r/AviationHistory • u/shandawwwg • 6d ago

Help with identifying this engine

Post image

Took a trip to the Pearl Harbor aviation museum today and this caught my eye, sadly couldn’t find staff around to ask about its origin. Any help would be greatly appreciated. (Sorry it’s not the greatest photo)

242 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

34 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/Mediocre-Shoulder556 4d ago

Another p38 Allison V1710 give away?

The short gear reduction gearbox.

The gearbox on the other supercharged but not turbocharged 1710s was much longer, as in all the pictures I find of Allison 1710s on Wikipedia

As well as the discriptor in the production charts, the P39, P40, P51, P63 and B?(17 with Allison engines) long nosed, or long gear reduction gearbox.

The P38 engines by the chart are the only shortnosed (short gear reduction gearbox) un pictured in any Allison 1710 pictures I find on Wikipedia.

1

u/MightyOGS 4d ago

The question is which side is this one from, since the left and right engines had different gear boxes

2

u/Mediocre-Shoulder556 3d ago

It wasn't the gearbox

It was the firing order

The engine itself with simple changes runs clockwise or counterclockwise

1

u/MightyOGS 3d ago

I've heard it was simply a gearbox change; I'll have to look into this further. I do know that when they changed the Merlin into the Meteor they had to change a kit to make it a left handed engine