[edwest2]

These engineering questions should be answered next year. From a post on the Facebook page for the book, The Secret Horsepower Race by Calum Douglas. Dated 19 November.

"After a five year effort to research and write a definitive technical history of Fighter Aircraft piston aero engine development in the Second World War, by the western powers. Yesterday I submitted the final manuscript to my publisher, Dan Sharp at Mortons.

"The next five months until publication will result in a lot of editing and refinement, but the main task is now done!

"Nearly a quarter of a million words, and over 400 pages of A4, 100,000 archive document photographs taken, and research visits all over the world, from Cambridge, to California to Stuttgart.

"I hope people will enjoy reading the result in April, when its on sale. It is a chronological history, trying to explain what happened and why with engine development - not an academic textbook.

"I would like to thank Daimler-AG, Mahle Powertrain, and Rolls-Royce Plc, for granting me access to their corporate archives, and also the IMECHE, Kew National Archives and the Imperial War Museum, as well as the Bundesarchiv and the Smithsonian.

"I would also like to thank in particular Dr.-Ing Karl Kollmann in Germany for giving me his fathers unpublished wartime engine development papers (Prof. Dr-Ing Kollmann, chief designer of Daimler-Benz)."