Didn't Napier design some beautiful engines. I'd love to hear a Sabre roaring along in the snout of a Tempest. I think the Tempest being restored at the moment is a Centaurus powered beastie (Mk II?)
A bit off topic but can somebody verify if the following is true:
The Sabre had a bad reputation with the RAF who imposed a 25 hours TBO on it. Napiers reckoned it was because the engine fitters couldn't break the habits learned on Merlins and weren't setting the engines up correctly. To prove their point Napiers put a Sabre on a test bed and ran it for 3,000 hours. Continuously. Needless to say this was as water off a duck's back to the RAF who continued to overhaul their Sabres after 25 hours. I know that the demands put on an engine in combat don't bear much resemblance to a continuous bench run but 25 hours????