Jack Stafford (c/o Geriaviator):-
THE NAPIER Sabre engine in my Typhoon roared
Napier and Son should be better known as an industrial, marine, rail, and aero engine manufacturer than they are in the British consciousness in my view. They were forever at the leading edge of technology, utilising H blocks, sleeve valves, opposed pistons and deltoid layouts in order to ever increase the available power. If they had one weakness it might be said that they were too clever for their own good, but that could be said of anyone pushing at the constraints of the envelope. Reliability thus suffered and even in military use that could be said to be almost as important as performance.
No doubt we will hear more of that from Jack Stafford, but a company that successfully adapted the pre war Junkers Jumo aircraft diesel engines (under licence) into the post war Deltic engine for the BR diesel electric locos of the same name had something going for it. By this time they had been taken over by English Electric, they in turn by GEC, they in turn by Alstrom, thence to Siemens, and were then subject to a management buyout.
The Deltic was the end of the road for Napier as an engine manufacturer, and it is now reduced to the making of turbochargers under Wabtec. A case of how the mighty are fallen, or par for the course for a UK manufacturer? Either way my take would have been to "keep it simple, stupid", but I'm only an ex-driver airframe. Perhaps our resident engineers would care to comment (and no doubt take issue with my unjustified generalisations)?
I should add that my info is trawled as ever from Wiki:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier_%26_Son