071 E

How did a racetrack founder’s machine shop end up building more than 70,000 American fighter engines? This is the story of James Allison, co-founder of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and the race-team shop that became Allison Engineering, maker of the Allison V-1710 V12 that powered the P-38 Lightning, P-39 Airacobra, P-40 Warhawk and the first P-51 Mustangs. The story begins in 1904, when Allison and Carl Fisher built a fortune on Prest-O-Lite acetylene headlights. In 1909, Fisher, Allison, Arthur Newby and Frank Wheeler founded the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and paved it with 3.2 million bricks. In 1915, Allison formed the Indianapolis Speedway Team Company to prepare race cars. Its precision shop on Main Street in Speedway, Indiana, went on to help launch the Liberty aircraft engine in 1917, won the Indianapolis 500 in 1919, and turned a failed Liberty bearing into a product sold to Pratt & Whitney, Wright and Rolls-Royce. After Allison’s death in 1928, the company passed to the Fisher brothers of Fisher Body, an unrelated family, who sold it to General Motors in 1929. Chief engineer Norman Gilman kept a liquid-cooled V12 alive through the Great Depression and the loss of the Navy airships Akron and Macon. In 1937 that engine became the first of any type to pass the Army’s 150-hour type test at 1,000 horsepower. With General Motors’ mass-production methods, Allison reached about 3,000 engines a month and employed more than 23,000 people at its 1943 peak. Then comes the twist. The P-51 Mustang became a legend only after its Allison was replaced by the Rolls-Royce Merlin, built in America by Packard. We compare the V-1710 with the Packard Merlin and the Pratt & Whitney R-2800, explain the supercharger decision that limited the Allison at high altitude, and follow the company into the jet age. In 1995, Rolls-Royce itself bought Allison. Which fighter do you think the Allison deserved more credit for: the P-38, P-39, P-40 or the early P-51A? Share your thoughts in the comments. Next watch: why Henry Ford refused to build the Merlin, and how Packard got the engine that made the Mustang famous. #WW2History #AviationHistory #AllisonV1710 #P38Lightning #P40Warhawk #P39Airacobra #P51Mustang #Indy500 #IndianapolisMotorSpeedway #RollsRoyceMerlin #MilitaryHistory #EngineeringHistory #WarbirdHistory #GeneralMotors #HistoryDocumentary Sources Daniel D. Whitney, “Vee’s for Victory! The Story of the Allison V-1710 Aircraft Engine, 1929–1948,” Schiffer Publishing, 1998. Allison Transmission, “History and Heritage,” company historical timeline. https://allisontransmission.com/compa... Indiana Historical Bureau, “Allison Machine Shop” state historical marker and supporting documentation. https://www.in.gov/history/markers/41... Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, entries on James A. Allison, Prest-O-Lite and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. https://indyencyclopedia.org/james-a-... Indiana History Blog, “Start Your Aircraft Engines! Aviation Accomplishments in Speedway During World War II.” https://blog.history.in.gov/tag/v-1710/ National Museum of the United States Air Force, “Packard V-1650 Merlin” fact sheet. https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Vis... Disclaimer: Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for ‘fair use’ for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. I do not own some or all of the video materials used in this video. In the case of copyright issues, please contact me at historymediachannel1@gmail.com for credit or removal.