According to my research (looking up the diameters in Wikipedia!)
An R2600 would fit on the Beaufighter firewall perfect!
When I first read this, I thought what about the weight of the engine? What about the length of the engine including accessories? What about a suitable prop for this installation? What about connecting British systems to US generators and pumps? Or British generators and pumps to a US accessory gearbox?
Now I see that someone’s already gone through the trouble of figuring out whether this is possible, judging from Avro Avian’s post above. But that doesn’t mean that it would be easy to reconstruct this modification, even if drawings and such still exist. It would most certainly encompass a very significant modification to the aircraft and you could ask yourself whether you’d rather have a static Beaufighter with the correct engines, or a flying Beaufighter with completely different engines, nacelles and systems. I’m sure that there will be several votes for the second option, but I do hope that large cheques will accompany those votes. 😉
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