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The Gloster-Whittle E28/39 Jet Aircraft
From: Science Museum
| By:
Andrew Nahum |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
Frank Whittle was a young cadet when he had the idea of jet propulsion. He became chief engineer of Power Jets Ltd, a company set up with the specific aim of developing and producing jet-propelled aircraft. The jet fighters which Whittle designed were to play an important role in the Second World War. Andrew Nahum, head of exhibitions and curator of aeronautics at the Science Museum, London, tells their story. |
  n 8 April 1941 the first British jet aircraft lifted off briefly while on taxiing trials and flew straight and level for about 200 yards. To the surprise of the Power Jets engineers who had built the Whittle W.I power unit the flying men present seemed greatly relieved. Jet propulsion was so new that pilots had privately wondered whether the high-speed jet exhaust would make the aircraft squirm around uncontrollably 'like a dropped garden hose'. |
 After the trials the aircraft was taken back, not to the Gloster works, for fear of bombing, but to the premises of a provincial motor dealer, Crabtree's Garage, in Cheltenham. The uniqueness of the occasion was compounded when the pilot filled in the Test Flight Report and noted under the entry for type of propeller: 'no airscrew necessary with this method of propulsion'. |
 The first proper flight took place some weeks later, on 15 May, at Cranwell in Lincolnshire. The aircraft flew for some 17 minutes and the most notable thing about this and the ensuing flights was the almost complete absence of trouble from the new engine. These flights gave a powerful boost to the view that the Whittle gas turbine programme was a 'potential war winner'. |
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| Frank Whittle in Royal Air Force uniform. | |
Frank Whittle, born in 1907, was a cadet at the Royal Air Force College, Cranwell, when the idea for jet propulsion first came to him while writing a thesis on 'Future Developments in Aircraft Design' as part of his class work. Although he also reviewed the possible use of the gas turbine in the thesis he had not put these two ideas together and was thinking in terms of a jet produced by a piston engine buried within a hollow fuselage and driving a fan. He concluded that this would not offer any advantage over a conventional propeller but in the following year, 1929, he realized that a gas turbine could be used to generate a propulsive jet. |
Whittle communicated his ideas to the Air Ministry but the feeling at the time was that materials were not available to stand the high temperatures in the turbine and that the development would be exceedingly difficult and expensive. Whittle was posted to test-flying duties at Felixstowe where he made numerous experimental catapult take-offs, and was commended as 'a very keen young officer and a useful test pilot'. In this period he continued to think about the jet engine and tried to interest various companies. |
An outstanding performance on the Officers' Engineering Course persuaded the Air Ministry to send Whittle to Cambridge where he studied Mechanical Sciences. While at Cambridge he allowed his patents on the engine to lapse, but in 1935 he received a letter from a former RAF colleague, Ralph Dudley-Williams (subsequently Sir Rolph Dudley-Williams), c/o General Enterprises Ltd, Callard House, Regent Street. It said, "This is just a hurried note to tell you that I have just met a man who is a bit of a big noise in an engineering concern and to whom I mentioned your invention of an aeroplane, sans propeller as it were and who is very interested. . . . Do give this your earnest consideration and even if you can't do anything about the above you might have something else that is good.' |
General Enterprises, the unlikely springboard for the British turbojet revolution, was a company making and supplying cigarette vending machines which Williams ran with another ex-RAF man, J C B Tinling. It was the latter's father, a consulting engineer, who encouraged them to get into the aircraft business due to the impending war. |
The enthusiasm of Williams and Tinling helped bring about the formation of Power Jets Ltd to develop Whittle's ideas. Backing was found from a firm of City bankers and the Air Ministry agreed to let Whittle work as chief engineer for the company. British Thomson-Houston Company, manufacturers of steam turbines, were subcontracted to build much of the engine and initially the tests took
place in the BTH plant at Rugby. |
 By April 1937 the first ground-test engine, known as the WU (Whittle Unit), was running, although problem of obtaining controlled stable combustion led to it being redesigned twice. By summer 1939 engine was approaching its designed thrust. At this stage the Air Ministry became enthusiastic about the work of Whittle's team and design work for the Gloster E28/39 was put in hand. |
In spite of the success of this aircraft and its power unit the subsequent wartime development of the gas turbine was far from smooth. The decision was taken to put the engine into production but the design altered to give more thrust and this modified version contained unproven elements. Furthermore the relationship was poor between the Whittle team at Power Jets and the Rover Car Company, which had been selected to manufacture the engine. Matters only improved when Rolls-Royce took over the project and the Gloster Meteor, the first British jet fighter, entered service in July 1944 in time to be used in action against the V1 flying bombs. |
In 1944 Power Jets was nationalized, eventually making up part of the National Gas Turbine Establishment (NGTE) at Farnborough. The tiny company had just nine years of life but it had provoked an enormous change in aviation. |
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