As the subject came up in thread drift in last month's thread on WW2 Luftwaffe capability to get within a few miles of the US eastern seaboard, I thought it best to start a new thread rather that tacking onto that after so long ... so here goes ...
From my posts #28 & 30 on the earlier thread:
...... and following the thread drift on aircraft engine lineage, is it true that RR scaled up Merlin/Gryphon superchargers to make the centrifugal compressor stages of their early jet engines?
...... All I need to do now is find a reference for the compressor design story .....
... which I can now do.
Even earlier than the Merlin or Griffon, the compressor design goes back to the RR Kestrel and R engines of Schneider Trophy fame. I quote from
The Power to Fly, by LJK Setright (Allen & Unwin 1971 - ISBN 0 04 338041 7), pp101-2. I quote at some length for the whole context and the joy of Leonard Setright's prose.
....but in 1931,when metallurgy and lubrication, fuel chemistry and supercharging occupied realms of black art rather than of pure science, the R set exceptional standards. It did more, for it set the pattern for future aero-engine development. There no longer remained any doubt that for a compact high-speed aircraft the liquid-cooled engine with in-line cylinders, minimal frontal area and low weight would, when combined with gear-driven supercharging and run at high rates of rotation, provide better results than any alternative power unit It provided dramatic proof of the value of forward-facing ram-air intakes; it provided a basis of knowledge of supercharging that persisted for so long that Rolls Royce's early and successful gas turbine aero engines (the Welland, Derwent and Nene) each used compressors of the same basic design scaled up to deliver a greater volume of air ....