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My late father was from England and served in the RAF during WWII. He flew on the heavy duty bomber AVRO- Lancaster. While doing some personal research on the Lancaster, I discovered that it used the Packard V-1650 Merlin, if I read the article correctly.

My late father said those planes were almost indestructible and the engines were work-horses.

kind regards
Garrett Meadows

If you have a continuing interest in that Packard-built engine and/or Packard's other non-automotive engines, the late Robert Neal's "Master Motor Builders" is the gold standard of reference works. I believe the book is listed in the "Packard Bookshelf" on this site.

Rolls Royce Merlin aircraft engines were made under license by Packard, and later on in the war by Continental and Ford of England. It has been said that the 4-engine Lancaster could have been powered by an engine from each of the manufacturers. Packard made over 55,000 of these engines. Those engines were mostly used to power the Mustangs and Canadian-built Mosquitoes. A good number were fitted to the British Spitfires and Hurricanes. A small number were installed in Curtiss P-40s. As O_D says, Robert Neal's book covers this subject in an excellent way.

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There is an ongoing debate over who produced the better engines. Rolls-Royce, which designed the Merlin engine, licensed the manufacturing of the engines to Packard, which made various design changes to accommodate mass production.

Here is what one aviation enthusiast determined about the differences between the Rolls-Royce- (RR) and Packard-built engines:

"If you read any of the authoritative accounts of the RR Merlin it is obvious there were very few differences between a Packard Merlin and a RR Merlin. RR manufactured more Merlin's than anyone, without including the Ford production that nearly all when to Bombers. So as well as doing prototypes and mass production RR did all the short run Fighter engines, a much more demanding scenario than just mass production.

"As mentioned above that the Packard Merlin used a different supercharger drive on its two stage engines. This was the only major mechanical difference.

"Ignition systems and fuel systems were American sourced, but they were fundamentally the same. Initially Packard were able to introduce improvements into the Merlin earlier than RR as they were still in the set up phase early in the war. The best example of this was the two piece cylinder block. The first Packard the V1650-1 or Merlin 28 depending on the customer used a Packard designed 2 piece block well before RR. This engine was used mainly in Lancaster's, and powered 617 squadron on the Dams raid. They were better than the Merlin XX that they were based on. Once RR had finalized its design all subsequence Packard Merlin's used the RR design of two piece block the Packard Merlin 28 becoming a 38 and the XX a 22.

"Co-operation between RR and Packard was excellent and a salutary lesson for all of today's young budding and existing MBA's . Much has been made of RR using craftsmen and Packard being more experienced in mass production but I don't believe there is any substance in this, other than it makes a good story.

"The racing Merlin's in the US are incredible engines. They use a Packard bottom end based on the 100 series Merlin, with 500 or 600 series Transport blocks and heads. They use Allison connecting rods from the Allison that powered the P82, and have mods to the crank that counter the vibration from the heavier Allison rods. They run at up to 3200rpm and produce 3300hp plus."

Bottom line: the Merlin was a superb engine, no matter who built it.

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I have a collection of 1/72nd die-cast models of each aircraft type that was powered by the Packard-built RR Merlin. The star of the show is a Lancaster done up in Squadron 617 livery. It is big and heavy.

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Am curious if there were any issues in the field with repairing the RR vs Packard versions. I read somewhere that when Packard first started production engineers had gone thru the plans and converted everything made in Detroit to use American thread sizes because the original RR designs had used mixed such as Whitworth, British Standard and Metric threads as well as some actual pieces being in metric and others in something else. If that is true I could see someone in the field trying to cram a wrong part or bolt in somewhere or messing one up by using the wrong wrench.

Hello Howard:

Accoring to Robert Neal Packard did not use SAE, but rather what was spec'ed by RR. This caused a lot of trouble as few machine shops in the USA even had the tooling to produce whitworth, BS and the like.

Over 200 Packard engineers and draftsmen were set to work on this project starting September 3, 1940. By early July 1941 they had the first hand-built engine completed (10 months) and by October 1941 (13 months) the engines were coming off the production line.

This is truly a remarkable feat as Packard also had to construct building #22 for the production line and a building immediately to the west where each engine was run-in before shipping.

See the attached pdf by Robert Neal.

And this may be helpful too:
http://www.tested.com/art/makers/492418-packard-merlin-how-detroit-mass-produced-britains-hand-built-powerhouse/

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Found this is Automotive Industries from the 1940's.
Wes

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One more article.
Wes

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Thank you for the reference. I appreciate it. I'll see if I can find a copy on Amazon.com
kind regards
Garrett Meadows