R-4360: Pratt & Whitney’s Major Miracle
by Graham White, Specialty Press, North Branch, Minn., 2006, $64.95.
I was a pilot on Douglas C-124 Globemasters in the late 1950s. That big fat cargo plane had four Pratt & Whitney R-4360 engines that allowed it to carry big loads and fly at about 250 mph all day long. For all the power plant’s size and complexity, it was very reliable. We blew out a spark plug once and had a generator overheat another time over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean; I followed the flight engineer out a tunnel in the wing and watched him disconnect the faulty generator, and we flew merrily on with all four turning.
There is a cutaway example of the R-4360 at the Smithsonian’s new Udvar-Hazy museum near Washington Dulles Airport, where I volunteer as a docent, and every time I look at it I marvel at how so many pieces could move in such harmony. I like to tell visitors that my hand moved the throttles of four of those monsters at one time—lots of horsepower for that day (1960). And can you imagine one of those monsters powering a single-engine airplane, such as the Vultee Vengeance dive-bomber?
This book includes lots of history on several big engines and the planes they were called upon to power, some successfully, some not. It gives new meaning to the term “tour de force,” and for good reason. It tells the whole story of a remarkable piston engine that exemplified the ultimate in production radial engine technology prior to the jet engine’s ascendancy.
The 4360 design started in 1941 and powered several airplanes—even the Northrop XB-35 Flying Wing with contrarotating propellers. And Boeing and Curtiss single-engine planes and twins, the Lockheed Constellation and of course the Douglas C-74, which turned into the C-124—and how about the Fairchild C-119 and Martin P4M Mercator, and the Republic XF-12 Rainbow, the Boeing B-50, the KC-97 Stratotankers and water bombers—and then the Thompson Trophy Racers with 4360s fitted in Vought Corsairs of WWII lineage? This was a very versatile engine.
Originally published in the September 2006 issue of Aviation History. To subscribe, click here.
