The above engine was fitted to the Grant, sherman, and one or two other Tanks. including the M4A1. I understand that aircraft engines have been fitted into Tanks since around 1918, the question is, why did they need to use aircraft engines instead of conventional engines?.
Don’t know if this is the right place to Post this.
Jim.
Lincoln .7
By: Creaking Door - 26th August 2012 at 12:28
The answer to this one is fairly simple; it was because the development of tanks at the time was very rapid and there wasn’t time to develop a completely new ‘conventional’ engine that had the required power.
Aircraft engines already had enough power but were not always best suited to fitting in tanks; the US for example were forced to use a radial engine (amongst others) in the Sherman that caused fundamental problems in its overall layout.
Other ways were tried to produce enough power; one ‘solution’ was to couple two or more smaller engine together. Some versions of the Sherman had the wonderful (well, bizarre) Chrysler Multibank engine, formed by mounting five six-cylinder truck engines onto a common shaft!
One nation that never seemed to have to use aero-engines in tanks was Germany but there is no truth in the often-quoted ‘fact’ that German tanks were diesel powered.
A derivative of the Rolls-Royce Merlin, the unsupercharged Meteor, was still powering a few British tanks in the First Gulf War!
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August 26, 2012 at 11:14 am