Vees For Victory!: The Story of the Allison V-1710 Aircraft Engine 1929-1948 (Schiffer Military History) [Hardcover]

Daniel D. Whitney (Author)

Book Description

Series: Schiffer Military History | Publication Date: August 1, 1998

Over 60 percent of U.S. Army fighters during World War II were powered by the Allison V-1710 engine. It was a strong and reliable power plant that powered the pre-war generation of 400 mph Army pursuits, and the majority of Army combat fighters on through

Product Details

• Hardcover: 472 pages
• Publisher: Schiffer Publishing, Ltd.; First edition (August 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764305611
• ISBN-13: 978-0764305610
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.7 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #168,320 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best aero engine book ever!, September 29, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Vees For Victory!: The Story of the Allison V-1710 Aircraft Engine 1929-1948 (Schiffer Military History) (Hardcover)

This work is a real monument describing everything you want to know about the subject. The Allison has thus far been overshadowed by its contemporaries, especially the Merlin. Now, in this book you can find very objective comparisons between the two. Also, for us technically minded, Mr. Whitney has assembled a 60-page chapter titled "Engineering the V-1710"! This chapter alone makes this book a must. In addition to the V-1710, the V-3420 has a chapter devoted to it. Overall, I recommend this book to all fellow enthusiasts whose interest goes beyond propeller spinner paint patterns!

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Apologetica for Allison and the V-1710 engine, July 5, 2009

By 

DarthRad (United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Vees For Victory!: The Story of the Allison V-1710 Aircraft Engine 1929-1948 (Schiffer Military History) (Hardcover)

Any thorough reading of the history of the Allison V-1710 engine can only result in labeling it as a solid underachiever for America during WWII. The reason for this was simple - the Allison Engine Company, a subsidiary of General Motors, had the massive corporate resources to gain government contracts and do excellent engineering work, but it did not have the tightly coupled engineering culture nor the vision to actually want to produce the best aircraft engines possible.

Instead, much like Curtiss-Wright, Allison was hampered by a corporate culture that valued beancounters over excellent engineering. As such, Allison never put in enough engineering work to solve all of the quirks and failings of the later versions of the V-1710 that could have made it competitive with its main rival, the Rolls-Royce/Packard Merlin engine.

This much I already knew from reading a large number of other books. Although highly detailed, "Vees for Victory" is simply too much of an apologetica for the Allison Engine Company and its most famous WWII engine to get a complete understanding of the problems of the V-1710. Some other excellent books to read are:

P-51 Mustang: Development of the Long-Range Escort Fighter - by Paul Ludwig

MUSTANG DESIGNER: Edgar Schmued and the P-51 - by Ray Wagner

Allied Aircraft Piston Engines of World War II - by Graham White

These three books give additional viewpoints on the problems that aircraft manufacturers encountered with the V-1710, as well as on the political battles involved with the USAAF in the procurement process for engines and fighter planes. The book on Edgar Schmued provides an excellent description of just what was possible inside a company with a corporate culture that did value excellent engineering. North American Aviation (NAA) designed and built its first P-51 airframe for the British in only 100 days (its Allison engine arrived late, a detail which author Whitney only alludes to by saying that the P-51 was finished within 120 days). It took time to work out all of the bugs with the P-51, but in "Mustang Designer", we see how a group of dedicated engineers rapidly solved all of its problems and perfected this aircraft through quick work and close attention to complaints and suggestions from the field - a classic example of an aggressive, closely coupled engineering culture.

Two additional books are useful for reading as comparisons to the story of Allison and the V-1710 during WWII:

R 2800: Pratt & Whitney's Dependable Masterpiece - by Graham White

Curtiss-Wright (greatness and decline) - Eltscher Young

The R-2800 was also used in combination with the GE turbosupercharger often blamed for the V-1710's problems. Unlike Allison, and much like NAA, Pratt & Whitney had the closely coupled engineering culture to rapidly perfect this engine-turbosupercharger combination. The R-2800 would go on to produce more horsepower than the larger and extremely troubled R-3350 engine of Curtiss Wright during WWII (although later the R-3350 also got an improved power rating).

The book about Curtiss-Wright is excellent because it examines the sort of profit and sales motivated corporate culture that resulted in CW's many engineering flops during WWII.

Author Daniel Whitney recounts in great detail the engineering process behind the V-1710, examining all its variants, many of which never came to fruition or ended up underperforming in their intended aircraft - the P-38, P-39, P-40, P-51, F-82, and numerous other experimental aircraft. Whitney includes a nice section on the Fisher P-75 (a GM product, it was a very large single seat fighter plane), with details I have not seen anywhere else. The problems with the Army procurement policies and the GE turbosupercharger and the later double supercharger design are also examined in depth. There is an excellent explanation of what happened to the B-39, the Allison V-3420 engined alternative to the B-29, and how it got side-tracked. Along the way, Whitney also records the doings of Donovan Berlin. Berlin was the peripatetic designer of the P-40 who had left Curtiss-Wright to next take on the P-75 project for Fisher and ended up directing all of the V-3420 projects for GM. It is always interesting for me to find out more about Donovan Berlin - he would eventually go on to work on the FH-1 Phantom and Boeing-Vertol's Chinook helicopter - somebody needs to write a book about Donovan Berlin's life, or at least a Wikipedia entry).

Whitney does point out that during WWII, Allison had in place a policy of not using its own corporate funds to develop or improve its engines. Allison did make some efforts to improve the V-1710 as the war progressed, but it also had in place a policy of making as few changes as possible to the basic engine; as a result, thorough re-designs to correct persistent problems were never done and so later upgraded versions of the V-1710 were unable to reach the same level of reliability and performance as the Merlin (and later, the Griffin) engines.

From the excellent section in this book on the Merlin engine, one can readily compare the different engineering choices made for these two engines. Whitney unfortunately never connects the dots together for the reader and explain how the different choices ultimately failed for the V-1710; one has to go elsewheres for this - the first three books in the list above provide these engineering explanations, especially Graham White's "Allied Aircraft Piston Engines of WWII".

The original V-1710 with the single stage supercharger worked well enough to become a reliable aircraft engine for low and medium altitude use at the beginning of WWII. However, as WWII progressed, this version rapidly became obsolete, and subsequent efforts to increase the power and altitude capabilities of the V-1710 all floundered to one extent or another (unlike the Rolls Royce Merlin), largely due to Allison's unwillingness to make radical changes to the basic engine, especially the engine manifold design.

The V-1710's manifold had 4 pipes feeding 3 cylinders (unlike the common plenum chamber design of the Merlin) and so was inherently prone to providing poor air-fuel distribution into the cylinders, leading to this problem of premature detonations in the cylinders whenever the engine was stressed to produce high power under unfavorable circumstances (e.g., in combat at 30,000 feet). The later two-stage supercharger was also a tacked on afterthought lacking all of the refined features of the Merlin's two-stage supercharger (chiefly, a backfire screen and an intercooler - the two-stage supercharger V-1710 used only anti-detonation injection to prevent detonation inside the supercharger) and was also prone to failure.

In the forced re-marriage between Allison and NAA with the P-51J (p.187-189) and the F-82 (p. 194-198), Whitney does not quite explain why the problems with those planes were never solved. Whitney does include Edgar Schmued's fierce diatribe against being forced to use the V-1710 in the F-82 (quoted from "Mustang Designer"), but that's about it. NAA clearly found it frustratingly impossible to get Allison to fix all of the technical problems of the two stage supercharger V-1710s.

And so, Whitney's claim that the P-51J was the "fastest P-51" model, and his comparison chart on p.189 between the Merlin and the V-1710 engined P-51s are simply disingenuous. The claimed speed for the P-51J of 491 mph listed in this book was its estimated design speed - the V-1710-119 engine in reality never worked well enough to get anywhere close to that speed. And so the Packard Merlin V-1650-9 engined P-51H is usually given the title of "fastest P-51" model at 487mph; its engine had a war emergency rating of over 2200 hp, far surpassing the V-1710-119, a fact missing from this book.

The problems of the P-38 in Europe (which became known as the "Allison Time Bomb" for the engines' tendency to blow up), as the result of flying in the freezing cold at 30,000 feet are also discussed, but unfortunately, Whitney focuses on operational and maintenace problems as discovered by Allison/Lockheed's investigation rather than General Doolittle's more blunt assessment for the USAAF in March 1944 (detailed in the book "P-51 Mustang: Development of the Long-Range Escort Fighter").

Whitney does give a thorough description of the efforts to re-engine the P-38s with the Merlin engine; however, he ignores the obvious advantage - the P-38s would be able to run reliably at full power at 30,000 feet instead of blowing up - and instead counters with a list of the theoretical downsides. Ultimately, he has to admit that it was mainly politics from Allison and the USAAF that prevented this from happening.

By 1944, Allison's engine business had drastically declined, due to its failure to develop a reliable, improved version of the V-1710, or another follow up engine. Allison worked intermittently on the V-3420, which was two V-1710s joined in a common crankcase, with funding by the USAAF as part of the P-75 project, and as a back-up (as the B-39) for the troubled R-3350 for the B-29. This promising engine could have had a life in the post-war civilian transport and airline industry, but Allison struggled to develop the engine (the manifold's uneven fuel-air distribution again presented problems), and when the government canceled those two projects, Allison refused to further develop this engine with its own funds.

Outside of this book, we see that Allison would get a new lease on life with a free kickstart into the jet age as its political connections got the USAF to hand over two British/GE jet engine designs for it to build. But that was about it for jet engines, as Allison would retreat into the safe and boring niche of turboshaft and turboprop jet engines, where it remains today. Ironically, it was purchased by Rolls-Royce in 1995.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just the tip of the iceberg!, March 18, 2001

By 

Bob Huckabee (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vees For Victory!: The Story of the Allison V-1710 Aircraft Engine 1929-1948 (Schiffer Military History) (Hardcover)

A terrific and fascinating work. Almost every sentence connects to a huge list of references. A great story of a company, it's people and just some of their many high achievements! I can't wait to read some of the other material referenced in this book. This book is a "must have" for anyone interested in aero egines and racing history.

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