By Kimble D. McCutcheon

On May 21, 1927, Charles A. Lindbergh stunned the world by flying solo and non-stop from New York to Paris in an airplane powered by a single Wright J-5 Whirlwind engine. To accomplish this, the engine had to run continuously for over 33 hours. The astounding thing is that only five years before, no successful air-cooled engine even existed in the United States. The story of this engine is not about one man’s revolutionary genius, but rather of the evolutionary effort of many individuals and organizations who collectively produced an engine that was light, reliable, maintainable, and had good fuel consumption. This was done in the classical engineering development tradition—the cycle of designing, testing, and improving. With the exception of supercharging, propeller reduction gearing, turbo-compounding, and direct fuel injection, the J-5 was everything an air-cooled engine would ever be.

(more)