engine porn... coupled Bugatti engines working in concert for a WW1 airplane (thanks Kim!)

During World War I, Ettore Bugatti designed and built a U-16 aircraft engine. The engine consisted of two inline eight-cylinder sections mounted side-by-side on a common crankcase.

Each eight-cylinder engine section had its own crankshaft and was built up of two four-cylinder blocks. The engine’s two crankshafts directly engaged a common propeller shaft.

Total displacement was 1,485 cu in (24.3 L), and the engine produced 400 hp at 2,100 rpm.

Bugatti did not have the production capacity to manufacture the engine, so licensed production was undertaken in France by a group headed by Peugeot.

 An additional license was sold to the United States (the engine was built as the King-Bugatti by Duesenberg). Developmental and production issues resulted in few Bugatti-based U-16 engines being built during World War I.

the crankshafts drove the propeller shaft through freewheeling (or overrunning) clutch mechanisms. If one eight-cylinder engine section were to fail, the clutch would simply disengage the dead section’s crankshaft from driving the propeller shaft and allow the good engine section to continue to produce power.

https://oldmachinepress.com/2015/01/17/breguet-bugatti-32a-and-32b-quadimoteurs/