Sweet sound of a 20mm Hispano Cannon

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Oberon

I wonder how many other front line aircraft in WWII were hand-cranked.

Some of the US Navy's and Army's early radial-engined planes were. The crank doesn't turn the engine, but speeds up a big flywheel, the sound heard at the beginning of the video. A clutch is then engaged. In some old you can hear a quick descending whistling sound as the flywheel decelerates and the engine starts.

Oop! Found one!

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Some of the US Navy's and Army's early radial-engined planes were. The crank doesn't turn the engine, but speeds up a big flywheel, the sound heard at the beginning of the video. A clutch is then engaged. In some old you can hear a quick descending whistling sound as the flywheel decelerates and the engine starts.

Oop! Found one!

Yeah, I came across the P-26 whilst looking to see if there was a list of hand-cranked engines, unless there were some Soviet aircraft that were also hand-cranked the P-26 and Bf109 are the only WWII frontline fighters to have hand-cranks, I'm fairly certain that all RAF aircraft were either cartridge or electric, aside from the old girls that were still propellor swing. Pretty sure the B-17 also had a flywheel starter but that was electrically powered, hence the procedure to push the switch to Starter, hold for twelve seconds (you can hear it spin up) and then flick the switch down to Mesh.

EDIT: Oh, just found via a comment on another video that the P-40 could be cranked in the event of battery failure, that makes sense, I imagine a few aircraft had a similar back-up arrangement, but not for primary everyday use.