Malcolm,
When I said that I didn't think that bolt failure was age related I meant old age ! These failures are I think mostly fatigue failures caused by the bolts being rather fragile. The fact that the design was upgraded for the '46' version would I think support this as the upgrade would negate their function as a fail safe in case of hydraulic lock. In both air and land applications of this range of engines there were mandatory precautions laid down to avoid the occurrence of hydraulic lock and my understanding is that, at least in the British army these were generally followed.
I would ALWAYS crank a radial engine over with the mags off before going for a start.
David
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