The origins of the turbojet, a jet power revolution. The History of Sir Frank Whittle's Invention.

With the world at war in June 1942, a short, fussy Englishman checked into downtown Boston’s Hotel Statler and made a peculiar set of demands.

After registering at the front desk (today’s Boston Park Plaza) as “Mr. Whitely,” he demanded a phone installed in his room not connected to the main switchboard. Meals must be served in his room and delivered by the same bellhop. And please, no surprise knocks on the door.

The mysterious little man was actually Frank Whittle, a 34yearold Royal Air Force (RAF) officer, pilot, and inventor of the jet engine. Earlier in the year, he nearly suffered a nervous breakdown from exhaustion while racing to bring England, under attack from Germany, into the jet age.

Now, for several weeks in 1942, Whittle was secretly involved in bringing GE’s Lynn, Massachusetts, plant, as well as the U.S.A., into the jet age as well. The course of GE’s new aviation enterprise changed forever.

As a young RAF officer in 1930, Whittle filed for the world’s first turbojet patent application. After facing five years of disinterest from the British government, a London investment house bankrolls Whittle’s commercial venture called Power Jets Ltd., and the RAF allows the young flight officer to work parttime on his propulsion experiments. By 1937, Power Jets is running a turbojet in a test cell.

By May 1941, Europe is at war and Whittle’s turbojet powers England’s experimental Gloster E.28/39 aircraft. The month before, General H.H. “Hap” Arnold, Deputy U.S. Army Chief of Staff for Air, had personally reviewed England’s jet propulsion advances, including the Gloster and its Whittle turbojet. Clearly, U.S. aviation was behind.

Arnold initiated a U.S. jet propulsion program and engaged GE to produce America’s first turbojet using Whittle’s design. His selection of GE was based on the company’s innovative impellers, turbines, turbosuperchargers, and compressors, which were developed mostly in GE’s Lynn and Schenectady operations.

In 1942, Donald “Truly” Warner, a top Lynn engineer, led the IA team to reconfigure Whittle’s design to American production standards with several improvements, including a more robust impeller, an automatic control system, and improved metal alloys for more durable turbine blades.

The GE team had a key advantage: The IA, a centrifugal flow design with a twosided impeller, was similar to the innovative GE turbosupercharger boosting the piston engines for thousands of U.S. and Allied aircraft.

The GE Lynn team successfully ran the IA on April 18, 1942, in a concrete test cell dubbed “Fort Knox.” The test cell, with eighteeninch walls and a distinctive smokestack, is now a historical monument. The first test run occurred about six months after Lynn received drawings for the upgraded Whittle W.2B – a remarkable and patriotic feat by the team.

Then, in June 1942, Whittle in Lynn arrived to lend a hand. He brought updated turbojet drawings and helped to tackle issues with excessive gas exhaust temperatures. Whittle was accompanied by a small group of English engineers. Their stay in the area was equally clandestine.

After several days in the Hotel Statler, Whittle moves in the dark of night into Marblehead, Massachusetts, home of a GE senior technical leader in Lynn named Reginald Standerwick, a fellow Englishman who joined GE more than 30 years earlier. For several weeks, Whittle will stay in the comfortable twostory house at 17 Brookhouse Drive, which is north of the Lynn plant and a casual walk from the ocean shore.

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General characteristics

Crew: 1
Length: 38 ft 10 in (11.84 m)
Wingspan: 45 ft 6 in (13.87 m)
Height: 12 ft 4 in (3.76 m)
Wing area: 386 sq ft (35.9 m2)
Airfoil: root: NACA 66014; tip: NACA 66212
Empty weight: 8,165 lb (3,704 kg)
Gross weight: 11,040 lb (5,008 kg)
Max takeoff weight: 13,700 lb (6,214 kg)
Fuel capacity: 356 US gallons (1,350 l; 296 imp gal)
Powerplant: 2 × General Electric J31GE5 centrifugalflow turbojet engines, 2,000 lbf (8.9 kN) thrust each
Performance

Maximum speed: 413 mph (665 km/h, 359 kn) at 30,000 ft (9,144 m)
Cruise speed: 375 mph (604 km/h, 326 kn)
Range: 375 mi (604 km, 326 nmi)
Ferry range: 950 mi (1,530 km, 830 nmi)
Service ceiling: 46,200 ft (14,100 m)
Time to altitude: 30,000 ft (9,144 m) in 15 minutes 30 seconds

#aircraft #engine #turbojet