Tumansky M-88

The Tumansky M-88 was an air-cooled radial engine for aircraft developed in the Soviet Union shortly before World War II. It was designed to address the shortcomings of the M-87. The improvements incorporated in the M-88 were a strengthened crankcase, crankshaft, connecting rods, waffle ribbing at the piston bottom and a two speed geared centrifugal supercharger. The M-88 retained the same bore/stroke and displacement as the M-87 while increasing power to 1,000 - 1,150hp. Design work began in 1937 and by 1939 the first prototypes were being flight tested in the Polikarpov I-180 fighter prototypes. At first the M-88 wasn't a success, but the designers persisted and the M-88 was made into a reliable and widely produced engine. There were a number of different variants with the most numerous being the M-88B, of which 10,585 were produced at Zaporozhye and Omsk. The M-88B solved most of the mechanical failures associated with the M-87 and early M-88's by including oil injectors in the crankshaft, improved cooling and strengthened drive components. 16,087 M-88's were produced.

In hindsight the Tumansky family of engines developed from Gnome-Rhône 9K and Gnome-Rhône 14K, were far less successful than the Shvetsov family of engines developed from the Wright R-1820.

File:Tumansky.jpg

Family tree of Tumansky engines

Applications

• Ilyushin Il-4
• Neman R-10
• Sukhoi Su-2

References

• Kotelnikov, Vladimir (2005). Russian Piston Aero Engines. Crowood Press Ltd., p.153-155. 

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