Something not completely related, but interesting non the less. This is a quote from sir Stanley Hooker, no doubt someone from here will be along to say he's wrong, and doesn't know what he's talking about, but hey
Quote:
Before the war, when the Merlin was designed, I don't think anyone even considered the possibility that fighter pilots would ever want to bunt their aircraft across the sky. The first thing we heard about the problem was from a whole lot of complaining fighter pilots at the time of the Battle of Britain.
Now the fact is that if we had fitted fuel injection to the early Merlins we should of lost power. The evaporation of the fuel squirted into the supercharger reduced the temperature of the fuel-air mixture by about 25 degrees C, giving an increase in the order of 60 HP - which meant 6-7 mph more on the top speed of a spitfire. It may not sound much, but for many a pilot it made the difference between life and death.
Quite apart from that, the fitting of fuel injection to the Merlin simply was not on as a short term measure, it would of taken a year or so to get such a redesigned engine into service because the balance of the engine, carburettor and supercharger was critical and one could not alter one part alone without reducing the efficiency of the whole
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Quoted from 'The Spitfire Story', by Alfred Price.
10-10-2011, 11:28 PM
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