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The civilian Merlin was not rejected for being unreliable! The fact is that civilian Merlin were approaching 2000 hrs TBO. The problem is that the Merlin often competed with the R-2800, i.e. an engine with vastly greater displacement. This meant that the Merlin had to be run at very high cruising boost, being quite noisy.
I am not saying it was a faultless engine, but the fact is that RR attacked all problems very quickly and aggressively like P&W did during the development of the R-2800 but so unlike DB or Wright (R-3350 was a nightmare and sad example of bean counters running the design department).
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"No man, no problem." Josef Stalin possibly said...:-)
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