Quote:
Originally Posted by DtheP47
Pratt and Witney continued with radial engines post war Barrie. The Boeing 377 Stratocruiser motored along behind four P&W R-4360 Wasp Majors, crossing the oceans at will and with high confidence, if not quite at the flight levels we are accustomed to today. A good many military type aircraft too were built with the large 3-row and 4-row post-war radial engines.
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Quite true, they were never able to come up with a decent liquid cooled engine , most of their aircraft used radial engines. The P-51, one of the best of them all because of it's range was because they changed the original Allison engine to a Merlin - the same applied to the -P-38 & P-40, although I am not sure that the P-38 was ever re-engined.
Having said that, the radial engines were good and could take more punishment e.g. flak, than a liquid cooled engine.