Wikipedia clanger in need of correction

Excellent question – to which I don’t have an answer. 🙂

I suspect it’s possible that as RR geared up the Crewe and Glasgow factories they revised their own tolerances accordingly. The engines from those factories were built by largely semi-skilled labour without the years of experience that the Derby workforce had.
I’ve no idea how many Kestrels they built over the years but that was their only previous experience of anything approaching mass production. I guess even then the numbers were only in the hundreds each year.

I once had a conversation with a chap who had worked on Merlins in their service life and he reckoned that the best finished engines were the Paisley(not Glasgow) factory ones. He claimed that you could tell them apart just by looking at the finish of the exhaust ports.

Just a note for those nnot familiar with U.S. auto history…

Remember Packard was more than your typical car company. It was the last survivor of the pioneering firms whose reputation was built on quality instead of cost.
Up untyil they offered a low cost series beacuse of the depression in the 1930s, they were always first rate cars. Approximately in the same league as pre-Derby Bentleys.

Excellent question – to which I don’t have an answer. 🙂

I suspect it’s possible that as RR geared up the Crewe and Glasgow factories they revised their own tolerances accordingly. The engines from those factories were built by largely semi-skilled labour without the years of experience that the Derby workforce had.
I’ve no idea how many Kestrels they built over the years but that was their only previous experience of anything approaching mass production. I guess even then the numbers were only in the hundreds each year.

And yet Rolls-Royce produced more engines from their own factories than Fords and Packard, so I guess its how you define mass production.

I have found that components of the merlin made by Rolls, fords and packards are interchangeable, which begs the question, if the original drawings were unacceptable, and susequent production by Ford’s and Packard’s were built to substantially different tolerences ,how come it all fits together?

Ford re-drew the Merlin to automotive industry tolerances. The original RR drawings produced what I guess would be a “selected fit” which wasn’t good enough for mass production. Packard presumably did the same.

The Packard production was to increase output as it was thought we wouldn’t be able to produce enough here. To move production away from German bombing may have been a factor but not one I recall being particularly stressed.

Not that the article is worthy of correction…
But I’d guess, if the Germans controlled the island, the security of some engine blueprints would be the least of anyone’s worries. 😀

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if that happened, they’d control hundreds (thousands?) of engines and the production tooling.

Still can’t find the Gunston book. I might just remove the US-built Spitfire reference and leave it at that. I presume the reasons for the Packard licence were (a) to provide a source of Merlins far removed from the threat of German acton and (b) to supply the Canadian Hurricane and Lancaster lines. Anyone reckon they know better? I also see from my Hurricane book that Packards were available from 1941, and not 43.
Even so, “presume” isn’t really a good enough reason to start modifying the entry, though, in my opinion.

William

Just as a point of interest regarding the Merlin drawings shipped to the us, all Merlin drawings were re-drawn by Packard for ease of mass producing them.

Ford’s UK “had” to redraw the Merlin as well,it took them a whole year; makes you wonder how Rolls-Royce could have produced a single engine, with such poor drawings….

Did you flag it up under the discussion section? You can change it yourself, thats the point of a Wiki 🙂

Scouse did say that he was without his trusted reference material at the time and passed it over to the historians rather than get it wrong(as Wiki seems to e.g. their entry for the Gloster Javelin which claimed two cannon armament instead of the four actually fitted(until I corrected it))

Did you flag it up under the discussion section? You can change it yourself, thats the point of a Wiki 🙂

Just as a point of interest regarding the Merlin drawings shipped to the us, all Merlin drawings were re-drawn by Packard for ease of mass producing them.

One way to describe the Mustang :rolleyes:

😡 😡 😡 😡 😡 😡 😡 😡 😡 😡 😡 😡 😡 😡 😡 😡 😡

originally for use in US-built Spitfires

One way to describe the Mustang :rolleyes: