Word: allisons
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...only liquid-cooled engine of American design now in mass production and general military use is the Allison. This engine drives the P-38, the P39 and the P-40. Its development was late in starting and was carried on under great difficulties. It has not yet caught up with its opposite numbers, Britain's Rolls-Royce (also being manufactured in this country) and Germany's Daimler-Benz...
When the first modern Allison was being manufactured for use in military planes, the minds of its makers and the Air Corps officers in charge of its development were on the turbosupercharger. This is in effect a rotary air pump, separate from the engine but driven by its exhaust gases, which furnishes sea-level pressures to the carburetion system far beyond the altitude range of the integral supercharger. An exclusively American development, it gave great altitude performance . . . in bombers and in the larger fighters. But in the smaller fighters which the Allison was to power, its incorporation in the design...
...however, a two-stage, two-speed supercharger has been developed and thoroughly tested. This is an elaboration which in effect gives the pilot a high gear for his supercharger when his airplane has climbed beyond the best limits of his low-speed blower. Allison motors with this supercharger now are being manufactured and flown, and will shortly be in quantity production. They will vastly improve the performance of Allison-powered aircraft. Today the Allison engine is already a vastly better engine than many of its critics have made it out; few, if any, other liquid-cooled power plants...
North American P-51 (Mustang)-single-engine, liquid-cooled. Newest of the Allison-powered U. S. pursuits, it has roughly the same limitations on altitude performance as other single-engine Allison craft. Improvement in the power plant and other technical changes promise a sensational improvement in altitude performance...
...Allison-powered plane-the twin-engined Lockheed P-38- may yet prove in combat that it is an adequate, all-around, high-altitude fighter, with its two Allisons doing what one Allison has not been able to do. Another fighter with an engine similar in general design to the Allison may also prove its worth at higher altitudes - the late-model P-40F with a Packard-made Rolls-Royce Merlin (British) engine instead of the Allison. According to published reports, the Merlin P-40 has shot up to 30,000 feet (on a par with the Spitfire and the Nazi...