The Engine So Good the Navy Never Stopped Building It

Deep beneath the ocean’s surface, inside America’s most advanced nuclear submarines, runs an engine designed before most of us were born. Meet the Fairbanks Morse opposed-piston diesel—the strangest, most resilient engine in American history.

In this episode of The Loud Era, we dive into the incredible 90-year legacy of the Model 38 8-1/8. Born from a secret German aviation design and perfected in Wisconsin, this engine features a radical layout: no cylinder heads, two crankshafts, and pistons that fire toward each other in a single cylinder.

While it was deemed "too complicated" for the American railroads and nearly vanished from history, the U.S. Navy refused to let it die. Today, it remains the primary emergency backup for the Los Angeles, Seawolf, and Ohio-class submarines.

Discover how a machine built by women on the home front during WWII became the mechanical heart of the fleet and why, nearly a century later, engineers still haven't found anything that does the job better.

Subscribe to The Loud Era for more stories of the legendary iron that built the world!

Chapters
00:00 The Secret Engine Beneath the Sea
01:08 How it Works: No Cylinder Heads?
02:49 The Fairbanks Morse 38 8-1/8 Legacy
04:00 A German Connection: The Junkers Jumo 205
04:34 Powering the Submarine Fleet in WWII
05:25 The Women Who Built the Engines
06:06 The Sound of Survival: 1,200 Horsepower
07:05 Conquering the American Railroads
08:11 The Failure of the Train Master
09:20 Why the Navy Refuses to Let it Die
10:43 Still Running: 90 Years of Old Iron ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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