The Bramo 323 Fafnir was a 9-cylinder radial aircraft engine of the World War II era. Based heavily on Siemens/Bramo's earlier experience producing the Bristol Jupiter under license, the engine was not particularily modern and saw limited use. Radial engine of a biplane. ... The term aircraft engine, for the purposes of this article, refers to aircraft reciprocating, or rotary, internal combustion engines as opposed to jet engines or turboprops. ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ... Siemens AG (NYSE: SI) is the worlds largest electronics company. ... Siemens-Schuckert was a German aircraft company that built a number of designs in World War I and inter-war era. ... Bristol Jupiter engine The Jupiter was a 9 cylinder one_row radial aircraft engine designed during World War I by Roy Fedden of Cosmos Engineering. ...

Development of the 323 started as an enlarged version of the Jupiter, developing it from the original into the "Germanized" Sh.20 and Sh.21 in 1929. The design was then bored out to produce the 950hp Sh.22 in 1930. Like the Jupiter, the Sh.22 featured a rather "old" looking arrangment with rather prominant valve pushrods on the front of the engine. In the mid-1930s the RLM rationalized engine naming and Bramo was given the 300-block of numbers, the Sh.14 and Sh.22 becoming the Bramo 314 and 322 respectively. Reichsluftfahrtministerium (Reich Aviation Ministry / German Air Ministry / German Aviation Administration) Note: If you are looking for the RLM-GL/C list, please go to List of RLM aircraft designations The Reich Air Ministry (Reichsluftfahrtministerium or RLM), was a German civil service organization in charge of development and production of aircraft...

The 322 never matured and remained unreliable during introduction. The team continued work on the basic design, adding fuel injection and a new supercharger. The resulting engine was just under 27 l in displacement, and produced 900 hp at 2,500 RPM for takeoff, improving slightly to 1,000 hp at 10,200 ft. The reduced power at sea level was inevitable for engines with mechanically-driven superchargers when they were regulated to a constant maximum boost pressure below their critical altitude. Fuel injection is a technology used in internal combustion engines to mix the fuel with air prior to combustion. ... For other meanings, see supercharger (disambiguation) A supercharger (sometimes called a blower), a positive displacement or centrifugal pump, is a gas compressor used to pump air into the cylinders of an internal combustion engine. ... Displacement can have one of several meanings: Displacement (distance), a physical quantity in kinematics; Particle displacement, acoustics of sound in air. ...

The original 322 design was produced in A and B models, differing in the direction they turned. The engines were intended to be installed in A/B pairs, thereby eliminating engine torque across a twin-engine aircraft. The original versions were also supplied in the C and D models, which featured a lower supercharger gearing for better performance at lower altitudes, improving takeoff power to 1,000 hp, but reducing the critical altitude.

The final versions, P, R and T, featured a two-speed supercharger for better all-round performance. This allowed it to generate 1,000 hp at sea level as in the C/D models, but improved altitude performance considerably, delivering 940 hp at 13,120 ft. The R-2 subtype added MW 50 water-methanol injection for added low-altitude performance, boosting power to 1,200 hp at 2,600 RPM. MW 50 was a 50-50 mixture of methanol and water (thus the name) that was sprayed into the supercharger of German aircraft engines primarily for its anti-detonant effect, allowing the use of increased boost pressures. ...

The Fafnir powered a number of German pre-war designs, including the Focke-Wulf Fw 200, Henschel Hs 126, Dornier Do 24 and Dornier Do 17, as well as the Focke-Achgelis Fa 223 helicopter. It's fairly poor fuel economy kept it from more widespread use, and most designs chose the similar BMW 132 instead, who's specific fuel consumption varied between .50 and .54 lb/hp/hr depending on model, whereas the early versions of the Fafnir got about .57 lb/hp/hr, a poor figure for the era. The C/D's, where the supercharger used less power, improved this to .51, but were only useful at lower altitudes. The Focke-Wulf Fw 200 was a four engine airliner. ... The Henschel Hs 126 was a Luftwaffe reconnaissance aircraft of World War II. It was used mostly for short range photographic duties over the Maginot Line. ... The Dornier Do 24 flying-boat was originally designed for Netherlands service, and part of the original Netherlands order was built under licence by Aviolanda and powered by Curtiss-Wright Cyclone engines. ... The Dornier Do 17, sometimes referred to as the Bleistift (pencil) by its pilots, was a World War II light bomber produced by Dornier that was used for a short time by the Luftwaffe. ... A helicopter is an aircraft which is lifted and propelled by one or more large horizontal rotors (propellers). ... The BMW 132 was a nine-cylinder radial aircraft engine produced by BMW starting in 1933. ... Specific fuel consumption, often shortened to SFC, is an engineering term that is used to describe the fuel efficiency of an engine design. ...

BMW bought Bramo in 1939 and continued production to supply the small number of designs that already used it, notably the Do 17. The naming at this point becomes somewhat confusing, with BMW, Bramo and Fafnir being used almost interchangably. 5,500 were produced before the lines were shut down in 1944.

Specifications

For BMW 323A:

Layout: Nine-cylinder air-cooled radial.

Cylinders: Bore: 154mm Stroke: 160mm (6" x 6.3")

Displacement: 26.82 litres (1,637 cubic inches)

Compression ratio: 6.4 : 1

Dimensions: Length: 1420mm Diameter: 1388mm

Weight: 550kg dry (1,210 lbs)

Power: 900 hp at sea level, 1000hp at 10,200 ft

Specific fuel consumption: 0.572 lb/hp/hr