From the Rolls-Royce experimental archive: a quarter of a million communications from Rolls-Royce, 1906 to 1960's. Documents from the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation (SHRMF).
Letter from a supplier defending the performance of their AC.9 bearing material and questioning the decision to discontinue its use.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 115\4\ scan0091 | |
| Date | 6th July 1940 | |
| WORKS TELEPHONE LYMINGTON 520 WORKS TELEGRAMS "WELLWORTHY" PRIVATE TELEPHONE LYMINGTON 232 MANAGING DIRECTOR'S OFFICE 1020a WELLWORTHY PISTON RINGS LTD., LYMINGTON HANTS JH/KES W. A.{Mr Adams} Robotham, Esq., Messrs. Rolls-Royce Ltd., Derby. 6th July, 1940. Dear Mr. Robotham, Thank you for your letter of the 1st instant and while I appreciate that wordy battles of correspondence do not help either the war effort or really do any good, I feel I have to reply to the points raised in your letter. I can do so, if it is desired, by a whole series of extracts from correspondence. Perhaps, thinking it over, I should not have, with so many other things on hand, have raised the question, but in two different places, once when Mr. Pilkington was with us, I was informed that you had said, "Why persevere with AC.9 when Rolls had dropped it", so I felt that it was desirable to point out that, while you people may or may not have confidence in AC.9, the results have shown that it has very considerable possibilities as a bearing material. Having heard on two occasions while I was at Leyland myself from two different people about Rolls having dropped their AC.9 experiments and having had from you personally one or two statements which seemed to indicate that you yourself had come to the conclusion that it was flogging a dead horse to go on with it, I thought it was time that I acquainted Mr. Hives with the real position. I should also like to point out that we have supplied approximately 100,000 pairs of bearings with practically no failures. Now I tell you something else which you possibly don't know, all of which can of course be confirmed by letter. We did a whole lot of research work and made dozens of bearings for the Dagger engine and these proved entirely successful and the AC.9 stood up to conditions where silver indium alloy failed, but it was reported by the Air Ministry to Napier that they should | ||