Mighty Motor

In East Hartford, Conn, last week a two-year-old Vought Corsair biplane scuttled along a runway, picked up its tail and leaped aloft after an amazingly short take-off run of 50 yd. The pilot whipped the plane into a vertical bank, streaked back at 225 m.p.h. The roar of the motor, one newshawk said afterward, was the deepest note he had ever heard from an aircraft engine. This engine was Pratt & Whitney's new 1830 Wasp, described by its makers as the most powerful ever developed for standard service in the U. S. Before the flight demonstration another 1830 Wasp on a test block made spectators' ears throb, shook their bellies.

The engine has 14 cylinders, in two circles of seven each, one circle behind the other. The power at normal maximum is 1,000 h.p.; at "emergency" maximum, 1,150 h.p. The engine weighs 1,250 lb., or only 1.09 lb. per horsepower, a record low. Air-cooled, it has 21,000 sq. in. of cooling fin surface.

Since radial air-cooled engines began to supplant other types, their power has been steadily stepped up by supercharging, higher compression, stronger parts and fuels with higher octane rating. Pratt & Whitney began to think that not much more could be asked of radial engines in single nine-cylinder banks. Since 1929 they have been tinkering with 14 cylinders in two banks, with smaller bores and lighter, more frequent power impulses.

The Navy likes the Wasp 1830 so much that it has ordered 200, banned their export. Last week's demonstration was in the nature of a release for U. S. commercial use. United Airlines, which sets as much store by Pratt & Whitney power plants as American Airlines does by the famed Wright Cyclones, has ordered 26 of the 1830's for its fleet of 24-passenger Douglas sleeper planes (TIME, March 16).

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