Pratt & Whitney XT57


The Pratt & Whitney XT57 was an axial-flow turboprop engine developed by Pratt & Whitney in the mid-1950s. The XT57 was developed from the Pratt & Whitney J57 turbojet.

Design and development

One XT57, a turboprop development of the J57, was installed in the nose of a JC-124C, and tested in 1956.
Rated at, the XT57 was the most powerful turboprop engine in existence at the time, and it remains the most powerful turboprop ever built in the United States.
Intended for use on the Douglas C-132 aircraft, the XT57 turboprop used a Hamilton Standard Model B48P6A propeller with a diameter of, which was the largest diameter propeller to be used in flight at the time. The single-rotation propeller had four hollow steel blades, a maximum blade chord of, a length of, and a weight of.
In the late 1950s, the XT57 was studied for use in a United States Navy-proposed, nuclear-powered conversion of a Saunders-Roe Princess flying boat. Despite not having entered service, the engine was selected because it had passed a Pratt & Whitney 150-hour testing program, which involved running the engine for 5,000–7,000 hours.

Variants

;T57/PT5: A turboprop engine driving a Hamilton Standard Turbo-Hydromatic propeller, turboprop to be used on the Douglas C-132, a Mach 0.8 speed military transport aircraft.

Engines on display

The XT57 engine is on display at the Pratt & Whitney museum in East Hartford, Connecticut.

Applications

;T57 turboprop