooden YC-76... 'The first flight [of the C-76] was made and the airplane was very heavy. It developed some serious vibrations. In fact, the pilot was awful glad to make a quick circuit to get back on the ground ... two of the Curtiss test pilots took it out on a flight and the Army requested that our project officer on the airplane be allowed to fly along on this trip. The Curtiss Company refused. We were very glad that they refused because on this second flight, it [the C-76] flew apart and the pilots were lost and so was the plane. www.wikiwand.com/en/Curtiss-Wright_C-76_Caravan
It's amazing how planes were produced in WW2. A whole industry that sprang up to meet the demands of the war, >80% of which didn't exist ten years earlier. Insane numbers of planes; each one precision engineered, cutting-edge tech for their day... yet they were put in the hands of teenaged farm-boys from Iowa, and the planes were basically treated as disposable, with pilots taught to ditch the plane, or even torch a fully-working plane that had made an emergency landing, if there was any chance of it falling into enemy hands. That post-ww2 era, with all these cheap, surplus military planes, engines, and parts, must have been crazy
America has been the leader in switching to a war economy quickly. We are rich in investment, natural resources, manufacturing facilities and manpower. Other countries do a great job too. Banks/investors have traditionally loved war economies because there is guaranteed money to be made.
In the mid to late 60's I set behind a Wright R3350-26W2 on at Fat Spad or EA1F for two tours of that place called nam with the US NAVY . Only one flight do I remember engine problems and that was a night mission when our oil sump red light came on . After trapping onboard the carrier the plane captain showed up in the ready room with a towel full of metal shavings and oil !! SAFE back on deck !! R3350's are known to leak oil LOL. If they dont you know something is terrible wrong !!
A very simple engine making big horsepower. VW used the same ideas. Bristol in the UK used sleeve valves to overcome the aerodynamic disadvantages of this type of engine by not having valves in the head thus making it smaller in diameter. Bristol took years to get it right. They also made engines similar to these. These engies are usually 7,14,9,18 cylinder for best vibration.
This looks like the production and script were done before the US Entry into WWII. From the equipment we see, there are aircraft from 1939 and 1940 that were outfit as they would be in those years. And that after entry into the war, slight changes were made to emphasize that fact,
Very interesting. Would it be great if mankind could only get along, none of this at this level would be needed! We've learned nothing over the many wars we have had to endure!
And where are the Wrights today? Almost gone. The 3350 was one of the worst engines ever made while the 2800 flew before it and continues to fly after it. 985s and 1340s are in daily use worldwide Pratt & Whitney: Dependable Engines.
@@Bartonovich52 I like the R-2800 & 1830 the best for ease of maintenance. The R- 33 1/2 was never designed to repair on an airframe. It was to be a QEC unit. However, Tinian changed all that out of operational requirements. I absolutely cringe safetywiring base bolts and installing the baffles.
@@Bartonovich52 Welll... howz about the 33 1/2 on the "Spads." I don't think those on the ground in 'Nam really cared just what type of powerplant the support aircraft had.
as a mechanic.... who rebuilds his own engines and transmissions... building an engine, running it on a dyno for 8 hours...... then tearing it down it find mistakes/bad parts then reassembling it.... thats f%$k-hen crazy....... crazy genius.... but the time it would take, especially during war time.......they did NOT sacrifice quality to make a dollar. ive never heard of someone building a car motor..... running it for a while..... and then immediately tearing it apart but thats actually a really good idea...... if you got the time..... and the skills to put it back together EXACTLY the same way it would be better to do this 2 times.... but what guarantees that the 1st time it was "rebuilt"..... its exactly the same as its "birth" so they why not tear it down 2..... or 3.... to 50 times after its birth? idk..... point is....... if you tear it down, and find that everything is perfect.... their is now higher odds of a mistake happening because you have to do things perfectly 2 times not sure if thats a view others have..... but to me its "check twice, torque bolt once" rather than "check twice, torque once, tear down, check twice, torque new bolts once" again.... idk, i like the idea, it makes perfect sense.... if you have godly amounts of time and money (for new bolts, gaskets, ETC)
Agreed. Also, a tear down on a new engine after a dyno run was certainly the first I've heard of in a mass production engine. I don't know if others did the same, but it was news to me. Nowadays, they probably don't even run 'em at all. @@kainhall
@@zfine1450 I think part of it was... Wright was the ONLY ones with engines 1700hp and up.... So, the Gov't either pays up and waits..... or they dont get shit Have to run 1100hp engines VS 2000hp 28 cylinder radial monsters (that could do 2800hp for short periods!!!) 2000hp in 1940 is just silly
WOW! I never realized how much easier it was to make inline water cooled engines! Making and machining 14 to 28 individual cylinders per engine means so many more processes and machines are needed. No wonder the single block with integral cylinder design is king even to this day.
Think about 5:02 ... 100 million pounds of oil and chemical impregnated sand would need to be stored and dumped somewhere after the casting process. Plus the first magnesium foundry in New Jersey would have some toxic discharge into the local river.
I remember when I worked at a foundry that was before most of them shut down because cheaper to buy from overseas, the molding flasks have a cope, the upper part and the drag which is the bottom part I wonder how many molds and cores I made over the years
In 1930s the machinery and tools were fantastic, I'm an electronic technologist I enjoyed the whole process of engine manufacturing, in those days there was a part used in engine called Magneto for me this word Magneto is very interesting it is like the HT coil and switching machanism in our 1st to 4th ganration motorcar that produce high voltage called high tension to spark plugs. In 1930s yet transistor was not invented there automatic machine were controlled by diodes, triodes bulkey electronic circuitry any how as per my resurch the in 1930s Germans were more advance in science and technology.
In aviation, engines, and especially supercharging, the Allies were on par with, or exceeded Germany. Don't fall into the mantra of "superior German technology in WW2."
@@kurtbjorn3841 In now a days there is no match of their automobile industry, for example Mercedes Benz, BMW, Audi although every nation is making top cars but the German are are more popular all over the world same was in 30s all nations were making aircraft but German were better in quality and performance.
@@FayazAhmad-yl6spFZ - We're talking WW2. There is this thought that German tech was unbeatable... but it was in rocketry only. In every other category, allies were similar or better. Our artillery was superior, as was small arms. We had the proximity fuze, the VT. Hell, we had the nuke. Our industrial capacity made Germany look like Samoa. Don't fall into this stupid "3rd Reich Awesome" crap.
I could never understand how the Wrights lent their name to Curtiss. Glenn Curtiss stole from the Wrights. Thomas Edison advised the Wrights to not seek patents for their inventions due to the weak patent laws. This allowed Curtis to steal from the Wrights and further to swoop in to take Army contracts from the Wrights. So, Curtiss-Wright has always been a mystery to me. My only thought is that Wright allowed this because of their patriotic duty to support the war effort.
By the time Wright merged with Curtiss in the late '20s, Orville was long gone from the company that bore his name. Wilbur died in 1912. Wright [the company] stopped building airplanes and concentrated solely on engines. Like the Wright brothers, Glenn Curtiss, I believe, had sold his company as well. It's in my book The Shoulders of Giants [smooth pitch for the book, eh?] available on Amazon.com.
LOL....all the Wright bros did was spend their time wanting to take everyone to court. Glenn Curtiss said that if you stepped outdoors and flapped your arms in the air the Wright Bros would file a law suit. Because of impending War the Gov stepped in and settled all lawsuits and how much the Wrights would receive in patent money.
Secret Curtis Wright merged until the US Gubment put a stop to airframe manufacturers, curtis building engines, Wright, and broke up the companies to Curtis aircraft and Wright engines!!! Same thing happened to Boeing, Bill Boeing owned Pratt Whitney, engines, and built planes, and had an airline, American !!!!! US Gubment broke that whole sebang up !!!!
Because Glenn was more mechanically inclined building motors and had more expertise in terms of sea planes. His motorcycles held records for years. Alexander graham Bell refered to Curtis as the nations lead expert on small engines.
Absolutely amazing the amount of physical labor, metal crafting machinery and precision that went into WWII aircraft engine production. You would never see this today; not enough people want to work, and everyone has a college degree (I don't; former Air Force Crew Chief) and most people today don't know how to get their hands dirty. These men and women were truly the greatest generation!
You are all so rite ! You don't realize how rite you all are ! Now I believe that
You all are beginning to realize why
President Kennedy was murdered..
He is certainly a national hero..let's not
Forget about that..look back on our
History as a great nation..and you will
Begin to see that Drugs are being used
Against our potential greatness..of
Corse being Americans we have embraced Hard drugs with our usual
Gusto..too bad !! Drugs and drug addictions are speedily destroying the
Infrastructure of the nation..just what
They all want..all the cadre of foreign
Leaders and dictators are gleefully
Watching the collapse of the fiber of
America..we are so cooperative in
Cutting our own throats that it's become comical..only we shouldn't be
Laughing..there's nothing to laugh about..this aircraft engine assembly
Video looks pretty sanitary .don't see
Many dirty hands..and ime sure that
A lot of the characters portrayed don't
.all have college degrees ..does a college degree make it that you can't
Or won't work ? Maybe it's that doing
Highly skilled work for a salary that is
Not realistic is the problem..if you can't
Make a living working how can you
Raise enough money to Live ?
In my opinion if my opinion is at all
Valuable..we should completely re vamp the whole entire nation into
Mobilization..set it up that everyone
Is regarded as highly valued and wanted and necessary..put everyone to
Work in some capacity or other..
A more military type of society more
Disiplin..without any loss of personal
Freedoms..a fresh new government
That is free of corruption and mis use
Of power and authority over people
America and All Americans are entitled
And deserve to have their self esteem
And their dignity restored to them..
Let's not fall into the pungie pits all
Prepared for Americans by our many
Enemies foreign and domestic...
We have suffered great losses at the
Hands of these Foreign invaders..
It's up to the American people to put
A stop to what is happening to the USA
Today...Americans..it's time for a change of leadership quality's within our government..how is it that organized crime has found it's way into
Our own government? They sure don't
Have any business there ! Their the ones who were responsible for the
Death of JFK. Among others..it's time
To clean house. So let's get together and get Busy ....
Not very accurate. Consider the difference in motivation between then and now. Todays workers are not building a life for their children like they did back then, nor are they highly motivated by wartime. The middle class they built has been destroyed today by corporate greed and government corruption changing laws to suit the rich. Todays workers are wage slaves treated like shit. Why would they want to make someone else rich while earning pennies?
As a retired aircraft technician these films are absolutely fascinating and informative, a brilliant look back in time to a period when speed was of the essence but without affecting quality,safety, and performance. Thanks for sharing these wonderful and historic archive films. 👍😀🇬🇧🏴
Fast, Good, Cheap. Cheap was the first casualty of war....
I pass through northern New Jersey on a regular basis. All of the great manufacturers have long departed. G.M., Ford, Singer Sewing machines, to name a few, all gone.
Sold out and production moved overseas, quality and reliability gone forever.
These people had pride in their skills and always worked for the 'perfect' finished product. That was nice to see.
You know it. Pride seems to be a deminishing commodity. I hope it can be brought back.
@Possumlove
I take it there were some B-29s malfunctioned as a result of this?
I thought they just made engines. They made chairs too? B-29s equipped with chairs. Thats wild. I guess they would be safer than bar stools though.
@Possumlove
I dunno. Did you actually watch this video? They basically went through it step by step all the procedures. QA inspects everything assembled. Then when those parts are assembled onto other parts, QA assures them again. When they're complete, theyre ran for (I think he said 12 hrs? ) Disassembled and reassembled if everything looks good. If any part looks bad, that whole engine is diassembled and every part reinspected from the start.
These are not chairs. The people working there are not just Billy bobs that have beefs with their boss, and pacify themselves by gettin smashed after work. These are gov't contracts they're filling. Most of those people went to years of school to do exactly what they were doing in the video. They dont bring their personal lives to work, and they certainly dont take it home with them.
Now, you can say that stuff about Lockheed Martin and Boeing and others now, but thats my point to begin with. Pride has gone. And as result, we have some crappy 737s not holding up. This video was made in a time where a mans word meant something. 1940's ethics and morals. Not 1990s snowflakey shit.
@Possumlove
And the comment about the Air force being " in bed" with Curtiss Wright was fact too?
@Possumlove
Or you could tell me your sources, since youve already done it.
I had an old friend named Otto Dietrich that designed and patented a planetary gear setup for "feathering" (varying the pitch), of the props for Curtis Wright. He also patented the mechanism for steering a caterpillar tractor with your feet, leaving your hands free to operate your loader, etc..
Otto had many patents to his credit. He worked with design at Curtis Wright in St Louis Mo. up to and during WW2. A really great guy! He helped my father and uncle at times with technical know-how in their toolroom and inspection areas. A very humble fellow, for someone as accomplished as he!
This is from a time when men and woman took pride in their work.
@@thepoodlebitesthepoodleche1914,
Visit any successful job shop, (lrg. industrial repair etc.), and you will find that spirit alive and well! It's plain old gotta be right, or its not, and you've probably lost a customer. Independent machine shops are peopled with some of the most systematically intelligent men, and a few women, that I know!
And now, heavy equipment are joystick controlled. Took some getting used to, but really nice. I'm a union operating engineer. We're having trouble finding young people who want to learn our trade and we're getting older. Not enough people to take our place.
@@TheBandit7613,
I applied three years in a row out at the 449 in Central Illinois! Couldn't get in dangit! Now I'm 50 and not young blood anymore, but would go learn still if I thought I had a chance! My uncle was an Operator out of Springfield area for 40 sumthin years! He ran a crane on a flatbed railcar, backhoes, etc.! He worked those cranes with one dang eyeball the whole time! How the hell Uncle Russel did that is amazing to me still! :)
Mr. Dietrich being of German heritage used his brain and skill to the advantage of America. Glad he was on our side then that of the Nazi's.
One hell of a sales pitch. Also, lots of people at work like it should be. The radial engine is a complete marvel of machined artwork.
Amazing. This is how we won the peace. I was a Machinist in the sixties and seventies. We have stopped building things today. I pray we will be able to win again. It still takes skilled hands.
So much admiration for the design engineers of the day. No CAD workstations. No calculators.
Paper and a pencil....
Slide rules.
Adding machines
Not pencil and paper, they used slide rule and common sense. It still works today.
Wow, I am in awe of the people who designed the production machinery and then the people who made them! Some of those machines are incredible.
Staggering the scale of it all, the precision, the labor, the expense, incredible!
@Leonard Carr Would you like to re-write your comment so it's intelligible?
@Leonard Carr Are you trying to.say *_American industrial might might not close down?_*
@@BrassLock Leonard thinks himself a cunning linguist.
@@MrLikeke 😎
@@BrassLock Stand aside, the big guns have arrived. ;)
My father worked for Curtiss Wright in Paterson 1941-1948 and his description of how the valve guides and seats are assembled into the cylinder heads was exactly as this film describes.
lived up the passaic ave on wood st. pop worked there too about that time. went to bendix plant 4 in teterboro airport to work on the saturn 5 project
It seems certainly true when they say: _"They don't build em like they used to"._
The amount of checking, inspections, and quality control is quite remarkable. They actually disassemble a brand new engine to check for improper wear? That is amazing attention to detail.
Thanks for sharing. 😎👌🏼
This was before computers and robotic assembly....that was decades away. Somehow I don't see that same level of precision and accuracy being executed in a factory in, say, China...
in commercial aviation, this is still very true. GA is privately owned so it's not as strict.
It’s called quality control to catch any inferior product from getting past the assembly and then passed on to airmen whose lives depended upon the end result.
Curtiss-Wright was headquartered here in Buffalo, NY from 1929 through WWII. Glenn Curtiss founded his first plant here in 1916 before he merged with Wright Aeronautics. There were two plants in Buffalo which produced over 9,000 P-40s, and another plant which was a metal processing plant. Include the Bell Aircraft plant and over 23,000 planes were produced in Buffalo for the war effort.
The instant the war ended, all of these huge factories and the Pratt and Whitney plants were closed.
The jobs were gone.
All of the engines, machine tools, buildings and parts were abandoned.
None of this massive production was needed anymore.
There were plenty of completed engines and parts for commercial airline use, for many years to come.
The amount of treasure just thrown away is staggering.
Not to mention the lives thrown away
In the 70's i saw dozens of these engines in a scrap yard, many unused. Even the big crates they were packed in would have been cool to drag home.
.
@@packingten
Is that like the shortest comment on the internet?
I want a radial piston engine!
It boggles the mind to think of all THIS labor back then. Thanks.
90 percent of that type of skill and knowledge has been exported. And the jobs of course. Capitalism is not without its warts.
How could any other engine manufacturing be as trusted? This is what pride is built on. 👍🇺🇸
Kittelizer PW was just as good, maybe better !!!! R1830 R2000 R2800 and the R4360 !!!! wright produced the R1820, R2600 and then the R3350 that just about defeated the B29 program. The R3350 was rushed to production without enough finishing and testing/development work !!!!
@@wilburfinnigan2142
Well shame on them, right?
@@AngryHybridApe Not really !!!! You cannot rush a development on an engine as new and complicated as the R3350 !!! Why during the war little new war material was designed and developed, not enough time !!! !There was a war to fight !!!!
@@wilburfinnigan2142
So then it wouldnt have mattered who got the contract, right?
@@AngryHybridApe Probably not !!! You do know Studebaker built most of the Wright R1820's for the B17 don't you ??? Chrysler built most of the R3350's for the B29, Ford Dearborne built R2800 plus the B24, Jeeps trucks tank engines. Chevrolet, oldsmobile Buick Cadillac all built others aircraft engines. and Packard built the RR Merlin for the Brits 37,000+ of them and 18,000 for the USAAF along with 14,000 M2500 Pt boat engines for the navy !!!
My grandfather worked in the saint Louis plant. He was the acquisition room chief. He got the parts in and to the right department. He never was more satisfied in employment. It was probably the feeling of contributing to the war effort .
The B-17 used those engines. My dad was a crewman on one, got him home safely every time!
Absolutely fascinating. This was 1942 - computers and precision robot assembly for this sort of work was decades off.....
Awesome film!!! I have seen. #2 Permatex and carefully placed sewing thread used to assure oil leaks on these round engines are kept to a minimum. Amazing machines & tooling were used to create these machines... Precision and attention to detail were trademarks of these craftsmen & craftswomen. Hats-off to the folks who rebuild these machines... Especially the people who do the Jugs, with the one piece head & cylinder castings... Great film!!!
I was always appreciative of the great accomplishments of throwing up immense factories to supply war materiel but until watching this didn't realize the more important miracle. To create a huge building is nothing. But those buildings had to be filled with thousands of precision milling machines and other tools, had to be supplied by foundries of many sorts, and had to be backed up by complex distribution networks - what an effort to get the job done at such a scale and in so little time. The depth of the effort to coordinate and build this manufacturing giant boggles the mind. And those people, at whatever level they were working at just did the job - couldn't happen today.
The amusing thing was the narrator. At times he spoke so fast I thought he was an auctioneer, at other times he sounded like he was broadcasting commentary on the Kentucky Derby. Gotta love those old style voice overs.
What I think of is the IQ of the engineers. I've always admired them, and even though I can draw an engine, in full detail, I would never take away the noteworthiness of such great minds.
Well said Luther. Such commentary makes me think of my Dad, a man with no college education, but an understanding of airflow unrivaled by any modern engineer. Watched him design a racing muffler on a cocktail napkin, then make it, then test it on his home made flow bench, then see them installed and make an increase of 8cfm in exhaust scavenging and a reduction of 5db of noise. All it takes is a want and need to do something, one or the other is not enough by itself.
We're inundated with World War 2 films of battlefield heroism, and rightly so too, as a record of the difficulties humans face in such a conflict.
However, it's quite amazing to see these old visual records resurface to balance the books a little, to show the enormous behind-the-scenes investments of money and labour, inventiveness and great skills required to build military hardware.
Nicely stated. This is just some amazing attention to details. Nothing was left to chance. Thank god these people existed at this time. They saved us all.
Ditto.
All done with pencil and paper and a slide rule...
It’s crazy how they were able to make these engines considering 40 years prior we were riding horses. Without the digital computer era they had to make everything by hand and analog machines. If you really dig deep into the technology of the time it was actually pretty astonishing how advanced we were. Many technology’s we used back then we still use now the only difference is now it’s digital. For instance the code machines of ww2 were these very complex machines with many moving parts that would require an entire team to design, then training to the people using them and you would also need training to fix them well now we wouldn’t need an actual machine of any kind we would only need one person to design an app to do the same exact thing and the people using it would need no training to use it. Everyone back then needed to be smart and now you just need a handful of people to be smart so the rest of the world can have a simple. Look at a coin mechanism or a coke machine from a long time ago they had so many moving parts, Tons of switches and now we have a couple small sensors, tiny circuit board. But if you take that 80 year old coke machine and just clean it up it will still work just fine but a 10 year old coke machine now won’t have a chance of working again. Back then all of the analog stuff had to be built well, everything had to be built well. It was a normal thing for people to work hard and produce quality products but now with all the digital technology we don’t work as hard as our grandparents had to we have computers and machines do the hard work for us. It’s only going to get worse as time goes on. As time goes on people will get lazier and lazier as we make machines do all the work for us.
@@peanutbutterisfu Slide rules! I had one. I knew how to use it. It had a thick leather case which really did protect it.
the head cylinders molding sequence , is a jewel in itself.
it's awesome to think that they mold those thin cooling fins in sand and they came out really crisp and precise.
Was thinking the same exact thing myself
Was even more impressive when they switched to forged aluminum cylinder heads and all those cooling fins were machined in afterwards.
@@InflatablePlane
And that style cooled better than the cast ones.
My father worked at Curtiss Wright in Wood Ridge and Wallington. My uncle worked at the plant in Fairfield, New Jersey. My father was a polisher there and my.uncle was a grinder..
My grandfather worked at CW in Paterson... I never met him, he passed when my father was 13... Would be awesome if I recognised him in this movie...
Respect.
Analog technology is capable of delivering even finer resolution/tolerance in machining. It is just a matter of how much time, money, and effort are available to do so.
The first computers were analog devices that used the rotation of cams, Spindles, and differential gears in order to calculate the product of very complex equations. Often products that were precise to within one-billionth of a part of the whole.
Our most precise gunnery computers were built in such a fashion, and even modern fire-control computers sometimes use similar analog mechanics for portions of their operations.
Digital computers could also be created with similar mechanical processes, but it was much less precise than the analog technologies. It was not until the advent of the transistor that digital computing could even hope to begin to compete with Analog Computing.
As late as the 1980s, the US military was still using analog computing for its equipment. The Fire Control computers for the F-14 were analog electronics (instead of mechanical), as were many Ballistic Missiles.
The machine-tools we see in this video were constructed with similar mechanical computation methods. Which is how they managed to create the advances in machining and complexity of components that gave such a massive increase in power over older machining methods that required purely human methods.
@@MatthewBaileyBeAfraid i think that to many years
no other nation could withstand our industries...was impressed with the quality and dedication to building these marvelous machines..the one engine needed no gaskets due to the incredivle tolerances..impressive..and these folks surely were a big factor in the War..
Great promotional video for Curtiss-Wright engines. Really shows how dedicated Americans produced aircraft engines in record numbers during wartime. Many workers back then felt it was their patriotic duty to do their part for the war effort. Not sure if we will ever see this anytime in the foreseeable future. Theres way to much government red tape, corruption and greed in today's world unfortunately.
In every rocket, aeroplane ,and car manufacturing documentry I hear only this same beautiful voice of the legend Mr lowel Thomson , without his voice this documentties are like body without a soul
You mean Lowell Thomas.
@@PeriscopeFilm ya exactly 😅
I'm so positively surprised by the fact that you guys can express so well in the comments. Spelling is good too, as far as I could see. In Sweden, where I come from, we've clearly lost the ability to write and spell correctly. There are, however, many of us who wonders what went wrong. Jeez...
Those were really exciting times for millions of people working in war related industries where everyone's work counted and women were for the first time involved in major industrial production in these clean efficient factories building the new modern marvels of their day!
I worked at the Evendale (Cincinnati) Ohio plant from 1966-1977. It became a GE Jet Engine plant during the Korean War. I worked with some ladies that were there during the Wright Aircraft days. They told me that building 800 was the first building built after WWII started and was constructed from scratch and completed within 9 months. At that time, it was the world's largest one floor building by square feet. Also, The Mill Creek Expressway (now I-75) was also built from downtown Cincinnati to Evendale within 9 months primarily to provide easy routing to the Evendale Wright Aircraft plant.
I grew up just a town over and had my first business in Sharonville just down the road from GE and the Ford plant. I remember the day a step ladder was left in the test cell and ingested by an NX engine.
My grandfather worked at the Wright plant from the late 20s till the mid to late 40s and when he passed away in the mid nineties we were going through his attic and found his work shirts he wore as a machinist. There are about 8 of them and most look like the one the guy in the video was wearing with the big WRIGHT logo on the back and his name on the front packet area. They are some thick quality shirts and this is before the era of screen printing so it’s all embroidered on. These engines were meticulously made and the machine work borders on artwork. I think that was my grandfathers happiest time in his life because he spoke of it all the way up till his death. So I’m proud to have a small piece of history from that manufacturer even if it’s a few shirts. But I have wondered over the years if the parts for those engines are so valuable today , I wonder what a shirt is worth that a man wore while building these engines. Don’t think I could sell my grandfather’s memory off like that but it still makes you wonder.
Please , when you tire of them, donate to a museum. Thank You.
I grew up just a few miles from the Cincy (Evendale) plant and I never knew it was built as a Wright plant. It was a GE jet engine plant then. Great video, thanks
Today's home of GE Aviation. Driven by it gazillions of times, even worked across the road from them in the 1980s. Great company.
As WWII history "nut" Father with 9 Uncles that served and Father in law, who all served and came home; I've heard many stories and have built a nice WWII library.
These just round out my uderstanding and appreciation of their service.
All have now past on but not forgotten.
I sat here with my mouth open, totally captivated...the entire time
Is that you Monica?
I remember hearing the narrator, Lowell Thomas, on the radio when I was a kid.
yup
It never occurred to me until now how much Paul Harvey and Lowell Thomas sounded like each other.
Lowell Thomas for Timex watches on Mutual of Omaha's "Wild Kingdom". "I'll be drinking a martini while Jim wrestles a crocodile."
Amazing American engineering-superb.
They are worth a fortune today. Love these old films
it is somewhat surprising that in that year they have very precious tools and did amazing work
I am amazed that all of these engines were all built using analog technology! Think about that!
I.E. state-of-the-art tools and techniques.
I did think about that and had to educate myself as to what analog or digital technology is. Although mostly everything has gone digital I'm not sure I understand how digital is better. Different yes, takes up less space, yes but better? Still can't see that clearly. I'm floored to see this video. The precision demonstrated here is stunning. Speaking of the analog vs digital it is said that the Saturn 5 engines (Apollo Rocket) could not be built today because there isn't anyone left with the skills those men had. I presume that would be "analog" skills. I'm not sure we are actually advancing. How do you see that?
Pedro, I think that you answered your own question... best.
@@pedrogonzales9202 Analog manufacturing techniques are sometimes slower but are NOT inferior. The biggest advantage of digital technology is that it makes record keeping and automation easier- and perhaps repeatability. But the *precision* limits are the same for both.
Craig Wall you have putted in plain English the difference between analog production and the digital production but as you stated correctly there is no real difference and the limits and tolerance are exactly the same. The real difference is that the parts of the engine is electronically machined whilst each component, if analog, is almost done by hand but otherwise in both cases it is assembled by hand. It is almost incredible that the workers of the Wright factories, but also any engine factories, has managed to produce so many engines composed of thousands of partsv! I am really impressed.....
Totally cool movie. Thanks for making this available. Interesting from an engineering and cultural point of view
Love our channel? Help us save and post more orphaned films! Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/PeriscopeFilm Even a really tiny contribution can make a difference.
This is an extraordinarily educational video showing intricate manufacturing details and the many workers involved in the entire process.
the sand casting of the cylinder head was impressive...........
Before someone proved it possible to cast those thin cooling fins, they all had to be machined.
Many believed casting fins was imposible.
Casting the fins instead of machining saved thousands of hours of production time.
The greatest generation. It scares me how our culture, population and government is not capable of this today. Greed, corruption, enormous government red tape, lack of common sense and laziness would prevent it.
lol dude we re-use rockets, launch cube-sats, & have x-37s now... you've got to be kidding.
Ppl demanding $15 to flip burgers and still get it wrong, yeah he’s absolutely straight.
The new battery technologies are about to alter EVERYTHINB.
Sad, but true. The response of all Americans in WW2 truly made them the Greatest Generation, from the fighting man down to the factory workers. I doubt we could do this today.
So very true
I love this treasure of history. Thanks!!
Glad you enjoyed it.
Love our channel? Help us save and post more orphaned films! Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/PeriscopeFilm Even a really tiny contribution can make a difference.
My father worked at the Paterson plant not sure which number but it was final assembly. My mother worked in the secretary dept preparing all the paperwork that went with each engine . Massive amounts because each engine was fully tested before shipping out . She remarked that there could be no typos or white outs on Navy engines, but the Army didn’t bother with that precision lol .
Although an antiquated film, full of information. Sounds great.
Amazing technology and procedures which were developed and learned and taught and perfected in a relatively short time.
Where did it all go, such intelligence, drive, and self respect.
Such power applied towards home would have produced the greatest society ever.
It's like, a high caliber of man was born and left. Their numbers dwindling severely by the 1960's and all but gone by the 1980's.
I would enjoy watching a young person (Gen Z) work in these factories and attempt to produce that which was done in the 40s. It would be truly entertaining. The skill exhibited here would be difficult to replicate as workers seemed to be dedicated to the product and not themselves.
I was watching a video about Pratt and Whitney and they had a multitude of test cells for their engines and they drove generators while they were testing the engines which saved them 25,000$ a month in electricity. This was during ww2 when the factory was running 24-7 and they were making a rediculous amount of engines per month for the B29 I believe fascinating video. It’s amazing to see how efficient those factories were during the war and the amount of airplanes that were built in the 4 years we were involved in it.
Pratt & Whitney didn't build the R-3350 engine used in the B-29, Curtiss Wright did
@@billlewis9362 where did I say anything about the B 29? I was talking about Pratt and Whitney’s factory power bill.
@@billlewis9362 sorry I had mixed two comments Pratt and Whitney was the factory that was saving 25000 a month by using the engines power during testing their engines.
@@billlewis9362 B50
Amazing technology. I never knew the tolerances were so close and the precision so exacting (4 millionth of an inch!) in these Wright engines. This documentary illustrates the vast industrial power of the USA that many Axis leaders knew would ensure their eventual downfall.
The gage blocks used to calibrate the measuring instruments were accurate to 4 millionths. The instruments were accurate to 20-25 millionths which allowed them to make engine components that were accurate to 100 millionths. And that only applies if it’s all done at 68+/-2 degrees F..
@@txkflier But still......can't say you're splitting hairs because hairs were split LONG AGO when speaking of tolerances such as this!! Temperature was ALWAYS kept the same, ditto with humidity. Thats why precision optic labs are located underground if possible-rock steady temperature. But no my friend, they got repeatable results MUCH tighter than 100 millionths, which would TECHNICALLY be called a ten-thousandth. Ford 1920's Model T's fuel injectors were ground to 3-5 millionths of an inch clearance in order to get a proper aerosol of fuel to mix with air. Saw it in an old timey documentary just like this one. To get that clearance Ford had to use diamond faces for turning. Gave a trippy light effect in old black and white because while spinning or standing still, you couldn't tell unless the lathe chuck was spinning because it was a PERFECT little long mirror.
Admiral Yamamoto was fully aware of US industrial potential. He just couldn't convince his superiors that they were destined to lose.
Love to work at a place like that...was lucky enough to do maintenance on R-2000 7M2....loved it
8,000 parts in a Cyclone. WOW. I hadn't thought about that. Fine machine.
It is said by those that knew, "Wright builds the engines to what it needs to run, then ads fifty percent more parts."
OVER 8000+ parts
4:45 I always wondered how they were able to cast such beautiful and deep fins on a cylinder... Unbelievable!
Having worked in foundries for 27 years I was impressed with the casting process. Skilled hand molders are a thing of the past.
Man oh man, I'd love to. Trip over several of these in some forgotten warehouse.
Oswald and Eustace Short , ( the Short brothers, or Shorts) having come to an arrangement with the Wrights, became the first company to manafacture aeroplanes ( the Wright flyer) for sale.
While CAD has provided an incredible leap in design and manufacturing I think it’s had an unexpected effect. Look back at the aircraft that are still flying that were designed with slide rules and gut instinct. When designing an object the engineer would design it to a spec and add some fudge factor to it. Your wing might have a need to not exceed say 28psi the engineer would design it to 150% of load and then throw in some additional fudge factor so now the wing will actually stand up to a 45psi load. If the pilot thinks it is rated for 28psi he probably won’t exceed 30psi loading. This additional load factor now enables the wing to survive anything thrown at it and lasts much longer. For example look at the B-52, DC-3, USN P-3. These aircraft were hand calculated and still flying many decades beyond their initial life expectancy. Now look at a modern aircraft. Need a wing to stand 28psi? Tell the CAD software you need it to build it with that spec. No additional beefing up because you know it will stand up. But there’s nothing left in case of exceedance. Anytime it’s stressed you’ve taken more life off the wing. My basis for these thoughts? 40 years in aviation from actual flying to being in the factory floor inspecting new aircraft.
21:30 after run-testing, EVERY ENGINE was completely dis-assembled and inspected. I wonder if they do that today for jet engines?
Today’s piston engines are checked using oil analysis. After running them on a test stand, an oil sample is taken and tested using a mass spectrometer. If metal is found in the sample, the type of metal will indicate which component of the engine has failed. If the oil sample passes the test, the engine is good to go..
Fantastic war time film. 👍🏻
They tore each engine down after the first test to check problems, then rebuilt again? Wow. Did they do that with the R-3350 too? I read where it had bad overheating problems, etc, in the rush to get in service on the B-29.
No wonder Lindbergh chose the Weight J5 Whirlwind for the Spirit of St Louis, he visited the factory and saw the after test tear down and knew that engine would not fail. It didn't.
But, did you know his J-5-C had a cracked lifter after his flights in Europe? The Navy aircraft mechanics discovered the problem during run-up after the Spirit was reassembled stateside. Or how about the cracked wing attatch point? Talk about Lucky!
This film must have been made before the C-W plant in Wood-Ridge, New Jersey was built because it was not mentioned. I worked in the Wood-Ridge plant in the late '80's. By then C-W was mostly just holding real estate, and the plant was rented out as an industrial park to different companies. The old-timers that had worked at C-W during and after WW2 said it had been built in 1942, in about 6 weeks. That plant had been built to produce R-3350 18-cylinder Cyclones for the B-29.
Hi! My name is Vincent. Yes, my father worked there for at least 32 years and was a polisher there. He worked at the plant in Wood-Ridge and now it has a lot of different companies in there. The address was 1 Passaic Street and he also worked in Wallington.
Just to add, my Uncle from.Paterson worked at the Fairfield plant on Fairfield Road. That was still going until the early 90's and my uncle retired after 47 years of service. The old building where they used to test out the engines is still there on New Dutch Lane in Fairfield. Curtiss- Wright owned
all that property where the airport is and also the big office building on Fairfield Road in Fairfield. They knocked down the plant in Fairfield and only kept the office part. They built a huge warehouse which was owned by Middle Atlantic Products but I think it is something else now.
my pop worked there on final assembley on those big motors. said they were assembled using castor oil. no sneezing coughing or farting allowed. lived at 81 wood st until 8/1969
We designed the motors after finding out what to do with/to the metal on each piece of the motor, someone built the machines to mill the parts, someone built the tools to check them to make sure they were in spec. And this is for most EVERY piece involved. It boggles the mind and I have a totally different view of what we did to "ramp up production" in WWII.
I have my doubts on the American will to come together in a national emergency like our ancestors did in WWII.
Amazing things have happened. We'll just have to wait and see.
@Suzukisan
The question is, will anyone want to survive its aftermath, if even possible?
It certainly wont be a garden of eden.
I don't. Half the population still loves America.
@@beep_beep_beep
And im one of them too. Kinda funny how people will hate a place. But when you ask them to leave, they dont want to. lol
I doubt you are aware of how bad the Curtiss Wright company was. Their R-3350 was very unreliable and it took entirely to long to get the bugs out. Things like swallowing exhaust valves and bursting into flames. Aircrew died as a result.
Their SB2C Helldiver was inferior to the Douglas SBD it replaced and was hated by pilots.
They spent the war building the obsolete P-40 while trying to come up with a replacement. They failed. So they were convinced to build the Republic P-47 under license. Build quality was so poor none saw combat.
And then there was the wooden YC-76...
'The first flight [of the C-76] was made and the airplane was very heavy. It developed some serious vibrations. In fact, the pilot was awful glad to make a quick circuit to get back on the ground ... two of the Curtiss test pilots took it out on a flight and the Army requested that our project officer on the airplane be allowed to fly along on this trip. The Curtiss Company refused. We were very glad that they refused because on this second flight, it [the C-76] flew apart and the pilots were lost and so was the plane.
www.wikiwand.com/en/Curtiss-Wright_C-76_Caravan
I worked at Evendale for 35 years.
I thought that the Cincinnati plant looked like GE Evendale. I grew up in NKY.
WORKED....AHAHAHAHAHA
As an 18 year old machinist apprentice in 1980, I always wanted to get a job there. It was the Holy Grail for a machinist living in
S.W. Ohio.
Ondray You worked with me🤣
It's amazing how planes were produced in WW2. A whole industry that sprang up to meet the demands of the war, >80% of which didn't exist ten years earlier. Insane numbers of planes; each one precision engineered, cutting-edge tech for their day... yet they were put in the hands of teenaged farm-boys from Iowa, and the planes were basically treated as disposable, with pilots taught to ditch the plane, or even torch a fully-working plane that had made an emergency landing, if there was any chance of it falling into enemy hands.
That post-ww2 era, with all these cheap, surplus military planes, engines, and parts, must have been crazy
America has been the leader in switching to a war economy quickly. We are rich in investment, natural resources, manufacturing facilities and manpower. Other countries do a great job too.
Banks/investors have traditionally loved war economies because there is guaranteed money to be made.
High quality work... lost today...
I like that everything made was done using U.S Standard measurements.
In the mid to late 60's I set behind a Wright R3350-26W2 on at Fat Spad or EA1F for two tours of that place called nam with the US NAVY . Only one flight do I remember engine problems and that was a night mission when our oil sump red light came on . After trapping onboard the carrier the plane captain showed up in the ready room with a towel full of metal shavings and oil !! SAFE back on deck !! R3350's are known to leak oil LOL. If they dont you know something is terrible wrong !!
A very simple engine making big horsepower. VW used the same ideas. Bristol in the UK used sleeve valves to overcome the aerodynamic disadvantages of this type of engine by not having valves in the head thus making it smaller in diameter. Bristol took years to get it right. They also made engines similar to these. These engies are usually 7,14,9,18 cylinder for best vibration.
The complexity is mind boggling. Even more so when one considers all this stuff was invented from scratch in a few years.
Great video !!! Thank you
Love the sound..!
The Great generation. People that actually took pride in there job and in there country. I don’t think we will ever see that again. So sad 😞
I always wondered why these radial engines disappeared. Possibly the 8,000+ parts could be a reason?
Fantastic machines that make the machines!
This looks like the production and script were done before the US Entry into WWII. From the equipment we see, there are aircraft from 1939 and 1940 that were outfit as they would be in those years.
And that after entry into the war, slight changes were made to emphasize that fact,
Very interesting. Would it be great if mankind could only get along, none of this at this level would be needed! We've learned nothing over the many wars we have had to endure!
Wonderfuly built with skill.
Incredible
My dad and grandparents worked here in WW 2
Hey have you been able to see how the production of the their work
"You can fly a Wright farther than you can ship a Pratt." ---- Randy Sohn, Warbird guru.
And where are the Wrights today? Almost gone. The 3350 was one of the worst engines ever made while the 2800 flew before it and continues to fly after it. 985s and 1340s are in daily use worldwide
Pratt & Whitney: Dependable Engines.
@@Bartonovich52 I like the R-2800 & 1830 the best for ease of maintenance. The R- 33 1/2 was never designed to repair on an airframe. It was to be a QEC unit. However, Tinian changed all that out of operational requirements. I absolutely cringe safetywiring base bolts and installing the baffles.
@@Bartonovich52 Welll... howz about the 33 1/2 on the "Spads." I don't think those on the ground in 'Nam really cared just what type of powerplant the support aircraft had.
“Chuckle chuckle!”
Rest in peace Mr. Sohn!
as a mechanic.... who rebuilds his own engines and transmissions...
building an engine, running it on a dyno for 8 hours...... then tearing it down it find mistakes/bad parts
then reassembling it....
thats f%$k-hen crazy.......
crazy genius.... but the time it would take, especially during war time.......they did NOT sacrifice quality to make a dollar.
ive never heard of someone building a car motor..... running it for a while..... and then immediately tearing it apart
but thats actually a really good idea...... if you got the time..... and the skills to put it back together EXACTLY the same way
it would be better to do this 2 times.... but what guarantees that the 1st time it was "rebuilt"..... its exactly the same as its "birth"
so they why not tear it down 2..... or 3.... to 50 times after its birth?
idk..... point is.......
if you tear it down, and find that everything is perfect.... their is now higher odds of a mistake happening
because you have to do things perfectly 2 times
not sure if thats a view others have..... but to me its "check twice, torque bolt once"
rather than "check twice, torque once, tear down, check twice, torque new bolts once"
again.... idk, i like the idea, it makes perfect sense.... if you have godly amounts of time and money (for new bolts, gaskets, ETC)
I'm pretty sure that their U.S. Government contracts provided plenty of cash for cost overruns and extra personnel.
@@zfine1450 to a point.... but they always go for the lowest bidder
Agreed. Also, a tear down on a new engine after a dyno run was certainly the first I've heard of in a mass production engine. I don't know if others did the same, but it was news to me. Nowadays, they probably don't even run 'em at all. @@kainhall
@@zfine1450 I think part of it was...
Wright was the ONLY ones with engines 1700hp and up....
So, the Gov't either pays up and waits..... or they dont get shit
Have to run 1100hp engines VS 2000hp 28 cylinder radial monsters (that could do 2800hp for short periods!!!)
2000hp in 1940 is just silly
@@kainhall Looks like Rolls Royce did it with the Merlin as well:ruclips.net/video/-fo7SmNuUU4/видео.html
Intellectual Curiosity: did radial engines have an engine "Block" in the traditional sense...or were the cylinders just "naked" in the air??
WOW! I never realized how much easier it was to make inline water cooled engines!
Making and machining 14 to 28 individual cylinders per engine means so many more processes and machines are needed.
No wonder the single block with integral cylinder design is king even to this day.
Built the second plant in 57 working days!!!! Can't do that now!
Think about 5:02 ... 100 million pounds of oil and chemical impregnated sand would need to be stored and dumped somewhere after the casting process. Plus the first magnesium foundry in New Jersey would have some toxic discharge into the local river.
It would take 20 years just to get a permit.
Too bad 80-90% of these workers lost their jobs when the War was over. In fact most aircraft plants were laying off workers after V-E day.
Ah, the reliable Curtis-Wright Cyclone Engine
My grandmother started with Curtis-Wright in St Louis before James S McDonnell bought the company
Built and made to an impecible standard and not down to a price to give supreme reliability through the working life of the engine.
What I find astounding is the Technology for all this. From 1900 - 1941 , where does this suddenly come from ?
Once a new technology like internal combustion engines enters the mainstream it tends to develop very quickly.
Mind boggling.
I remember when I worked at a foundry that was before most of them shut down because cheaper to buy from overseas, the molding flasks have a cope, the upper part and the drag which is the bottom part I wonder how many molds and cores I made over the years
A cyclone of activity’s. Power for the nations aircraft.
Whats the difference between a jig and a fixture.
This is an amazing video!
In 1930s the machinery and tools were fantastic, I'm an electronic technologist I enjoyed the whole process of engine manufacturing, in those days there was a part used in engine called Magneto for me this word Magneto is very interesting it is like the HT coil and switching machanism in our 1st to 4th ganration motorcar that produce high voltage called high tension to spark plugs.
In 1930s yet transistor was not invented there automatic machine were controlled by diodes, triodes bulkey electronic circuitry any how as per my resurch the in 1930s Germans were more advance in science and technology.
In aviation, engines, and especially supercharging, the Allies were on par with, or exceeded Germany. Don't fall into the mantra of "superior German technology in WW2."
@@kurtbjorn3841
In now a days there is no match of their automobile industry, for example Mercedes Benz, BMW, Audi although every nation is making top cars but the German are are more popular all over the world same was in 30s all nations were making aircraft but German were better in quality and performance.
@@FayazAhmad-yl6spFZ - We're talking WW2. There is this thought that German tech was unbeatable... but it was in rocketry only. In every other category, allies were similar or better. Our artillery was superior, as was small arms. We had the proximity fuze, the VT. Hell, we had the nuke. Our industrial capacity made Germany look like Samoa. Don't fall into this stupid "3rd Reich Awesome" crap.
@@kurtbjorn3841
Dear, what about Germans FlaK 40 anti-aircraft gun and MG 40 machine gun.
I could never understand how the Wrights lent their name to Curtiss. Glenn Curtiss stole from the Wrights. Thomas Edison advised the Wrights to not seek patents for their inventions due to the weak patent laws. This allowed Curtis to steal from the Wrights and further to swoop in to take Army contracts from the Wrights. So, Curtiss-Wright has always been a mystery to me. My only thought is that Wright allowed this because of their patriotic duty to support the war effort.
By the time Wright merged with Curtiss in the late '20s, Orville was long gone from the company that bore his name. Wilbur died in 1912. Wright [the company] stopped building airplanes and concentrated solely on engines. Like the Wright brothers, Glenn Curtiss, I believe, had sold his company as well. It's in my book The Shoulders of Giants [smooth pitch for the book, eh?] available on Amazon.com.
LOL....all the Wright bros did was spend their time wanting to take everyone to court. Glenn Curtiss said that if you stepped outdoors and flapped your arms in the air the Wright Bros would file a law suit. Because of impending War the Gov stepped in and settled all lawsuits and how much the Wrights would receive in patent money.
Secret Curtis Wright merged until the US Gubment put a stop to airframe manufacturers, curtis building engines, Wright, and broke up the companies to Curtis aircraft and Wright engines!!! Same thing happened to Boeing, Bill Boeing owned Pratt Whitney, engines, and built planes, and had an airline, American !!!!! US Gubment broke that whole sebang up !!!!
Because Glenn was more mechanically inclined building motors and had more expertise in terms of sea planes. His motorcycles held records for years. Alexander graham Bell refered to Curtis as the nations lead expert on small engines.