Design and Development
In the 1930s, BMW took out a license to build the Pratt & Whitney Hornet engines. By the mid-30s they had introduced an improved version, the BMW 132. The BMW 132 was widely used, most notably on the Junkers Ju 52, which it powered for much of that design's lifetime.
In 1935 the RLM funded prototypes of two much larger radial designs, one from Bramo, the Bramo 329, and another from BMW, the BMW 139. BMW bought Bramo soon after the projects started; unsurprisingly BMW folded the Bramo engineers into the BMW project, cancelling the Bramo design. The resulting proposal was essentially a two-row version of the BMW 132, the 1,550 PS (1,529 hp, 1,140 kW) BMW 139.
The BMW 139 was originally intended to be used in roles similar to those of the other German radials, namely bombers and transport aircraft, but mid-way through the program Kurt Tank suggested it for use in the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter project. Radial engines were rare in European designs as they were considered to have too large an area for good streamlining and would not be suitable for high speed aircraft (the US Army agreed, see hyper engine). However, radials were often used in American and Japanese fighters at the end of the 1930s, and improvements in the fairings were reducing the concerns about drag. Tank felt that attention to detail could result in a streamlined radial that would not suffer undue drag, and would be competitive with inlines.
Read more about this topic: BMW 801
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