Tank Aero Engines
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The Story of the Tank Aero Engines
http://snyderartdesign.com/blog/page/30/ By Richard C. Hill
This 70-page, softbound, self-published work is obviously a labor of love. While it has its failings, many of which are not insignificant, this monograph nevertheless remains an important work. If Mr. Hill had not written this, then who would have?
My “go-to” reference on aircraft engines, A History of Aircraft Piston Engines by Herschel Smith, gives all of six sentences to the Tank engines. Obviously, if one is piqued by Smith’s description of a “somewhat strange engine,” Mr. Hill’s work is, for now, the best reference.
Not many more than 100 examples of two different Tank engines, Models 63 and 73, were built in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, by the Milwaukee Parts Corporation during a period from roughly 1928 to 1932. Other than being a bump in the road of aero engine development, the engines demonstrated what could happen if free-thinking engineers had their way with the status quo.
In this case the status quo was the—almost literally—carved in stone Curtiss OX-5 engine. Its detriments are widely known—complex lubrication requirements and overly weighty liquid cooling system, among them—making for notorious unreliability.
Frank C. Tank, who had some interesting connections, which you will discover in the book, thought that the OX-5 in a Jenny he had bought could be improved. He redesigned it for air-cooling. He convinced his brother, Alfred J. Tank, an engineer, to quit his job and work up the designs with him for the new engine. Together, they approached Edwin J. Michalski of the Milwaukee Parts Corporation to produce the engine. Therein lie the stories of the Tank engines.
The information provided in the stories of the characters and the engines is quite interesting and engaging, if one can wade through the informality of the prose. This is written almost like an expansive e-mail missive. Repetition is rife. Whole paragraphs from one page appear in rewritten form just a page later. The text cries for an editor.
In general the presentation is pleasant, but frustrating. Where the photographs are about the best I have seen in this type of publication—crisp, contrasty with open shadows, which reveal a fair amount of detail—the same cannot be said for the typography and design.
Paragraphs should be obvious. The only indication of a paragraph is a slightly indented line—about the width of a lowercase “i”—and shortened line of type just above. This presentation gives the sense of one huge block of type. This is neither inviting to the eye nor conducive to digesting information in palatable bites. Further, the use of boxed copy blocks throughout had me dividing my time between reading the body text and the boxed text. It was more a distraction than an aid, which is what it should be.
Despite these failings, I would recommend this to anyone interested in the minutia of aero engine history. There are a number of jumping off points for further research, especially the activities of Frank C. Tank.
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Self-published, 2002
$10 plus $2 postage
Available from: Richard C. Hill
Box 328
Harvard, IL
60033-0328
Reviewed December 17, 2003
