The Armstrong Siddeley Mongoose is a British five-cylinder

radial Radial is a geometric term of location which may refer to: Mathematics and Direction * Vector (geometric), a line * Radius, adjective form of * Radial distance (geometry), a directional coordinate in a polar coordinate system * Radial set * A ...

aero engine An aircraft engine, often referred to as an aero engine, is the power component of an aircraft propulsion system. Aircraft using power components are referred to as powered flight. Most aircraft engines are either piston engines or gas turbin ...

produced by

Armstrong Siddeley Armstrong Siddeley was a British engineering group that operated during the first half of the 20th century. It was formed in 1919 and is best known for the production of luxury vehicles and aircraft engines. The company was created following t ...

. Developed in the mid-1920s it was used in the

Hawker Tomtit The Hawker Tomtit is a British training biplane from the late 1920s. Design and development The Royal Air Force in 1927 required a replacement for their current elementary trainers, the elderly Avro 504Ns. They specified that the power plant sh ...

trainer and

Parnall Peto The Parnall Peto was a small seaplane designed to the British Air Ministry's specification 16/24 in the early 1920s for use as a submarine-carried reconnaissance aircraft. Design and development Two examples were designed and built by George ...

seaplane amongst others. With a

displacement Displacement may refer to: Physical sciences Mathematics and physics *Displacement (geometry), is the difference between the final and initial position of a point trajectory (for instance, the center of mass of a moving object). The actual path ...

of 540 cubic inches (9 litres) the Mongoose had a maximum power output of 155 horsepower (115 kilowatts). A Mongoose engine powers the sole remaining airworthy Hawker Tomtit, based at

Old Warden Old Warden is a village and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Central Bedfordshire district of the county of Bedfordshire, England, about south-east of the county town of Bedford. The 2011 census shows its population as 328. The ...

Design and development

The Mongoose is a five-cylinder, single-row, air-cooled radial piston engine. The engine features twin forward-mounted

ignition magneto An ignition magneto (also called a high-tension magneto) is an older type of ignition system used in spark-ignition engines (such as petrol engines). It uses a magneto and a transformer to make pulses of high voltage for the spark plugs. The old ...

s and enclosed valve rockers, the

cylinders A cylinder () has traditionally been a three-dimensional solid, one of the most basic of curvilinear geometric shapes. In elementary geometry, it is considered a prism with a circle as its base. A cylinder may also be defined as an infinite ...

being the same as those used for the earlier

Jaguar The jaguar (''Panthera onca'') is a large felidae, cat species and the only extant taxon, living member of the genus ''Panthera'' that is native to the Americas. With a body length of up to and a weight of up to , it is the biggest cat spe ...

engine. An unusual feature of the Mongoose is the vertical position of the lower cylinder, a design thought likely to promote oil fouling of the

spark plug A spark plug (sometimes, in British English, a sparking plug, and, colloquially, a plug) is a device for delivering electric current from an ignition system to the combustion chamber of a spark-ignition engine to ignite the compressed fuel/air ...

s.Lumsden 2003, p. 69. Built in several variants, power output ranged between 135 and 155 hp (100-115 kW).

Variants

;Mongoose I :1926, 135 hp. ;Mongoose II :1930, 155 hp. ;Mongoose III :1929. ;Mongoose IIIA :1929, civil use. ;Mongoose IIIC :1929, Military use based on IIIA.

Applications

''Note:'' * ANBO III (Second batch, 1931) *

Avro 504N The Avro 504 is a single-engine biplane bomber made by the Avro, Avro aircraft company and under licence by others. Production during World War I totalled 8,970 and continued for almost 20 years, making it the most-produced aircraft of any kind ...

* Avro 504R *

Avro Tutor The Avro Type 621 Tutor is a two-seat British radial-engined biplane from the interwar period. It was a simple but rugged basic trainer (aircraft), trainer that was used by the Royal Air Force as well as many other air arms worldwide. Design ...

* Avro Type 621 Trainer *

Handley Page Hamlet __NOTOC__ The Handley Page HP.32 Hamlet was a British six-passenger monoplane transport designed and built by Handley Page.Jackson 1973, p320-321 Only one was built to order of the Air Ministry, first flown with three-engines, later changed to tw ...

Handley Page Gugnunc The Handley Page H.P.39 is a wooden biplane that was constructed in 1929. The aircraft was intended to compete in a competition proposed by the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics - the Guggenheim Safe Aircraft Competition. T ...

* Fokker S.IV

Surviving engines

An Armstrong Siddeley Mongoose IIIC powers the sole remaining airworthy

, ''K1786/G-AFTA'', owned and operated by the

Shuttleworth Collection The Shuttleworth Collection is a working aviation, automotive and agricultural collection located at Old Warden Aerodrome in Bedfordshire, England. History The collection was founded in 1928 by aviator Richard Ormonde Shuttleworth. While ...

this aircraft flies regularly throughout the summer months.The Shuttleworth Collection - Hawker Tomtit
Retrieved: 22 February 2012

Specifications (Mongoose I)

References

Notes

Bibliography

* Gunston, Bill. ''World Encyclopaedia of Aero Engines''. Cambridge, England. Patrick Stephens Limited, 1989. * Lumsden, Alec. ''British Piston Engines and their Aircraft''. Marlborough, Wiltshire: Airlife Publishing, 2003. .

External links

{{Armstrong Siddeley aeroengines Aircraft air-cooled radial piston engines

Mongoose A mongoose is a small terrestrial carnivorous mammal belonging to the family Herpestidae. This family has two subfamilies, the Herpestinae and the Mungotinae. The Herpestinae comprises 23 living species that are native to southern Europe, A ...

1920s aircraft piston engines