I can’t think of a more unattractive thing, from a pilot’s point of view, than taking off from a WW2 era carrier deck. This is a deck without a steam catapult, where strategic circumstances mean it may not be possible to launch in ideal circumstances. In this mix was ‘Tiger Force’ with it’s proposed Highball Mosquitos, aiming to attack Japanese shipping in 1945-6. Here you had single stage Merlin Mosquitos with perhaps 6,000 lbs of fuel and 2000 lbs of munitions aiming to climb off a carrier deck. The Highball setup was all ‘secret squirrel’ but it has always raised an eyebrow why they would use a single stage Merlin in the setup, when the two stage, two speed Merlin 61 was available. Then I figured the application was never about ‘long distance – lean cruise’ at 30,000 feet as much as ‘just getting off the bloody deck’ at sea level as the principal concern. So a single stage Merlin set for ‘sea level’ maximum performance, with a four blade setup for maximum sea level thrust, was selected. Now, under the influence of the excellent ‘The Secret Horsepower Race’, I am wondering if 160 Octane fuel with high boost or even Nitrous Oxide boost was employed to get a fully laden Highball Mosquito off the deck. I guess some of this approach would travel over to postwar Sea Mosquito or Sea Hornet launching technique, so would be curious to hear from anybody with insight on this matter.
By: Creaking Door - 19th May 2022 at 23:23
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By: Creaking Door - 19th May 2022 at 10:57
I think your first reaction was absolutely right: ‘just get off the bloody deck’ and applying the general principle that you don’t get something for nothing, you have to ask yourself what are the advantages (and disadvantages!) of superchargers, two-stage, two-speed, or otherwise?
Getting air into an engine is the biggest (perhaps the only?) problem that designers struggle with; air is ridiculous, thin, squashy stuff that resists all efforts to make it move where you want it to go (quickly), it heats-up too readily, it expands and contracts, and it comes ‘as standard’ at too low a pressure and with too little oxygen in it! (Of course designers need air to be many of these things too but that doesn’t make it any less annoying!)
The supercharger is the preferred solution to many of the problems that air has and progressively supercharging an engine will continue to solve those problems until one of the other physical limitations is reached. Anyway back to that deck…
I think I am right in saying, that, at sea-level, a single-stage, single-speed, supercharged Merlin can produce as much ‘boost’ as the limitations of the Merlin engine (and the fuel) can handle (and said Merlin will be smaller, lighter and less complex than any two-stage and / or two-speed Merlin (and may actually produce more power?)). After you get off the deck and start to climb to higher altitude it is a different matter, however…
…that’s my short answer! (For now!)
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May 17, 2022 at 2:49 pm