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Engine Views

2021-04-22

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I saw a few videos on YouTube today showing Boeing 707s at an overhaul facility in the mid-1990s. 707s and 720s have been part of my fascination with civil aircraft as long as I can remember. They were also in the jet-setting public's conscience for most of the second half of the 20th century, and it's hardly an exaggeration to state that the design of the 707 is one of the most classic in the history of aerospace.

One aspect of that classic design is the 707's low bypass ratio engines. Four or more of these tiny, inefficient engines were needed for aircraft of the time to obtain sufficient power and reliability--the Boeing B-52 has eight such engines! The aesthetic result was a plane whose fuselage was much more prominent than its engines, so much so that many airlines didn't apply colored paint to the engines and left them bare.

The Douglas DC-8 and Convair 880 had similar aesthetics. Airline liveries were so designed that one's eye was drawn to the nose, the window panes, or the tail, not the pods under the wings. The engines were there, of course, but where the people were--where YOU would be if you too soared above the clouds--that's what draw one's attention.

Safety and performance demands led to the development of the high bypass ratio engine in the 1960s, and the first civil aircraft to feature them included the Boeing 747 and the McDonnell-Douglas DC-10. Engines became more prominent in the appearance of jetliners; gone were the days when they simply blended into the wing. Some aircraft, such as the Lockheed L-1011, were distinguishable precisely because of the their powerplant layouts. Engine nacelles began to be painted and accented, drawing one's gaze to them.

Today we have aircraft such as the Boeing 787, whose engines are absolutely enormous. The fan diameters of both the GEnx and the Trent 1000 are over 9 feet, and with the nacelle diameter included the engine is over half the diameter of the fuselage. The Airbus A340 began its service life with smaller CFM56 engines before being upgraded to larger Trent 500s of the A340-600. Even modern KC-135s have been given CFM56 engines in recent years, which are much larger that the original engines.

It might be the fact that I grew up looking at aircraft of years gone by, but these engines on modern aircraft simply don't look appealing to me. I enjoy when aircraft fuselages are quite large in comparison to their engines, even if the engines themselves are big, such on the 747. Perhaps this is an outgrowth of the aesthetics of propeller planes, where the engine itself was relatively small even if the propeller blades were large. Either way, I prefer how airliners look when their engines are very small.

This isn't a plea for aircraft to return to that style. I know there are massive advantages to using high bypass ratio engines over low bypass ratio engines. But it does mean that older aircraft have a certain beauty in my eye that newer aircraft will never have.

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[Last updated: 2021-10-28]