evan price wrote:
Check out the Gnome engines.
That suggestion has helped kill my entire morning.
My main area of historical interest is WW2, so I mostly overlooked them.
I knew vaguely that Gnome and Rhone made rotaries in WW1, merged at some point and later made radials.
Seems Gnome was a pioneer in 2 row radials - the earliest efforts failed but later after the merger Gnome-Rhone was among the first (or the first?) to build successful ones.
The Gnome-Rhone radials got their start from licensed Bristol (Roy Fedden again) designs, though in their own right in the early 30s or so they were among the industry leaders. By the time of WW2 they had fallen behind a bit, which is how I overlooked them.
Apparently the occupation ruined them. They were forbidden from working on/developing their own designs, and spent the war building old designs and BMWs under license. Oh and being horribly bombed. Interesting - I didn't know that what was left of the company was nationalized after the war and formed SNECMA.
I did know that SNECMAs famous product the Atar line of jet engines was developed by German engineers - former BMW in fact - recruited and imported for the task. Which kind of fits.
Maybe we're just jaded, but your villainy is not particularly impressive. -Ennesby
If you know what you're doing, you're not learning anything. -Unknown
Sanity is the process by which you continually adjust your beliefs so they are predictively sound. -esr