The RAF in 100 Objects by Peter Jacobs

Author:Peter Jacobs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press

Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle. (AHB)

Since the RAF was not interested in Whittle’s concept, it was not declared secret and so he took the idea to the engineering company British Thomson-Houston (BTH), but although his idea was well received, the company did not want to put up the money required to develop the engine. For now, the idea went no further and so Whittle focused on his RAF career, first attending an engineering course at Henlow and then a two-year engineering course at Cambridge University.

Meanwhile, the discussions and debates about the potential of Whittle’s concept had continued and, eventually, in 1936, the company Power Jets Limited was formed from a four-party agreement, which included Whittle and the Air Ministry. In 1938, the development and testing of the WU (Whittle Unit) began at BTH’s Ladywood facility near Lutterworth. However, the problems of funding had never gone away and so the Air Ministry finally stepped in to help. But the secrecy now attached to the project, as well as the continual delays in securing additional funding, meant the development of the engine had slowed at a time when Germany’s work on a jet-powered aircraft was far more advanced.

Because the WU was too large to develop into a flyable engine, Whittle started work on the contracted engine, the Whittle Supercharger Type W.1. To reduce the length of the engine and, therefore, its weight, it featured a reverse-flow design. Air from the double-sided centrifugal compressor was fed rearwards into the combustion chambers, then back towards the front of the engine and then finally reversing again into the cooled axial-flow turbine.

By now the Air Ministry had placed a contract with the Gloster Aircraft Company to build a simple aircraft specifically to air test the W.1. The result was a small low-wing aircraft of conventional configuration, with the jet intake in the nose, called the Gloster E.28/39 (standing for the twenty-eighth experimental specification issued by the Air Ministry in 1939).

Otherwise known as the Gloster Whittle, the aircraft was delivered to Brockworth in April 1941 for ground testing, after which it was moved to RAF Cranwell where, on 15 May 1941, Gloster’s Chief Test Pilot, Flight Lieutenant Gerry Sayer, flew the jet-powered E.28/39 (W4041) for the first time. The flight lasted seventeen minutes and was followed by a series of flight tests, during which a maximum speed of 350mph (563km/h) was attained in level flight at 25,000ft (7,620m).

The experience gained from the E.28/39 paved the way for Britain’s first operational jet fighter, the Gloster Meteor, which first flew in 1943 and entered operational service the following year; it was the Allies’ only operational jet aircraft of the Second World War. In 1948, Frank Whittle, by then an air commodore, left the RAF, having received a knighthood for his work. He then moved to the United States where he died in 1996 at the age of 89.

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