Chuck YeagerKonto zweryfikowane

That’s interesting to hear. It is hard for someone raised on the British Empire version of the war to imagine that there was more room for optimization of the engine.

A key difference was redesigning the engine for mass manufacture. RR used highly-skilled workers with a degree of hand-fitting of parts; Packard reworked it so it could be built by average assembly line workers. Source: White "Allied Aircraft Piston Engines of WW2"

Didn’t they have the Allison engine as well?

The original design was with the Alison engine and the RAF used them operationally but found they didn’t perform well over 12000 feet so used them in reconnaissance and Army Co-operation roles.

The majority of RR Merlins were built at the Packard plant in the City of Detroit. Jack Roush and Roush Industries, also from Detroit, is currently one of only a handful of folks that rebuild them. I have been through his operation on the Merlin, it is amazing to see.

Great story, Rolls came to Detroit. Visited GM, Ford and Packard. The only folks they thought could come close to their ability was Packard. In the end, the Packard built engines ended up being the most reliable of the Merlin engines built.