By the age of 14, she’d achieved her goal, her chosen bike a two-stroke Royal Enfield. When she wasn’t giving her sister Anne pillion rides, she was taking it to bits and putting it back together again, engine and all.
the Women’s Engineering Society. It was borne, in 1919, out of the need to protect the right to work of women who had been allowed to work in arms manufacture and other engineering trades during World War I.
In May 1926, the Society distributed a letter to girls schools throughout the country. Shilling’s mother convinced her to reply. By age 17, she became an apprentice electrical engineer learning the ropes, or more accurately cables, in the new electrical power plant at Bungay, Suffolk.
With support from the Women’s Engineering Society, Shilling joined the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Victoria University of Manchester in October 1929. She was one of only two women accepted that year; up from the none that had been accepted before.
Shilling received her Master of Science in 1933, and promptly joined a lecturer, Dr G.F. Mucklow, in researching fuel consumption, heat loss, and supercharger performance in Rolls-Royce and Napier single cylinder engines.
Her husband went on to fly Lancaster bombers during World War II,
By November 1939, after a series of promotions, she had reached the position of Technical Officer in charge of carburettor research and development work. In other words, she was perfectly positioned to tackle the skittish Merlin engines of the Hurricane and the Spitfire. In lieu of a fix, pilots had devised their own workarounds: dramatic maneuvers deployed if and when the engine cut out.
Tests ordered and overseen by Shilling identified the true problem: the rich cut that followed the weak cut addressed by Lovesey and Fisher.
Shilling worked out the precise volume and pressure of fuel being pumped into the chamber by the Merlin engine and designed a brass restrictor with a hole precisely the diameter needed to allow maximum flow of fuel, and therefore maximum power, without flooding the engine. Crucially, Shilling’s solution could be fitted without the removal of the carburettor, so the fix could be made in situ at operational airfields.
This left only the logistical problem of how to get the restrictors to Fighter Command airfields in good time. Shilling organized a small band of engineers to assist, though inevitably she travelled up and down the country solo, and by her preferred mode of travel: her trusty Norton motorcycle.
Years later, Keith Maddock, chief engineer at Hangar 42, an RAF base during the war, went so far as to describe the restrictor as a war-winning modification. “Beatrice Shilling helped us to win World War II—of that there is no doubt,” he told the BBC in 2017. Her war efforts weren’t limited to improvements to the Merlin engine. She also contributed to a range of engines to improve starting in freezing conditions, and operation at higher altitudes.
Her technical knowledge was very possibly unsurpassed. If nothing else, she was eventually awarded the Order of the British Empire for her wartime efforts.
In 1955, she was promoted to be the Royal Aircraft Establishment’s Senior Principal Scientific Officer.
https://www.damninteresting.com/how-miss-shillings-orifice-helped-win-the-war/ via a short note about her when extensively describing the Merlin engine in https://www.hagerty.com/media/people/in-the-moment-a-lady-an-engine-and-world-war-ii but not really respecting her accomplished engineering solution
By November 1939, after a series of promotions, she had reached the position of Technical Officer in charge of carburettor research and development work. In other words, she was perfectly positioned to tackle the skittish Merlin engines of the Hurricane and the Spitfire. In lieu of a fix, pilots had devised their own workarounds: dramatic maneuvers deployed if and when the engine cut out.
Tests ordered and overseen by Shilling identified the true problem: the rich cut that followed the weak cut addressed by Lovesey and Fisher.
Shilling worked out the precise volume and pressure of fuel being pumped into the chamber by the Merlin engine and designed a brass restrictor with a hole precisely the diameter needed to allow maximum flow of fuel, and therefore maximum power, without flooding the engine. Crucially, Shilling’s solution could be fitted without the removal of the carburettor, so the fix could be made in situ at operational airfields.
This left only the logistical problem of how to get the restrictors to Fighter Command airfields in good time. Shilling organized a small band of engineers to assist, though inevitably she travelled up and down the country solo, and by her preferred mode of travel: her trusty Norton motorcycle.
Years later, Keith Maddock, chief engineer at Hangar 42, an RAF base during the war, went so far as to describe the restrictor as a war-winning modification. “Beatrice Shilling helped us to win World War II—of that there is no doubt,” he told the BBC in 2017. Her war efforts weren’t limited to improvements to the Merlin engine. She also contributed to a range of engines to improve starting in freezing conditions, and operation at higher altitudes.
Her technical knowledge was very possibly unsurpassed. If nothing else, she was eventually awarded the Order of the British Empire for her wartime efforts.
In 1955, she was promoted to be the Royal Aircraft Establishment’s Senior Principal Scientific Officer.
https://www.damninteresting.com/how-miss-shillings-orifice-helped-win-the-war/ via a short note about her when extensively describing the Merlin engine in https://www.hagerty.com/media/people/in-the-moment-a-lady-an-engine-and-world-war-ii but not really respecting her accomplished engineering solution
It was know as Miss Shilling's orifice.
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