Quote:
Originally Posted by skunk works
Something else from that show..."Washing-machine Charlie"
Originally from Europe as a way to identify German planes (I'm told)(Erich could tell you more).
Germans didn't bother to synchronize motors on multi-engined (mostly 2s) planes like the Allies did. A waste of unnessary polish/time in war-time, So a Whroom-Whroom-Whroom would be heard (as you heard each engine at "close but not the same" rpm, instead of a steady roar.
Hence the nic-name.
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Synchronising the motors was a simple job, done in flight by fiddling with the throttles. The Luftwaffe pilots deliberately left their bomber engines unsynchronised (at least, early in the war) because this was believed to confuse the huge acoustic detectors which the British had built to detect approaching aircraft (before the advent of radar of course, which the Luftwaffe didn't initially know about). These were massive concrete "mirrors" of various types, curved to focus the sound onto a microphone. Some of them still exist.