Rolls-Royce aircraft piston engines

In 1915, the Eagle, Falcon, and Hawk engines were developed in response to wartime needs. The Eagle was very successful, especially for bombers. It was scaled down by a factor of 5:4 to make the Falcon or by deleting one bank of its V12 cylinders to make the Hawk. The smaller engines were intended for fighter aircraft. Subsequently, it was enlarged to make the Condor which saw use in airships.[1]

The Rolls-Royce Kestrel

The Kestrel was a post-war redesign of the Eagle featuring wet cylinder liners in (two) common cylinder blocks. It was developed into the supercharged Peregrine and later the Goshawk.[2]

Developed concurrently with the Kestrel was the unusual Rolls-Royce Eagle XVI X engine that was cancelled in favour of the Kestrel despite performing well on the test stand.

The Buzzard was an enlargement of the Kestrel [3] of Condor size, developed in its most extreme form into the Rolls-Royce R racing engine used for the Schneider Trophy competition.[4]

The Vulture of 1939 was essentially two Peregrines on a common crankshaft in an X-24 configuration, both of these types being deemed unsuccessful.[5]

The Rolls-Royce Merlin, and later the development of the Buzzard, the Rolls-Royce Griffon were the two most successful designs for Rolls-Royce to serve in the Second World War, the Merlin powering RAF fighters the Hawker Hurricane, Supermarine Spitfire, fighter/bomber de Havilland Mosquito, Lancaster and Halifax heavy bombers and also allied aircraft such as the American P-51 Mustang and some marks of Kittyhawk.

Experimental engines were developed as alternatives for high performance aircraft such as the H-24 configuration Rolls-Royce Eagle 22,[6] the two-stroke Rolls-Royce Crecy[7] and the Rolls-Royce Pennine[8] and Rolls-Royce Exe, the Exe being the only one of these last three engines to fly.[9] However the successful development of the Merlin and Griffon, and the introduction of jet engines precluded significant production of these types.

Production of Rolls-Royce designed aircraft piston engines ceased in 1955 with the last variants of the Griffon.[10] Between 1961 and 1981 Rolls-Royce was licensed to build the Teledyne Continental range of light aircraft piston engines including the Continental O-520.[11]

As of 2017 examples of the Falcon, Griffon, Kestrel and Merlin remain airworthy.[12]

Various types of Rolls-Royce aircraft piston engines are on public display at the following museums:

• Fleet Air Arm Museum
• Imperial War Museum Duxford
• Lone Star Flight Museum
• Midland Air Museum
• Royal Air Force Museum Cosford
• Royal Air Force Museum London
• Science Museum (London)
• Shuttleworth Collection

[13]

1915 Rolls-Royce Eagle V-12

The Rolls-Royce Merlin

• Rolls-Royce Eagle (V-12)
• Rolls-Royce Hawk
• Rolls-Royce Falcon
• Rolls-Royce Condor
• Rolls-Royce Eagle XVI (X-16)
• Rolls-Royce Kestrel
• Rolls-Royce Buzzard
• Rolls-Royce Goshawk
• Rolls-Royce R
• Rolls-Royce Peregrine
• Rolls-Royce Merlin
• Rolls-Royce Exe
• Rolls-Royce Vulture
• Rolls-Royce Crecy
• Rolls-Royce Griffon
• Rolls Royce Eagle (H-24)
• Rolls-Royce Pennine

• Ernest Hives
• Stanley Hooker
• Cyril Lovesey
• Arthur Rowledge
• Arthur Rubbra
• Packard V-1650

Related lists

• List of aircraft engines

• Bill Gunston, Development of Piston Aero Engines. Cambridge, England. Patrick Stephens Limited, 2006. ISBN 0-7509-4478-1
• Bill Gunston, Rolls-Royce Aero Engines, Patrick Stephens Limited (Haynes Group) ISBN 1-85260-037-3
• Sir Stanley Hooker, Not Much of an Engineer, Airlife Publishing, ISBN 0-906393-35-3
• Pugh, Peter. The Magic of a Name - The Rolls-Royce Story - The First 40 Years. Cambridge, England. Icon Books Ltd, 2000. ISBN 1-84046-151-9

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Rolls-Royce piston aircraft engines.

• Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust
• "From Eagle to Merlin" a 1939 Flight article