1945 Cyclone 18 - Lockheed promo

 

A year is only 8760 hours. The Wright Cyclone 18 has a total flight and test time of ten million hours. In hours, years or annual rings in a tree, that's eleven centuries of time. In the war years, the Cyclone 18 has gone through a fast, grueling development program. No other engine has ever had to take such punishment —excess temperatures, overloads, over-speeding, lean mixtures and maintenance handicapped by supplies. From that usage, however, came continuous refinement and design changes . . . improvements which paved the way for increases in performance not only of bombers, but of all types of planes powered by the Cyclone 18. Thus, the Cyclone 18 built today for planes such as the Lockheed Constellation is the sum of this ten million hours of experience. The forced acceleration of war has produced an advanced engine, years ahead of its time, for all types of planes.