PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Is there a DC7C Flight Engineer in the house ?
Old 7th Apr 2017, 13:36
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WHBM
 
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Wright never really had the resources to sort out the Turbo-Compound, although airframers continued to buy it, just because it packed more power into the space than P&W managed. Of course, in the way of the 1940s-50s, each time they appeared to get to grips with something a higher power version was launched and problems continued.

But the issues by the time of the DC7C were nothing compared to those of the B29 in the Pacific in WW2, with earlier versions of the same engine. Read a fascinating detailed account by a subsequent US 1960s airline pilot of the issues he had experienced with the B29 Superfortress, where almost as many men were lost to B29 catastrophic engine failures as to enemy action. Apparently at Guam there was a forward maintenance base where they just junked failed/seized/blown Turbo-Compounds in a huge heap, getting to about 20 feet high, engines being added to the top by a large fork-lift.

I don't think Boeing ever used a Wright engine again after the wartime B29.
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