Continental IV 1430

[Nick Sumner]

Sadly there is not much information around about this engine, two publications which mention it are Graham White's Allied Aircraft Piston Engines of World War II and Bill Gunston's World Encyclopaedia of Aero Engines. Graham White actually owns an example!

http://www.enginehistory.org/iv-1430.htm

The two books give a sharply different view of the engine. White covers it on pages 375 to 379. He states flatly that it never made it's designed power of 1600 hp.

Gunston on the other hand on page 50 mentions a July1944 type test where he claims the engine gave 2100 hp at 3400 rpm at 87.8 inches of manifold pressure.

If Gunston is correct those seem to me to be extremely impressive perfomance figures from a 23.4 litre engine.

Which of these gentlemen is correct?

[Kutscha]

Nick, in one of the photos of GW's engine mounted on a trailer there is a graphic saying 2200hp.

http://www.enginehistory.org/Collections/IV-1430/DSC02111.jpg

[Wuzak]

I think the engines that were cleared for flight struggled to just over 1000hp for use in the XP-49 & XP-67.

Bench testing may have got the results mentioned, but I doubt that they passed the type test, and it was basically after the engine was dropped.

Interesting fact, there were more man hours spent on the single cylinder test engines for the IV-1430 than Rolls Royce spent on the Merlin getting it to flight status.