How to say, since the birth of aircraft engines, whether in this plane or history, the British aircraft engines were at their worst... Even after the Cold War, what about Japan? At least from the moment, Japan's high-performance aircraft engines are still completely in the stage of assembly of incoming materials! That's right, assembling, even processing of incoming materials is not considered a matter of evil. The most evil thing is that you can assemble the Japanese's complete cylinders, oil supply equipment, and cooling equipment, but if you give the Japanese spark plugs, fuel nozzles, bearings, etc., then they will not assemble well...

The Japanese have tried hard, but their ideals are full and reality is skinny. They want to imitate British engines. Considering that although the liquid-cooled engine has the advantages of small resistance and better heat dissipation, the structure is relatively complex and the damage resistance is poor. Therefore, the Japanese chose to imitate the air-cooled engine with simple and solid results. You should know that the first engine that the Japanese imitated in history was Bristol's Saturn engine, which is an air-cooled engine. Is this right? From an industrial and technical perspective, it is correct, but in fact, the Japanese's choice has tricked themselves!

The first engine imitation of the Japanese was not particularly excellent, the British clerget 9b 9-cylinder star-cooled engine. To be honest, the performance of this engine is really not great. This engine weighs 173kg only has an output of 130 to 140 horsepower, the maximum engine speed is only 1250 rpm, and the power-weight ratio is only 0.556kw/kg. It is considered to be a relatively poor British engine.

If you want to talk about it, for example, the British liberty-12 v12 liquid-cooled engine weighs only 383.3kg, and the output is as high as 450 horsepower! The speed also reaches 2,000 rpm! The weight is as high as 0.87kw/kg! The latter is obviously the crown of British engines! The former is actually a low-end product!

When choosing this engine, the Japanese Navy and Army also expressed extreme dissatisfaction. After all, in this plane, the engine power of German late-stage fighter jets is above 175 horsepower! If you take into account ground attacks, you can jump to more than 400 horsepower! The engine chosen by the Japanese industry is obviously unbearable for the Japanese Navy and Army, which pursues the high-end. This thing is so backward! So much so that Yamamoto said that Japan's first engine was already lagging behind before it was produced!

However, the final result was surprising. The performance of the Japanese version of the engine produced by the Japanese with a full set of drawings and molds can be described as a tragedy. The problems include, but are not limited to, the cylinder life is too short, the engine speed is unstable, the heat sink processing is not qualified, the spark plug is abnormally coking, engine vibration of unknown reasons, air parking and fire... Among the first batch of trial production engines, as many as 18 aircraft crashed due to engine problems! In fact, there were only 30 first batch of trial production engines...

So, the Japanese were shocked and frightened! With an hourly salary of up to 5 pounds per hour, the Japanese finally invited experts from British Airways engines. What is the concept of an hourly salary of 5 pounds per hour? According to 8 hours a day, it is 40 pounds a day, and if you don’t have a rest in a month, it is 1,200 pounds! At that time, a British MK tank was only 5,000 pounds!

According to the Japanese understanding, there were original British drawings and molds before, but now with original British engineers, the problems can always be solved, right? The British professional and technical personnel with an hourly salary of up to 5 pounds are indeed very powerful, and soon discovered many problems in the Japanese industry, including but not limited to too large casting tolerances, unqualified parts heat treatment, insufficient mechanical strength, and low fuel octane number, etc.! And it is said that it will take a "long time" to solve these problems.

Then the Japanese decided to replace the engines with British goods if the performance of their own engines does not meet the standards. Logically, it should be too late to reach this point. After using the original British air-cooled engine, the troops responded well, but then, when these aircraft were deployed to the Philippines and Guinea, the problem arose again! The stability and life of the engines plummeted. In this regard, the explanation given by British experts is that under the current technical conditions, the high-humidity and salinity of tropical air is very unfriendly to air-cooled engines! There is no way, the temperature is too high, and the heat dissipation efficiency will definitely be affected!

So, in the end, the British experts gave a suggestion that the Japanese could try to replace the liquid-cooled engine... So, this was embarrassing! For the British, although it was just a battle, both liquid-cooled and air-cooled engines were systemic, and even when designing the aircraft, the problem of liquid-cooled and air-cooled exchange was considered in special circumstances. However, for Japan, it would take "long time" to build a relatively low-level air-cooled engine. What's more, liquid-cooled engines?

Faced with the tragic situation where the war could start at any time in the next year, the Japanese had no choice but to decide to increase the import volume of engines and solve the heart problems of the Japanese air force by "stocking up" a large amount of goods before the war. Therefore, this time, Kikujiro Ishii's first strategic goal in this negotiation was to purchase as many aircraft engines and accessories as possible! And convince the British to continue to provide related products during the war.

"If all these plans can be realized, the engine problem of the Japanese Air Force during the war should be solved, right?" Ishii Kikujiro said this in his heart last night before finalizing the final negotiation plan. But is this really the case? It can only be said that it is possible! With the continuous advancement of technology, the performance of the product itself is indeed very important, but the maintenance and maintenance of equipment and related teams have also become very important! The Japanese may be able to stock up on a large scale to meet the Air Force's engine needs on paper, but you must know that the engine needs to be maintained, which requires a large number of professional talents and teams to effectively maintain these precision equipment. The Japanese can stock up on engines, but what should I do if the urgently needed professional talents?

In fact, not only the Japanese people need to face this problem. Even in history, in World War II, some equipment will be replaced by different environments and maintenance issues, causing the combat readiness to decline. For example, from the Pacific battlefield to the European battlefield. After arriving in Europe, during winter combat, the p38 was affected by the cold and humid air of Europe, resulting in the reduction of combat readiness. The British and German air forces fighting in Africa were also very passive by the local desert climate. Of course, all this has nothing to do with Kikujiro Ishii now, and he has only really started his work today!
Chapter completed!