Rolls Royce Meteor Tank Engines


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In spite of extensive searches on the internet I am unable to locate the site of the Tank engine factory that RR swapped with Rover for their gas turbine facility in Barnoldswick. The factory was located in Nottingham but does anyone know where?

Thanks

Canuck

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Yes. It was at Bobbers Mill, at the start of Aspley Lane, across the road from the Wheatsheaf pub. Previously it was a storage facility for Players. It is still there, on Ascot Road, I think it is.

By the way, do you have the book I co-authored telling the story of the Meteor tank engine, published by the Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust?

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The Rolls-Royce facility at Balloon Woods was its engine-testing site for engines that had been repaired at Garden Street - the old Radford Mill recently demolished. Feel sure I have said all this not long ago.

The finest tank engine up to the recent modern types was the adaption of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine to power armoured fighting vehicle. It is a wonderful story, how it all came about and how Rolls-Royce, with its vast experience of motor vehicle transmissions, suspension, etc, made the Cavalier tank into the Cromwell at its Clan Foundry site at Belper. RR was responsible for the first 3000 engines, which were made by Henry Meadows, after which they were manufactured by Rover, Morris, and Jaguar Cars. The Bobbers Mill factory was a repair/overhaul facility, though it did manufacture a batch of new engines. Production ended in 1962 by which time over 14,000 had been made. Horsepower began at 600+ for the Cromwell, Centurion and other vehicles (the engines did not have the Merlin's supercharger) and ended at 800 for the Conqueror.

Anyone interested in learning about the Meteor engine and its installations can get a copy of the book THE ROLLS-ROYCE METEOR - Cromwell and other applications from the publishers, post free, for £15. Address: The Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust, PO Box 31, Derby DE24 8BJ. Email: julie.e.redfern@rolls-royce.com

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littlebro, it's not quite as easy as that. The Rover Company at Barnoldswick and Clitheroe in Lancashire had the job of manufacturing the production version of the Whittle W2B/23 engine. This engine was invariably referred to in reports, etc, as the B23. The Air Ministry told Rolls-Royce, who had by then taken over Rover's work on gas turbines, that the designation B23 looked and sounded like a bomber aircraft designation. Rolls-Royce then appended its R to the B23 to produce the RB23, and gave it the name Welland. All subsequent engine types had the RB prefix. It is generally understood that RB stands for Rolls-Barnoldswick, but the fact of the matter is that the B suffix came with the design from Whittle's Power Jets company.

First there was the W1, then the W1X, then the W1A, then the W2 and then the production variant the W2B.

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Chulla you craft little devil !

What a mine of imformation you have, please share amongst us Nottstalgians & others to read too.

I never knew RR produced tank engines until I read this thread.

You must have loads more to tell, what about a new thread ?

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# 11

When I was in the Army in Germany we used to swan around in AFV 432 personnel carriers (a sort of tank with no turret or gun) powered by Rolls Royce K60 2 stroke opposed piston supercharged multi-fuel engines, they made a very strange whining noise..

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#7 I have seen some great photographs on Nottstalgia covering a multitude of subjects but for me littlebro, your dad's photo is far the best I have seen for a very long time. Brilliant.

I go along with that, it really is a superb picture. My old man sneaked a camera along with him on his push through Europe, he upgraded it to a captured German Zeiss and made up 35mm film in his battalion radio truck. He was lucky enough to be senior NCO at medium artillery field headquarters and got away with many things. When he took his rolls of film to be developed on Alfreton Road on his return, the whole lot mysteriously vanished in the shop, I think the photographer who ran the shop was lucky to escape with his life.

I have a few photo's he managed to keep, I think this is an official one he may have took at field headquarters, I note a bit of touching up on it, it's actually his battery opening up on the Northern German flank when Montgomery turned south to break up the Ardennes offensive and relieve the pressure on the US Army, the old man said the power of the British response was by then far beyond the means of the Whermacht to cope with.

img042.jpg

Sorry to go off the subject. I did hear, I think it was on a recent veterans programme, that when the Deserts Rats were issued with Cromwells they were appalled at the sight of them, they thought they were death traps because they presented too many flat sided faces to the enemy, as usual the British tank designers got it wrong, they said, looking at that picture they do look rather square with very little sloped armour to deflect shot from the enemy, who by then had equipped nearly all their front line tanks with the dreaded 88mm high velocity gun. They lasted a while in service but I'd be interested to know what their loss rate was compared to other tanks.

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Chulla you craft little devil !

What a mine of imformation you have, please share amongst us Nottstalgians & others to read too.

I never knew RR produced tank engines until I read this thread.

You must have loads more to tell, what about a new thread ?

He certainly is Catfan, keeping quiet then comes up with all this usefull stuff does our Chulla.

I knew about the Meteor engines being down rated Merlins, the reason being that a bloke in the West Country obtained one of those fibreglass Spitfire replicas and decided to make it a ground runner for fetes etc etc. The cost of a real Merlin put one of those out the window and he obtained a Meteor instead from redundant military stock, relatively cheaply. It took some fitting, then he fitted out the cockpit with original components and ended up with a very cool looking and sounding Spitfire he was able to transport around on a trailer. I've seen a video of him starting it up for the first time, bloody terrifying it was, but a nice bit of gear for the fraction of the cost of a real Spitfire.

About three years ago I went to stay with my pals who lived then in Earby, Lancs, just a couple of miles from Barnoldswick, or 'Barlick' as they pronounce it up there. I didn't appreciate how much the town was tied to Rolls Royce and certainly didn't know that Rover originally owned it. It's so isolated you wouldn't believe it, the Luftwaffe would never have found the place. Road access is very limited, I don't know how they get equipment in and out of the place, during the war they had a railway which closed in 1966, no chance of an airfield, too many hills, it's right in the middle of the Pennines not far from Pendle Hill.

The town is clearly very prosperous and well cared for by Rolls Royce, plenty of sports grounds and floral displays, when you get there after passing through the filth dereliction and slummy ghettoes of Burnley, Nelson and Colne, it's like arriving on another planet.

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caftan.

Rolls-Royce only produced the prototype engines - at Clan Foundry and 25 at Bobbers Mill. It modified the Merlin at the request of Leyland, who were going to make the tank with the old American Liberty engine of 400 horsepower. RR agreed to make the Merlin engine a suitable 600 horsepower engine. No soon had RR done this then Leyland backed out of the project, leaving RR holding the baby. RR was too involved in developing and making aero-engines to get involved with the production of the Meteor engine, so it got the Wolverhampton engine maker Henry Meadows to make the first 3000 engines. All of the engines were made from old Merlin aero-engines - they being stripped down for the necessary parts. Once RR had supplied the parts for the 3000 engines it left the project, but was still involved in a little engine development work. There was an eight-cylinder version called the Meteorite, that went in tank transporters, steaming along the Continental roads at 50 miles per hour! It then concentrated on the tank, making it the finest tank of its type in the British Army. It could achieve 50 miles per hour; absolutely unheard of speed at the time. The tank was improved and named Challenger, with the later Avenger and Comet types.

It was Leyland that gave it the name Meteor, some might remember that Leyland used this name for its lorries, and also the Comet. Bobbers Mill remained with Rover during the war. It made some new engines there but was mainly the Meteor overhaul and repair facility.

By the way. There are a number of car specials that have the Meteor engine in them. They usually say that they have a Merlin under the bonnet, but in most cases (if not all) it is a Meteor.

Read the book; it's all in there.

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Further to my saying that some special cars have a Meteor engine in them, this one was built up from a Rolls-Royce Phantom II chassis by Robin Beech in East Sussex. Its Meteor engine is one of the original 3000 engines.

Meteor%20car%202_zpsjzmhvrtj.jpg

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#15. Neither Rolls-Royce nor Leyland gave the Meteor Tank engine that name. Meteor is purely Rover. Meteor being the name of their Solihull and previously Coventry factories. Rover were bombed out of Coventry and so moved to Solihull. Ocasionally one or two brass plates appear on the market that were 'removed' from factory entrances. Rovers factories were always known as 'Meteor Works'. In the 1930's Rover produced a 'sporty' car which was also called a Rover Meteor. Also the Gloster Meteor is so called because of the people who designed (but not built) the Welland engine, the designers of that engine being Rover - the builders being Rolls-Royce. Your book is OK but it is written by Rolls-Royce and is so biased in their favour - the truth is often distorted. But then I am probably biased towards Rover.

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#18. Malcolm, you are entirely wrong. Leyland gave the name Meteor at the early planning stage. The book was not produced by Rolls-Royce, nor is it written in any kind of biased manner. The main contributer was the man who was responsible for putting the engine into production in 1942. The book is a combination of memories and contemporary data. The Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust, while promoting the history and technical excellence of Rolls-Royce, is free to critise the Company, as it has done on a number of occasions. The criticism has been against the old Rolls-Royce Limited company, that no longer exists. We have total access to old records, including the private files of some of the past execuutives.

There was absolutely no reason to be biased about telling the story of Rolls-Royce's work on the Meteor engine and the Cromwell. It is one of the great achievements of its kind during the war, and one that was unknown until the Heritage Trust revealed the story. No other company had the get-up-and-go attitude, the wilingness, the aptitude, the expertise, to get things moving during the war. It also designed and produced guns, another one of my books about an aspect of Rolls-Royce that no-one knew about. The trouble is that most people only know that Rolls-Royce made posh cars, and engines for Spitfires.

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