During the Second World War (1939-1945) the British established an aircraft assembly plant at Takoradi in what was then the Colony of the Gold Coast, now the Republic of Ghana. Many of the aircraft put together at Takoradi, from parts shipped from the UK, were Bristol Beaufighters, twin-engine fighters, used in Egypt and North Africa in large numbers in a wide variety of roles including bombing, ground attack and reconnaissance. The Beaufighters were powered by two Bristol Hercules, fourteen cylinder, sleeve-valve radial engines, which in later versions developed about two thousand horsepower. In 1971, two old Hercules engines were found in the bush on the campus of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, and the curiosity of engineering students led to one of them being given a brief new lease of life.
No one could say how two Bristol Hercules aero-engines came to be left in the bush behind the mechanical engineering workshop. Perhaps years before someone had thought that they might be of interest to the students. They certainly excited much curiosity when rediscovered one hot afternoon in 1971.
Seeing a group of students with an obvious focus of attention, a British senior lecturer walked over to find out what had caught their attention. ‘What are they?’ he was asked as he joined the gathering. To his amazement he found himself looking at engines he had worked on as an apprentice at the Bristol Engine Company in the mid 1950s. ‘Those are Bristol Hercules aero-engines,’ he told the young men who looked back blankly, little the wiser for this response to their question.
There followed a long stream of questions and answers at which the students were told about the history and uses of the engines. There could be no certainty that the engines had come from a Beaufighter, they were used in several other aircraft. They might have come from a civil aircraft that died at Kumasi airport, and much more recently than the end of World War II; the Englishman knew from his own experience that Hercules engines were still being overhauled and returned to service as late as 1956.
There followed more technical questions and the students asked about the number of cylinders. The Hercules engine had fourteen cylinders arranged in two rows of seven. Then one student asked, ‘Why are the cylinders round?’ This question startled the lecturer. These were students studying engineering at a university yet they clearly lacked much basic mechanical knowledge that would be taken for granted in an industrialised country. The lecturer decided to discuss the issue with Professor Norman Smith, the Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
It was agreed that one of the Hercules engines would be mounted on a stand and dismantled by the students as part of a course in Principles of Mechanical Engineering. Two or three students would be assigned to each of the major mechanisms of the engine such as cylinders and sleeve valve drive, carburettors, reduction gearbox and supercharger. With the aid of a maintenance manual obtained from the engine manufacturer, the students would write an account of their assigned mechanism, explaining its function in detail. Finally, each would be given a component part that was said to be worn out and sent to the workshop to make a replacement.
This was the fate that befell one of the old engines. Hercules was not returned to life: he never roared or flew again, but his bare bones told the tale that bones can tell, and a new generation of engineers gained practical hands-on experience that they otherwise might have missed.
AUTOPOST by BEDEWY VISIT GAHZLY
