Bristol Taurus
The Taurus was a 14-cylinder two-row radial aircraft engine, produced by the Bristol Engine Company starting in 1936. The Taurus was developed by adding cylinders to the existing Aqulia design, creating a design that produced just over 1,000 horsepower (750 kW) with very low weight.
Bristol had originally intended to use the Aquila and Perseus as two of its major designs in the 1930s, but the rapid increase in size and speed of aircraft in the 1930s demanded much larger engines than either of these. The mechanicals from both of these designs were then put into two-row configuations to develop much larger engines, the Aquila becoming the Taurus, and the Perseus becoming the Hercules.
Unlike the earlier engines, where the sleeve valve was a new and untried design, the Taurus was fairly well understood and was delivered running at almost the same power it ended with, at 1,015 hp (760 kW). After several years of development, this improved only to 1,130 hp (840 kW), a tesimonial to how good the first versions were.
The first Taurus engines were delivered just before World War II opened, and found some use primarily in Bristol's own Beaufort torpedo bomber. When the same plane was fitted with the famous List of aircraft engines
