262 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1962 



Large quantities of the "Liberty-12" engine were produced by the 

 automobile companies, including Packard, Ford, Lincoln, and some 

 General Motors divisions. It was used by the British as well as by 

 the U.S. Air Service and Navy. Engine production was far ahead 

 of airplane production in this country, and at the end of the war 

 many thousands of these engines were on hand. Many were sold at 

 low prices to "rum runners" and were very successfully used in run- 

 ning liquor through the Coast Guard blockade along the Atlantic and 

 Pacific coasts during the prohibition period. During these years the 

 Coast Guard had no "requirement" for a light and powerful marine 

 engine, and their motor boats were far outclassed by the "Liberty"- 

 equipped bootleggers' craft. 



The "Liberty" engine remained important in U.S. Army and Navy 

 aviation well into the 1930's. This engine was used in the NC boats 

 with a special economical carburetor setting developed at the Wash- 

 ington Navy Yard. NC-4 was, of course, the first aircraft to cross 

 the Atlantic, May 16-17, 1919 « The "Liberty" was also the first 

 engine to fly nonstop across the American Continent (in the Fokker 

 "T-2," May 2-3, 1923, piloted by Kelly and McCready). Also, in a 

 turbo-supercharged version, it held the world's altitude records in 

 1920, 1921, and 1922, and powered the first flight around the world in 

 1924. 



From a technical viewpoint, the outstanding airplane engine during 

 World War I was undoubtedly the "Hispano-Suiza" V-8 (pi. 11, fig. 

 1, text fig. 8, and table 1) , built first in Barcelona by a Swiss engineer, 

 Marc Birkigt, It was adopted for French fighters in 1915 and used 

 in the "Spad" 7 and 13, perhaps the best fighters of World War I. 



Tlie basic contribution of Birldgt to engine design was the en-bloc 

 cylinder construction wdth a cast-aluminum water jacket containing 

 steel cylinder barrels and with enclosed and lubricated valves and 

 valve gear.® The success of this engine started a revolution in liquid- 

 cooled engine design which culminated m the Rolls-Royce "Kestrel" 

 and "Merlin," via the Curtiss K-12, C-12, and D-12 engines. It was 

 also the prototype for the "Mercedes" and "Junkers" engines which 

 were the backbone of the 1940-45 German Luftwaffe, together with 

 en-bloc Russian, Japanese, and Italian designs. By 1917 "Hispano- 

 Suiza" engines were being built in England and the U.S.A., as well as 

 in France. 



The only weakness in the early "Hispano-Suiza" engines, by stand- 

 ards of the time, was a tendency toward exhaust-valve burning. This 



8 The first nonstop Atlantic crossing was by Alcock and Brown, about a month later, 

 June 14-15, 1919, using two Rolls-Royce "Eagle" engines, also with welded-cylinder con- 

 struction (see pi. 10, fig. 1). 



» It will be recalled that the Wright brothers also used crude aluminum en-bloc water- 

 jacket construction on their No. 1 engine. Subsequent engines, however, had separate 

 cylinders. 



