Orenda Engines
Canadian aircraft engine manufacturer and parts supplier
Orenda Engines was a Canadian aircraft engine manufacturer and parts supplier. As part of the earlier Avro Canada conglomerate, which became Hawker Siddeley Canada, they produced a number of military jet engines from the 1950s through the 1970s, and were Canada's primary engine supplier and repair company.
History
Origins
The origins of the company stem from World War II. During the war, the National Research Council of Canada ran a small aerodynamics effort similar to NACA in the United States or Royal Aircraft Establishment in the United Kingdom. In 1942 they sent two of their researchers to the UK to take a survey of their efforts and report on what fields of study the Canadians should focus in order to avoid duplication.
Over the next year a number of members of the NRC's aerodynamics lab traveled to the UK, and in May 1943 they published their findings in the top secret Report on Development of Jet Propulsion in the United Kingdom, widely known as the Banks Report. Among their recommendations was the suggestion to form a cold weather testing centre, as up to then jet engines had not been tested in that environment; another suggestion was to form their own engine company as soon as possible.
Turbo Research
Following the advice of the Report, in March 1944 the government formed Turbo Research as a crown corporation. The company was formally incorporated on 1 July 1944, set up in a disused section of the Research Enterprises Limited factories in Leaside, a neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario. Several members of the NRC teams that had traveled to the UK during the Report moved to the new company, including K.F. Tupper as chief engineer, Paul Dilworth as chief designer and Winnett Boyd, initially as the combustion engineer, but later as the chief designer.
The team initially studied a series of designs based on the basic Whittle centrifugal-flow design, starting with the TR.1 and growing through the TR.2 to the largest, the TR.3.
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