Hi JD
I think its fair to say that Westlands gearbox design heritage is just a bit more comprehensive than your rather dismissive comments. Some of it, of course, having come from other companies prior to the enforced mergings of the late 50s from Britol, Fairey, Saunders Roe etc.
That said, the award winning conformal gearing design made for the Lynx was quite a triumph in the way extra power could be transferred across the gear teeth thus allowing the gear box height and overall dimensions to be substantially reduced. This is not possible in the Fiat sourced "sun and planet" style box (a la Sea King) which inherently means a more vertical orientated design and lower power to weight ratio.
While the accident rate of the W30 certainly contibuted to its demise , I think mostncommentators would also point to Westlands poor perfromance in commercial product support at the time..certainly in the civilian arena.
What your message also misses is reference to the major potential impact of the world beating WEstland Advanced Engineering Gearbox ( AEG) design which aimed to make fundamental changes in how power and torque was to be transmitted through the MRG components. The casing design (made of composites) aimed to transfer most of those stresses through that casing rather than at the gear teeth. This in turn meant a significant increase in power to weight potential, as well as much reduced fatigue loadings and hence safety improvements. Further benefits would not only be a smaller MRG for the given power but also a much shorter one. The rig prototypes as far as I understand it, were well on the way to proving the concept - I witnessed one of the runs myself, and of course, the RAF's version of the W30....to meet ASR404 (Puma/Wessex replacement) in the mid 80s was to have this MRG design.
I also Understand that the WG34 concept envisaged using the AEG at a later stage, and as has been said earlier in this thread, when the RN ASW version was envisaged, use of this AEG was seen as offering a route to full mission performance as originally specified. A combination of bi-national workshare allocation and the gross early 101 cost overuns put paid to a later Merlin Mk2, this had beem sign posted with the earlier cancellation of the RAF W30-404, which would have been the first use of this world beating MRG design.
Had EH101 had the AEG in its design (and it had worked!) then we would not be discussing the 101's low payload ratio at all, as the gearbox itself would have been much lighter than the MRG design used, not under as much component stress, and the RTMs could have been used to their power potential at better sfcs. Oh and another bonus is that the overall height of the beast would have been several feet less! Problem is that the several £100M to get it sorted was never forthcoming.
....now anyone want to discuss which squadron numberplates will survive the transfer?
