The Engine That Won World War II – Jay Leno’s Garage

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With 1390 hp, Jay demonstrates the power and engineering of the Merlin 1650-1 engine that was the heart of the P-51 Mustangs and the Lancaster bombers in World War II.

37 Comments

  1. RUSSIAN ENGINE WIN WORLD WAR 2 , LEARN HISTORY . NOT AMERICAN HISTORY, LEARN REAL HISTORY…

  2. Hey Jay correction required it is the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum at Mount Hope in Hamilton Ontario. Would love to show you around but sorry it is definitely not in Toronto.

  3. For me, this is the most amazing beautiful engine going and it sounds like nothing else in the world 😍

  4. Could you use a wind-screen mounted on your dash-board ? Nice demo….thanks From Canada.

  5. The guys at BMW, who put their radial engine in The FockeWolf 190 May disagree with Jay over the greatest WW2 engine.

  7. Two more planes to add to the list that had Merlins. The Spitfire and the Mosquito. The Mosquito was by far and away the best bomber of WWII. Very fast, deadly accurate and if the Germans could actually catch them, they had very little loss of life. Even the famed FW190's had trouble catching them. Hitler offered his pilots two kills for shooting down one Mosquito. The Mosquito could fly low enough to place a bomb in the front door of a building. I would also like to add that the allied planes were so superior to the Japanese at the end of the war there was no need to drop the atom bombs. Australia with the Spitfire Mk V which was built at the end of the Battle of Britain had a kill ratio of fifteen to one over Burma. Which is up there with the kill ratio of the German pilots over Russia. Japan could have been completely isolated by the allied forces surrounding them with the many carriers the USA had. The Hellcat a carrier-based plane had a kill ratio of about eighteen to one. Once Japan was surrounded by US aircraft carriers the Japanese would eventually have no fuel for their planes and no other supplies would be able to get through. Anything that moved would have been picked off by the allied aircraft roaming free over Japan. Game set and match.

  9. The place to see a Merlin in action back in the 1960s was on the Detroit River, powering the monstrous Unlimited racing boats that competed for the legendary Gold Cup. You wouldn't be able to hear well for days afterward.

  10. Jay
    Americans are terribly lacking in education just as engineers were just as responsible for victory in ww2 and change their World today.
    Just how close and rapid and war changing.
    Me109 vs Spitfire
    Fw190 vs Spitfire / Typhoon Tempest
    The Avro Lancaster
    And race cars
    Engineering optimum whether changing entire tooling meaning drop in production could change war trrr

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