Yeah, it won bob and whole war for germs... oh sorry, it didn't...



The complex engine management looks promising, but I'm afraid it could discourage many less patient ppl from going full real. Looks good anyway.

..apparently it was enough to roll into Poland in a few weeks though :rolleyes:

I bet you're from germany.

No I'm not, I just stated a fact, whilst you made a statement that had nothing to do with the quality of the engines.. :rolleyes:

It was... stating lightly, in an indirect way, that the quality of an engine, while extremly important for tech geeks, does not guarantee victory in an air battle ;-)
You apparently can't stand when someone does not admire the oh how very awesome engineering achievements of the III reich, so you hit the nationalism string, hoping to embarass me?
Have more> ;-)

Now let's go back on topic.

I tried to google it, but I didn't find anything relevant.. :(
Sounds really interesting!

Just because it was more complicated doesn't mean it was superior. Any engine configuration with inverted cylinders tends to trap oil and other fluids in the inverted cylinder heads, leading to hydraulic lock on ignition and other fun things. There are reasons why there is only one surviving DB60X engine.

erm, no, we were not talking about victory in air battles here, we were talking about the quality of engines, sorry dear..
I have an engineering background and a degree in history, and if there's something I can't stand is when people make stupid comments like yours. My stupid answer about your country being invaded in a few weeks was just to keep on the same tone of your stupid statement about "oh it was worse but hey it won the war".. uh and just for the sake of numbers, if you do some maths you will see how the Luftwaffe was proportionally more effective than most of the other air forces involved in WW2, just for the sake of argument..

I'm not a nazi, I just hate lack of objectiveness because of cheap "hey we won!" propaganda..

yeah it was overheard in a museum, I doubt you'd find any info on the net :(

well actually the DB engines weren't more complex. The inverted cylinders solution had its valid reasons:

1) improved fwd visibility: your nose section is tapered upwards and your exhausts are not bang in your face like on the Merlin.

2) better protection of injection system: Hurris and Spits caught fire like torches because of the inlet pipes being on top of the engines, in a very vulnerable position. In the DB engines they were under the engine, in a more protected area.

3) Room for cannon: the space below the engine meant you could actually fit a big ass cannon on the plane axis, which was accurate being in the roll axis and wouldn't affect manouverability like cannons on wings. The narrow section on the top meant easy installation of machineguns very close to the roll axis as well.

4) oil recovery on the DB engine is quite clever and efficient.


the fact that there aren't many DB engines in working order surviving today is for two simple reasons: spare parts availability and airframes to be fitted to. Merlin and P&W engines were produced and maintained well after WW2 and there are still factories and maintenance shops that keep or produce spare parts stock. The engineering of the components is quite a sophisticated thing to do (see if you can find the assembly diagram of a DB crankshaft to have an idea of what I'm talking about), and if there's not a market request for it then there's no market, simple..