The R-2800 powered several types of fighters and medium bombers during the war, including the US Navy's Vought F4U Corsair, with the XF4U-1 first prototype Corsair becoming the first airframe to fly (as originally designed) with the Double Wasp in its XR-2800-4 prototype version on May 29, 1940, and the first single-engine American fighter plane to exceed 400 mph (640 km/h) in level flight during October 1940. The first prototype F4U Corsair, the earliest aircraft specifically designed to use the Double Wasp The twin distributors on the Double Wasp were prominently mounted on the upper surface of the forward gear reduction housing - with one of the pair of magnetos mounted between them on most models - and almost always prominently visible within a cowling, with the conduits for the spark plug wires emerging from the distributors' cases either directly forward or directly behind them, or on the later C-series R-2800s with the two-piece gear reduction housings, on the "outboard" sides of the distributor casings. The fins were all cut at the same time by a gang of milling saws, automatically guided as it fed across the head in such a way that the bottom of the grooves rose and fell to make the roots of the fins follow the contour of the head, with the elaborate process substantially increasing the surface area of the fins. To enable more efficient cooling, the usual practice of casting or forging the cylinder head cooling fins that had been effective enough for other engine designs was discarded, and instead, much thinner and closer-pitched cooling fins were machined from the solid metal of the cylinder-head forging. The Double Wasp was much smaller in displacement than either of the other 18-cylinder designs, and heat dissipation was a greater problem. The Double Wasp was more powerful than the world's only other modern 18-cylinder engine, the Gnome-Rhône 18L of 3,442 cu in (56.40 L). First run in 1937, near the time that the larger 3,347.9 cu in (54.862 L) competing 18-cylinder Wright Duplex-Cyclone's development had been started in May of that year, the 2,804.5 cu in (45.958 L) displacement R-2800 was first-flown by 1940, one year before the Duplex-Cyclone.
0 kommentar(er)
