Aeronautics: Aviation Powerplants

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of the rotary engine was used in the most famous aircraft of the war: The Fokker Dr.1 Triplane flown by Baron Von Richtofen. A unique feature of these engines is that they had no throttle, but ran at a constant speed. Also the cylinders were not fixed in place as one might expect. They instead rotated around a fixed crankshaft. The propeller was attached to the cylinders. The advantage of this configuration was lowered production time and elimination of a costly and vulnerable cooling system. Speed control was gained by cutting the fuel supply and thus shutting down the engine. The engine would retain enough momentum to allow the pilot to simply turn back on the fuel system and restart the engine to get power. Rotary and small inline engines soon gave way to the large Radial engines of World War 2. These were configured in a radial pattern similar to that of Rotary engines. They, however do not have a fixed crankshaft but instead directly spin the propeller from a moving ...

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