Annular Cowls

[KJ_Lesnick]

I'm curious why the Germans were so obsessed with annular cowls?

[wuzak]

I'm curious why the Germans were so obsessed with annular cowls?

I'm curious why you're curious.

Anyway, just have a think about it and ask yourself what advantages the annual cowl had over other cooling solutions. Look at the types that used these cowls and ask yourself why the annular radiator system may have been beneficial in those instances.

[KJ_Lesnick]

I'm curious why you're curious.

I like to know how things work

Anyway, just have a think about it and ask yourself what advantages the annual cowl had over other cooling solutions.

You can't easily tell if it's a radial?  I'd guess that it might be conducive to modularity.

Look at the types that used these cowls and ask yourself why the annular radiator system may have been beneficial in those instances.

They were bombers mostly...

[wuzak]

I'd guess that it might be conducive to modularity.

Bingo.

They were bombers mostly...

Mostly, but not all.

If you look at many of the types with annular radiators and liquid cooled engines you will find that most of them had used, at some stage, radials as well.

[rickshaw]

Easy to mount an inline engine on a radial engine fuselage/engine bay.  The fuselage remained the standard width, the cowling remained (largely) the same.  This facilitated the upgrade of aircraft or swapping between engine types as the war situation worsened.

There were examples of previously radial cowled inline engines being transplanted, minus the radial cowl onto other aircraft with ill effects as well.  The Czech version of the Me109 springs to mind, post war which was sold to Israel.  It used the inline engines from the Ju88, which had previously had a radial cowl.   The cowl was remove and it used the standard Me109 radiators. 

[jcf]

Easy to mount an inline engine on a radial engine fuselage/engine bay.  The fuselage remained the standard width, the cowling remained (largely) the same.  This facilitated the upgrade of aircraft or swapping between engine types as the war situation worsened.

There were examples of previously radial cowled inline engines being transplanted, minus the radial cowl onto other aircraft with ill effects as well.  The Czech version of the Me109 springs to mind, post war which was sold to Israel.  It used the inline engines from the Ju88, which had previously had a radial cowl.   The cowl was remove and it used the standard Me109 radiators.

Umm, not. The 109 originally used a Jumo engine and anyhow the Mezak did not use
a Junkers style annular (not radial) radiator power-egg. The engine type was completely
separate from the installation type. He 111s, amongst others, had Jumo engines, but did'nt
have annular radiatiors. Also the Do 335 used an annular radiator on the front with a DB
engine. People need to stop conflating engines with installation type, yeah it makes it easier for
What-if modelling muppetry, but it has f-all to do with the real world engineering and the whys
of particular installations.