The Bristol Titan was a British five-cylinder air-cooled radial engine, designed and built by the

Bristol Aeroplane Company The Bristol Aeroplane Company, originally the British and Colonial Aeroplane Company, was both one of the first and one of the most important British aviation companies, designing and manufacturing both airframes and aircraft engines. Notable a ...

in the late 1920s. It had the same size cylinders as the earlier

Bristol Mercury The Bristol Mercury is a British nine-cylinder, air-cooled, single-row, piston radial engine. Designed by Roy Fedden of the Bristol Aeroplane Company it was used to power both civil and military aircraft of the 1930s and 1940s. Developed from ...

engine, (displacing ), and produced between . Later versions of the Bristol Titan also used a Farman-style reduction gear produced by Gnome-Rhône.

Design and development

The engine was designed as a five-cylinder radial, to use as many parts of the

Bristol Jupiter The Bristol Jupiter was a British nine-cylinder single-row piston radial engine built by the Bristol Aeroplane Company. Originally designed late in World War I and known as the Cosmos Jupiter, a lengthy series of upgrades and developments turn ...

as possible. Cylinders, pistons, articulated connecting rods, crankshaft and other minor parts were interchangeable with the Jupiter.Flight International 5 July 1928
/ref> The major significance of the Titan was that it was licensed to Gnome-Rhône and became the pattern for the ''Gnome-Rhône 5B and 5K''. In 1927 Gnome-Rhône was looking for ways out of its licence agreement with Bristol for the Jupiter engine of 1920 and began to produce the Gnome-Rhône 5B and 5K without royalties. Gnome-Rhône was not satisfied with simply producing Bristol designs under licence, and started a major design effort based around the mechanics of the Titan engine. The results were introduced in 1927 as the K-series, spanning the Gnome-Rhône 5K Titan, the seven-cylinder Gnome-Rhône 7K Titan Major, and the nine-cylinder Gnome-Rhône 9K Mistral. With the introduction of the K-series, Gnome-Rhône finally ended royalty payments to Bristol, the Gnome-Rhône 5K being built in much greater numbers than the original Bristol Titan. By 1930 they had delivered 6,000 Jupiters, Mistrals and Titans, making them the largest engine company in France.

Variants

;Titan I:(1928) - ;Titan IIF :Modified valve gear. ;Titan II (Special): ;Titan IV:(1928) - , 0.5:1 reduction gear from Bristol Jupiter. ;Gnome et Rhône 5B: ;Gnome et Rhône 5Ba: ;Gnome et Rhône 5Bc: ;Gnome et Rhône 5K Titan:licence-built Titan II, ;Gnome et Rhône 7K Titan Major:enlarged seven-cylinder Titan with many detail improvements, produced by Gnome-Rhône without licence.

Applications

* Avro 504N * Bristol Primary Trainer * Bristol Type 110A

Specifications (Titan I)

References

Notes

Bibliography

* Lumsden, Alec. ''British Piston Engines and their Aircraft''. Marlborough, Wiltshire: Airlife Publishing, 2003. . {{Gnome-Rhône aeroengines Aircraft air-cooled radial piston engines

Titan Titan most often refers to: * Titan (moon), the largest moon of Saturn * Titans, a race of deities in Greek mythology Titan or Titans may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Fictional entities Fictional locations * Titan in fiction, fictiona ...

1920s aircraft piston engines