The Argus As 5 was a large 24-cylinder double W aircraft engine, designed and built in Germany in the early 1920s by Argus Motoren.
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Design and development
Following the Armistice of 1918, Germany continued to build aircraft and engines under the control of the Military Inter-Allied Commission of Control. For use on very large aircraft, Argus designed and built the As 5 WW-24 water-cooled piston engine.
The As 5 consisted of six banks of cylinders arranged around a common crankshaft with a single output shaft. Each cylinder drove the crankshaft through a master and slave big end, similar to most radial engines. The top and bottom sets of three cylinder banks were set at 45° to each other with a 90° separation between the outermost banks.
Individual cylinders with sheet metal water jackets shared the aluminium alloy heads, four to a bank. Inlet and exhaust valves were actuated by shaft driven overhead camshafts. The aluminium alloy crankcase was split top and bottom.
Although some testing was carried out, the As 5 never flew and was abandoned along with the very large aircraft projects it was intended to power.
Engines on display
A single example survives on display at the Polish Aviation Museum in Kraków, Poland.
Specifications
Data from Pearce