WIX Archives

Re: Timeline...

Posted by Christer on Wed Dec 25, 2002 05:19:55 PM

In reply top Re: Timeline... posted by Joe Scheil on Wed Dec 25, 2002 11:21:59 AM

I?m sorry Joe, but I can?t follow Your thoughts here.

I don?t know exactly what David means but I suppose he means that everything until September 1939 did happen except that a better mind was substituted for Adolfs, WWII never happened and the races were held in 1945.

> But the Spitfire cant compete yet as the Type R motor is developing slow. <

Which year is this?

The R was "fully developed" and shelved in 1931 and in the early fourties the Griffon emerged as a derated and further developed R-engine.

> Their long range plan would have been to have the Crecy in service by 1950. <

The races would be held in 1945, wouldn?t they?
Do You mean that the development of the Crecy would have drained the resources from the Merlin and Griffon even though work on the petrol variant of the Crecy didn?t begin until 1939?
It started out as a diesel and by an Air Ministry Order it was redesigned as a petrol engine.
No WWII, no Orders, no petrol Crecy!?

If there was "no" development of the Merlin and its supercharger, then there wouldn?t have been a corresponding Griffon. This means that You can forget about all the fighters which gained their performance through any of these engines, such as the late marks of the Spitfire and the Mustang and the Hornet and the ...... well, the list can be made longer.

The troubles with the Napier Sabre would have put that design in the bin rather quickly, maybe the Bristol sleeve valve radials would have survived.

I don?t know about the american engines but I don?t think they would have reached a higher level of development than their british counterparts.

I think that shelving the R-engine instead of developing it further in the early thirties was a big mistake but at that point in time they were unrivalled. They did win in actual history and I suppose they had done that when fiction begins too!?

The Griffon engined Spitfire Mk.IV would have been a reality before 1945, even without WWII.
When talks about racing begun, Rolls-Royce would have strolled down the stairs to the basement in Derby and they would have found what they were looking for.
The old winner from 1931 would have given them a good head start, I think.

Christer

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