Forgot to note the Sabre-Fury in one of the pix above. Now there’d be an impressive beast. There was also a Griffon-Fury prototype with a Shackletonesque beard-radiator cowl and contraprop. Wicked-looking brute. Anybody care to stick on a Griffon 58 instead of a 3350 when retiring the Centaurus to static display…??

S.

You mean like this one

As for Kermit Weeks – well he has the second prototype Tempest II
and the Tempest V at Booker . I have a feeling he might be content!

I think you may very well be correct there David.

Hello everyone, I’ve been lurking for a while and hope it’s OK if I join in.

It is highly unlikely that anyone will ever put a new-build sleeve valve engine into production. Even Napier, who designed the Sabre in the first place, never really got the hang of building them. The TBO that they were set for squadron entry was only 25 hours, and the sleeves very often failed even below that minimal life, until manufacture of the sleeves was switched to Bristol, the only company who ever started to come to terms with this technology. Even then, Sabre lives were short though spectacular, and the only sleeve valve engine to be truly fit for aviation, in the post-war era, in terms of reliability and serviceability, was the Centaurus. But in the end, overhead-valve radials became the dominant and most-evolved form of high powered piston aero engine. (The R-2800 family and the Vedeneyev / Ivchenko M14 family are arguably the most succesful of their type.)

I can’t imagine the CAA ever being happy for a new Sabre-engined aircraft to fly in the UK, such is the engine type’s reputation for unreliability. And it’s hard to see what could substitute for it while still enabling the aeroplane to look reasonably original. The FW-190 and Me 262 reproductions use modern engines of appropriate configuration, in the case of the 262 they are encased to make them resemble the originals.

However, if someone becomes extremely rich and wants a new warbird with a difference, all is not lost. Building a series of new Tempests II or Furies would be a lot easier, because even if it upsets some purists, you could use a known quantity like the R-2800.

Much misinformation has been written about the Sabre. It has sometimes become fashionable to over play the issues and their impact on the course of the war. In fact if you look at the development time line you will see that all the other high powered piston engines had problems equal to if not greater than those of the Sabre. Think Vulture, or the Wright R3350, development of which started in 1936 and it was still unable to produce any sort of reliability in 1942/43

The main difference with the Sabre is that it actually got into production in 41/42, out of necessity, whilst many of the other projects were shelved or had to wait until the end of the war to be reliable. And no other production Piston engine managed the phenomenal output of the Sabre. Only specially prepared racing Merlins using all the post war goodies and huge helpings of ADI exceed the Sabres production level outputs. I’m talking here of power to weight, frontal area ete etc and not total gross output, although a production Sabre was run with ADI at 4000hp. So given time and no money Napier could get there. And don’t forget that RR’s last production piston engine the Eagle was like the Sabre and Centaurus a sleeve valve engine.

No company had a monopoly on design or manufacturing during the war, but sometimes companies refused help, whilst others refused to help. Bristol at first refused to help produce Sabre sleeves, until vast amounts of political clout was brought to bear. Likewise in the US Wright Aeronautical refused to acknowledge the problems with the R3350 and nearly caused the failure of America’s Strategic Bomber program. Much attention was diverted to fire fighting a poor design rather than fixing the root cause. So no country has a monopoly on industrial stupidity either.

I have firsthand accounts from a family friend who flew Typhoons in 44, and he, whilst acknowledging the reliability issues, never had an engine fail on him causing an accident or need to abandon the aircraft. He did mention to me that some pilots needed a neck massage after each flight as they would fly across the channel with one ear turned towards the Sabre, such was the engines reputation.

“Mr Nut”

However, we can now post before thinking, I’ve done it , we have all done it.

And so have I, but I learnt an important lesson many years ago, and now when I’m upset with and email I write my reply and place it in my drafts folder and read it again the next day. I have lost count of the number of times my edited version bears no resemblance to the original.

The internet is a little trickier, and I think we all need to be a little more understanding with those that post.

sorry nige im just very offended by some utter crap people come out with

Sorry stewart1a but I think you need to take a number of steps back, along with many others 🙁

I have to echo Moggy’s words here and have to add that before you take a pop at someone just consider this: :rolleyes:

A few years ago if we had something to say to another person we would usually ring up and have a conversation or arrange for a face to face. This would usually, but not always result in understanding. Before this it was often by letter but I think it safe to say now, that the art of letter writing has passed most of us by. Those that have good written communication skills are truly lucky, as schools don’t teach it any more.

In the last 10 years we have started to use email. Today we have taken this one step further and have instant messages. Now having lost the art of writing, some of us may be misinterpreted, and some of the more sensitive of us may over react. Very often the reader completely gets the tone wrong and jumps down the writer’s throat. Just have a think about it. How often have you been upset by some clowns email at work?

Now as for the Miss Helen thread there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. We are surely allowed to express what they have seen. Come on people!!!! Speculation value was nilon that thread.

The May 16th thread about flying may have contained some miss-informed views, but some people are of a nervous disposition and they have a right to express these views. Just give them a sensible reply. Surely that’s not hard. Censorship is the road to ruin, and what we need to do is encourage more people to participate and not continuously be critical so that many of the casual readers remain just that. And also consider this. Some of the most critical of us out there are often on one side of the argument on one threat and then seemingly taking a contrary view on another. This does not go un-noticed and will eventually attract ridicule, which I will probably now get so I finish my rant and dive for cover.

Herc being worked on. This is progress.

I was having that conversation with the TFC engineer. They have found some tooling for the engines in NZ, so I presume it would be ex SafeAir and previous to that RNZAF. However there is still the matter of missing props. The engines they have are from a Hastings, and they are in the process of double checking the integrity of the engines after discovering a problem with the so called zero time Centaurus for the Seafury.

I have some engine pics that I will post tonight. I would appear as if they have some patterns to create new exhausts for a front collector ring. Big job that.