Sleeve valved Bristol Hercules airplane engine demonstration

Aircraft engines have always been the subject of the fascination of many and when you see the way that some of these things are put together, it isn’t hard to see why.

This time, we check out a demonstration of the Bristol Hercules engine, a “14 cylinder, two-row, supercharged, air-cooled, radial engine with a displacement of 38.7 litres.” (Via the Bomber Command Museum)

This monstrosity of a power plant is most certainly a crowd pleaser as it fires up and turns the propeller away with its massive size and displacement.

With all of that mass and all of those moving parts, it’s really tough not to be completely entranced by this brute. Check out the video below to see the big time airplane engine in action as it is started up on the ground.