Did any WW2 aircraft engines have any design feature allowing them to continue running when shot? I'm talking about mechanical engine parts such as cylinders, blocks and heads. Not referring to protecting cooling, fuel, ignition, or oil systems.

Not sure about any specific defenses built into the engines themselves but the B-17 was well known for being able to take some serious hits and continue flying...

Lots of videos on utoob, you can go down that rabbit hole easily....

It's been decades since I've had conversations with WWII pilots, but I remember one of them telling me that the Rolls Royce Merlin in the P-51D and later versions were designed to run for about 90 seconds without oil pressure, to allow them time to escape the immediate attack.

At least some of the radials Wright and Pratt & Witney made could run with some cylinders shot away.

Slightly off topic: a major disadvantage of Mitsubishi’s Zero fighter was not having self-sealing gas tanks or (I believe) armor, compared with U.S. carrier-based fighters, and later land-based fighters like the P-38.

Our early P-40's were prone to fuel leaks, I think from the main tank behind the pilot. I remember a guy who owned the local hobby shop (model cars and planes, mostly) in Oak Park, IL, in the 1950's telling me about feeling something cold and wet on his back and bailing out just before his plane blew up. Happened during WWII, probably early.

I've read numerous stories of P-47's had the R-2800 engine had pistons and rods blown out and they would make it home. Radial engine, water cooled, forget it, one round could bring you down.

Radials were all air-cooled, I think you mean in-line or V-type engines.

It's amazing so many P-51's were used for strafing missions, though, for just the reason you mentioned. P-47's were better suited for their radials, to say nothing of their eight .50 cal guns.

Well, Bristol developed a piston engine for WW II fighters that was more bullet resistant because of its less vulnerable valve mechanism:

AI Overview
“During World War II, Britain produced several types of piston engines that used sleeve valves instead of conventional poppet valves to manage airflow. The most prominent were developed by the Bristol Engine Company and D. Napier & Son. 
Bristol sleeve-valve radial engines
Bristol was a leading developer of air-cooled radial engines using the single sleeve valve concept patented by James C. McCollum and refined by Roy Fedden. In these designs, a hardened steel sleeve moved inside each cylinder, with a complex gear mechanism precisely aligning ports cut into the sleeve with intake and exhaust ports in the cylinder wall.

Bristol Hercules
Engine type: 14-cylinder, two-row, air-cooled radial engine. …”

I watched one take off at an air show, and was disappointed that it didn’t sound any different than conventional engines.

I can't think of any way to put armor around radial engines, which are air-cooled, that would let the cooling air reach the cylinders. With a liquid-cooled engine, the cooling system itself is the major weak point. (Naval aircraft like the Wildcat, Hellcat and Corsair, which flew over open ocean, always had radials for this reason.) A single bullet hole through a radiator would eventually and inevitably leak the coolant out, overheat and seize the engine and force a landing ... if they could find a safe place. Armor protection, if any, was given to the pilot. They just had to hope they could shoot down the enemy plane before it could shoot them down.

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... a major disadvantage of Mitsubishi’s Zero fighter was not having self-sealing gas tanks or (I believe) armor ...

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pm...php/Main/GlassCannon

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In short, they can't take it, but they can surely dish it out. The Glass Cannon is characterized by All Offense, No Defense.
[...]
This can even apply in real life. Some military weapons and vehicles can deal a lot of damage, but they're easily destroyed if they take a hit.
[...]
Japanese aircraft during the early stages of WWII; while fast for the early 1940s and well-armed, they had next to no armor or safety features such as self-sealing fuel tanks or armored glass to protect pilots and crew. While some Allied designs were notorious for taking hundreds if not thousands of rounds of ammunition and still flying, even a short burst of gunfire would be enough to set a Zero ablaze and generally take its pilot with it. Later designs had armor and speed to match next generation Allied fighters, but by that point Japan had lost the best of its pilots and could only send up half-trained rookies to fight.

(Pardon the grammar; I didn't write it.)

If a P-38, with machine guns and cannon concentrated in the nose (wing-mounted ones have to be "regulated" for POI somewhat like a double rifle), got a Zero in its sights, it was game over for the Zero. It couldn't outfly (outmaneuver) the Zero, but it sure could outgun it.

I'm not sure the distance they set the convergance point for the eight 50's for strafing with a P-47, but I wouldn't want to be driving a German locomotive in 1944 or 45!

Air cooled radials werent any more bullet proof than liquid cooled V-12s. A 2Omm round through the engine block usually ment you were done flying under power shortly.
That being said, my dad flew P51s during the 70s into the early 80s for Ed Browning. We had a family friend who flew P47s during the war and had a few dozen hours in a P51. He told us “The P51 guys got all the girls, but If you wanted to live long enough to f*ck them you’d rather be in the ‘47.

As stated, air-cooled engines were typically more durable than in-line engines. A HUGE Achille's heal in any in-line engine was the coolant tank. In the P-51 Mustang and Spitfire/Hurricane, this was RIGHT IN FRONT of the engine below the propeller spinner. A single rifle-caliber bullet through this spot and the pilot is walking home in about 5 minutes. At best, the pilot had enough time to pull up to bail-out height and get away from those who he was straffing (never bail out over troops you just straffed/bombed).

For this reason alone, the P-47 (with its massive air-cooled engine) was better for ground-attack in WWII. It was also durable, had more guns, and was a flying tank. It's a shame we didn't have them in Korea (the Air Force could only afford one kind of fighter in the post-WWII years, so we had to scrap our P-38s and P-47s (the P-38 was more expensive to operate with its two engines and the P-47 wasn't as sexy as the Mustang). We lost a LOT of Mustangs to ground fire over there due to this vulnerability.

Surprisingly, we lost a lot of Corsairs over Korea, as well. I don't know why, but I never read anything about Corsairs getting shot down on ground-attack missions in WWII very often. They had the durable air-cooled engine, but they had an oil cooler on the underside of the wing, and again, a SINGLE rifle-caliber bullet or piece of shrapnel from a flak burst could turn the pilot into a pedestrian in about 5 minutes.

I've read books about P-47s coming home with legendary damage. Some had pistons shot off the engine, and somehow the engine ran long enough to bring the pilots home across the Channel.

Now, it wouldn't be really useful to add armor to the engines. Armor equals protection, but it also equals weight, drag, and reduced bomb load and range. The aircraft were surprisingly un-armored, except for maybe some armor plating in the cockpit to protect the pilots. Put a couple hundred pounds of dead weight on the engines and the aircraft is slower, flies lower, and is even MORE vulnerable to fighters and ground fire. THere just wasn't any way to do this without unacceptable losses of performance.

It's amazing how 'flimsy' those WWII aircraft were. The skin on most bombers was thinner than a soda can, and was really the just to keep the wind out and improve aerodynamics. They were simple, and in American cases, they were VERY durable/reliable. We had armor over the guns, cockpits, and (most importantly), self-sealing fuel tanks. This kept them from exploding from taking rounds in the fuel tanks.

The Japanese, on the other hand, had LOUSY protection on their planes in the early war years. One author described the Zero fighter as a light sport plane with guns. It's true. It had amazing performance and range, but it had no armor and no self-sealing tanks. Typically, Japanese fighters took even minor damage and caught on fire. One American Navy pilot shot down 9 Japanese planes on a SINGLE mission - now, he was good, but he could have never done that against German aircraft, for example.

Later in the war, Japan produces some fighters that were the equal of the best US Navy planes, but fortunately by then, the number of skilled pilots had declined so much and quality control was so poor that they simply didn't make a real difference in the war effort. Too little, too late.

An FW190 was on Johnsons P-47, The P-47 damaged and Johnson wounded. The 190 emptied all of its rounds into the 47 and couldn't bring it down.
The German pilot pulled along side of Johnson, gave him a salute and turned for home.
I'm not searching through all my books but I think that's a true story.
One tough bird!

During the Korean war Skyraiders had armor added to the underside of the fuselage to protect vulnerable areas due loses from ground fire. The armor was aluminum if I recall correctly.

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Originally posted by Schmelby:
An FW190 was on Johnsons P-47, The P-47 damaged and Johnson wounded. The 190 emptied all of its rounds into the 47 and couldn't bring it down.
The German pilot pulled along side of Johnson, gave him a salute and turned for home.
I'm not searching through all my books but I think that's a true story.
One tough bird!

Robert S Johnson. His biography, “Thunderbolt,” by Martin Caidin is an EXCELLENT book.

The Fw-190 was out of 20mm, and put a coupla hundred rounds of 7mm into Johnson’s already heavily damaged P-47 (that is why he didn’t evade, as his controls were damaged). He hunkered down behind his armOred seat and hoped for the best. His canopy was jammed shut so he could’t bail out.

He was extremely lucky, and he made it home. I doubt ANY other fight could have absorbed so much punishment.

The radial engines use a master rod type connecting rod for all 9 cylinders, so no, you couldn’t lose one of those and still have an engine running.

An engine

quote:

The radial engines use a master rod type connecting rod for all 9 cylinders, so no, you couldn’t lose one of those and still have an engine running.

I'm not 100% sure what you meant by that. You couldn't lose the crank on any engine but I am not sure if a radial engine gives a hoot if the cylinder itself is operating?

quote:

Originally posted by hrcjon:

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The radial engines use a master rod type connecting rod for all 9 cylinders, so no, you couldn’t lose one of those and still have an engine running.

I'm not 100% sure what you meant by that. You couldn't lose the crank on any engine but I am not sure if a radial engine gives a hoot if the cylinder itself is operating?

All cylinders connect to the one master rod.
So if you were to take out the rod all the cylinders on the engine would fail at the same time.
Here’s what they look like for those that haven’t seen one.
https://www.aviationgifts.com/...2800-master-rod.html

If we are just talking one bullet taking out one cylinder on an R2800 it will still run, even if one master rod is taken out at the cylinder head.