Genius Of The Jet | The Invention Of The Jet Engine: Frank Whittle | Historical Lost Interviews

Genius Of The Jet, the invention of the turbojet.
Sir Frank Whittle. Historical Lost Interviews PART 1

The story of Frank Whittle, RAF pilot, mathematician of genius, inventor of the jet engine, and British hero.
In 1929, a twenty-two-year-old maverick named Frank Whittle – a self-taught aeronautical obsessive and risk-takingly brilliant RAF pilot – presented a blueprint for a revolutionary, jet-powered aircraft engine to the Air Ministry. His idea had the potential to change the course of history, but it was summarily rejected.
Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, OM, KBE, CB, FRS, FRAeS (1 June 1907 – 8 August 1996) was an English engineer, inventor and Royal Air Force (RAF) air officer. He is credited with inventing the turbojet engine. A patent was submitted by Maxime Guillaume in 1921 for a similar invention which was technically unfeasible at the time. Whittle’s jet engines were developed some years earlier than those of Germany’s Hans von Ohain, who designed the first-to-fly (but never operational) turbojet engine.

Whittle demonstrated an aptitude for engineering and an interest in flying from an early age. At first, he was turned down by the RAF but, determined to join the force, he overcame his physical limitations and was accepted and sent to No. 2 School of Technical Training to join No 1 Squadron of Cranwell Aircraft Apprentices. He was taught the theory of aircraft engines and gained practical experience in engineering workshops. His academic and practical abilities as an Aircraft Apprentice earned him a place on the officer training course at Cranwell. He excelled in his studies and became an accomplished pilot. While writing his thesis he formulated the fundamental concepts that led to the creation of the turbojet engine, taking out a patent on his design in 1930. His performance on an officers’ engineering course earned him a place on a further course at Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he graduated with a First.

Without Air Ministry support, he and two retired RAF servicemen formed Power Jets Ltd to build his engine with assistance from the firm of British Thomson-Houston. Despite limited funding, a prototype was created, which first ran in 1937. Official interest was forthcoming following this success, with contracts being placed to develop further engines, but the continuing stress seriously affected Whittle’s health, eventually resulting in a nervous breakdown in 1940. In 1944 when Power Jets was nationalized he again suffered a nervous breakdown and resigned from the board in 1946.

In 1948, Whittle retired from the RAF and received a knighthood. He joined BOAC as a technical advisor before working as an engineering specialist with Shell, followed by a position with Bristol Aero Engines. After emigrating to the U.S. in 1976 he accepted the position of NAVAIR Research Professor at the United States Naval Academy from 1977 to 1979. In August 1996, Whittle died of lung cancer at his home in Columbia, Maryland. In 2002, Whittle was ranked number 42 in the BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.

Whittle was born in a terraced house in Newcombe Road, Earlsdon, Coventry, England, on 1 June 1907, the eldest son of Moses Whittle and Sara Alice Garlick. When he was nine years old, the family moved to the nearby town of Royal Leamington Spa where his father, a highly inventive practical engineer and mechanic, purchased the Leamington Valve and Piston Ring Company, which comprised a few lathes and other tools and a single-cylinder gas engine, on which Whittle became an expert. Whittle developed a rebellious and adventurous streak, together with an early interest in aviation.

After two years attending Milverton School, Whittle won a scholarship to a secondary school which in due course became Leamington College for Boys, but when his father’s business faltered there was not enough money to keep him there. He quickly developed practical engineering skills while helping in his father’s workshop, and being an enthusiastic reader spent much of his spare time in the Leamington reference library, reading about astronomy, engineering, turbines, and the theory of flight. At the age of 15, determined to be a pilot, Whittle applied to join the RAF.

In January 1923, having passed the RAF entrance examination with a high mark, Whittle reported to RAF Halton as an Aircraft Apprentice. He lasted only two days: just five feet tall and with a small chest measurement, he failed the medical. He then put himself through a vigorous training program and special diet devised by a physical training instructor at Halton to build up his physique, only to fail again six months later, when he was told that he could not be given a second chance, despite having added three inches to his height and chest Undeterred, he applied again under an assumed name and presented himself as a candidate at the No 2 School of Technical Training RAF Cranwell.

#turbojet #aviation #Whittle

I was born on June the 1st 1907 in centry my parents were working class my father was uh that that time a foreman in Alfred Herbert’s Machine Tool manufacturers and U I lived there in com for 9 years went from an elementary school there from the age of six onward

And then the family moved to lemington Spa because my father bought a small very small engineering outfit called the Livington valve and Pistol ring company and I really did get my first engineering experiences there because I helped him sometimes so I think it was about t an hour or something like that

Uh um making slots in valve steps excellent and you went to Grammar School school but I think you you you had a limited application at school oh yes I I was very lazy with homework and got a series of raspberries for that but at the end of term I would often do quite

Well for I’d come top of maths something like that I never did win a prize at school that sounds to me as though you worked at what you liked working at and nothing else yes and uh one thing of course the the school didn’t realize as the Headmaster and teachers they thought

I was lazy and so on so I was I I just did not do my homework very often but I did an awful lot of private study I used to go down to the library in lington spa and study all sorts of things which are not in the school

Curriculum and uh that was where I first started to learn about Guest turbin uh the gas turbines of um of History what from passon today well no going the book particular book that uh I found in the library which interested me was by stodd Steam and gas turbin it was

Called and uh it went way back you know discussed things like Heroes engine which is I’m told about 94 95 ad some difference of opinion to exactly when it was I see now presumably you made a decision when you were 15 were you to apply for the RF can you tell us

What happened then oh yes I um uh was always attracted to flying from my earliest years almost when I was for my pite toy and this is 1911 was a model of a tin model of aerio and uh the things I do remember rightly airplanes flying so and my

Heroes were people like Captain Albert ball and major mccon and so on the VCS of the first world war and I just wanted to fly and also I thought the boys in the uniform of aircraft apprentices look very good so I decided I’d like to wear that uniform and applied to join as

An apprentice I passed the exam all right and uh then I went for a physical at Halton and I was turned down uh with poor physique they called it which burned me up because I considered myself to be an abnormally Active Child and uh so

Um I uh was sunk for the time being but before I left the camp a very kindly physical training sergeant if you could imagine such a thing uh took pity on me and he gave me a diet to follow and um series of exercises Max aling exercises

I did all that for 6 months I’d put on three Ines on height and three inches on my chest so I thought well I have another shot and I wrote to the ministry but they said no once you’ve been turned down you’ve been turned down forever and

There seemed to be no hope I got other people to write in for me my physics master and other people but no the answer was no I thought well I go through the whole process again as I never had never it had NE never happened before in the hope that the bureaucracy

Wouldn’t pick it up and I was lucky that time I got through both the written exam again and the medical and ended up kemwell in number four Wing I didn’t like my life as an apprentice course I join because I wanted to fly but then there seemed no hope as an

Apprentice but I the one thing which brightened life was I became very interested in model airplanes making them join the model aircraft society and became really the leading light in that one so so much so that uh the initials bwm which stood for boys wi model aircraft Society was most people said

That meant boy W boy whittles model aircraft Society was we are know we were known as boy Whitt Boy Smith and so forth in those days then we became aircraft apprentices later then it was as as an apprentice what did you do a lot of mechanical engineering as your

Father had done with you or what yes oh we had courses in uh all branches of uh practical engineer uh well you know Workshop practice um turning the worst part most hateful part was fitting basic fitting filing away at a say a block of Cal iron which is like glass and sort of

Thing you had a hell of a job to make any impression on with a file were you learning very much about aircraft structures at that time or engine structures yes oh yes we had to do uh stress diagrams and for stress purposes and we had to know how to pull engines

Apart and put them together and so forth well there was a lot of that sort of thing and presumably the time you spent with your father was useful to you oh yes I I I was already familiar with things like lathes and drilling machines and meling machines was your father

Particularly inventive my father was a very in inventive man but unfortunately he um just didn’t have a uh the education to back it up he um but every week practically there was some new scheme he wasn’t very persistent you may together and uh uh one week it would be

A Gear Drive a new Gear Drive for a car cars were very much in their infancy in those days or next week it would be per petal motion and uh I couldn’t convince him that perpetual motion wouldn’t work life as an apprentice uh was it the

RF discipline that you found ENT oh I didn’t like the discipline at all and uh I particularly liked uh stamping away on the parade ground because it did seem to me that it didn’t help an awful lot to uh one’s training in a service like the

Royal Air Force but uh I do realize now that you that discipline is important how then did you become a Cadet there were to be uh five Cadets selected from number four Wing at Cranwell and uh I was number six in the passing out list I hadn’t been a leading

Boy which was U quite a handicap because up to that time no boy who hadn’t been a leading boy ever made the cadet college but uh uh when Commander Barton as he was then my commanding officer had seen this large model airplane that would made a 10 foot6 Wing SK B and that

And other things I suppose uh impressed him so when the number one boy failed because of his eyesight uh it made me eligible so I was recommended I went through the medical and so forth there was another narrow Escape I’ve since heard about and that was that uh Lord

Trenchard nearly stopped it because um I hadn’t been a leading boy and I hadn’t made my uh no kind of a name in sports on which a lot of weight was put in those days and he said to Barton sure you’re not making a mistake so I’m according this according to trenchard’s biography

In that biography it says that Barton said he thought that he’ got a a mathematical genius trenchard said all right Barton but if you made made a mistake I’ll never forgive you went without the jet several times over that was excellent so you come to be a Cadet doing was at first I

Think as Cadets we had a very full program uh of which from my point of view and from point of view of most of us uh flying was by far the most important we only had two or three flying periods a week but uh that was the real highlight

Of the whole course we otherwise we covered service subjects like Air Force law uh buzzing that’s Mor Cod and U um well everything connected which particular to a fighting service and then humanistics you know we had to read certain uh Lamb’s essays and I had to write an essay on that and

Uh the were humanistics that particular branch and then history and included history and quite a lot of um Workshop uh stuff uh rigging airplanes putting engines pulling engines apart and putting them together again but the Great Joy was flying was it was your if you can just say that again um was your

Physique no limitation on on actual cockpit drill I wasn’t uh my comparatively small physique I should say it was rather useful in flying it um uh there’s no problem about physique sitting in an airplane and flying it and what were the the aircraft types they were presumably wouldn’t I

Learned to fly on the a 504k that was a a very ancient type of airplane 1911 type and it sort with a toothpick Between the Wheels you know uh to prevent it tipping over on its nose which in reality it helps it to tip it over on its

Nose or even turn upside down um which you never did oh uh no no I didn’t turn the abro 504k but I later did in a 504n I’m I I have to confess I wrecked uh two or three airplanes three at least yeah but in forgivable circumstances well no

Uh I was in trouble for instance uh the first one shortly after I gone so in in a 504k I got lost and uh this was a cranell and wanted to get back to crell when the visibility deteriorated very badly I think it was down to about half

Of Mile and I thought the uh I found myself over the hangers at Digby and I thought that the hangers at Digby ran east and west but they didn’t they ran North and South so I was targeting Cranwell from the line of the hangers you see now the Curious thing about this

I never thought of quoting it in my defense where the compass should have been there were just four screw holes I didn’t have a compass I never thought of quoting that about it what did happen was was that um I aimed 90° in the wrong direction realized that I

Was getting more and more lost saw what I thought was a beautiful Green Field and it was young corn with very soft soil so when I landed I pulled up very smartly and the Weedle sank in and I tried to find out where I was and only

Some Farm yokal came up and they couldn’t really tell me they said cremel was over there pointing and or sleep it was they didn’t know where CR was and U anyway in the end I thought well I’m I’m going to have another shot so I got

One of them to swing the prop trained him what to do you know contact switch off contact switch off then when I got all set uh he forgot all the drill he said be you ready to start us sir all with words to that anyway I

Got going and then when I opened up the engine yeah my wheels had sunk in so that uh I didn’t move for a moment uh a few seconds just the tail just lifted with in the slipstream I thought well if I can get moving a little bit

It’ll um begin to ride over the muck and so that’s what happened I was watching the Hedge getting nearer and nearer rain all over the wind screen I’m going I’m I made it so I sat back and then to my horror Dead Ahead was about the only tree for miles around

I couldn’t miss it I just flew straight into it uh were you hurt no no no the airplane wasn’t it wasn’t much good but there was a court of inquiry presumbly no no no I I just got a rocket from my flight Commander it was the day incidentally

The cross country run at Cranwell which all Cadets hated and they most of my fellow Cadets thought I’d done it to get out of the cross country run spendid anecdote I think we think we have to come to the fourth year thesis now so uh could you just take me through

That and and say to me that didn’t everyone had to write this thesis and just tell the story in your own terms a lot of people keep asking me how the jet job started so and I tell them uh the fact which is that uh as a fourth

Termer I had to write a Cadet a thesis uh or Cadets had to write a thesis and um uh I’d written um three on one Parts one two and three of chemistry in the service of the area but for my fourth term I chose future developments and aircraft design rather

Ambitious and rather concentrated on the engine side but the main thing in that tees was that I arrived at what I now know know was the well-known Breer formula I wasn’t familiar with it at the time connecting speed range engine efficiency and so forth and to me that

Meant meant that if you wanted to go very fast and far you would have to go very high heights of 50,000 ft that sort of thing at T where the piston engine obviously wouldn’t work and at speeds which a uh where the propeller wouldn’t

Work so it was I started to look for a new kind of power plant what I was struggling with uh this looking for a new kind of propulsion I looked into the rockets and uh C my calculation showed that you with a bit of luck you might

Get 10 minutes endurance which isn’t a lot of use for airplanes so I then turned to guest ter driving a propeller but of course the snag was I still had the propeller which um uh just is no good for very high speeds the height doesn’t bother it too

Much but um it just doesn’t like the high speeds because uh um you have the tip speed speed which is pretty fast say 800 ft a second added to the forward speed vectorially so that you end up with a tip going beyond the speed of sound and under those circumstances the shock

Waves and things that form greatly reduce the efficiency of a propeller after considering other things when I was in 111 Squadron uh as a pilot officer flying siskins I considered a piston engine driving a fan inside a hollow fuselage the scheme which C caponi campen lat tried out and that according to me

Wasn’t much good because was it was just as heavy as a piston engine if not heavier and uh the fuel consumption was shocking so I discarded that and then thought well why not throw that piston engine away up the compression ratio of the fan and substitute a turbine for the

Piston engine and there was the turb this was really the the the moment of Discovery did it come to you out of the blue well I’ve been I it didn’t come to me out of the blue for the simple reason that I’ve been trying to find it for 18

Months and uh but just the the thought get rid of the piston engine and substitute a turbin you might say that came out of the blue whether I was having a bath or what whatever at the time I couldn’t tell you I forget but you did wonder afterwards I think like

So many inventors that why it had taken so long I did inde uh well I wondered after the idea had come to me I thought my goodness why didn’t I think of this before and it seems so obvious then so how was your crownal thesis received my crownal thesis

Um when the professor marked it he wrote on it in effect he didn’t really understand it but he gave me 30 out of 30 which I thought was quite satisfactory uh Ary Williams who became so very important in the development is now s Ral Dudley Williams was that he was a first termer

With me at Cranwell we were in the same Hut in fact and uh I used to help him with his uh more technical uh studies and we kept in touch and and when I was at Felix as a float planee test pilot he was there as a member of a flying boat Squadron

Temporary at Felix to by by which time I’d had the idea and uh i’ discussed it with various people and at fixo incidentally it was considered quite a joke amongst my brother officers it Lenard SN one of the pilots there Christen at wh Whitt’s flaming touch hole so i’ frequently been

Greeted with the that how how’s the old flaming touch hoold getting on of course it wasn’t getting on at all go so though I’d been helped to take out a patent by WEP Johnson another close colleague um it wasn’t making any progress but then Dudley Williams came into the story

Later on that he was in belied out he wasn’t well and he was placed on the retired list he joined up with another officer who’ been invalided out after a bad crash and the two of them approached me in 1935 after many I’d made many unsuccessful attempts to get the thing

Exploited and uh asked me whether I’d done anything about it if not he thought he might be able to raise some money can I just take you back I knew there was somebody with inial W wrong can I just take you back to um to the fact that

Your Co became interested referred you to the air Ministry and then you went to see first I think it was um uh Tweety wasn’t it who took you to Griffin could we go through that yes uh when I uh at the end of 1929 when the idea came to me I was at

The central flying school at wittering uh doing the flying instructors course one of the instructors there was WP Johnson who became a very good friend and colleague in later years and he’d been trained as a patent agent and he became very interested in my proposal he

Thought it would work and he helped me to draft a patent but before that he’ gone to group Captain Baldin as he then was the commandant of the CFS he convinced him that he I’d got something that would work and Baldwin sent me to the air Ministry to see a man named

Tweedy who then took me to see AA Griffith and another scientist am minist scientist at the kensing Kensington laboratory well I explained it and uh Griffith uh pointed out an error in my calculations and it was all rather depressing you know and then after that I got a letter from the air Ministry

Saying in effect that they weren’t really interested and so forth were you aware at that time the day a Griffith was working on a similar development I’d seen uh uh AA Griffith I I knew was interested in gas turbines because I tweaty had shown me a paper that tweaty

Had written on the um theory of design the compressors axle flow compressors I was quite astonished to know what it was because it had no propeller and John replied oh it’s easy old boy it just sucks itself along like a Hoover there was the awful Race Against Time there was the skull duggery she used to say oh well Daddy’s doing something very hush

Hush I thought my goodness why didn’t I think of this before and it seems so obvious Then a small English church is the last resting place of a man who didn’t just change the face of the Earth he enabled us to see what it actually looked like his name was Frank Whitt this is the story of how he invented the jet engine he overcame all

The odds only to see the British government almost throw his idea away and miss a chance to shorten the Second World [Applause] War I was born on June the 1st 1907 in centry my parents were working class my father was a foreman in Machine Tool manufacturers I lived there in centry

For 9 years went from an elementary school there and then the family moved to lington Spa because my father bought a small very small engineering outfit called the Livington valve and Pistol ring company and I really did get my first engineering experiences there because I helped him sometimes so I

Think it was about t an hour or something like that uh U making slots in B stems in lemington Frank also won a scholarship to the town’s secondary school I was very lazy with homework and got a series of raspberries for that but at the end of term of I would

Often do quite well for I’d come top of maths something like that I never did win a prize at school but I did an awful lot of private study I used to go down to the library in lemington Spar and study all sorts of things which are not in the school

Curriculum and uh that was where I first started to learn about Guest turbin I um was always attracted to flying from my earliest years almost when I was for my favorite toy and this is 1911 uh was a tin model of oblero and my heroes were people like Captain Albert ball and

Major mccon and so on the VCS of the first world war and I just wanted to fly and also I thought that boys in the uniform of aircraft apprentices look very good so I decided I’d like to wear that un uniform and applied to join as an apprentice the Royal Air Force

However rejected young Whittle he was too small I uh was sunk for the time being but before I left the camp a very kindly physical training sergeant if you can imagine such a thing uh took pity on me and he gave me a diet to follow and series of exercises Max aling exercises

I did all that for 6 months I put on 3 Ines on on height and 3 in on my chest so I thought well I have another shot and I wrote to the ministry but they said no once you have been turned down you’ve been turned down forever I

Thought well I go through the whole process again as i’ never Haden in the hope that the bureaucracy wouldn’t pick it up and I was lucky that time and ended up at Cranwell in number four Wing Whittle didn’t enjoy life as an Air Force Apprentice in that rank he would

Never get to fly what brightened whittle’s life was the model aircraft Society where he became the leading light at building working replicas so much so that uh the initials bwas which stood for boys wi model aircraft Society was most people said that meant boys boy Whitt’s model

Aircraft Society because we are known we were known as boy Whittle Boy Smith and so forth in those days whittle’s skills at making model planes singled him out to the authorities perhaps he might be officer material there were to be uh five Cadets selected from number four Wing at

Cranwell and uh I was number six in the passing out list so when the number one boy failed because of his eyesight uh it made me eligible the founder of the royal Air Force had his doubts though Lord trenchard nearly stopped it because um I hadn’t been a

Leading boy and I hadn’t made my uh no kind of a name Sports on which a lot of weight was put in those days Whitt’s Co had a compelling reason to make trenchard think again he thought that he’d got a a a mathematical genius it was this natural gift that got

Whitt a Cadet ship less than 1% of apprentices made the huge step to join the elite in the Officers Training college at Cranwell although this was next to the apprentices wing it was socially another world one that shared the culture of the public schools from where most of the cadets Then Came In The Bleak Lincolnshire Countryside Frank Whitt’s life now took a new Direction Cranwell provided a very intensive education for Whitt for the cadets just as it is today the highlight of the course was the flying lessons I learned to fly on the a 54k that was a a very ancient type of airplane 1911 type and it sought with a

Toothpick Between the Wheels you know uh to prevent it tipping over on its nose which in reality it helps it to tip it over on its nose or even turn upside down Whittle was soon a daring even overconfident pilot and one who had his fair share of

Accidents I’m I have to confess I wrecked two or three airplanes three at least yeah the the first one I got lost and wanted to get back to cranell when the visibility deteriorated very badly it was the day incidentally of the cross country run at Cranwell which all

Cadets hated and they most of my fellow cadetes thought I’d done it to get out of the Cross Country in between Learning to Fly and studying at Cranwell Whittle first conceived the idea that would make him famous it all started with a student thesis oret had to write a thesis and I

Chose future developments and aircraft design rather ambitious and rather concentrated on the engine side but the main thing in that thesis was that I arrived at what I now know know was the well-known Breer formula I wasn’t familiar with it at the time connecting speed range engine efficiency and so

Forth and to me that meant that if you wanted to go very fast and far you would have to go very high heights of 50,000 ft that sort of thing at tght where the piston engine obviously wouldn’t work work and at speed it’s a uh where the

Propeller wouldn’t work so it was I started to look for a new kind of power plant Whittle prepared this paper during the first half of 1928 but his findings at Cranwell were the fruit of the 5 years he had by now been training there my crl thesis

Um when the professor marked it he wrote on it uh in effect that he didn’t really understand it but he gave me 30 out of 30 which I thought was quite satisfactory Whitt envisaged flying speeds of 500 mph at a time when propeller planes struggled to reach

150 these machines were noisy and shook the pilot terribly that’s because their engines were actually car motors on a bigger scale with many moving Parts Whittle felt an aesthetic dislike for such power plants the problem with a pistol engine as you go up height even though you supercharge it is that the

Power drops off as the air gets thinner and there eventually comes a point where it it won’t generate enough power to turn itself over against its own friction whittle’s idea would use the same Principle as a balloon filled with air when this escapes every child knows

What happens but it wasn’t clear how an engine might recreate such a force I considered a piston engine driving a fan inside a hollow fuselage and then thought well why not throw that piston engine away up the compression ratio of the fan and substitute a turbine for the piston

Engine and there was the turbo Jen by now Whittle had left Cranwell but his search for this solution had preoccupied him ever since it didn’t come to me out of the blue for the simple reason that I’ve been trying to find it for 18 months but just the the thought get rid

Of the piston engine and substitute a turbine you might say that came out of the blue whether I was having a bath or what whatever at the time I couldn’t tell you whittle’s plan proposed just one moving part this would be a shaft with a compressor driven by a turbine at the

Other end it would work like this the compressor spins round sucking air into combustion Chambers at many times atmospheric pressure here this air is mixed with vaporized Fuel and ignited the hot gas created expands through through the turbine turning the shaft and escapes into the atmosphere it is

This continuous Force which propels a jet airplane along the turbojet concept brought with it so many natural advantages a very big factor in favor of a a jet engine was that when you went up high uh the air temperature was very low very cold and that benefit fed the

Compressor a lot it meant that you could get a uh much better conditions for the compressor and the other thing is that in a normal to Velocity coming out of it is wasted in the case of the jet engine that was completely used after the idea had come to me I

Thought my goodness why didn’t I think of this before and it seems so obvious then this was wh moment of Genius he had seen the future of powered flight and he was a pilot officer aged just 22 I was at the central flying school at wittering uh doing the flying instructor

Course one one of the instructors there was WP Johnson who became a very good friend and colleague in later years and he’d been trained as a patent agent and he became very interested in my proposal he thought it would work and he helped me to draft a patent have you ever

Patented anything no I don’t know thing about it does a patent both publish and protect that is the whole point of patents but one thing’s essential file a patent application before touting the thing round otherwise you haven’t a hope I’ll tell you what let’s rough out a

Specification now oh what fine what do we do well you make a rather better sketch and I’ll get on with a clever bit the writing okay armed with his patent Whitt offered his idea to Industry no one thought it could ever work according to the theories of the time there was

This fundamental difficulty with gas turbines inefficient compressors inefficient turbines and the other big snag was the materials then existing in 1929 wouldn’t stand temperatures more than say about 500° Centigrade but I knew or felt pretty confident that they would evolve in a normal course of development and of

Course it did the positive young officer also went to London to put his revolutionary concept of the air Ministry Whitt fared no better when he met AA Griffith one of the ministry’s top scientists I went to see uh Dr Griffith and another scientist at South Kensington explain the idea it was very

Cooly received Griffith uh pointed out an error in my calculations and it was all rather depressing you know and then after that I got a letter from the air Ministry saying in effect that they weren’t really interested and so forth it didn’t help that um I hadn’t then received an engineering

Degree soon after this rejection whittles seemed to have more bad news after I completed the flying instructors course I’m very near got posted to number four FTS Abu SAR in Egypt that would have been a real nail in the coughing of the jet engine if that had happened fortunately the posting was

Changed Whittle remained in Britain and served a year as a flying instructor these were happy times for him in May 1930 he married Dorothy Lee during this period he also got the chance to develop his exceptional flying skills he was now one of the raf’s best

Pilots and was chosen to fly in the henden air pageants where he thrilled Spectators with his skills at crazy flying these were the Red Arrows of the day and Whitt loved entertaining the public this way at this time in Germany a young scientist was eagerly looking forward to

His first trip in an airplane his name was Hans Von ohine I always dreamed about the beauty of flying my first flight with a commercial airplane I believe it was a three engine Yonkers was a great disappointment it was so noisy and so vibratory that I felt the piston engine and propeller is

Not the good propulsion system the Elegance of flying is destroyed by it the sight of smoke rushing from chimneys inspired Fon a to think if that Force could be created by a turbine maybe he could make a smoother AO engine high speed was not the primary goal to me the

Smoothness and low noise was more the starting point of my thinking but as I thought about it I noticed that as a matter of fact it will be capable of driving the airplane faster Britain’s air Ministry had declined to keep Whitt’s patents a secret freely available they quickly

Made their way to Germany just as the Nazis came to power these patents were widely read in German Aviation circles at the same time that Hitler was rapidly building a new Luft buffer whittle’s idea aroused no such interest in Great Britain and his own jet engine remained

Still born yet the Royal Air Force was certainly Keen to nurture its inventor after four years every General duties officer had to specialize he was given a choice between engineering radio navigation physical training and so on uh but I didn’t get a choice because having been pestering their ad Ministry with inventions they

Just said to me you will be an engineer though they’d stopped sending officers to Cambridge they decided that I should go so I went to Cambridge in uh September 34 to take the mechanical science of tripods once at University Whitt applied every piece of learning to his idea for jet

Propulsion I had got the feeling rather that I might might be ahead of my time um with the extra knowledge I gained at Cambridge I did become rather more aware of the difficulties then this letter arrived in the post which says my dear Whittle 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 airplane s’s propeller as it were and who is very interesting he’s

Jotted a note at the top of the original letter he says this letter changed the course of my life and triggered a revolution in aviation and it did because this letter rescued the turbo jet idea in this country from Oblivion the writer was Ralph Dudley Williams an old friend from

Cranwell he visited Whittle at Cambridge with another former officer named Collingwood tinling and they approached me with the idea of forming a company and getting on with it and they succeeded a merchant bank was the Catalyst oh falan Partners were approached by an intermediary an engineer named Bramson uh Williams ATT

Tendon got in touch with him and he got in touch with Falcon partners and Falcon Partners commissioned him to write a report on the whole project which he did and it was wholly favorable Bron’s report you might say was another of the big key points in the whole story he’d

Been very much involved with Aviation he was a pretty skillful aeronautical engineer and his report inspired Falcon Partners to go on with the job and in March 1936 they formed the company called Power Jets limited Whittle told his backers the project had a one in 30 chance of

Success the air Ministry quickly added another obstacle one claws said that I was not to work more than 6 hours a week on the job but of course uh that didn’t op it as a an effective control on me and I worked all the practically fulltime

Out at Cambridge Whitt also had to fit in the task for which he’d gone to University in the first place and I very much wanted first class honors so I had to work like hell because I was designing the Jet Engine and preparing for my finals at the same time and that was

U a very difficult thing to do I succeeded in getting my first happily and then was able to turn back to the jet Engine Whitt approached a manufacturer in rugby to build the world’s first jet engine British Thompson Houston made steam turbines Whittle drove over from Cambridge rehearsing ing what he’d say to persuade the huge company to accept a contract he succeeded when all he could offer them was 2,000 well below what his project really

Needed the proper scientific way to go about the job would be to build a compressor and test it build a turbine and test it build combustion Chambers and test it and then put them all together when we the results from each were satisfactory but the cost for that would have been about

£30,000 and there was no hope of getting that amount of money so the only way the only thing to do was go ahead with the complete engine what we were doing was trying to prove the engine right from the word go in a cavernous rugby Workshop Whittle set to work on this huge

Challenge the bth built the engine and I stood over it more or less while it was going on I felt that we were going to be all right as far as the simple centrifugal compressor was concerned I felt that I the turbine was going to

Be all right but I was uneasy about the combustion problem because we were aiming at 24 times the kind of in combustion intensity that was um obtainable in those days but the engine became ready for running proper on April the 12th of 1937 a lot of people said it wouldn’t even turn itself

Over what did happen proved the very opposite I gave a signal with my hands to raise the speed with the electric motor to 2,000 RPM and that was done and then I opened the main control and it it started to [Applause] roll it accelerated out of control and

So did everyone standing around it they all went down the factory like the wind I didn’t because I was petrified with fright I just couldn’t move it seemed like perpetual motion but of course it wasn’t the fact was that of a pool of fuel had accumulated in the combustion

Chamber which we didn’t know about and that was keeping it running after I switched off the control well that sort of thing happened day after day we had about four of that kind of runaway just after the engine first ran and we submitted a report to the air Ministry

This was the subject of another report by Griffith the man who turned the job down in the early days and his report damned it with faint praise uh he brought in all the difficulties said that no propeller meant that we wouldn’t have the slip stream to help us take off and so for

Whittle didn’t know that in Germany some people were by now far more willing to bet on his idea one of them was Ernest hinol a legend in his country’s resurgent aviation industry Fon oine had been introduced to him he was alone in his Villa in V he explained to me that

He wanted to finance the whole thing by himself if it works when he said I have the best aromist I have that the best and best designers and uh I want you to tomorrow to speak with them and explain your ideas I loved the Baltic Sea Coast very

Much I sure would think that would be a nice place to work and uh so I choose hle additionally I felt I was afraid to go to in engine companies I thought they were too much ingrained in their reip engines and my model didn’t work sufficiently good H’s company was attractive for another

Reason the whole development was very inexpensive but when we would have asked for more money we would have gotten it so money was not a problem by contrast the Power Jets Kitty was empty as the Nazi threat grew Whittle had a war winner yet Britain was set to abandon it

There were several things which hampered progress in 1937-38 the worst was the tight financial situation our financial Beckers began to get cold feet they had uh quite unrealistically expected that within a matter of a month or two we would have an engine capable of flying in the stratosphere of course we had breakdown

After breakdown and they began to lose heart and they did not produce the the money that they promised the am Ministry were very hesitant to help because we were in financial difficulty after we’d first run the engine and shown that it at least was self-driving they did agree to um a very

Limited contract the ministry’s grudging help only created new problems as soon as they gave us a contract we came under the the official Secrets act that meant that we couldn’t tell people what we wanted their money for you can’t go to someone and say look

We got a damn good idea would you let us have some money uh we can’t tell you what it is uh but it’s very good no it uh we couldn’t do it by 1939 Britain had spent just £7,000 on Whitt’s jet his very position on the

Project was perilous at the end of June he was actually to leave Power Jets on his last day there Whitt had to impress an important visitor with his engine on June 30th of 1939 we managed to get a big breakthrough in the attitude of the air Ministry in that uh uh Pi director

Of scientific research uh came up to see the engine run and we managed to keep it going for about 20 minutes in his presence and he became a complete convert so much so that he he agreed that an engine for flight should be ordered and that an airplane to use it

Should be ordered too when I drove him back to the station to catch his train back to London I had the Curious experience of him explain to me all the advantages of the engine that it could run on any fuel that it was vibrationless etc etc and I

Just sat quietly I was only uh a squadron leader at this time I thought yeah you’re telling me Oh Boy this of course was the big turning point in the whole job the turbojet was saved for Great Britain but Germany unaware of Whitt’s breakthrough already

Had a Jet Plane I was uh very certain that it would work but of course you always feel there’s a danger and um we had made not to to many pretests we run uh the engine before it flew uh perhaps several hours it’s a very M the support

Of a huge Aircraft company had enabled Hans Fon oine to overtake Whittle H’s h178 was ready just days before war broke out test pilot Eric vet was eager to take off he started and then he disappeared and after a while he came back and we s oh he’s Landing he didn’t

He made another round and we said oh my God he must like it uh but we didn’t have the airplane very filled up with gasoline he landed and stopped the airplane just where hle stood and he said everything functioned beautiful and and and the engine worked well and he

Was he was really himself very ined we had a nice Festival a jubilant hle rang General Ernst udet at the German air Ministry I learned later on he called uded and he said hey congratulation but let me sleep that’s an ungodly time by now Frank Whitt had been forced

To move Power Jets from rugby to a scruffy Foundry at nearby lorth ladywood Works was the name of the site today there’s nothing to show that history was once made here but in these buildings Britain slowly expanded its jet program in 1939 we only had a a just a

Handful of of about half a dozen and then beginning of 1940 we began to build up a team and I was very careful in picking um real quality know first class honors Cambridge first class honors Oxford Imperial College of science we were advertising of course we couldn’t

Say what we were advertising for and when we were interviewing them we couldn’t tell them what we wanted them for though I think some of them guessed from the questions we asked Whitt’s charm and enthusiasm at once inspired his new team to strive for the impossible the noise and lack of space

At ladywood forced Whittle himself to work at brownsover Hall A Country House nearby here he worked through the night desperately aware that his work could shorten the war and drove himself to nervous exhaustion my memory of him really was just somebody always working and when he

Was at home if he took any time off say Sunday would sit in his chair by the fire at Broomfield and would’ be there with his slide rule which of course people used in those days to do their calculations and um Bits of Paper all over the place working and a little bit

Of time for myself and my brother but not much not much as Britain entered its most critical phase of the war the expanding team at ladywood was galvanized by a new order to prepare engines for a prototype jet fighter codeen named f940 we know it as the Gloucester meteor as a potential

War winner getting it in the sky to fight the Luft vafa now became the focus of their work at Power Jets they did not know that Germany was by now developing its own twinjet combat planes at Messa Schmidt and hle the country’s prototype jet the

H178 had not been a success but its last flight was exploited to the full by its maker hle in invited the air Ministry to come and the highest who came was udad and somehow hanle used that possibility to offer a new design of a two engine fighter aircraft and

Actually he got the contract about two months later the plane was the h280 the Nazis wanted it in 14 months hle passed this demanding deadline to Fon oine to build its jet engines or hle wanted things very fast he was very uh um optimistic very positive but a

Little bit unreal and unrealistic in his time schedules in Britain the air Ministry still wouldn’t fund Frank quitt properly forcing power JS to work in impossible conditions in addition to our continuing financial problems had many others like having to use the same Parts over and over again when they ought to have been

Scrapped and of course that was linked with the finance because we couldn’t afford new parts we had to make do and Furbish up damaged paths some people continued to claim Whitt’s jet wouldn’t even fly by May 1941 his engine was was ready to go in Britain’s first Jet Plane the experimental Gloucester E28

39 for its Maiden flight the top secret aircraft was taken to Cranwell where the jet story had begun the Power Jets team followed full of Hope on the same day a young Naval pilot Eric Brown was forced to land at Cranwell today he’s one of the few surviving Witnesses of this

Historic occasion when when I landed I was a bit astonished to find so many civilians present and uh when I went to check in the mess and asked what was going on there seemed to be almost an a of conspiracy about the whole place and um nobody would give a straight answer

To this we’ve been out the day before for Te some texting trials then on the May the 15th the weather looked as though it wasn’t going to uh work out so I went back to uh lorth that morning I went to control to to check if the

Weather was good enough for my on flight to croon but it obviously wasn’t and they said would I mind doing a weather check for them anyway I landed and um they said would I be prepared to do a further weather test in the afternoon and then we got a message to say that

The weather was clearing so I rushed back to cranell again and in the evening Jerry said did the flight an airplane was rolled out with a shape I well not so much the shape but the construction of which I’d never seen before because it had no propeller and an extraordinary

Whining noise came from it and it taxed out to the end of the runway and after a while eventually took off and I was quite astonished to know what it was because I’d never heard of this stage in my career of a jet aircraft the various government minist

Refused to film this remarkable event luckily an unknown photographer grabbed it in secret Jerry was sitting at the end of the runway a party off us were sitting just to the right and he held it on the brakes and ran out the engine to full speed released his brakes and then he he

Hopped off in about 600 yards quite an impressive takeoff they held it down level and then Glide one of my colleagues Pat Johnson WP Johnson slapped me on the back he said Frank it flies and in the tension of the moment I rather rudely said that

Was Bloody well what it was designed to do isn’t it and it landed successfully and immediately it landed it was absolutely inundated with people rushing out and congratulating the pilot so I realized something quite extraordinary taking place people in the area had hadn’t heard that uh particular kind of noise

Before and you couldn’t really hide it however secret it was supposed to be uh one officer was said to have asked another one how does that thing work John and John replied oh it’s easy old boy it just sucks itself along like a Hoover another story was that someone

Who claimed to have been an eye witness said there was a Merlin engine inside the hollow fuselage with a little propeller and he he’d seen it he was a a reliable witness he claimed well everybody gravitated towards officer’s mess and so I followed on and there was

Quite a lot of hilarity going on in a corner of the room I asked what it was all about but still nobody would reveal what was involved but um it was quite obvious it was something quite momentous the flight indicated Whittle Britain’s new jet plane was better than anybody

Had realized one event particularly brought the point home the ministry gave us permission to open up to 177,000 just for one flight and at that um engine speed it did 375 or 38 anyway it was faster than the Spitfire the news reached London and Winston Churchill he ordered a thousand whittles

Al last the E28 could not be a war plane hence the disappointment felt behind the scenes up at Cranwell I would have preferred it to have been the meteor which is then on the Starks because that was a combat airplane whereas the E28 was just an experimental airplane Whitt’s jet served

Notice on all piston engines a notice that fast reached their manufacturers they now demanded their share of a product none had invented and which they’d rejected for years because of the war Whittle would have to share his secrets with them all this of course is um putting Power Jets into a weaker and

Weaker position from the commercial point of view and that we had to uh swallow because it was a wartime situation and I and several other of my team were serving officers and uh we had to put um National considerations before commercial considerations that was very dominant in my mind Whittle played a selfless

Patriotic role in which he offered his knowledge freely to the British Aviation companies however they were working flat out to build engines for planes like the hurricane and the Spitfire so in 1941 Great Britain turned to the United States then at peace for backup in manufacturing its jet engine the

Americans had only been told about Whitt’s power plant earlier that year ironically their top scientists had dismissed the concept in 1940 They concluded the gas turbine Eng engine could hardly be considered a feasible application to airplanes the British government expected to keep the rights in Whitt’s

Invention and did not intend to give it away to a future competitor but that’s inevitably what happened we shipped over the engine in Parts in the bomb Liberator also with the team who were horribly frightened L the pilot should pull the wrong lever and they’d all drop into the

Atlantic the company selected to build the engine was General Electric for America the jet story began the night of October 4th 1941 with the arrival of a highly secret engine assembly at a Boston airport it was Britain’s now famous Whittle Turbo Jet the first jet engine successfully produced and flown by the allly

Gentlemen I give you the Whittle engine consult all you wish and arrive at any decision you please just as long as you accept a contract to build 15 of them General Electric had that engine their engine version of the w2b called the taipi on test in April of 42 so just

Rather less than 6 months which is astonishing and even better than that 6 months later the Bell Aircraft company had their twin engine jet flying it was agreed that I would go over and help them out and so I went over at the end of May I went Lynn under

An assumed name they insisted I use an assumed name I call myself Whitely there were times when I forgot it like in the hotel I would sign waking up sign for my early morning coffee and forget that I was supposed to be using an assumed name

And of course sign the real one I’m told that uh that didn’t matter really because the waiter was an FBI man in the great Republic Whitt was treated royally and he in turn was astounded by what he found there it was most satisfying to see the work

GE were doing because uh well they got on with the job so fast it was remarkable and their enthusiasm was most inspiring and I thought at the time if only I had had that kind of cooperation a few years earlier what a difference it would have made in America doctors found

That Whittle was by now battling with severe ill health back in Britain the problems that caused it had only got worse the engine that was destined to be the power plant of the meteor was a more powerful version of the experimental engine really there were no major difference it it looked quite similar

From the outside the Royal Air Force eagerly awaited the metor but Power Jets was not allowed to produce the engines for it that job had been contracted to a car maker Rover gles were getting on with the job fairly well but Rovers were making an absolute nonsense of the

Engine they kept that they just hadn’t got the people who could do the job and they thought they they thought they knew what to do the situation became so bad that it looks as though there would be a complete hash of everything the Rover were Rover were making such a poor job

Of the engine that uh the order for the production of the meter was cut right back Rover tried to redesign its engines and held up the meteor by 2 years but there was also Dirty Work we intended that the Rover company should be subcontractors and only subcontractors but unfortunately they went behind our

Back to the ministry and and try to get direct contracts and eventually they succeeded in doing that and instead of being subcontractors to us they in effect became competitors who had the advantage of having all our information handed to them on the orders of the ministry in December 194 2 a solution

Was at last found to the problems with Rover Rolls-Royce took over the job of building Whitt’s engines but the mighty company would only weaken Power Jets further Ernest he was the chief executive of Rolls-Royce he was responsible for the Rolls-Royce part in taking over the jet development because

He he had come to realize that this was the future of the AO engine and since Rolls-Royce then were one of the most prominent a engine firms in the world he wasn’t going to be left out I would call him an honest Rogue because when he was going to do

The dirt he told you he was in advance and one of the things he said to me on one occasion was he said we’re going to be the center of this job and nothing you could you can do will stop us by 1943 uh the rollsroyce having made

Such a big difference to the prospects of the engine the ministry agreed to reinstate the production of the metor with Whitt’s engines the plane finally made its first flight that year yet it should have been ready 2 years earlier and had the air Ministry pursued Whitt’s

Idea back in 1929 a similar plane would have been available by the start of the war to repel the luffer lives would have been saved the war even shortened at least the work of Frank Whittle could now have a bearing on how that war was fought I thought that he was doing

Something quite important because every time I asked my mother what he was doing she used to say oh well Daddy’s doing something very hush hush I didn’t become aware that he was anybody out of the ordinary until 1944 in January when they um made the whole thing public and then the house became

Surrounded by reporters we we had been working in complete secrecy until uh early January 1944 at which time for reasons I don’t really know um the British and American governments decided to uh make an announcement about it and it was like the world blew up around me the shock was very

Considerable Whitt and his engine dominated the front pages says here in the Daily Herald I knew Frank had a secret says his wife so the cat is out of the how strange it seems to be able to talk about it it may mean that I shall be known throughout the world in

Any case my younger son Ian is a far brighter boy than I was at his age I think he will be a success the success of the family have you seen that before no I’ve never seen that before oh dear how wrong as industry reaped the rewards of

Whitt’s genius new jet fighters joined the meteor first off the drawing board was dein’s brilliant vampire the pilots loved their new equipment although the planes remained highly secret as Eric Brown discovered when he came to fly them when I was allotted to the Jet flight at farra of

Course it was a top secret flight and it was in a hanger at the far side of the Airfield well away from the main activity and there were um RAF regiment guards there with guard dogs so it was very highly guarded at the time once inside the plane was a revelation to

Brown we’re getting into the cockpit of a j Elan for the first time you are struck by the wonderful view um because in a tricycle underage no propeller or large engine ahead of you it is quite remarkable and once you start up the engine although to listen to a jet if

You’re outside the cockpit it sounds thunderous when you’re in the cockpit it is incredibly quiet Frank Whittle often visited farra to check how his invention was performing was quite obvious he was itching to get his hands on it and fly it but we were always alerted that he

Was coming and a little M would be passed around saying would you make sure that the E28 39 was not serviceable for flight on that particular day and um because this would stay off Frank it was obvious they didn’t want this wonderful airplane and this wonderful man to be

United in case there was a an accident so he tged this pretty soon and I think he played along with it in July 1944 the gluster meia became the first jet fighter to enter operational service when the Air Force allocated its initial supply of planes to 616 squadron at manston in

Kent by now the LT vaffa could no longer Mount Air Raids over Britain but these meteors were quickly put to work intercepting a lethal new Menace the V1 guided missile Germany’s flying bomb terrified the londoners who were its Target in the Skies over Kent the meteor Pilots sought to prevent v1’s reaching

The capital some used their wing tips to flip the missile over so it crashed around this time Allied Pilots were startled to find themselves being attacked by a German plane with no propeller this was the Messa Schmid 262 Germany’s own jet program had by now Advanced to this sophisticated

Design it had been chosen instead of the h280 the Nazis never liked hle and had canel his promising jet fighter yet it could have been mass-produced by 1944 by contrast the 262 arrived late and was rushed into battle too soon in Britain meanwhile Frank Whitt seemed at

His Peak he was a national hero while his company now had a custombuilt factory from which to expand he had a Clear Vision for its future I always wanted to include Manufacturing in our duties in 1944 Power Jets had reached a point where they were able to produce say batches of

40 or 50 engines and we had a first class nucleus uh for proper manufacturing organization Power Jets also had some outstanding work in progress Whitt was already planning the second generation of jet engines there was the lr1 turbo fan which would have been the first turbo fan in the world there was

The um engine for the miles m52 the supersonic airplane those are our two big projects which we had in hand lr1 stood for long range one Whitt saw the scope for jets that would fly planes further as well as faster than Pistons but he would need a more efficient

Engine from the earliest days of the turbo jet engine I was bothered by the fact that it has a basically low propulsive efficiency about 50% as compared with say a propeller at moderate speeds of 80% and so the answer to me was that we must gear down the jet

In some way and that led to the concept of the turbo fan for which I took out a patent in 1936 the turbo fan is a turbo jet to which a fan has been added this fan causes air both to flow through the core of the engine and to

Bypass it this additional jet of cold air increases thrust and improves fuel economy the design had huge potential with a turbofan you can expect propulsive efficiencies of 75% or even better if you have a very large bypass ratio as piston engine bombers approach their design limits with planes like the

Lancaster Whitt saw a timely use for his new bypass jet as the war progressed in 1943 for example uh I came to the conclusion that it could be the answer to a longrange bomber for the Pacific War we also visualized it as an engine for a transatlantic airplane Whitt was already predicting

Longrange jet airliners and the kind of engines they would need but it was the other Power Jets project that would grab people’s attention the engine for the supersonic playing the m52 was uh an half fan with after burning all tacked onto the back end of the w2700 Jet Engine and that should

Have given sufficient power for the miles m52 to do a ,000 mph I think it would have done it despite its huge potential whiteall never felt comfortable with Power Jets it was a private company but its driving force was a serving officer and it was publicly funded the fault lines were

Clear I realized that there was a complete mess uh from the contractual point of view there was no there were no effect of agreements and no one except pets and RIS any money except the government of course and I felt that um the government having put in 2 million

That all the companies should be nationalized forming a collective double jet establishment and of course I hope the power jet would be the at the top of the pyramid with myself as chief engineer whittle’s proposal was considered in the high levels of government s Stafford Crips the minister

Of aircraft production at that time used what I’d said to get the ministry out of the mess that they created by nationalizing pets only which relieve them of all their undertakings it was expected that power jets would still continue with its Advanced engine projects but then other firms began to uh

Uh create difficulties they said they weren’t going to have the government competing with private Enterprise so considerable pressure was brought to bear on the the ministry and the minister caved in to the large AO engine companies so we the people who had pioneered the whole thing

Were deprived of the right to design and build engines sorry that was too much for myself and my leading team members and most of us uh resigned the supersonic plane and the turbofan project had by then been cancelled the civil servants found a reason to justify this

Loss believe it or not the minister said that people wouldn’t want to fly at speeds more than about 250 mil an hour as Whittle left Power Jets he was acutely aware of the commercial opportunity that was now at stake the position in 1945 and 1950 was that

Britain was really ahead of the world in all forms of gas serban development but stupidly we allowed the lead to slip away in 1945 the Allies discovered the Germans impressive range of jet planes and their designers after the capitulation of Germany I was at that time in fber the

CEO of the captured enemy aircraft flight so I was sent to Germany and to look at their Advanced aircraft and also at the same time to interrogate their designers and test pilot amongst them was Fon oin and naturally I wanted to know what his connection with the

Whittle patent had or patent had been in Germany but he was not going to answer this question he was very non-committal and Sid steep to as much as he could Brown flew the various German jet planes including the mes 262 the Allies already knew that its engine the yumo

004 was a sophisticated axial Flow Design now they could compare its performance with that of the less complex British Jets so a more efficient engine in many ways it was highly unreliable the yumo 004 inoperational service had a scrap life of only 25 hours and the engine

When I flew this engine I found it extremely sensitive and difficult to handle because it did not like Quick Throttle movements either accelerating or decelerating any Quick Throttle movement either way could possibly cause a flame out of the engine whittle’s Jets were more reliable but he

Could take them no further the course of events brought anguish I think my mother was most distressed by what was happening to to Father she was most distressed I I could remember her crying about it at times because she would tell me oh Daddy’s so unwell because of what’s happening and it is

Such a shame and how can they treat him like this yes it’s very sad for her he managed to Soldier on in the RAF and he was an air Commodore in 1946 but in the end by 1948 he’d been declared as unfit for flying and somehow that

Triggered that was the last straw and he he and the RAF both agreed that he should retire and he did must been very sad for him oh very sad yes the Air Force was e everything to him the public knew none of this and saw a war hero

Receiving his just rewards in 1948 Whitt went to Buckingham Palace to collect a Knighthood he also had a financial award for his ion which was good for the time worth nearly £3 million today it would soon become clear he was greatly under rewarded he sought a roll but his

Stature made him hard to place in an industry he himself had founded no engine maker hired his services in many ways I paid quite heavily for um uh the the work I did there was the awful Race Against Time that dominated life on top of of all the technical

Difficulties there were the financial difficulties there was the skull duggery of uh people who were uh messing things up and uh oh it was frustration after frustration and it took its toll I began to have a series of nervous breakdowns and for years it was years before I really recovered my health Britain stole a march on the rest of the world when it launched the first jet airliner the beautiful new plane with its four engines was a fruition of all Frank Whitt’s early Visions first after he left the RAF he turned his mind to the introduction of the Comet and he

Joined boac as a consultant to help them introduce the comet into service he was very worried at the time that the thing was being rushed into service service I’ve got his 1949 diary where he discusses uh the strength of the Square Windows and he was worried about that at

The time and um was making a suggestion to deavin and how they could get over the problem Whitt’s advice was ignored the comet crashes which followed were caused in part by its Square windows with time on his hands Whittle traveled and tried to recover his health he also turned to writing his

Memoirs the jet age took off without Frank Whittle but the Royal Air Force was soon re-equipped with the benefits of his invention by 1950 the gluster meteor provided the backbone of Britain’s air defense capability it was a fitting outcome to all the secret toil of the Power Jets

Team in the dark days of the [Applause] war the nation did at last build its own supersonic fighter in the shape of the English electric lightning while jet engines also powered an awesome British Fleet of nuclear bombers but the country could never really afford such planes they would

Later play an important role in the Forkland campaign but were destined to become Museum pieces British civil jet planes fared little better after the comet crashes it was Boeing 707 which brought long-range jet travel to the masses by 1960 Airlines were mostly buying their planes from America that year the bypass engine

Entered service turbo fans soon followed with their far better fuel economy they were just what the airlines needed to realize lowcost Global Travel for Frank Whitt it was the ultimate Vindication of his wartime vision and revealed fed the sheer Folly of canceling his Pioneer turbo fan yet he never worked on jet engines

Again and memories began to fade of how the story had begun I think in this country they were beginning to forget all about Frank Whittle by the 60s and’ 70s it was all so different in the United States they were so much more gung-ho they were very good at slapping

Him on the back and telling him what a good capap he was in 1976 Whittle went to live in America I think he felt more recognized over in the states than he did over here after the war Hans Von oine had himself moved to America to work on jet propulsion for

The US Air Force fascinated by each other’s work Whittle and Fon oine became good friends back across the Atlantic Britain eventually rediscovered its Genius of the jet by 1986 even um the queen uh took a hand and ordered him the order of Merit um and other honors came along

Following that so I would say from about the early 80s onwards people began to remember who it was who was the Prime Pioneer of the Turbo Jet and also a man with a profound Legacy today we make almost 1 and a half billion in air passenger Journeys a year

Cheaply and safely thanks to Frank Whitt he shrank the world but his gift of Britain is less appreciated its famous plane makers have departed but today rollsroyce is a world leader in building jet Engines I’m often asked how I feel about it and it’s a question I find very difficult to answer things could have been a lot better we could have had a much bigger influence in the war than uh happened but when I see what’s happened in in the way of civil

Aviation and uh military Aviation too but particularly civil aviation I can only say it’s extremely satisfying especially when you see something like the Concord and one of the things you see I never foresaw when I was working on this thing is that I would be a passenger crossing the Atlantic in 3 and

1 half hours and incidentally another thing I didn’t foresee is that I would have a son who would be flying 747s as a captain in Cathy Pacific kitac Aerodrome at at Hong Kong was had a very interesting approach a curved right hand turn right down to almost a touchdown

And uh when father came with me in the back of the in the cockpit in a Boeing 747 um he he was very startled when he saw that his son was flying an air plane at 1,000 ft straight towards the Foothills and then making a a steep

Final turn which of course was quite normal at kitech was the way you had to do it I had I hadn’t briefed him unfortunately so he was was very white knuckled by the time we landed he was continuing to theorize uh in aerodynamic improvements and aeroengine improvements until the

End of his life he always took an active interest in Concord and uh looking into a second generation SST Super Sonic transport and making recommendations and speaking publicly and privately uh amongst the industry to try and encourage the uh airframe manufacturers to take the risk and embark on another generation of SuperSonic

Transports Concord is a marvelous airplane I plan it many times but I’m looking forward to the next generation of SuperSonic transports which I think should be capable of uh carrying 300 passengers for distances of the order of 4,500 miles like San Francisco Tokyo at speeds of about a mark number

Of about 2.3 that’s we getting up to 2,000 M an hour as compared with the Concords 1350 but beyond that U I think we’re going to see even much higher speeds than that in due course unfortunately they’re going to be very expensive propositions sir Frank Whitt died in August

1996 assured of his position as the greatest Aero engineer of the 20th century glor the Royal Air Force paid fitting tribute to its distinguished son for the memorial service at Westminster Abbey He and I had wanted the opportunity to fly together preferably in an open cockpit biplane so that together we could Loop and spin and climb and dive this modest ambition was never realized for one reason or another the nearest we got was when I flew him to Hong Kong in a boing

747 on the last morning of his life I lent over his bed and said Dad let’s put on our kit and go flying he opened his eyes and looked at me and smiled that evening with hazel holding his hand he died and I wondered I wondered if he went flying and if he

Did if he went on his own or did he have a Companion he was cremated in the USA and the aache there um brought his ashes over to this country and I went to Heath row to meet the airplane and I came home and put the ashes on the bookshelf in my study with the ashes of

My mother who died 3 weeks earlier I uh decided to put them in at the church of Cranwell and they organized a a meteor and a vampire so we flew the ashes up to Cranwell and they were in interred there with a little ceremony A