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Jeffrey Syken
“…Some 160,000 Merlins were produced during WWII, more than 100,000 in Britain, the rest by Packard in the U.S. They were used in more applications - air, marine and land - and appeared in more marks (50) and power ratings (21) than any other engine. They powered aircraft of more purposes (nine) and types (31)…”
historynet.com
Many people believe, to this day, that the Rolls-Royce Merlin aero-engine of WWII fame was named after the Wizard of Arthurian legend, not so. In fact, it was part of a Rolls-Royce tradition of naming their aero-engines after birds-of-prey (R-R’s first production engine was the Eagle and the engines that preceded and proceeded the Merlin were the Kestral and the Griffon, respectively – all birds-of-prey). Tradition also meant that the Merlin would be a “fitter’s” engine; meaning that the component parts would be machined until they fit in their respective place in the engine. This would contrast mightily with the Packard-built Merlins whereby every part had to be interchangeable with every other part and “fit” from the get-go. Maybe that’s why a Brit-built Merlin cost around $25K/unit and Yank-built Merlins cost $12K by the end of WWII. Cost and manufacturing methods aside, Merlins built on either side of the pond had the same role to play; keep ahead of the Luftwaffe when it came to powering the allies front-line combat aircraft – not an easy task.
The origins of the Merlin are in two R-R pre-war aero-engines – the “Type-R” and the “Buzzard” (which was the predecessor of the Kestral). The former was a seaplane racing engine that won the 1931 Schneider Trophy and the latter two pre-WWII R-R production engines. The Merlin would be an amalgamation of these engines which was, at first, given the designation “PV-12” (meaning “Private-Venture – 12 cylinders). There were teething problems, but they were worked out and by the time WWII and the Battle of Britain broke-out, in 1940, Merlin-powered Spitfires and Hurricanes were in-place to defend the British Isles. Still, aerial combat exposed flaws in the design of the Merlin such as an inadequate supercharger and problems with float carburetors. In its multiple incarnations, the Merlin would resolve these problems and only get better, to the point that available horsepower had doubled by the end of WWII.
With the end of WWII came the jet-age yet, the Merlin would still have life as a civil commercial aero-engine. However, by 1955 R-R ceased production of piston-powered aero-engines and the rest, as they say, belongs to history.
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