Packard Merlin: How Detroit Mass-Produced Britain’s Hand-Built Powerhouse (2015)

https://www.tested.com/art/makers/492418-packard-merlin-how-detroit-mass-produced-britains-hand-built-powerhouse/

by curtis • 8 years ago

84 75 8 years ago

Reno air races coming up in September! https://airrace.org great opportunity to see and hear maxed out merlins pylon racing https://youtu.be/X6ClBodW_lc https://youtu.be/Xn805LoN6mw

jacquesm• 8 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyWUTXuXjr0 pretty disturbing end of a P51.

olivermarks2• 8 years ago

That crash resulted in major rule changes and course redesign. The Galloping Ghost had been too heavily modified for speed and failed in flight

jabl3• 8 years ago

If you don't have a fear of flying and want to acquire it, reading NTSB reports of aviation accidents is a good start. In this case, https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/...

osullivj• 8 years ago

Wonderful piece for those interested in early WWII aviation. There are lessons for software development in there. Brad Cox's classic Planning the Software Industrial Revolution [1] highlights the importance of gauges to Eli Whitney's project to built firearms with interchangeable parts, and asserts we need a similar technology in software to enable construction from reusable components. In Most Dangerous Enemy [2], Stephen Bungay points out that it took 2.5 times more man hours to build a Spitfire than an Me109. German production engineering was far better than British. This piece illustrates that perfectly. Rolls Merlin engine was a great piece of design engineering, but it was inefficient in terms of production engineering. What is intriguing about this article is the detail on the effort needed for Packard to port the Merlin design to their production engineering standards, and then for Rolls and Merlin to share design changes. Effectively sending each other pull requests!

[1] http://bat8.inria.fr/~lang/hotlist/free/licence/papers/cox/C... [2] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Most-Dangerous-Enemy-History-Britai...

jernfrost2• 8 years ago

Interesting, given that I've read that Americans were far better at mass production than the Germans. My impression is that Germans engineered their hardware better than Americans but they were not as good at mass producing it fast.

So if I understand correctly, the British was exceptionally slow at manufacturing compared to the Americans then.

rleigh• 8 years ago

It depends upon your definition of "slow". At mass production, maybe. But maybe faster at changing and iterating on designs due to being more flexible and adaptable.

WalterBright3• 8 years ago

I read years ago that the Spitfire required twice as many labor hours to produce than the Me-109. The Germans were pretty good at simplifying the design so it could be mass-produced.

pjc502• 8 years ago

need a similar technology in software to enable construction from reusable components

People have been attempting this for a long time with only moderate success. It's where object orientation came from: objects were supposed to be reusable. Similarly with UNIX pipelines. The new enthusiasm for package managers produces some absurd results (left-pad) but is generally heading in the right direction, as is the trend that everything that's popular enough becomes a language feature or in the standard library.

eru4• 8 years ago

Yeah, object orientation never really worked for making reusable lego-bricks.

The functional programming people have been at this game for far longer (and are building on top of mathematics started around the 1940s). There's some encouraging developments, including some that are making it into mainstream languages.

Yes, libraries (including standard libraries) do tend to work really well, too.

walshemj2• 8 years ago

Not always German tanks where complex prone to breakdowns and took much longer to build.

iguy4• 8 years ago

This is part of a long and interesting story I don't have time to find the right links for...

In the UK compared to the US, say 1850-1950, the premium commanded by skilled labour over unskilled was always much smaller. Or another way to say that is that they had a very large pool of skilled people. This was part of what allowed them to do many interesting things first (like railways), but also as time went on discouraged automation. For example lots of first world war UK munitions factories imported the latest American machines, suddenly needing to modernise once their skilled men were conscripted. This is, I believe, part of why Rolls-Royce were doing things described in the article -- call it a first-mover disadvantage relative to Detroit.

There is lots of interesting data about all these things. If you want to think about robots taking jobs and all that, then understanding (for example) the cotton industry circa 1900 is actually a great place to start. If some factories employ 1/4 the workers of others, that sounds a lot like having 3 robots... transistors are not involved, but certainly dollars (and unions, and taxes, and shipping) are.

jernfrost2• 8 years ago

Thanks that is extremely interesting info. I have noticed when talking to Americans and reading about American manufacturing, I get the sense that workers are not expected to be particularly skilled and that production is designed with that in mind.

I am from a Nordic country and we tend to follow the German style system of vocational training where you go in an apprenticeship and get a certificate. I have tried to understand the American model but it seems less formalized to me. It seems to be more company specific. You get trained to do a particular job at a particular company.

stephengillie• 8 years ago

The American system is to have no overarching system. Our empire is too large - we have to accept people from numerous systems and varying levels of ability. Alaskans and Alabamans have to work alongside Germans and (both kinds of) Georgians. So the company trains you to do what they need.

maxerickson5• 8 years ago

It's increasing expected that entry level skilled jobs need an associates degree, which is 2 years at a small college.

A random example:

https://www.mesacc.edu/programs/manufacturing

(The only reason that stuff couldn't be available in most high school programs is that we are a bunch of dicks over here)

wil421• 8 years ago

For what Americans consider trade schools, like welding, plumbing and a whole bunch of others, there are apprenticeship style training. It can even depend on the state.

Line workers in a car manufacturing plant are very low skilled and are jobs that anyone in theory could do. Most manufacturers in the US around the South (where I live) are in very rural areas. It would be hard to find a huge population of skilled workers to fill a plant.

BMW, Mercedes, Hyundai, and Kia have plants near me. The BMW plant is the largest in the world. I believe Toyota and Mazda are opening up new sites as well.

pjc502• 8 years ago

This does sound like something that needs a book to expand on it.

Interestingly enough if you look at the modern UK car industry, there are two kinds of success: large factories with overseas management, and small boutique high-tech companies with local management doing similar things to the Rolls-Royce described here: supercars, F1 etc. All small hand-finished production runs.

My hypothesis is that something about the class system causes management-worker relations to break down at scale. Perhaps this can be avoided by having a business small enough for the boss to be regularly seen on the shop floor, and professional enough that the input of individual skilled workers is valued.

The last "British" large-run carmaker, MG Rover, collapsed in ignominy and the directors narrowly escaped prosecution for defrauding the investors in the previous round of rescue.

iguy4• 8 years ago

Many books! (Although sadly too many are just modern political battles dressed up in earlier period costumes.) For now let me recommend https://pseudoerasmus.com/ (and his book lists) as an honest guide to all this, for those with enough time!

Postwar UK is indeed a different story. My reading of the demise of Leyland - Rover etc. leans towards it being a parable about communism never working, rather than about market wages & skills & how much automation paid off where & when, as for the century before. But indeed small firms (and foreign firms) escaped this fate.

arethuza6• 8 years ago

Robert Peston in his book WTF points out that the management performance of UK companies is bimodal - either truly world class or awful - I suspect those in the "awful" category are those where old fashioned class stereotypes still rule.

kokey• 8 years ago

I have worked between US and UK companies for a long time now and I do find US companies (of the multinational sort) generally have the mindset, management and engineering culture that leans more towards automation. One of the reasons, I suspect, is that US companies have to think about scale sooner or more often, so standardisation, automation and coordination needs to be adequate to allow it to succeed at scale.

NeedMoreTea2• 8 years ago

One of the revelations of the 1851 Great Exhibition was the difference between US exhibits and those of Britain, France and Germany. In some ways embarrassing because the US was the only nation (and somewhat ridiculed as a result) not to sponsor their nation's attendance it showed a simplicity and practicality that was often absent in the European equivalents.

Notably the reaper and other agricultural machinery and Colt firearms that were clearly ahead in both means of production and practicality.

There's been quite a bit written that it was the first indication that the world's centre would be changing. The US had none of the baggage and history that went with having hand made, high skill crafts and could go straight to production in large numbers. Because they were starting from scratch across much of the nation they had to. Which turned out to be a huge advantage. Much as we've seen more recently with developing nations going straight to mobile phones without landlines first, or China short-cutting much of the industrial development the West had to go through.

There's been a couple of credible books making the case that most of the changes of world centre through the ages have been for similar reasons.

If I can bring any titles to mind I'll edit. Offhand I can't remember.

dsfyu404ed2• 8 years ago

Here's some info about the guy that played an important role in figuring out the fuel mixture that made these power outputs possible. It's an equally interesting read.

http://www.enginehistory.org/Biography/FrankWalkerWeb1.pdf

mannykannot2• 8 years ago

And let's not forget Beatrice Shilling's contribution to the performance and combat-safety of the Merlin:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Shilling%27s_orifice

arethuza6• 8 years ago

If you like this then I can recommend "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: Churchill's Mavericks" by Giles Milton - it starts with British inventors creating an important new weapon (the limpet mine) from sweets, condoms and bowls from Woolworths in a shed (of course)...

The boffin/craftsman side of things seemed particularly important to the UK effort in WW2.

rurounijones• 8 years ago

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4314039-station-12-aston... is another good one. Mostly diaries and interview from people who worked on the boffinry side of things.

iguy4• 8 years ago

In this vein, R V Jones "Most Secret War" is great if you haven't read it -- about the cat & mouse game of radar development, from a guy deeply involved:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0033806QY/

gargravarr2• 8 years ago

Reading around, the stuff R V Jones got up to during that period makes for some entertaining stories!

E.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Beams

arethuza6• 8 years ago

The book mentions Fairburn and Sykes - who I was only familiar from the name of the knife - turns out they were quite "interesting" characters:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/38/a4544...

WalterBright3• 8 years ago

What other engine would have a book written entitled "Sigh For A Merlin"?

https://www.amazon.com/Sigh-Merlin-Spitfire-Alex-Henshaw/dp/...

The Boeing Museum of Flight once offered rides in a Merlin-powered P-51. I was first in line that day, and was smiling for a week afterwards.

From the book:

"One day I happened to be chatting near my home with an RAF Wing Commander (retired) now dressed in dark grey slacks and Norfolk jacket. Suddenly out of the blue and on its way to Coningsby was a fighter of the Battle of Britain Flight right over our heads.

We both stopped talking and looked up--the crisp steady note of the old Merlin as joyous a sound as ever it was all those years ago. The ex-Wing Commander said absolutely nothing-- then he sighed. It was such a poignant sigh. I felt it must have invoked so many memories of the days when the Wing Commander was young, daring and vigorous and like a Knight of the Crusade had leapt onto the Spitfire and its Merlin to ride into the pages of history.

The silence was still uninterrupted. Thoughts and memories began to flicker through my mind. I remembered crashing badly and the terrifying sound of things being torn apart; closing my eyes as the ruptured earth flung pieces of metal over my crouching head; the peculiar smell of oil, petrol and glycol and damp earth hanging in my nostrils. Then the panic as I struggled out of parachute, harness and shattered cockpit--and then the silence. An almost deathly silence. As I prayed a word of thanks over the crumpled wreckage and the large black mass buried in the soft ground--once a powerful, gleaming engine--I heard this sigh. It may have been a pressure-relief valve, or glycol, or oil on hot metal, but in the emotion of the moment it became a sound I shall always remember. What better epitaph to a wonderful machine and a magnificent engine than to call my book Sigh for a Merlin?"

arethuza6• 8 years ago

I agree that Merlin powered planes do sound lovely, but there is also something about the Vulcan howl that is impressive (and a bit disturbing).

Mind you - in both cases recordings really don't do them justice.

WalterBright3• 8 years ago

I agree. Recordings not only don't do them justice, they don't have any similarity at all to how they sound. I recall standing in a field and a P-51 went by overhead, at minimum altitude and full throttle. If one hasn't heard that, one can never understand :-)

gargravarr2• 8 years ago

Agreed on the Vulcan - having watched XH558's final flight, a low-altitude slow climb opening the throttles to max, the way the Olympus engines split the atmosphere behind the aircraft isn't just something you hear, it's something you feel. Definitely can't capture it on a recording. The fact that it set off about 20 car alarms at once is testament to its power!

Graham24• 8 years ago

I've heard the Vulcan fly a few times and it sounds as if the very air itself is screaming in complaint not the plane.

mannykannot2• 8 years ago

There's another passage in that book that this article might help explain: IIRC, there came a time when Henshaw and his fellow test pilots experienced some life-threatening engine failures of the Spitfires that they were testing, at one point forcing him to make a crash landing in an urban area (perhaps the Wednesfield crash of 7/18/1942 mentioned in his Wikipedia entry? And is that perhaps the incident mentioned in the last paragraph of your quote?) The cause was traced to something like a small change in the order in which the engines were assembled. That the British-built engines were hand-crafted seems to make this less surprising.

I would guess that, being hand-built, it would be trickier to keep them well-maintained, and require a particularly well-trained and skilled corps of artificers. The article does not get into it, but I wonder if there were differences in reliability between the Packard- and Rolls-Royce- built Merlins?

spitfire• 8 years ago

It was the skewgear (drive shafts) for the magnetos which were failing. They had a few go out before they traced down the problem. I love the sound of a Merlin.

phasetransition9• 8 years ago

The story of the Merlin V12 is really the story of E.J. Houdry, a Frenchman who came to the US in 1930 and, with plenty of help at Standard oil, perfected fluid catalytic cracking of hydrocarbons.

FCC gave the US AVgas with octane as high as 150 by the end of the war. This allowed much higher engine manifold pressures than the Germans before detonation, who had mostly 87 octane fuel throughout the war. Engine power is roughly proportional to manifold pressure.

Source: a long rabbit trail of trying to understand why the Daimler Benz DB 605, while seemingly far more advanced on paper, was never better than parity with the smaller Merlin during WW2. Houdry being in occupied France at the wars' start would make an interesting alternate history.

raverbashing• 8 years ago

And before anyone asks, FCC stands for Fluid catalytic cracking

sdfx• 8 years ago

Can you point me to any books on this subject? Sounds like a fascinating story to dive into in more detail.

phasetransition9• 8 years ago

Not specifically about this topic, but "Oil & War: How the Deadly Struggle for Fuel in WWII Meant Victory or Defeat" is the most definitive account of the overall fuel supply factors that I am aware of.

phasetransition9• 8 years ago

"zeolite" materials as catalysts are something you are exposed if you study materials science (my formal education). Also W.K. Lewis is a name you'll be exposed to if you dip a toe into chemical engineering. Zeolites and Lewis are central in the FCC story.

A little Googling produces their patent on this: https://patents.google.com/patent/US2451804A/en?oq=2%2c451%2...

phasetransition9• 8 years ago

A little more Googling of the ACS website produces a nice PDF historic summary of the Houdry process:

https://www.acs.org/content/dam/acsorg/education/whatischemi...

dsfyu404ed2• 8 years ago

Don't forget alcohol injection. Without water/alcohol added to reduce intake temperatures the high manifold pressures would have never been possible.

Tuna-Fish• 8 years ago

The germans had that too. The difference in engine power between the sides was mostly about the quality of the fuel.

phasetransition9• 8 years ago

Water methanol injection was invented by Sir Harry Ricardo, a British engineer.

It is my understanding that his book "The High Speed Internal Combustion Engine" was the definitive text on the topic of internal combustion engines in the 1930s and 40s.

Google finds a reprint for a reasonable price here: https://estore.ricardo.com/shop/the-high-speed-internal-comb...

jabl3• 8 years ago

I've understood that a large reason why the Allied fuel had higher octane was use of TEL, and that for some reason(???) the Germans never figured it out (sounds unlikely?) or they couldn't produce it due to some other reason. Is this completely wrong, did the Germans also use TEL?

maxerickson5• 8 years ago

This article doesn't make citations but seems credible:

http://gasolinefuels.blogspot.com/2011/06/world-war-ii-and-o...

It sounds like there is a volume story there, with the US supply situation being much better.

phasetransition9• 8 years ago

My knowledge about the role of tetraethyl lead in AVgas is limited to basically Wikipedia. But overall octane driver for both sides was feedstock quality (oil or paraffins).

The Wikipedia primary source that shows the Germans also had TEL production is given as this book:

https://books.google.com/books?id=FDNyGpCS9WsC&pg=PA470&lpg=...

Knacker_Hughes• 8 years ago

Because Detroit built the Merlin engine in World War II - today, we don't have to say "Vorsprung Durch Technik"

lovemenot• 8 years ago

> we don't have to say "Vorsprung Durch Technik"

And yet apparently, some actually do have to regurgitate 1980's-era copy from a German automobile makers' successful advertising campaign in (at least) the British market. As though doing so were some kind of victory. Leaves me so sad.

arethuza6• 8 years ago

Doesn't Audi still use Vorsprung Durch Technik in their UK advertising?

emmelaich• 8 years ago

How about a 5 litre v-twin motorcycle cut off a Merlin engine?

http://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2015/08/19/4296075.htm

baybal2• 8 years ago

An interesting fact is that former Packard engineers were fathers of archetypal "American V8s." Some solutions they saw on Merlins were replicated 1-to-1 in their own works like cylinder head designs.

TomMasz• 8 years ago

As a kid I remember reading an article in a hot rod magazine about a drag racer powered by a Merlin engine. It was quick, as you'd imagine, but easily overpowered the tires of the time so not as quick as it could have been. I wonder what happened to it.

csours• 8 years ago

That the Merlin outperformed the Allison at high altitude is hardly a condemnation of the American-designed engine. In its element (up to about 15,000 feet), the V-1710 was robust and reliable – utilizing fewer than half the number of parts found in a Merlin. It was also extremely adaptable to different configurations of gearing, rotation direction, accessories, etc. The Allison engine is a showpiece of modular design.

---

Engineering is finding the best compromise for a particular set of requirements.

msisk6• 8 years ago

Tangentially related to this article is Simon Winchester's latest book "The perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World".

One of the chapters in this book is about the differences between the hand-built cars of Rolls Royce (and their origin story which I never knew) and Henry Ford's production line that required interchangeable precision parts.

Theodores• 8 years ago

During a childhood visit to a car factory I noticed how the panels for the small, mass-market, fairly horrid hatchback went together perfectly whilst the panels for the luxury low-volume saloon needed lots of men with actual hammers to bash into shape.

The tooling used to make the hatchback had cost a fortune and was the finest German stuff. The tooling used for the luxury saloon was a lot older and therefore worn. There were no backup dies in the worn tooling so over time the panel fit only got worse with once fine details no longer sharp.

The executives driving their luxury saloons would probably have been horrified if they had known that it was the cheap cars that went together properly in an exact manner with their cars being the ones needing to be bashed to 'look right'. They would also have been horrified to see the same facility used for making panels with everything being 'just being a bit of tin' to the staff rather than their pride and joy.

Having had the reality of luxury exposed as it being hand made, bashed into shape at such a formative age I have always wanted the robot built products, e.g. the mass market car rather than the bashed into shape expensive version.

The deluxe cars of today are still very much 'bashed into shape' in ways that they always have been. The BMW car brand 'Rolls Royce' very much hand-craft cars as they always have, they are not doing it wrong by not re-designing their products to make it so a rival can churn out millions of identical clones.

The original aerospace 'Rolls Royce' was in the same position, making a modest amount of engines and not in 'total war' mode. Their less than precise drawings were fine for what they were doing, they had people to bash stuff into shape, 'luxury auto style', with that making economic sense. The war changed everything though.

Packard Merlin: How Detroit Mass-Produced Britain’s Hand-Built Powerhouse (2015)

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