Good engineering
My father used to say "an engineer is somebody who can do for a shilling what any damned fool can do for a fiver".
In other words, engineering is about delivering products that are efficient, both technically and financially. And this is a nice example of doing just that. On the left is the legendary Rolls Royce Merlin engine. (for the purist, this is a Merlin 35 on display at the Fleet Air Arm Museum). In the '30s & '40s this was state of the art; producing 1200 h.p. when only 20 years before 400 h.p. was pushing it. Now, state-of-the-art products require state-of-the-art manufacturing. And back then, that meant doing your best, and inspecting the hell out of the parts before they went to assembly. If you were really pushing the boundaries, this meant a very high reject rate.
Using de-tuned aero engines in tanks was a long standing practice: but now some bright spark realised that parts not quite good enough for a 1200 h.p. engine would be just fine if the motor was only intended to produce 600 h.p. And so was born the Leyland Meteor - one of the great military vehicle engines. Tweaking the proven Merlin design to run on standard fuel, removing the supercharger and replacing some of the expensive light-alloy parts with steel produced a cheap, light, compact, reliable and powerful engine, that could use a lot of parts rejected for use in the aero engine, which would otherwise go to scrap. Later in WW2, time-expired Merlin engines & surplus stock of superseded models were brought into the manufacturing process.
This is proper engineering, and it made a real difference. By the invasion of Europe, the British army was equipped with tanks that were fast, reliable, frugal and in plentiful supply: just what you need to fight a highly mobile war. And most of this was due to the excellence of the powerplant. The Germans, on the other hand, had squandered their dwindling resources on tanks that were dauntingly powerful, but were huge, heavy, slow, unreliable and vastly expensive to operate: their biggest drawback was the Maybach engine which simply wasn't up to the task. The proof of the pudding is the Centurion tank, arguably the most successful tank ever made. First built in 1945, versions of this vehicle are still in service today. All powered by the Meteor engine...
Using de-tuned aero engines in tanks was a long standing practice: but now some bright spark realised that parts not quite good enough for a 1200 h.p. engine would be just fine if the motor was only intended to produce 600 h.p. And so was born the Leyland Meteor - one of the great military vehicle engines. Tweaking the proven Merlin design to run on standard fuel, removing the supercharger and replacing some of the expensive light-alloy parts with steel produced a cheap, light, compact, reliable and powerful engine, that could use a lot of parts rejected for use in the aero engine, which would otherwise go to scrap. Later in WW2, time-expired Merlin engines & surplus stock of superseded models were brought into the manufacturing process.This is proper engineering, and it made a real difference. By the invasion of Europe, the British army was equipped with tanks that were fast, reliable, frugal and in plentiful supply: just what you need to fight a highly mobile war. And most of this was due to the excellence of the powerplant. The Germans, on the other hand, had squandered their dwindling resources on tanks that were dauntingly powerful, but were huge, heavy, slow, unreliable and vastly expensive to operate: their biggest drawback was the Maybach engine which simply wasn't up to the task. The proof of the pudding is the Centurion tank, arguably the most successful tank ever made. First built in 1945, versions of this vehicle are still in service today. All powered by the Meteor engine...
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