A War Horse
Sunday morning up bright and early to enjoy the best
of the day. Out to Longacres Garden Centre near Bagshott to get some plants and
compost for Gita to help her in her passion for gardening. As we were about to leave
and head home a World War Two bomber circled over head. Four engines, two tail
fins and gun turrets front and rear I instantly thought it was a Lancaster
Bomber and the thought of a Triumph engined generator that kept the batteries
charges for the operation of the electrically powered turrets. Other bombers
had used hydraulics driven from the engines. Not a good idea when, in a combat
situation, a stray bullet could make your whole defence system inoperable. Once
home, the car unloaded I went off to the museum on the LE to check in and give
some feedback on the weeks’ events. I had thought that it may not have been a
Lancaster bomber as so few were serviceable and asked if there were any other
four engined, two tail fin bombers from World War Two. Indeed there was and it
was a Halifax. In the museum on the Monday our friend from Croydon, who is
ex-RAF, and a keen restorer of vintage motorcycles was asked the question “was
the bomber a Lancaster or Halifax?” He said there were no flying Halifax so it
was probably a Lancaster. His attendance at the museum this week was to do with
a little Francis Barnett, the 150 that has a spiders web of tubes laced
together to make the frame.
I have done some investigations on the use of Triumph
engined generators. There is a whole list of other motorcycle manufacturers
that were used by the RAF. The museum does have a couple of these generators
with engines and it seems that not only were they used on the Lancaster bomber
but also on service trolleys. The service trolleys were for starting the
aircraft on the ground and primarily just for charging the batteries.
I have been told by an electrician that generator
engines normally run at 3000rpm which gives an output of 50 cycles per second.
Does that mean for American electrics you would need to run at 3600rpm to give
60 cycles per second? I contacted the RAF archives and they kindly sent me
details of a Triumph engined service trolley. As the manual is dated 1952, I
guess that these trolleys were in use for a good many years. So Triumph had a
lightweight all alloy engine that was designed to rev at 3000rpm. The cams had
very modest lobes so it could not be used for much else in its current form.
At the cessation of hostilities Grand Prix racing
resumed and Triumph put together a very interesting racer for 1946. Its
heritage was from the generator engine using the head and barrels along with a
higher compression and more lift from the cams improved the performance enough
for the bike to be quite competitive surprising the opposition with some very
good results at the Isle of Man. A number of features on the engines can be
seen in many of the later twins particularly the Twenty One and Speed Twin.
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