Liquid Cooled Fighters? Or Air Cooled Fighters?

[xxmikexx]

Folks,

For what it's worth, the Wright Brothers invented the first aircraft engine. It had no cooling at all in the usual sense -- just pistons embedded in a large block of aluminum (I think it was) that acted as a heat sink. They got away with this for the Wright Flyer because the engine was not intended to run for extended periods of time.

Message: The Wright Brothers were the first true aeronautical engineers. They didn't simply cobble together an aircraft that happened to fly. Their engine design was specifically intended to increase the horsepower-to-weight ratio by decreasing the weight.

[Iceman07]

There was a quote from a P-51 Reno Racer (I don't remember who it was) when asked about how hard it was beating the round-engine racers, specifically the Sea Furies:

(sic) "We don't have any problem beating the Sea Furies, the problem is keeping our engines together while doing it"

As I remember, the modified P-51's had to run at something like 120% power, while the radials could run at 75% rated power.