500 mph piston engined aircraft in 1938?

[Paynts]

check this out kind of reminds me of voodoo

http://project-napier-heston.com/

[JET1]

napier sabre 24 cyl x engines are kind of hard to find these days!

check this out kind of reminds me of voodoo

http://project-napier-heston.com/

[First time Juke]

Re: 500 mph piston engined aircraft in 1938?

check this out kind of reminds me of voodoo

http://project-napier-heston.com/

Insert from the link:

The question since that fateful day has been: Would the purposely built Napier-Heston Racer have been capable of recapturing the world speed record? The racer never had a chance to do so because of the circumstances that occurred. It’s design is still regarded by many to have represented the pinnacle in powered flight. It is time to give this majestic, historic aircraft another chance

I agree...a scale model might as well do the trick.

[David E. Wells]

Re: 500 mph piston engined aircraft in 1938?

There are currently only 2 or 3 Napier-Sabres in the country. Kermit Weeks has a Hawker Tempest project and plans to Keep what he's got (1 or 2) for that. The Other is in the Smithsonian, where it will stay, static. They don't give up what they've got. According to Frank Benko, Project Manager for the Napier-Heston Project, he's going for a Griffon. That Sabre, by the way, is a VERY complicated thing, arranged in an H w/2 crankshafts driven by a BIG Gear. If you Blow that Baby up in a Racer, there probably won't be enough Spare Parts, IN THE WORLD, to fix it!...D.

[Paynts]

Re: 500 mph piston engined aircraft in 1938?

it sure was compicated, but aparently it was getting more and more reliable as the war went on and in terms of power to weight I think it had a potential to be better than the radials of the time, figures of 3500 hp were being talked of on test engines at the end of the war. But of course as the end of the war came and the jet came of age, the funding and interest in these hyper performance piston engines dissapated somewhat and of course as has been mentioned earlier the usage of piston engines in other plane application was more about reliable cruising power rather than out and out high performance

[rdyturn]

Re: 500 mph piston engined aircraft in 1938?

Check out this 1/5 scale working replica.

http://www.enginehistory.org/eagle_22.htm

[kiwiracefan]

Re: 500 mph piston engined aircraft in 1938?

That replica is pretty cool, but it isnt a Napier Sabre, its a Rolls Royce Eagle, the Eagle was a post war powerplant, and as such it didnt see alot of service, it was first flown in the Westland Wyvern of 1946, but the wyvern was designed around the then comming turboprops from rolls royce and Armstrong Sidley. 15 Eagle powered wyverns were built, but they were replaced with the armstron sidley python powered variant. Just a side note on Kermit Weeks Tempest project, the airframe saw operational service in WWII with 486 (nz) Squadron of the RAF. It was marked SA-I and originally flown by 'A' flight commander F/LT Sweetman It flew 21 operational missions first from hornchurch in England then Continental Europe.
Kermit has an ex RNZAF p-51 in his collection too, N921 currently marked as Cripes a mighty 3rd, served in the RNZAF Territorial Air Force (similar to the ANG).

[Skyracer]

Re: 500 mph piston engined aircraft in 1938?

Wikipedia has quite a good article on the Napier Sabre.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier_Sabre

And this one at http://www.eagle.ca/~harry/aircraft/tempest/sabre/

There is a great cutaway drawing here: http://www.khulsey.com/makoto_ouchi_napier_sabre.html

[JET1]

amazing!!!

how does someone find that much free time!

http://www.enginehistory.org/eagle_22.htm

[BadIdea]

Re: 500 mph piston engined aircraft in 1938?

Here is a pic of a Napier Sabre on display at Duxford.