Who Invented the Jet Engine?

I met Frank Whittle at the naval academy. I was an aerospace engineering major and he was a professor emeritus. He always seemed to have a smile on his face and was polite to a tee.

Hans von Ohain, the leading German jet engineer, wrote a very comprehensive foreword in the 'Elements of Propulsion, Gas turbines and Rockets'. In that foreword he states: "The first patent of a turbojet engine, which was later developed and produced, was that of Frank Whittle, now Sir Frank. His patent was applied for in January 1930. This patent shows a multistage, axial-flow compressor followed by a radial compressor stage, a combustor, an axial-flow turbine driving the compressor, and an exhaust nozzle. Such configurations are still used today..." and "From the beginning of his jet propulsion activities, Frank Whittle had been seeking means for improving the propulsive efficiency of turbojet engines. He conceived novel ideas for which he filed a patent application in 1936, which can be called a bypass engine or turbofan. To avoid a complete new design, Whittle sought an interim solution that could be merely "tacked on" to a jet engine. This configuration was later known as the aft fan. Whittle's work on fan jets or bypass engines and aft fans was way ahead of his time. It was of greatest importance for the future or turbopropulsion." and "In April 1937, Whittle had his bench-test jet engine ready for the first test run. It ran excellently; however, it ran out of control because liquid fuel had collected inside the engine and started to vaporize as the engine became hot, thereby adding uncontrolled fuel quantities to the combustion process. The problem was easily overcome. This first test run was the world's first run of a bench-test jet engine operating with liquid fuel.".

Think worth mentioning is that Ohain and Whittle became somewhat friends after the war.

I was fortunate enough to have taken a class in aircraft propulsion from Dr. von Ohain in the mid 1980s. He was a wonderful instructor, a kind and gentle man. He was also very complimentary of "Sir Frank", as he called Whittle, saying that Whittle's initial design was "far superior" to his.

The speed of development during that period was mind blowing. There was only 11 years between the first flight of the Lancaster and Vulcan bombers.

The Romanian Henri Coanda is the creator of the first jet aircraft in the world which he tried himself in 1910 at Issy-les-Moulineaux (France). The airplane was exhibited at the Aeronautical International Exhibition from Paris.

I was a student of Hans Von Ohien who taught jet propulsion at the university of Florida. He was a humble man and very approachable. I still have the Pratt and Whitney pocket handbook that he gave all his students.

Being nearly 80 years old, i remember the British movie, in 1952, Breaking The Sound Barrier. 😊

Jet engines surged into commercial service, because they were simpler and lighter. Despite their increased fuel consumption, the reduced weight of the early jet engines, relative to piston engines, allowed enough extra fuel to be carried that jet aircraft could fly further at the same take-off weight. The best illustration of Whittle's claim that competitive piston engines would become very complex is the Napier Nomad. The Napier Nomad achieved a thermal efficiency of 45%, running as a 2-stroke diesel with a compression ratio of only 3.5:1 and 89 psi of boost. To achieve its high fuel efficiency, it used a turbosupercharger with an eight stage axial flow compressor and three stage axial flow turbine. As the power of the turbine was well in excess of what was needed to drive the compressor, the turbosupercharger shaft was mechanically coupled to the crankshaft. From an airflow perspective, the Napier Nomad was a turboshaft engine with a piston engine replacing the combustion section.

Hans von Ohain created the first German Jet Engine which was copied around the world and is basically the same today. Frank Whittle created the British jet engine. Franks type of Compressor used a different type of fan that worked OK on smaller engines but presented a problem the Germans didn't have with their design when scaling up the engine size. For Franks compressor design the fan had to get bigger in Diameter to pump more air. In the German version (similar to all jets today) you just had to stack more turbine blades in a row but the diameter did not have to get bigger, the German engine grew in length, not diameter. But let's give Frank the Award for the BIGGEST BALLS in Jet Engine development. In the early stages of testing Franks HUGE engine went into Run Away. All of the technicians ran out of the test area to get away from the impending explosion. Frank stayed behind, got the engine under control and saved the project. So Frank wins the BIG BALLS award for bravery under fire!

This is common knowledge, it was actually a man called Henry Jet, he was a hairdresser from Little Brington Northampton. In 1935 while at work in the solon Henry accidentally dropped a hairdryer on the floor, he bent down to pick up the hairdryer but it accelerated away from him at great speed, Henry was already well known in the village for creating the worlds first petrol operated hairdryer in commercial use, hence why the hairdryer shot across the floor at great speed when Henry dropped it. It was also on that day that the phrase "It shot off like a Jet engine" was invented as one of Henry's co-worker named Mavis shouted this now well known phrase when Henry dropped the highly modified hairdryer. That night Henry drew up plans for a bigger petrol powered Hairdryer but was interrupted by his good friend Ronald who just happened to live with him as a lodger and they totally didn't share the same bed, Ronald said to Henry as a joke "you should stick it on an aeroplane" Henry and Ronald would later die in a house fire that was said to have been caused by three small metal ball bearings about the size of a golf ball attached to a piece of string and were connected to the mains electricity for some reason, to this day no one knows what the strange invention was or what it was used for.

At the very end of the 50s, I'd seen plenty of TV footage of early US jets, their pilots climbing in, and the canopies dropping into place as the engine fired up. One day, Dad arrived home from a business trip to the east coast. "I got to fly in a jet!" he announced with satisfaction. All I could visualize was Dad, fedora on his head and briefcase in hand, squirming into the rear seat of a two-place fighter. To my credit, I decided at age 5 that the idea was nonsensical, but I had never seen a 707, which had only started commercial service in 1958, a year ahead of the DC-8. I finally saw one on a TV episode of something I probably didn't understand, but I finally knew what passenger jet looked like!

P80s were deployed to Europe during the war, 2 to England and 2 to Italy but didn't see combat. British Meteors saw combat on the continent based out of Belgium running ground attack missions at the very end of the war.

For fun, I imagine Simon showing up unannounced at my funeral and giving my eulogy. The looks on peoples faces...priceless.

There was no fuel shortage for the Me262. Galland wanted more jets because plenty of jet fuel was available (kerosene, diesel), unlike gasoline for piston engines and most other things.

👍Nice concise history and well presented, thank you.

Whittle is buried at Westminster Abbey, saw it myself in 2023, I vote him.

Frank Whittle is a name that rings a bell 😏 Sadly his innovation was ignored.

Well presented!

Weird that US engineers found that they had to adapt their tools to the metric system. I was under the impression that we in Britain didn't adopt that until decades later. We were using Imperial measurements.