In the next five or six months two major engine factories and their branches, buttressed by a ickle of production from automobile factories now tooling up to make plane engines, are expected to be turning out 3,000,- 000 h.p. a month. In terms of wits, that is the equivalent of 3,000 engines of 1,000 h.p. each. That would equip, every month, 1,500 aeroplanes of all types—bombers, patrol planes, pursuits and observation planes—including the "spares" which go with each order.
On American engines, even more than on American aeroplanes, is going to depend in good part the maintenance of British bombing power. On them will be predicated the future of American air power.
Speed and bomb-carrying ability of warplanes are functions of design, wing-loading and power loading, No nation has a copyright on design, Our latest pursuits, for example, copy many of the best features of British and German pursuits. g-loading means the relation between the weight of a plane and the wing area—the hi r the weight the faster the plane. Pow: leading means the relation between the weight of the plane a the engine horsepower—the lower the weight. the faster the plane. Design and wing-loading can be changed at the pleasure of the engineer. but as the armed services make demands for bigger planes and higher speeds, it is the engine manufacturers who hold the key to the superior performance of our aircraft.
In the radial-shaped, air-cooled field no other nation has been able to approach American engines in dependability and power output. The two leading radial engine manufacturers, the Pratt & Whitney division of the United Aircraft Corporation and the Wright Aeronautical Company, (the later a subsidiary of the Curtiss-Wright Corporation), are turning out engines of greater horsepower than any engines in production abroad.
It is a Pratt & Whitney engine rated at 1.850 horsepower which carries along the new Navy Vought-Sikorsky shipboard fighter at more than 400 m.p.h. at optimum altitude. That is a top, not a cruising, speed. The same engine, with slight alterations, is being re-rated for a 2,000 horse power output.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.