Piston engines

On the morning of Sunday, August 27, 1939, a gas turbine engine conceived by a young German physics student, Hans von Ohain, powered a Heinkel He 178 V1 on its first flight.

All previous aircraft had been powered by piston engines. Nearly every noteworthy aircraft performance improvement was the direct result of an engine improvement. Many of these engine improvements ranked among some of the greatest accomplishments of the first half of the Twentieth Century.

During the period between the World Wars, aircraft engines improved dramatically and made possible unprecedented progress in aircraft design. Engine development in those days, and to a large extent even today, is a very laborious, detailed process of building an engine, running it to destruction, analyzing what broke, designing a fix, and repeating the process. No product ever comes to market without some engineer(s) having spent many long, lonely, anxious hours perfecting that product. This is especially true of aircraft engines, which by their very nature push all the limits of ingenuity, materials, and manufacturing processes.

Just prior to World War II, engineers at both Pratt & Whitney and Curtiss-Wright worked feverishly to produce the first air-cooled engine capable of more than 2,000 horsepower. The efforts of both teams were nearly thwarted by severe vibration from unexpected sources. This is the story of how the Pratt & Whitney team, through hard labor and persistence, identified and solved the problems with vibration. The result was one of the most successful engines of all times - the R-2800.