Radial Engine Round Up – Military Single Engined Aircraft

Photos by Tim Adams, Scott Jankowski, Del Laughery, Don Linn, Bob Finch and Ken Kula

Radial aircraft engines have been around since the beginning of powered flight. Usually, air cooled cylinders are attached in a circular pattern around the crankshaft. This leads to a wider engine design, but the depth of it is not a major issue unless multiple banks of cylinders are “stacked” upon each other.  Two other styles of engines are: In-line engines, which differ from radials as the in-line motor cylinders are cooled by a liquid, and the engine design is normally longer and Rotary engines – popular during the early 1900s, they fell out of favor rapidly due to cooling and lubrication complexities associated with a rotating bank of cylinders, which radial and in-line engines do not have. 

Radial engines tend to be lighter than similar horsepower in-line designs because of the lack of liquid cooling system equipment. It is said that parts in a radial engine wear longer too, reportedly because there’s less vibration in a radial design.   

Photorecon.net will run four scrapbooks with photos of aircraft powered with radial engines. This first one will feature military single engine designs, followed by single engined civilian designs. We’ll then run two more collections with multi-engine use in both civilian and military aircraft. 

Sopwith Triplane (replica) – original airframes were powered by a Clerget rotary engine, whose air-cooled cylinders rotated around the crankshaft. While not a true radial engine, for purposes of this article we’ll say that a rotary engine is closer to a radial than to an in-line engine.

The original Consolidated Vultee L-13A design had a Franklin in-line engine. Several subsequent conversions inserted either a Jacobs, Wright, Pratt and Whitney, or in this case, a Lycoming radial engine for improved performance. This is known as a Caribbean Traders Husky II.

World War II vintage Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber was powered by a Wright Cyclone radial engine.

T-28s are powered with a Wright R-1820 engine

Goodyear Vought F2G Super Corsair was equipped with a Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major 28-cylinder engine. 

A Russian-built Polikarpov I-153, powered by a Shvetsov M-62 radial engine. This aircraft was restored and flown in 1998 in New Zealand after recovery in Russia.

The Douglas AD/A-1 Skyraider is powered by an 18-cylinder Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone radial engine.

 A Westland Whirlwind HAR.10 resplendent in Air Sea Rescue colors. The engine inside is an Alvis Leonides Major 755 14-cylinder two-row radial.

Curtiss Hawk Model H75A, exported to France before World War II was powered by a Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp radial.

This replica Flug+Werk Focke Wulf FW-190A-8 is powered by a Chinese-built Shvetsov Ash-82FN of Russian design. Original FW-190s were powered by a BMW 801 model radial.