Friday Update, March 2, 2012

[Art-J]

According to Bill Gunston's "Development of Piston Aero Engines" indeed, Mikulin engines series had origins in licenced BMW VI (although the history of this cooperation dates back to late '20s). The book doesn't say when and how V-1710 was born, but I'd say it also was late '20s / early '30s design, after all it powered Acron and Macon airships didn't it? Was it also based on BMW VI however? I don't know.

Cheers.

[robtek]

I know it because one of the meier brothers (www.meiermotors.com) told that when they were calibrating the valves on a allison v1710 his old trainer came by to visit, looked over his shoulder and said :Ahh, a BMW. when meier answered : No, its a Allison, and his old trainer reparted: you can tell me a lot, but this is for shure a BMW.
As a matter of fact, when working on the Yak-7 and Yak-3 the original engine mountings from the AM engines could be used without any alterations to mount the Allison engine.
In the early 30's BMW had this airship engine ready, but it was decided at higher state offices that BMW should build radials instead inline engines.
So BMW sold the patents to Allison, who had urgently needed money and no engine, and bought the patents for the Wright R-2600 radial, which developed on the german side to the BMW 801 and on the russian side to the Ash-82.
So as one can see, the war of states is very different of the war of companies.