The Rolls-Royce Spey (company designations RB.163 and RB.168 and RB.183) is a low-bypass

turbofan The turbofan or fanjet is a type of airbreathing jet engine that is widely used in aircraft propulsion. The word "turbofan" is a portmanteau of "turbine" and "fan": the ''turbo'' portion refers to a gas turbine engine which achieves mechanic ...

engine originally designed and manufactured by

Rolls-Royce Rolls-Royce (always hyphenated) may refer to: * Rolls-Royce Limited, a British manufacturer of cars and later aero engines, founded in 1906, now defunct Automobiles * Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, the current car manufacturing company incorporated in ...

that has been in widespread service for over 40 years. A co-development version of the Spey between Rolls-Royce and

Allison Allison may refer to: People * Allison (given name) * Allison (surname) (includes a list of people with this name) * Eugene Allison Smith (1922-1980), American politician and farmer Companies * Allison Engine Company, American aircraft engine ...

in the 1960s is the

Allison TF41 The Allison TF41 (Company designations RB.168-62 and Model 912) is a low-bypass turbofan engine. Design and development The TF41 was jointly developed by Allison Engine Company and Rolls-Royce from the latter's RB.168-25R Spey. Allison manuf ...

. Intended for the civilian

jet airliner A jet airliner or jetliner is an airliner powered by jet engines (passenger jet aircraft). Airliners usually have two or four jet engines; three-engined designs were popular in the 1970s but are less common today. Airliners are commonly clas ...

market when it was being designed in the late 1950s, the Spey concept was also used in various military engines, and later as a

turboshaft A turboshaft engine is a form of gas turbine that is optimized to produce shaftpower rather than jet thrust. In concept, turboshaft engines are very similar to turbojets, with additional turbine expansion to extract heat energy from the exhaust ...

engine for ships known as the Marine Spey, and even as the basis for a new civilian line, the

Rolls-Royce RB.183 Tay The Rolls-Royce RB.183 Tay is a medium-bypass turbofan engine, developed from the RB.183 Mk 555 Spey core and using a fan scaled directly from the Rolls-Royce RB.211-535E4 to produce versions with a bypass ratio of 3.1:1 or greater. The IP c ...

. Aviation versions of the base model Spey have accumulated over 50 million hours of flight time. In keeping with Rolls-Royce naming practices, the engine is named after the

River Spey The River Spey (Scottish Gaelic: Uisge Spè) is a river in the northeast of Scotland. At it is the eighth longest river in the United Kingdom, as well as the second longest and fastest-flowing river in Scotland. It is important for salmon fishi ...

Design and development

In 1954 Rolls-Royce introduced the first commercial bypass engine, the

Rolls-Royce Conway The Rolls-Royce RB.80 Conway was the first turbofan engine to enter service. Development started at Rolls-Royce in the 1940s, but the design was used only briefly, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, before other turbofan designs replaced it. ...

, with 17,500

lbf The pound of force or pound-force (symbol: lbf, sometimes lbf,) is a unit of force used in some systems of measurement, including English Engineering units and the foot–pound–second system. Pound-force should not be confused with pound-m ...

(78 kN) of thrust aimed at what was then the "large end" of the market. This was far too large for smaller aircraft such as the

Sud Caravelle The Sud Aviation SE 210 Caravelle is a French jet airliner produced by Sud Aviation. It was developed by SNCASE in the early 1950s and made its maiden flight on 27 May 1955. It included some de Havilland designs and components developed for ...

, BAC One-Eleven or

Hawker Siddeley Trident The Hawker Siddeley HS-121 Trident (originally the de Havilland DH.121 and briefly the Airco DH.121) is a British airliner produced by Hawker Siddeley. In 1957, de Havilland proposed its DH.121 trijet design to a British European Airways (BEA ...

which were then under design. Rolls-Royce then started work on a smaller engine otherwise identical in design derived from the larger RB.140/141 Medway - which itself had been cancelled after

British European Airways British European Airways (BEA), formally British European Airways Corporation, was a British airline which existed from 1946 until 1974. BEA operated to Europe, North Africa and the Middle East from airports around the United Kingdom. The a ...

(BEA) had demanded the downsizing of the Trident,"World Encyclopedia of Aero Engines - 5th edition" by

Bill Gunston Bill Gunston (1 March 1927 – 1 June 2013) was a British aviation and military author. He flew with Britain's Royal Air Force from 1945 to 1948, and after pilot training became a flying instructor. He spent most of his adult life doing resear ...

, Sutton Publishing, 2006, p.197 the RB.163, using the same two-spool compressor arrangement and a smaller fan delivering

bypass ratio The bypass ratio (BPR) of a turbofan engine is the ratio between the mass flow rate of the bypass stream to the mass flow rate entering the core. A 10:1 bypass ratio, for example, means that 10 kg of air passes through the bypass duct for ev ...

s of about 0.64:1. Designed by a team under Frederick Morley, the first versions of what had become the 'Spey' entered service in 1964, powering both the 1-11 and Trident. Several versions with higher power ratings were delivered through the 1960s, but development was ended nearing the 1970s due to the introduction of engines with much higher bypass ratios, and thus better fuel economy. In 1980, Turbomecanica

Bucharest Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north of ...

acquired the license for the Spey 512-14 DW version, which propelled the Romanian built BAC One-Eleven aircraft (Rombac One-Eleven). Spey-powered airliners remained in widespread service until the 1980s, when noise limitations in European airports forced them out of service.

Tailored for the Buccaneer and Corsair II

In the late 1950s the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

started the development of the

Sverdlov-class cruiser The ''Sverdlov''-class cruisers, Soviet designation Project 68bis, were the last conventional gun cruisers built for the Soviet Navy. They were built in the 1950s and were based on Soviet, German, and Italian designs and concepts developed prio ...

s that would put the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against ...

at serious risk. The Naval Air Warfare Division decided to counter this threat with a strike aircraft which would fly at very high speed at very low level. The winning design was the Blackburn Buccaneer. RRSpeynozzle

The first version of the Buccaneer, the S.1 powered by the

de Havilland Gyron Junior The de Havilland Gyron Junior was a military turbojet engine design of the 1950s developed by the de Havilland Engine Company and later produced by Bristol Siddeley. The Gyron Junior was a scaled-down derivative of the de Havilland Gyron. ...

, was underpowered in certain scenarios, although not in maximum speed, and the engine was unreliable. The Spey was chosen in 1960 as a re-engining option to give more thrust for a Buccaneer Mk.2. It was also predicted to increase range by 80%. The engine was a militarized version of the BAC 1-11 Spey, and called the RB.168-1. The Buccaneer S.2 served into the 1990s. A Spey derivative, designed and developed jointly by Rolls-Royce and Allison for the

LTV A-7 Corsair II The LTV A-7 Corsair II is an American carrier-capable subsonic light attack aircraft designed and manufactured by Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV). The A-7 was developed during the early 1960s as replacement for the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk. Its design was ...

, was produced under licence in the United States as the TF41.

F-4K and M Phantom

The British versions of the

McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II The McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II is an American tandem two-seat, twin-engine, all-weather, long-range supersonic jet interceptor and fighter-bomber originally developed by McDonnell Aircraft for the United States Navy.Swanborough and B ...

(designated Phantom FG.Mk.1 and FGR.Mk.2) replaced the 16,000 lb wet thrust

J79 The General Electric J79 is an axial-flow turbojet engine built for use in a variety of fighter and bomber aircraft and a supersonic cruise missile. The J79 was produced by General Electric Aircraft Engines in the United States, and under lice ...

turbojets with a pair of 20,515 lb wet thrust Spey 201 turbofans. These provided extra thrust for operation from smaller British aircraft carriers, and provided additional bleed air for the boundary layer control system for slower landing speeds. The air intake area was increased by twenty per cent, while the aft fuselage under the engines had to be redesigned. Compared to the original turbojets, the afterburning turbofans produced a ten and fifteen per cent improvement in combat radius and ferry range, respectively, and improved take-off, initial climb, and acceleration, but at the cost of a reduction in top speed because compressor outlet temperatures would be exceeded in an essentially subsonic civil design.

Reliability

During its lifetime the Spey has achieved an impressive safety record. Its relatively low maintenance costs provide one of the major reasons it remained in service even when newer designs were available. With the need for a 10,000 to 15,000 lbf (44 to 67 kN) thrust class engine, with better specific fuel consumption and lower noise and emission levels, Rolls-Royce used Spey turbomachinery with a much larger fan to produce the Rolls-Royce Tay.

AMX development

A fully updated version of the military RB.168 was also built to power the

AMX International AMX The AMX International AMX is a ground-attack aircraft jointly developed by Brazil and Italy. The AMX is designated A-11 Ghibli by the Italian Air Force and A-1 by the Brazilian Air Force. The Italian name, "Ghibli", is taken from the hot dry w ...

attack aircraft.

Variants

;RB.141: ;RB.163-1: ;RB.163-2: ;RB.163-2W: ;RB.163 Mk.505-5: ;RB.163 Mk.505-14: ;RB.163 Mk.506-5: ;RB.163 Mk.506-14: ;RB.163 Mk.511-8: Gulfstream II and

Gulfstream III The Gulfstream III, a business jet produced by Gulfstream Aerospace, is an improved variant of the Grumman Gulfstream II. Design and development The Gulfstream III was built at Savannah, Georgia, in the United States and was designed as an i ...

(USAF designation F113-RR-100 for the Gulfstream C-20) ;RB.163 Mk.511-14: BAC One-Eleven ;RB.163 Mk.512-14DW: BAC One-Eleven/Rombac One-Eleven ;AR 963: (RB.163)

Boeing 727 The Boeing 727 is an American narrow-body airliner that was developed and produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. After the heavy 707 quad-jet was introduced in 1958, Boeing addressed the demand for shorter flight lengths from smaller airpo ...

(proposed); it was to have been built under licence by Allison ;F113-RR-100: US military designation for the Mk.511-8 engines fitted to the Gulfstream C-20. ;RB.168-62: ;RB.168 Mk.101: (Military Spey) Blackburn Buccaneer S2 ;RB.168 Mk.202: (Military Spey)

modified F-4J for British service ("Phantom FG1"). (Surplus engines were purchased and used by

Richard Noble Richard James Anthony Noble, OBE (born 6 March 1946) is a Scottish entrepreneur who was holder of the land speed record between 1983 and 1997. He was also the project director of ThrustSSC, the vehicle which holds the current land speed record ...

for the Thrust SSC land speed record car of 1997.) ;RB.168 Mk.250: (Military Spey) Hawker Siddeley Nimrod MR1/MR2 ;RB.168 Mk.251: (Military Spey) Hawker Siddeley Nimrod R1 and AEW ;RB.168 Mk.807:

, built under licence by

FiatAvio Avio S.p.A. is an Italian company operating in the aerospace sector with its head office in Colleferro near Rome, Italy. Founded in 1908, it is present in Italy and abroad with different commercial offices and 10 production sites. Avio operate ...

;AR 168R: Joint development with

Allison Engine Company The Allison Engine Company was an American aircraft engine manufacturer. Shortly after the death of James Allison in 1929 the company was purchased by the Fisher brothers. Fisher sold the company to General Motors, which owned it for most of it ...

for the TFX competition (won by the

Pratt & Whitney TF30 The Pratt & Whitney TF30 (company designation JTF10A) is a military low-bypass turbofan engine originally designed by Pratt & Whitney for the subsonic F6D Missileer fleet defense fighter, but this project was cancelled. It was later adapted with ...

;RB.183 Mk 555-15 Spey Junior:

Fokker F28 Fellowship The Fokker F28 Fellowship is a twin-engined, short-range jet airliner designed and built by Dutch aircraft manufacturer Fokker. Following the Fokker F27 Friendship, an early and commercially successful turboprop-powered regional airliner, Fokk ...

;WS-9 Qinling:

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

license-produced version of the RB.168 Mk.202 manufactured by the

Xi'an Aero-Engine Corporation Xi'an Aero-Engine Corporation (XAEC, ) is one of the major aircraft engine designers and manufacturers in China, originally established in 2001. It along with its parent company (via the Xihang Group), Xi'an Aircraft Industrial Corporation, is a ...

. It was used to power the

Xian JH-7 The Xi'an JH-7 ( – fighter-bomber; NATO reporting name Flounder), also known as the FBC-1 (Fighter/Bomber China-1) Flying Leopard, is a tandem two-seat, twin-engine fighter-bomber in service with the People's Liberation Army Naval Air Force ...

and JH-7A. An improved WS-9A developing of thrust is reportedly in development.

Marinised versions

;SM1A : Marinised Spey delivering 18,770 shp ;SM1C : Marinised Spey delivering 26,150 shp

Applications

* BAC One-Eleven/Rombac One-Eleven * Blackburn Buccaneer *

Grumman Gulfstream II The Gulfstream II (G-II) is an American twin engine business jet designed and built by Grumman and then in succession, Grumman American and finally Gulfstream American. Its Grumman model number is G-1159 and its US military designation is C-11A ...

* Hawker Siddeley Nimrod MR1/R1/MR2/AEW3 *

* McDonnell Douglas Phantom FG1/FGR2 *

Engines on display

Examples of the Rolls-Royce Spey are on public display at the: * Beijing Air and Space Museum * Coventry Transport Museum *

Gatwick Aviation Museum The Gatwick Aviation Museum is located in the village of Charlwood, in Surrey, United Kingdom on the boundary of Gatwick Airport. History Originally started in 1987 as a private collection by local businessman Peter Vallance, the museum becam ...

Midland Air Museum The Midland Air Museum (MAM) is situated just outside the village of Baginton in Warwickshire, England, and is adjacent to Coventry Airport. The museum includes the ''Sir Frank Whittle Jet Heritage Centre'' (named after the local aviation pionee ...

Montrose Air Station Heritage Centre The Montrose Air Station Heritage Centre is located to the North of Montrose, Angus, Scotland. Montrose has the distinction of having the first operational military airfield in Great Britain and the Heritage Centre is located on the former ...

* North East Land, Sea and Air Museums *

Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust The Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust is an organisation that was founded in 1981 to preserve the history of Rolls-Royce Limited, Rolls-Royce Holdings and all merged or acquired companies. Five volunteer led branches exist, three in England, one in Sco ...

Royal Air Force Museum Cosford The Royal Air Force Museum Cosford, located in Cosford in Shropshire, is a free (currently, 2022) museum dedicated to the history of aviation and the Royal Air Force in particular. The museum is part of the Royal Air Force Museum, a non-departme ...

Royal Air Force Museum London The Royal Air Force Museum London (also commonly known as the RAF Museum) is located on the former Hendon Aerodrome. It includes five buildings and hangars showing the history of aviation and the Royal Air Force. It is part of the Royal Air Fo ...

Yorkshire Air Museum The Yorkshire Air Museum & Allied Air Forces Memorial is an aviation museum in Elvington, York on the site of the former RAF Elvington airfield, a Second World War RAF Bomber Command station. The museum was founded, and first opened to the pu ...

East Midlands Aeropark East Midlands Airport is an international airport in the East Midlands of England, close to Castle Donington in northwestern Leicestershire, between Loughborough (), Derby () and Nottingham (); Leicester is () to the south and Lincoln () north ...

Specifications (Spey Mk 202)

References

External links

Rolls-Royce.com Spey page
{{People's Republic of China military aeroengines Low-bypass turbofan engines Spey 1960s turbofan engines