The Wright Whirlwind was a family of air-cooled radial aircraft engines built by Wright Aeronautical (originally an independent company, later a division of Curtiss-Wright ). The family began with nine-cylinder engines, and later expanded to include five-cylinder and seven-cylinder varieties. Fourteen-cylinder twin-row versions were also developed, but these were not commercially produced.
15-709: The Lawrance J-1 was an engine developed by Charles Lanier Lawrance and used in American aircraft in the early 1920s. It was a nine-cylinder, air-cooled radial design. During World War I the Lawrance Aero Engine Company of New York City produced the crude opposed twins that powered the Penguin trainers, and the Lawrance L-1 60 hp Y-type radial. After the end of World War I, the Lawrance engineers worked with both
30-588: A Lawrance J-1 on display. Data from A History of Aircraft Piston Engines Charles Lanier Lawrance Charles Lanier Lawrance (September 30, 1882 – June 24, 1950) was an American aeronautical engineer and an early proponent of air-cooled aircraft engines . Lawrance was born on September 30, 1882, in Lenox, Massachusetts , the son of Francis Cooper Lawrance Jr. (1858–1904) and his first wife, Sarah Eggleston Lanier (1862–1893). After his mother's death in 1893, his father remarried to Susan Ridgway Willing ,
45-566: A daughter of Rev. Morgan Dix , the rector of Trinity Parish . They lived at 153 East 63rd Street, in the National Register of Historic Places listed Barbara Rutherford Hatch House, and together, their children were: Lawrance died at his Long Island home, Meadow Farm in East Islip, New York , on June 24, 1950. Wright Whirlwind The Whirlwind series was succeeded by more powerful but still air-cooled radial aero engines, notably
60-458: A sister of Ava Lowle Willing (who married John Jacob Astor IV ). They had a daughter, a half-sister to Lawrance, Frances Alice Willing Lawrance, who married Prince Andrzej Poniatowski (son of Prince André Poniatowski ) in 1919. From his parents marriage, Lawrance had a younger sister, Kitty Lanier Lawrance, who was raised by their paternal grandfather, as their parents died when she was still young. In 1915, Kitty married W. Averell Harriman ,
75-512: The Governor of New York (they divorced in 1928). Lawrance's maternal grandfather was banker Charles D. Lanier , a close friend of Pierpont Morgan . His great-grandfather was James F. D. Lanier , who founded Winslow, Lanier & Co. His paternal grandfather was Francis Cooper Lawrance, of Paris and Pau, France . In 1885, his paternal aunt, Frances Margaret Lawrance , married George Venables-Vernon, 7th Baron Vernon . Lawrance attended
90-598: The Groton School in Groton, Massachusetts , before Yale University , where he graduated in 1905, where he was a member of Wolf's Head . Shortly after his graduation from Yale, he joined a new automobile firm that went bankrupt by the financial panic of 1907 . He then went to Paris, where he studied architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts , experimenting with aeronautics at the Eiffel Laboratory . Lawrance returned to
105-608: The Pratt & Whitney Wasp series and the Wright Cyclone series . The Whirlwind was a direct descendant of the Lawrance J-1 , a nine-cylinder air-cooled radial built by the Lawrance Aero Engine Company for the U.S. Navy. Because the Navy was very enthusiastic about air-cooled radials, but was concerned that Lawrance could not produce enough engines for its needs, it forced Wright to purchase
120-480: The bore . This family included three members: the nine-cylinder R-975 , the seven-cylinder R-760 , and the five-cylinder R-540 , providing a range of different power levels using the same basic design. Of these, the R-975 proved the most popular, especially because of its use in armored fighting vehicles during World War II . During the mid-1930s, Wright also developed two fourteen-cylinder double-row versions of
135-472: The Army and the Navy in developing their L-1 onto a nine-cylinder radial engine, which became the 200 hp Model J-1 . It was the best American air-cooled engine at the time and passed its 50-hour test in 1922. The U.S. Navy badly needed light, reliable engines for its carrierborne aircraft. As a means of pressuring Wright and other companies into developing radial engines, it gave a contract to Lawrance for 200 of
150-638: The J-1 radial and ceased buying the liquid-cooled Wright-Hispano engines. At the urging of the Army and Navy the Wright Aeronautical Corporation bought the Lawrance Company , and subsequent engines were known as Wright radials. The Wright Whirlwind had essentially the same lower end (crankcase, cam, and crankshaft) as the J-1. The New England Air Museum in Windsor Locks , Connecticut , has
165-571: The Lawrance company in 1923 and build the J-1 itself. Wright's J-1 was the first engine in its nine-cylinder R-790 Whirlwind series and was quickly followed by the J-3, J-4, J-4A, J-4B, and finally the popular and successful J-5 of 1925. In 1928, Wright replaced the R-790 series with the J-6 Whirlwind family, in which a supercharger was added to boost engine power and the cylinders were enlarged by expanding
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#1732855043821180-967: The United States in 1914 and in 1917, he founded the Lawrance Aero Engine Company in 1917. He designed the Lawrance J-1 air-cooled aircraft engine , the direct ancestor of the extremely successful Wright Whirlwind series of engines. Long-distance flights of Admiral Byrd , Charles Lindbergh , Amelia Earhart and Clarence Chamberlin were all made possible by the Whirlwind series of engines, which could operate continuously for 33.5 hours. Despite sensational publicity that Lindbergh's flight attracted, Lawrance himself remained in relative obscurity. In discussion with Harry Bruno about his need for publicity to attract funds, he complained, "Who remembers Paul Revere's horse?" Developed with US Navy funding in 1922, Lawrance's J-1 engine used aluminum cylinders with steel liners operated for 300 hours, when 50 hours endurance
195-726: The Whirlwind, the R-1510 of 600 hp (450 kW), and the R-1670 of 800 hp (600 kW). These were used in a number of military aircraft prototypes, but neither engine reached the production stage. Air-cooled Whirlwinds were lighter and more reliable than liquid-cooled engines of similar power, since a liquid cooling system added weight and required extra maintenance. Thanks to these advantages Whirlwind engines were used widely and were built in large numbers. Licensed copies were produced by manufacturers such as Continental Motors , Hispano-Suiza , and adapted for Soviet government production by
210-482: The company to found Pratt & Whitney , Lawrance replaced him as company president. President Calvin Coolidge congratulated Lawrance for his development of the air-cooled aircraft radial engine that won the 1927 Collier Trophy for the year's greatest achievement in American aviation. In 1932, he wrote a book entitled Our National Aviation Program . In 1910, he married Emily Margaret Gordon Dix (1885–1973),
225-645: Was normal. The Army and Navy urged the Wright Aeronautical Corporation to buy Lawrance's company, and subsequent engines were built under the Wright name. In May 1923, Lawrance's company was purchased by Wright Aeronautical , as the United States Navy was concerned that Lawrance couldn't produce enough engines for its needs. Lawrance was retained as a vice president. The radial engines gave confidence to Navy pilots performing long-range overwater flights. In 1925, after Wright's president, Frederick B. Rentschler , left
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