Rolls Royce Vulture X-24 - The Big Aero Engine That Couldn't

[@plumahoplita]

glad to see you back with this content

[@Dalesmanable]

I’m in awe of how these were designed and manufactured with the technology of the time. Paper drawings, no computer-controlled machines etc.

[@busterdee8228]

Excellent presentation. The Sabre's dual crank H solution sounds excessive until you see the daunting challenges of a single-crank X. I, too, wish it had been sorted just to see how rod problems could have been solved. RR engineers thought paired fork--blade should have been tried (I assume with bore centers adjusted). It does make me wonder how radial engine master, with many more links, succeeded. Maybe 'long engine' beam strength is just too different. In the Merlin, there was room for cross-bolted main cradles--impossible with an X. Again, this was an excellent presentation.

[@waynec3563]

Many big radial engines, such as the R-2800 and R-3350, had single piece master rods and a crankshaft constructed in several pieces. The Rolls-Royce Pennine, developed later in the war, used a multiple piece crankshaft and single piece master rods. It was air-cooled and had sleeve valves, and was reportedly able to produce ~2,800hp from its 2,750 cubic inches.

[@EbenBransome]

@@waynec3563 I have no idea how much a cubic inch is - I think the engine was about 46 litres - but by the end of the war air cooled multi-row engines were already known to be a failed concept, especially with sleeve valves and their inherent head cooling problem.

[@waynec3563]

@@EbenBransome Yes, 46L, 2591 cubic inches.

[@neiloflongbeck5705]

You missed a bit out. The Air Ministry was so concerned that RR couldn't fix the Vulture that they reversed the decision to order the HP.56 (designed to meet Specification P.13/36 which gave us the Manchester). The HP.56 and Manchester were ordered in February 1937, and the cancellation of the HP.56 came in October 1937. They ordered Handley Page to redesign the HP.56 as a four-engined bomber using the Merlin, which became the HP.57 Halifax, so that we wouldn't have 2 medium bombers grounded due to engine issues. They were proved right.

[@johnnyappleseed6415]

RR Vulture: Behold my complexity, rogues! Napier Sabre: Hold my ale...

[@adamconnell5965]

It makes me sad some of these wacky engine configurations didn't get a bit more time to mature... jets are indeed awesome but still so simple that they're a bit boring

[@hoost3056]

Boring is safe. Simple, strong, reliable. All the complexity is to keep people employed.

[@AnyoneSeenMikeHunt]

On a positive note the development stopped thanks to the war ending and no more people needed to die. Whacky engines did live on tho, look at the W16 in the Veyron. That is as bonkers as this stuff before it.

[@300guy]

Especially during a war there is only so many resources to go around. With newer versions of the Merlin constantly under development, the Griffon in the middle of development, jet engines coming in the near future. There just wasn't the people and resources to put into the Vulture and Peregrine which were not going to be widely used anyway.

[@pizzagogo6151]

I see your point, but I imagine if you were chugging along in your B29 with their fully developed, and technically interesting engines but you can see a speck of a Me 262, despite its barely functional, "boring" gas turbines, closing in behind you at an incredible rate.😮.i suspect at that moment you'd be happy to trade every dollar you have in the bank for similar " boring" engines

[@John900C]

Gas turbines engines may be simple in concept, but getting them to work effectively takes a monumental effort that is just as interesting as engines with odd arrangements when you study it in depth.

[@FireDragon16180]

Excellent, thank you

[@exharkhun5605]

The KZbinr "Let's Go Aviate" recently did a video on the Vulture and the Packard X-2775. He concluded that there was nothing inherently wrong with the design of the Vulture engine or the X configuration. It's downfall was the fact that it's "ironing out period" was right in the middle of the Battle of Britain with it's insatiable need for Merlin's. After that died down the Merlin was all ironed out and had almost caught up in power output, and even stronger successors were starting to reach completion. Would you agree with that? (This is my own speculation) Had the war started a year later the Merlin may have been remembered as an underpowered problem-ridden historical curiosity and the "Engine That Defeated Hitler!!!" would have been the Vulture. Interestingly Packard in the US had already made a well-running X-engine for the Schneider trophy so they had some experience, they could have produced American Vultures the same as they did V-1650's.

[@EbenBransome]

The Merlin was developed right through WW2. The Hurricane and Spitfire were only supposed to be stopgap aircraft anyway, but like the Swordfish, the Spitfire went on right through the war. Even if the BoB was in 1941 I doubt the Vulture would have been chosen. It was much heavier than the Merlin and probably nearly twice as expensive. Against the Luftwaffe what was needed was a small, agile fighter that could be produced quickly. In fact the Spitfire was a rather poor quality rush job compared to the P-51. Vultures with their cost, complexity, need for more mechanics and need for a bigger aircraft to house them, could have resulted in failure.

[@waynec3563]

The engine at 6:10 is the Rolls-Royce Exe. This was the smaller, air-cooled, sleeve valve X-24.

[@recoilrob324]

Thank you for the comment....came here to say the same thing.

[@jfkastner]

Awesome Info, thank you.

[@coreyandnathanielchartier3749]

This is a great video, with lots of nerdy specs and bits of knowledge on this much-maligned, but not wholly-unsuccessful engine. I think the British, German, and finally, the US engineers underestimated (or ignored) the quite significant amount of heat that is dissipated by surface cooling of the crankcase and various covers. Coupling two engines together greatly reduces this surface area (exposed to cold nacelle air). It was, however, the late Thirties, and they seemed to be wedded to the in-line style configuration. It doesn't exactly reduce drag compared to a radial of similar power, but it does allow them to 'move' the drag to a place where it has a lesser effect on the aircraft, or even partially converted to thrust.

[@billynomates920]

i've a mechanical engineering degree - if only i could go back in time! mr rolls, mr royce, would you like a cup of tea?

[@RichardCorongiu]

Lots of research here. Thank you

[@cliffwilliams6349]

Btw, Warwick is pronounced in English English as ‘Worrick’, dropping the second ‘w’.

Ooh, finally new vid from Flight Dojo! Thanks

[@wargamingrefugee9065]

The extra long prop blades @13:50 have me scratching my head.

[@SoWereDoingWhatNow]

Extra long?

[@wargamingrefugee9065]

@@SoWereDoingWhatNow Yes. To me it looks like each of the two counter rotating props has one blade which is long than the other two. An optical illusion or design choice? I don't know. I really can't figure out what is going on in the image. :-/

[@DNorthWest]

An excellent presentation. The Vulture V did perform well in the second Tornado prototype, however by then it had been cancelled much to the annoyance of Sydney Camm given it showed greater promise at higher altitude than the sabre powered Typhoon. However the development of Vulture was important for the development of the Merlin 60 and Griffon 61 series of engines. Stanley Hooker used the Vulture supercharger has the base for the two stage, two speed superchargers Rolls Royce engines subsequently developed for Spitfires, Mustang, Mosquito, Beaufighter and Lancaster. Also Stanley Hooker used Vulture to drive test beds for the Jet Engine compressors under development.

[@andrewdillon7837]

I wanna see one as a tractor engine,,blast everything ,,4 super chargers,,

[@MelloJello894]

For the algorithm!!!!!! Great vid!

[@oxcart4172]

Thanks for this great video. I was just reading its Wikipedia entry, and it doesn't say anything about surviving engines.

[@fbomb3930]

Class of one

[@GSimpsonOAM]

Warwick. Second w is silent...

[@johnfisk811]

The Vulture was pretty well fixed just as it was being cancelled. I have always wondered what the performance of the Vulture Henley was. The Exe was reliable from the beginning as long as you poured enough oil into it but brought nothing that the Merlin could not do.

[@magoid]

At the end of the war, the Merlin was squeezed enough to achieve and even surpass the power target for the Vulture.

[@stevejeffryes5086]

You have used photos from at least two completely different engines. The photo at 2:13 and 14:57 is of an engine which was probably air cooled with fin assemblies fitted over the 20 cylinders. The other pictures are indeed of a liquid cools engine with water jackets integral to the blocks.

[@mpetersen6]

Why is the engine in the thumbnail the Allison X-42xx

[@flightdojo]

Because no good photos of the vulture exist in high enough res to make a decent thumbnail 👌🏻

[@leoa4c]

They had the space to have a single exhaust manifold per side. The 2 exhaust manifolds per side choice, I assume, created unnecessary aerodynamic issues as the rest of the aircraft had to deal with 4 jets of hot, high energy flow rather than the usual 2 present on V engines. Ease of maintenance and manufacture may have been what drove the 4 manifold configuration. I'm not sure it made up for the aerodynamic headache of dealing with the 4 jets. (Many thanks for another great video.)

[@scrumpydrinker]

If Rolls Royce had put the development hours into this engine it would probably been a success, but at the beginning of the war it was a conscious (and probably correct) decision to abandon this engine in favour of concentrating on the Merlin and Griffon development. Also they were easier to make so at that time churning out complicated and problematic engines didn’t make a great deal of sense. Other engine development programs were either put on a very reduced priority or, in the case of the Peregrine were altogether dropped.

[@philiphumphrey1548]

I wonder how many of the problems were down to too much heat being generated in too small a space. The Heinkel 177 and Boeing B29 suffered similar overheating problems to the Avro Manchester. Maybe they could have reduced the problems by making the nacelles bigger so more air could flow through, but that would have added to drag, and simply going to more but smaller engines was a better solution.

[@patrickradcliffe3837]

If this motor had made it past gestation and limited production and had gone through the same HP evolution the merlin did, it could have ended as a four thousand HP output.

[@floycewhite6991]

Simply not enough time for development and revision.

[@bradyelich2745]

I'm sorry and I can't but I have to ask did you go to Rommel's barber?

[@Johnwashere-dt2ov]

Yes! We saw you there! Should have said hello.

[@ypaulbrown]

Rommel was bald

[@Daniel-jk7pe]

Translate says "Rommel something soon"​@ypaulbrown

[@kevinbarry71]

rolls-Royce never did figure out fuel injection. Not until it didn't matter

[@waynec3563]

Later Merlins and Griffons used fuel injection carburetors.

[@EbenBransome]

Complex one. They did end up with single point fuel injection. German direct injection was technically very superior but caused major fuel problems because they couldn't get the injection pressure high enough with the pumps of the day, and the inverted vees ended up with oil dilution problems - history repeating itself. The fact that carbs lasted as long as they did postwar showed how difficult fuel injection was with pre-1980 technology.

[@waynec3563]

@@EbenBransome Packard built Merlins had the pressure injection carb from the start, as it was a local supply item. The "single point" injection had the advantage of cooling the intake air. Rolls-Royce were also building the experimental Crecy, which relied on direct injection for its stratified charge. The fuel pump was from, or modelled from, a down German aircraft.

[@thomascooley2749]

Still wish Ford would have been allowed to produced their areo v12 That said ford built over 30k merlin engines for the war and without Ford and Packard Rolls-Royce wouldn't be a house hold name today much like Packard

[@AnyoneSeenMikeHunt]

Why was Ford 'not allowed' to make 'their areo v12'?

[@thomascooley2749]

@AnyoneSeenMikeHunt short version Allison had a v12 that we had allready bought into and the merlin was what the British were purchasing That ford areo v12 got cut down and reworked into the ford Gaa -Gac v8 tank and equipment engines

[@AnyoneSeenMikeHunt]

@@thomascooley2749 Still doesn't explain why Ford was, as you said, 'not allowed' to make 'their areo v12'.

[@MrCateagle]

Ford was offered the Merlin contract before Packard.and refused it.

[@jbepsilon]

@@AnyoneSeenMikeHunt Perhaps not as much 'not allowed' as the government saying "we're not going to buy it". Same end result either way.

[@EbenBransome]

RR knew the Vulture was a flop but didn't want to admit it. Eventually Merlins became so successful that the head of RR was able to cancel the Vulture on the grounds that all hands were needed to the Merlin pump. The Merlin ended the War as the most *developed* aircraft engine, if not the most advanced. It did need a complete crankshaft and housing redesign to use thin wall bearings, but by that time it was effectively obsolete anyway. The Vulture was basically obsolete by the time the bugs were being got out. Both in Germany and the UK progress was held up by companies trying to keep their trade secrets. Generally the UK seems to have been better at knocking heads together, but there was still far too much wartime duplication. RR didn't need to waste effort on sleeve valves, nor did Napier, which had to be taken over by EE before it was any good. Nor did RR need to waste time and effort on the Vulture.

[@infernoking7504]

I wonder how much torque it made for 24 cylinders 1800 hp isnt alot

[@AnyoneSeenMikeHunt]

A metric fukton I imagine.

[@RyanBloemke]

Pretty easy to calculate. 3151.2 ft/lbs at 3000rpm for the 1800hp version.

[@Rockall57]

FFS your Voice sound's like Ai...😂.... But your real!...

[@PxThucydides]

Are... you... sure?

[@benjaminepstein5856]

Aww hell yeah

[@glhx2112]

Ah yes, the motor that murdered the Manchester .

[@andysgoodtime630]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/iImtfJeeZrCNZtk

[@andysgoodtime630]

Sorry man it’s just hard for me to picture without pictures. Oh shit, there were pictures. Maybe I’m the problem.

[@superdupergrover9857]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@K1W1fly]

"Ambitious, but Rubbish".