Austro Daimler V12 360 HP

[leo]

Austro Daimler was working on a 360 HP V12 engine at the time of the Armistice. Was it a copy of a Rolls Royce or was it an original design? What was its projected use? I would think bombers, but AH did not have any in production.

[Cigogne]

Leo,

That does not mean that the engine was not fitted and tested in prototypes of various kinds. A Rumpler C.VIII was fitted with one of these and tested as a possibly variant for the KuK Luftfahrtruppe. Also, it was fitted and tested in several others as well, including Aviatik's 3-engined bomber. Peter Grosz' big Austro-Hungarian Army Aircraft book goes into a lot of detail about engine development and which protoypes used the engine and for which it was designed. Highly recommended if you don't have it.

I don't believe that it was a copy of the Rolls-Royce. I believe it was in development simultaneously.

[Ransom E. Olds]

It seems really unlikely to me that Ferdinand Porsche would slavishly copy the work of Sir Henry Royce. Perhaps it's, broadly speaking, two banks of the 6 cylinder AD engine on a new crankcase? Ransom

[GrzeM]

I'm sure that it was original design, Austro-Daimlers were excellent engines and there was no need to copy anything.
IIRC that engine was used on the Brandenburg W.13 big flying boats.
G.

[leo]

Thanks for the reply, Gentlemen. I wish we had a little more interest in the kuk LFT.

The AD 360 V 12 was a design of Porsche, and it was a combination of two AD 160 hp on one crankshaft. Excellent, when tested in the factory, with lots of problems for the front units / the naval stations. The reason was found months later. The factorys had still reserves of good oil, the front units had to replace high qualtity oil by f.e. castor oil. So Porsche decided to stop the production of the AD 360 V 12 and designed an new 6 cylinder with 360 hp (type 22.000). The stop of the production was also the reason, why at the time of the armistice 65 of 106 W 13 flying boats had no engine.
Best gegards
VH