Читать книгу Engineering Hitler's Downfall - Gwilym Roberts - Страница 62

As for those Spitfires and Hurricanes, they began the war with insufficient firepower, as Hastings asserted, but they had the benefit of one superlative piece of engineering – the Merlin engine.

Following Rolls-Royce’s usual practice, the engine was named after a bird of prey, in this case a small falcon. It was designed by a team working under Ernest Hives, then the company’s general works manager and newly appointed board member who, after 1940, was ably assisted by Stanley Hooker. Both the Hurricane and Spitfire were designed around the Merlin engine.