The Fairey P.16 Prince was a British experimental 1,500 hp (1,118 kW) 16-cylinder H-type aircraft engine designed and built by Fairey in the late 1930s. The engine did not go into production.

Design and development

The Prince P.16 was a radical design by Captain A.G. Forsyth who was the Fairey company's chief engine designer. The Prince was an

H engine An H engine is a piston engine comprising two separate flat engines (complete with separate crankshafts), most often geared to a common output shaft. The name "H engine" is due to the engine blocks resembling a letter "H" when viewed from the fro ...

, similar in layout to the

Napier Rapier The Napier Rapier was a British 16-cylinder H pattern air-cooled aero engine designed by Frank Halford and built by Napier & Son shortly before World War II. Design and development The Rapier was the first of Napier's H cylinder engines. The ...

and later Napier Sabre. In an H engine, the cylinders are arranged vertically as two separate banks, each resembling a flat engine, and each with its own crankshaft, but sharing a common

block Block or blocked may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Broadcasting * Block programming, the result of a programming strategy in broadcasting * W242BX, a radio station licensed to Greenville, South Carolina, United States known as ''96.3 ...

. The crankshafts are then geared together to drive a common output shaft. While sharing a similar configuration, the Prince engine was more like a double- flat 8 engine, two engines sharing a common block, since rather than gearing the two crankshafts together, each had its own output shaft, driving

contra-rotating propellers Aircraft equipped with contra-rotating propellers, also referred to as CRP, coaxial contra-rotating propellers, or high-speed propellers, apply the maximum power of usually a single piston or turboprop engine to drive a pair of coaxial propell ...

via separate shafts and gears. Each bank of cylinders could be shut down in flight to drive only one propeller, an idea that was reused much later in the

Armstrong Siddeley Double Mamba The Armstrong Siddeley Double Mamba is a turboprop engine design developed in the late 1940s of around . It was used mostly on the Fairey Gannet anti-submarine aircraft developed for the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy. Design and developmen ...

turboprop A turboprop is a turbine engine that drives an aircraft propeller. A turboprop consists of an intake, reduction gearbox, compressor, combustor, turbine, and a propelling nozzle. Air enters the intake and is compressed by the compressor. ...

. The engine was test flown in a

Fairey Battle The Fairey Battle is a British single-engine light bomber that was designed and manufactured by the Fairey Aviation Company. It was developed during the mid-1930s for the Royal Air Force (RAF) as a monoplane successor to the Hawker Hart and ...

. The idea came from the desire to deliver high power in a reliable form for naval use. A conventional twin engined aircraft can provide more power than a single, and if an engine fails it can remain airborne on the remaining engine. Unfortunately, a conventional twin could not be designed so that it came within the size limits for aircraft carrier use on the cramped vessels of the era, even with wing folding; by combining two engines into a single engine block, each powering an independently-driven propeller installed fore-and-aft as contra-rotating units, you could get the power and engine-out safety of a twin engine aircraft in the envelope of a single engine aircraft. The added benefits included no dangerous asymmetrical thrust if one unit fails, as happens in a conventional twin that loses an engine, and the drag of both engine nacelles can be eliminated and combined within the cross-section of the fuselage.

Applications

Variants

*P.16 Prince 3 or Prince H-16S 1,540 hp (1,148 kW)

Specifications (P.16 Prince 3)

References

Notes

Bibliography

* Gunston, Bill. ''World Encyclopedia of Aero Engines''. Cambridge, England. Patrick Stephens Limited, 1989. * Lumsden, Alec. ''British Piston Engines and their Aircraft''. Marlborough, Wiltshire: Airlife Publishing, 2003. .

External links

Flightglobal archive - Image of Fairey Prince
{{Aeroengine-specs Prince (H-16) 1930s aircraft piston engines