Pratt & Whitney's First Engine Named Historic Engineering Landmark

Most visitors don't venture upstairs to the archives at the New England Air Museum in Windsor Locks, Connecticut. But then again, Marty Ross isn't most visitors.

Working with New England Air Museum volunteer Charles "Smokey" Stover, the UTC Aerospace Systems project engineer is looking for a specific set of plans. As Ross sifts through boxes, he briefly explains the storied history of Pratt & Whitney's first engine, the R-1340 Wasp A Engine.

"Rentschler really wanted to develop the air-cooled engine," Ross said, finally finding the prize he is looking for. He stares appreciatively at a schematic of the Wasp.

"When we look at this engine as engineers," Ross later said, sitting in front of a pair of Wasp engines at the museum, "they really raised the bar. They reset the bar."

Ross has been working on getting the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, or ASME, to designate the R-1340 as an engineering landmark.

He succeeded.

"They (Pratt & Whitney founders) were the geniuses of their day," Ross said.

Ross worked with Chester, Connecticut's Craig McBurney on researching the finer points of the company's first dependable engine. McBurney has skillfully rebuilt many Wasp engines. Some of his mechanical artwork is found at the World War II museum in New Orleans, Louisiana. While the entire machine is fascinating, both McBurney and Ross agree there were two designs that really made the engine a mechanical marvel.

"My favorite part of this engine is the master rod-crankshaft combination. It's the heart of the engine and it's what made this engine so successful," McBurney said from the Pratt & Whitney hangar museum in East Hartford, Connecticut.

Ross also believes the Wasp's master rod and the crankshaft was a game-changer in powered aviation.

"George Mead said they designed the crank cases so that they were identical halves. It was a great thought. They were thinking about manufacturability early on. The more manufacturable the part, the more reliable the part," Ross said.

The Wasp joins select company. ASME has only selected 260 other landmarks around the world. This latest honor shows how originality was – and remains – at the heart of Pratt & Whitney.

"It's this concept of innovation, thinking about things differently, not accepting the status quo from an engineering point of view. Coming up with something tremendously innovative for the first time is really a lasting symbol that makes Pratt & Whitney great," said Tom Prete, vice president of Engineering for Pratt & Whitney.

The ability of the engine to be both light, but powerful, is a testament to the engineering minds of the company's founders, says Dr. Lee Langston, member of the ASME History and Heritage Committee.

"It's really what's in an engineer's head that makes the real difference. Computers are said to be great breakthroughs and so on. They certainly are and they speed things up, but you still need that spark of genius that comes from a hard-working inspired mechanical engineer," Langston said.

Back at the museum, Marty Ross isn't lost in the seemingly endless boxed world of records – he belongs in it. The story of dependability is found here, the foundation for aviation is learned here. And for an engineer, what better machine than the Wasp to learn how something was designed, how it was built, and why it has lasted.

"I think really what I like about the story is that it made civil aviation possible because of the reliability of the engine. Boeing designed the model 247 around the Pratt & Whitney Wasp. And because of the reliability of the engine, they actually said, 'We see a business case for civil aviation here.' I think people really need to know that story," Ross said.