Keep it Simple
At the age of ten, Beatrice Shilling had grown tired of being left behind by her older sisters on cycling trips. An unusually small girl, Beatrice saw little hope of her legs ever lengthening to the point where she should keep up. Not one to ever accept defeat however, ten-year-old Beatrice began saving for a motorcycle.
Aided by a prize she won in a national engineering competition; she accomplished her goal at the young age of 14. When not riding the two stroke Royal Enfield motorcycle she could invariably be found taking it apart bit by bit and reassembling it. Just one year later, she had made the determination that engineering was the career for her.
Unfortunately for Beatrice she grew up in a different world than we live in now. England in the 1920’s had very different views on the roles of women in society. “The average woman does not possess the same engineering instinct as the average man”, was one opinion recorded in the Daily News at around that time. The best chance she would have of accomplishing her goal was through the help of the newly formed Women’s Engineering Society. Thanks in part to the society, by the age of 17 Beatrice had become an apprentice electrical engineer, and never looked back.
She was one of two women accepted into the engineering department at her college (up from the prior year’s record of zero). Once completing that training, she was afforded the ability to continue studying her true passion, mechanical engineering, and thermodynamics. Her early love of motorcycles never faded, and she eventually would specialize in fuel consumption and supercharger performance.
Her technical knowledge, and her bravado, were on full display when she wheeled her 490cc motorbike onto the Brooklands racing track in 1934. At less than have the engine size of many of her competitors, officials gave her and her small motorcycle little to no chance in the competition. Those officials were entirely unaware what they were looking at. Shilling had more alterations to her motorbike than she could count, and they were on full display as she hit speeds of 106 mph, a record that would never be broken. Five years later, the track would be shuttered forever, as Europe plunged into war. Beatrice would never again use her engineering prowess to set speed records on a motorcycle. She would instead use it to help win the war.
In 1940 Beatrice was employed by the Royal Aircraft Establishment. Initially she wrote technical documentation, but it did not take long until her skills were noticed, and she was promoted to technical officer in charge of carburetor research and development work. Her first task, solve a problem that was coming close to causing the British to lose the war.
For 16 weeks in the summer of 1940 The Royal Air Force and the Luftwaffe clashed in the skies over southern England. Nazi bombers escorted by fighters made runs at London looking to break the will of the British people. The hopes of the British rested in two aircraft. The tried-and-true Hurricane, and the sleek modern Spitfire.
The Spitfire was revered among pilots for its speed and agility, and by the end of the war it became a bona fide national icon. The plane was also fatally flawed. Its engine would sputter and quit right as the fighting was getting heavy: while diving, a basic attacking and defensive maneuver. The rival Nazi aircraft did not suffer from this shortcoming; thus they enjoyed a massive advantage in air combat.
The Merlin engine which powered both he Spitfire, and the Hurricane was designed as most engines of the time were. A carburetor on the top of the engine mixed fuel and air, and gravity did the work of feeding the mixture into the engine. In a car engine, or an aircraft engine that process generally works just fine. The problem with the engine cutting out, arose because the engineers had not accounted for a confusing little thing called negative gravity.
When entering a steep dive, with the engines at full power an aircraft is accelerating towards earth faster than it would during a free fall. Anything not bolted to the aircraft, will accelerate more slowly due to its own inertia. The best way to understand this concept, is to imagine being the pilot in the dive. You would feel the skin of your face being stretched upwards as the rest of your body was accelerating towards the earth. The problem for the British aircraft, is that fuel does the same thing in a dive. Fuel that normally is pulled by gravity down into the engine, was instead flowing upwards to the top of the carburetor, rather than down into the engine. With no fuel to burn, the engine sputtered, and died.
To their credit, a couple of engineers were quick to come up with some complicated devices that would force pressurized fuel into engines. The Royal Air Force quickly moved to retrofit the engines of all aircraft in service, a process which took months and had a hefty price tag. Their intricate and technical designs ensured that engines no longer stalled during dives, but they utterly failed to solve the problem.
Once out of the dive, the valves, diaphragms, and pressure chambers of the new designs continued to pump fuel through the carburetor. This flooding of the engine led to a far more serious and prolonged engine stall, as the engine was far too filled with fuel to actually burn any of it.
It took two of England’s best male engineers months to come up with a solution. Additional months along with hundreds of mechanics to deploy it. And it failed. All they managed to do was create a bigger problem than they started with.
It took England’s best female engineer one week to come up with a solution to that problem. And just one more week to deploy it, with no need of help from mechanics. While engineers toiled away with ever more complex designs for how to solve the new engine flooding method, Beatrice, who actually had hands on experience with engines to go along with her technical knowledge, devised a brilliantly simple solution.
She worked out the exact amount and pressure of fuel that needed to be pumped into the Merlin engine, and then used a small piece of brass to make a restrictor with a hole precisely the diameter needed to allow the best rate of fuel to flow. The device could be affixed to the engine in under five minutes, without the need to remove the carburetor from the engine. Once perfected she rode the country on her trusty motorbike delivering the devices to every airfield in England.
Humans have a knack for overthinking our problems and overcomplicating our solutions. Whether dealing with problems at work, in relationships, in finances, or…in war. The simple solutions are the best ones.