Originally Posted by tangofox007 View Post
They tried "spinning" engines in aircraft in the early days. There was a bit of a problem with the gyroscopic effect.

They really didn't just "try" it. All large aircraft engines on commercial passenger as well as all aircraft in the AirForce, up too the Jet engine, were of the "radial" type and really were spinning engines

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No, not quite.

On the majority of aircraft with radial engines, the engine was mounted to the airframe and the propeller was mounted to the crankshaft. So the engine remained fixed and the crankshaft rotated.

But there was a model or two in the early years that had the crankshaft mounted to the airframe and the prop mounted to the engine, so that the crank was fixed and the entire engine rotated. But that was not the case in the vast majority of radial engine applications.

A spinning prop creates enough of a problem due to gyroscopic issues. I suspect that, if you got a R-4360 spinning, you would have to throttle back to idle before every turn!!!