Rolls-Royce aircraft piston engines test stand. The Buzzard was an enlargement of the Kestrel of Condor size, developed in its most extreme form into the Rolls-Royce R racing engine used for the Schneider Trophy competition. The Vulture of 1939 was essentially two Peregrines on a common crankshaft in an X-24 configuration, both of these types being deemed unsuccessful. The Rolls-Royce Merlin, and later the development of the Buzzard, the Rolls-Royce Griffon were the two most successful designs for Rolls-Royce to serve in the Second World War, the Merlin powering RAF fighters the Hawker Hurricane, Supermarine Spitfire, fighter/bomber de Havilland Mosquito, Lancaster and Halifax heavy
Rolls-Royce RB211 turn Rolls-Royce from a significant player in the aero-engine industry into a global leader. Already in the early 1970s, the engine was reckoned by the company to be capable of at least 50 years of continuous development. The RB211 was officially superseded in the 1990s by the Rolls-Royce Trent family of engines, the conceptual offspring of the RB211. In 1966, American Airlines announced a requirement for a new short-medium range airliner with a focus on low-cost per-seat operations. While it was looking for a twin-engined plane, the aircraft manufacturers needed more than one customer to justify developing a new airliner.