Like the Jumo 205, it was an opposed piston two-stroke diesel engine.
It had four banks of six cylinders in a rhomboid configuration, with four crankshafts, one at each vertex of the rhombus, and 48 pistons.
[citation needed] It is rumoured to have been taken to Moscow at the end of World War II, where development may have continued.
In 1942 the 223 was abandoned in favour of an even larger engine, the Jumo 224 with an intended output power of 4,500 horsepower.
[1] The Jumo 223 series was influential to the successful three-crankshaft Napier Deltic engine.