During the period between the World Wars, aircraft engines improved
dramatically and made possible unprecedented progress in aircraft design. Engine
development in those days, and to a large extent even today, is a very
laborious, detailed process of building an engine, running it to destruction,
analyzing what broke, designing a fix, and repeating the process. No product
ever comes to market without some engineers having spent many long, lonely,
anxious hours perfecting that product. This is especially true of aircraft
engines, which by their very nature push all the limits of ingenuity, materials,
and manufacturing processes.
Improvements in superchargers greatly assisted the increased production of
power, and also allowed the engine to produce sea-level power at considerably
greater altitudes than non-supercharged engines. Early superchargers were just
"rotary induction systems", and served little purpose other than to assure equal
distribution of fuel to all cylinders. As engine development progressed,
superchargers became better and better compressors by providing higher pressure
while consuming less power. |
