COLUMN // HISTORY
At the Center of the Whirlwind
Charles Lanier Lawrance designed the engines that set records and won prizes, mostly for the aviators who then received the lion’s share of the glory.
Written by Lee S. Langston
The Lawrance J-1 radial 9 engine is now part of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum collection. Photo: Smithsonian Institution
In the early years of aviation, innovators chased fame and (small) fortunes by pursuing prizes. Michelin, the French tire company, sponsored a series of distance competitions, starting with a triangle over Le Mans that was won by Wilbur Wright himself. William Randolph Hearst staked $50,000 (the equivalent of $1.7 million today) in 1911 to the first aviator to fly coast to coast in less than 30 days; Hearst kept his money as no one completed such a flight before the competition expired. London’s Daily Mail also put up prize money for aviation accomplishments, including £10,000 won in 1919 for the first transatlantic crossing, a flight between Newfoundland and Ireland.
The most famous of these rewards was the Orteig Prize: $25,000 offered in 1919 by New York hotelier James Orteig to the first aviator to fly non-stop between New York and Paris. It took years before the state of the art caught up with the dream of winning the Orteig Prize. But as every schoolchild was once taught, the New York-to-Paris non-stop flight was finally achieved in May 1927 by a plane powered by a J-5C Whirlwind engine.
OK, so the glory for the pioneering flight across the Atlantic Ocean went to Charles A. Lindbergh, and deservedly so. But it’s a shame Charles Lanier Lawrance doesn’t receive more acclaim. Lawrance’s innovative air-cooled nine-cylinder radial engine, first introduced in the early 1920s, would soon become the basic design for radial engines that came after it.
Lawrance was born into a prominent New York family in 1882 and graduated from Yale in 1905. After working for a failed automobile venture and studying at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he began working on a lighter air-cooled engine for airplanes to replace previous heavier, water-cooled ones that were common in the 1910s. He founded the Lawrance Aero Engine Company in New York City in 1917 to commercialize his innovations, and after World War I started, he continued this work while serving in the U.S. Navy.
US President Calvin Coolidge (left) presents the 1927 Collier Trophy to aeronautical engineer Charles L. Lawrance (right) for the development of the air-cooled radial engine. The photo was taken on the lawn of the White House in March 1928. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Shortly after the war, he invented the first practical aviation air-cooled radial-piston engine in the United States, the nine-cylinder Model J-1. Compared to other engines at the time, it was lightweight, tipping the scales at 476 pounds, while still producing 200 hp at 1,800 rpm. It used aluminum cylinders with steel liners, which increased engine life and endurance greatly.
These properties were put to the test in a very public way just a few years after Lawrance launched the J-1. On October 8, 1922, the Curtiss Marine Trophy Race was held in Detroit, Mich., for sea planes, attracting a race day crowd of 200,000 spectators. The racecourse consisted of eight laps around a special triangular 20-mile course laid out over the waters of the Detroit River and Lake Huron.
Eight of the U.S. Navy’s newest high-speed seaplanes were entered. Two of the eight were powered by Lawrance’s Model J-1 air-cooled engine while the six others were powered by a variety of air- and water-cooled piston aero engines. Only one of the eight entered seaplanes finished the race, with seven failing to finish for various reasons. The winner was powered by the Lawrance J-1, at a maximum speed of 120 mph.
Eventually this demonstration of superior performance resulted in a Navy order for 200 Lawrance J-1s. That contract started the serious production of this innovative radial air-cooled aero engine.
This monoplane, powered by one of Charles Lawrance’s J-5C Whirlwind engines, completed the first nonstop flight from New York to Paris. The pilot stands in the foreground. Photo: Associated Press
But for all the confidence the Navy had in Lawrance’s engines, it felt his company was suspect. Concerned that Lawrance Aero Engine couldn’t supply enough engines for its needs (in this interwar period, plans for naval aviation were blossoming) the Navy pushed for it to be swallowed up by a larger, more stable rival.
In May 1923, Lawrance's company was purchased by New Jersey’s Wright Aeronautical Company, a major supplier of aircraft and aircraft engines and a descendant of the Wright Brothers’ original firm. Lawrance was retained as a vice president, and working off Lawrance's J-1 designs, Wright Aeronautical developed an air-cooled engine, the Model J Whirlwind series.
In addition to Lindbergh with the Spirit of St. Louis, Wright engines based on Lawrance’s designs were used by other famed aviators, including Richard E. Byrd, Clarence Chamberlin, and Amelia Earhart. These radial engines based on the J-1 Model design gave confidence to Navy pilots performing long-range overwater flights.
Lawrance went on to become president of Wright Aeronautical after a team of executives, including president Frederick B. Rentschler, left the company to found engine maker Pratt & Whitney Aircraft. (The Rentschler team carried with them the J-1 design philosophy to create P&WA’s first radial piston engines.)
In addition to all the prizes and records captured by Lawrance, he won a major one himself. Months after Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic behind the J-5C Whirlwind, Lawrance received the Collier Trophy, which since 1911 has been awarded annually for the most outstanding achievement in aviation. President Calvin Coolidge himself presented the Collier Trophy to Lawrance, recognizing him “as the builder and designer of the Whirlwind motors.”
Lee S. Langston is professor emeritus in the mechanical engineering department at the University of Connecticut at Storrs.
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