I was stuck in DeRidder,LA the other day and had an interesting experience. During WWII the United States, with a seemingly limited supply of money, built airfields and runways from coast to coast( over 50 in the state of Florida alone!). When you come across a former "airfield", even to this day, they show evidence of their heritage. Fort Lauderdale KFLL, where the lost squadron originated and George W. Sr. began his military career, still has some of the original bunkers and one of the original barracks remaining. Other fields have hardly changed a bit since 1941. DeRidder is one of these fields. The original, creaking, wood hangar still exists and is full of "tube and fabric" airplanes. A walk inside the office is like a step through a time portal. The walls are covered with posters and pictures dating back to WWII. The place stinks of 50+ years of Pine Oil., and has the noise attenuating qualities of Steel drum(standard military!) A man everyone calls "the Colonel" runs the place. And I mean "runs" the place. He wears every hat; flight instructor, mechanic, airport manager, gas pumper, fire department and who knows what else! If you are ever in the area, it's worth a visit. But.......before I get too far off tangent. One of the posters that I noticed in his office was from Chrysler, touting the "new" Hemi engine. It had a great cutaway drawing, with what looked like a P-40 but was advertised as a modified P-47, with an inverted V-16. So I did some research when I got home.
Now, you guys "over there" might not get as much out of this but here in the states, Dodge has been bombarding us with the "yeah, it's a Hemi" campaign. Ergo, it may have more relevance. Either way, I want to know where I can find one THESE Hemi powered trucks!!!
Even the aircraft engine would later leave its mark on Chrysler passenger cars & trucks. Chrysler had developed the large XI-2220 reciprocating piston engine in 1941 for use in fighter planes. The water-cooled, 2,500-horsepower inverted V16 powerplant was essentially two, narrow-angle V8s mated nose-to-nose. Engineers solved the problem of vibration from coupling so many cylinders to a single, long crankshaft by placing the reduction gears to drive the propeller in the middle of the engine rather than at the front or back.
The XI-2220 was flight-tested in a couple of X-P-47 fighters in 1945, but the war ended before production could begin so the project was cancelled, sending most of the engineers back to designing car engines. But the XI-2220 has a special place in Chrysler history because it was the company's first "Hemi" - it was designed with a hemispherical combustion chamber that had the spark plug in the center for more-even burning of the fuel-air mixture. As we all know, this design was applied to large V8 car engines in the 1950s and later spawned the famous racing and muscle cars of the 1960s and '70s.
The engine test stand for the XI-2220 was built on a WC 3/4 ton chassis shown on the front cover of our 2002 catalog. Single cylinder tests started in May 1941; two cylinder testing started in August 1941. Fire destroyed the crankcase pattern equipment. Early 1944 test engine produced 2500 HP during a 50 hour test. Republic Aircraft volunteered to do the the P47 installation at it's Evansville Indiana facility under subcontract to Chrysler. The engine was installed in P47D-15 serial number 42-23297.
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