Talk:Packard V-1650 Merlin

Moved below to this page

It should be noted that the project engineer at Packard was Nils Joel Skrubb, a Finn, educated in Engineering in Helsinki who emigrated to the US to work for the the Packard Motor Company in the 1930's. He completely revised the Rolls Royce design to American Standards after spending six months of detailed study and memorization and conversion. The Brits found it difficult to accept that the Packard version was superior. A common misconception was that it simply was the Rolls design. It was completely revised and redrawn.––71.238.187.240 (talk) 06:05, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

This may be correct but needs editing into an encyclopedic form and better references. 122.107.58.27 (talk) 08:21, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Note that I've added several sentences to the lead paragraph that may address concerns about an adequate summary of contents and the need for an accessible overview.

˜˜˜˜ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yankees98 (talk • contribs) 18:50, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

completely revised the Rolls Royce design to American Standards - then why did they feel the need to replicate completely the BSF and Whitworth nuts and bolts used on the engine. Packard was under a licence agreement with RR that precluded 'tinkering' without RR's agreement. All modifications, including those involved only in the method of manufacture, had to be submitted to the design authority - Rolls-Royce - and that meant everything. What the writer probably originally meant was that the drawings were re-drawn using American drafting standards so that an American-trained machinist would be familiar with the terms used. That is not the same as 're-designing'. Once you take a known good design and start making radical changes you enter the realm of the unknown, where everything needs re-testing to ensure that it is safe for flight and that adds considerably to the time needed to bring the engine into use. Aero-engines have to achieve mandatory Type Tests that certify the engine as being suitable for use in man-carrying aircraft, and only a fool would alter the design of a proven engine necessitating much lengthy and time-consuming re-testing. And RR had been designing and testing the Merlin engine since around 1935 so by 1940 when Packard came on the Merlin scene RR already had an accumulated time of around five years of the engine being in use.

... and Rolls-Royce had built this engine, the Rolls-Royce R in 1929, when Packard hadn't built anything of note so quite what Packard had to teach RR about building high-performance aero-engines engines I don't know.

The only noticeable difference between the RR and Packard-built engines was that the Packard engines tended to be more nicely finished on the exteriors. Pilots didn't mind who made the engines as from their POV there was NO difference.

Packard were free to suggest possible modifications to RR and also to try them out on their own Merlin engines, but it was RR's responsibility to ensure that the engine still met it's certificating requirements, and so any alterations to either design or manufacture had to be approved by Rolls-Royce.

Oh and BTW, in 1946 when the F-82 Twin Mustang entered service the US Government were still having to pay RR royalties on the Merlin design, which is why North American were forced to change the later F-82s to use the Allison V-1710 engine. And you can bet your life that if Packard had made any notable design contribution to the Merlin the USGs lawyers would have found a way out of paying Rolls-Royce. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.112.68.219 (talk) 21:16, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Boost Pressures

The +6 figure in the table figures seems to be a bit off. The conversion factors shown would support this.

Inches of mercury (inHg) absolute pressure	Pounds per square inch of boost gauge pressure
80 inHg=	+25 lbf/in² boost	80.8 inHg
67 inHg=	+18 lbf/in² boost	66.6 inHg
61 inHg=	+15 lbf/in² boost	60.5 inHg
46 inHg=	+8 lbf/in² boost	46.2 inHg
44.5 inHg=	+6 lbf/in² boost	42.1 inHg

The others are close. AMCKen (talk) 20:05, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Odd turn of phrase

"and Packard Motor Car Company was eventually chosen because the parent British company was impressed by its high-quality engineering"

What does this passage mean, who is the "parent company" and what are they parent of? It seems to be implying that Packard had a parent company in the UK, or that Rolls was that parent, yet I do not believe either is true. I believe the statement is simply trying to say that Rolls was impressed by Packard, but the wording implies something else. Maury Markowitz (talk) 13:57, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

This is the neutrally worded summary on the V-1650 from the Rolls-Royce Merlin article (cites removed):

As the Merlin was considered to be so important to the war effort, negotiations were soon started to establish an alternative production line outside the UK. Rolls-Royce staff visited a number of North American automobile manufacturers in order to select one to build the Merlin in the U.S. or Canada. Henry Ford rescinded an initial offer to build the engine in the U.S. in July 1940, and the Packard Motor Car Company was subsequently selected to take on the $130,000,000 Merlin order. Agreement was reached in September 1940, and the first Packard-built engine, designated V-1650-1, ran in August 1941.

I can re-check some sources but I seem to remember reading that Rolls-Royce visited several companies in the US and eventually chose the one best able to take on the task. There is probably a lot more to the decision than is included here. Perhaps 'parent company' should be replaced with 'Rolls-Royce' for clarity, that phrase is not cited. Current cite three is probably just for the first run date, which I probably added looking at the source. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 20:05, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

The contract was originally intended to have been awarded to Henry Ford but he was a noted Anglophobe and pro-German, and refused, so it went to Packard instead. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.7.147.13 (talk) 19:38, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Purpose of scheme?

The second sentence of the very first paragraph is at variance with my understanding.

< The engine was licensed in order to provide a 1500 hp-class design at a time when US engines of this rating were not considered ready for use . . . >

It says (to me) that the engine was licensed by Packard from R-R for the US. I suggest that it is nearer the mark to say that it was licensed from R-R to Packard for the UK. 86.18.201.189 (talk) 00:34, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't have cites, so this appears on the discussion page. In 1940 the number of engines required was more than RR could produce. They contracted Packard to copy their engines, as they found the Packard parts were interchangeable with their own. (This engineering requirement is not as simple as it sounds.) The State Dept intervened in Jan 1942, stopping the export of all supercharged engines. It was ploy to confiscate many hundreds of engines which had already been paid for by the British govt. RR ceased Merlin production in Aug 1944, and all subsequent Merlins were made by Packard. RR had taken the jet engine contract from Rover, and they were also retooling their factories for the Griffon engine. 220.244.76.70 (talk) 10:30, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

At the time (1940) Rolls-Royce's Merlin factory in Derby was a target for German bombers and significant damage would have halted Merlin production completely. The Merlin was essential to the defence of the United Kingdom as it powered the two main British fighters involved in the Battle of Britain - the Hurricane and Spitfire. It also powered the Defiant.

The Merlin licence was for Britain to obtain US production of an essential engine away from the possibility of bombing - all the Merlins used in the Battle of Britain were produced at Derby. The Packard-produced Merlins were only originally intended to be used in British aircraft, and the US government had no interest in the design - they had the Allison V-1710 - until much later when it started to be used in the Kittyhawk and later the Mustang.

And the two-stage Merlin 60-series - built by Packard as the V-1650-3 - was devised by Stanley Hooker [1] and intended for the high-altitude Wellington VI and had little to do with Packard. The original test rig used a Vulture supercharger in-series with the Merlin's own supercharger. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.7.147.13 (talk) 10:07, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Postwar use

Some false credit to the Luftwaffe for intake cooling design and its MW 50 used during WW2. The did use water/alcohol in some planes during the war but infact the master of this technology was Pratt & Whitney who got better results than the Germans. The German system (Wassereinspritzung) was direct injection of water/alcohol into the cylinders which did give benefits but not as good as the Pratt & Whitney system which injected into the intake just down stream of the supercharger. This allowed the fluid to evaporate in the intake and cool the incoming charge creating a denser charge of the cylinder and resulting in more power. The ADI (Anti-Detonate Injection) system in the entry is injection into the intake, as the P&W system was so any reference to the MW 50 (Wassereinspritzung) system is completely mis-credited. A Pratt & Whitney engineer, Frank Walker did most of the development work on this and if you look you will find this well documented www.enginehistory.org/Frank%20WalkerWeb1.pdf .66.159.206.125 (talk) 01:54, 28 January 2013 (UTC)