Aviation Engines

Dogfights have always attracted attention. Since the First World War, their participants have been considered heroes, stories have been written about nothing, and they have become idols of generations. However, the reality of air combat is much more prosaic. Whatever the motivation of the pilots to fight, there was always a winner on one side and a loser on the other in a crippled or burning plane falling to the ground. This series deals with the struggle from their beginning to the modern age, when the sky is steadily ruled by jet engines.

The Great War continues and planes fly everywhere. They fly low because, although it is already known about aircraft engine blowers and even turbochargers, they are not used for engines and at that time they have no special meaning. But everyone wants to climb higher! To fly higher without supercharging systems, we need to give the cylinders more air. The basic solution is to increase the volume of the cylinder. In this case, however, the weight of the engine and its dimensions increase. Is it possible to prevent this?

The Achilles heel of the Soviet aviation industry was the production of aircraft engines. Until 1917, the technical policy of the Russian government was based on the purchase of aircraft engines abroad and on the licensed production of French engines. Engines of our own design were practically not produced. During the civil war, the situation in this area deteriorated sharply due to the lack of qualified engineers and workers and the economic blockade of the country by Western states.

Even before A.M. Ljulka started working on the jet engine, similar work was done in England and Germany, that the first jet engines were tested here in 1937 and the first flight of the jet engine took place in Germany in 1939. But all this happened in deep secrecy. So A.M. Ljulka went this route alone and is rightly considered the founder of the development of jet engines in the USSR.

The Kuznetsov NK-12 is a Soviet turboprop engine of the 1950s, designed by the Kuznetsov design bureau. The NK-12 drives two large four-bladed contra-rotating propellers, 5.6 m (18 ft) diameter (NK-12MA), and 6.2 m (20 ft) diameter (NK-12MV). It is the most powerful turboprop engine to enter service.