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Dakoda Neilson
Ms. Bennett
British Literature
12 September 2011
The History of the Turbo Jet Engine
Today, we recognize, speed, power, and authority with our Air Force. The United States
Air Force is classified as one of the best air forces in the world due to its skills and its mobility.
The reason that the Air Forceis extremely effective is the equipment that they use: jet aircraft.
Jets have made the world smaller in a way. A hundred years ago, it would have taken military
strategists months to move large amounts of troops around the world. Now the United States Air
Force can be mobilized to any part of the world in 24 hours. In fact, the world was been reduced
so much, time-wise, that between 1976 and 2003, ausual London to New York trip on the
Concorde(the world’s fastest passenger jet) would take a little less than three and a half hours at
1350 miles per hour (British Airways). The reason the Concorde could go that fast is the jet
engine.A jet engine is a device that creates thrust to power most modern aircraft; the TurboJet
engine has a history all on its own and it changed the world.
Frank Whittle was born in 1907 in Coventry, England. As a child, Whittle was always
interested in flight. By the time he was four, aviation was just getting a start; the invention of the
airplane was only seven years old. At the age of 15, Whittle joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) as
an Apprentice, meaning that he would spend most of his time preforming upkeep on very
unreliable and dangerous early “aeroplanes” (Public Broadcasting Service). Aviation in its first

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twenty years was some of the greatest and most dangerous moments in the history of flight.
Airplanes could not fly too high, they could not fly too low, and they could fail easily and would
brake just by sitting too long. Whittle worked with these aircraft until he was removed from his
apprenticeship and was chosen to jointhe ranks at RAF’s Officers Training College at Cranwell
(about 70 miles north of Cambridge, England) (Public Broadcasting Service).As technology
advanced, aircraft were flying higher and faster. Whittle quickly discovered that there were
problems with propeller-driven aircraft.Propeller-driven, piston-powered aircraft have two major
flaws. First, the propeller is spinning and the airflowing towards itaccelerates close to the speed
of sound or 671 miles per hour at sea level (“The Speed of Sound and Mach Numbers”). Thus,
the propeller loses its efficiency because the air moves faster than what the pitch on the propeller
can push back. Second, the engines being used at that time are piston-powered; the pistons in the
engine going up and down to drive the propeller. When the piston moves up from the bottom of
the cylinder head, it compresses fuel and air; the mixture of fuel and air then explodes, and
pushes the piston back down (NASA). All of this turns a shaft called the propeller shaft. The
propeller shaft turns the propeller though the air at a high rate of speed. At an attitude of 10,000
feet or higher the engine begins to lose power because it does not have enough air to run properly
(Public Broadcasting Service). In 1929, Whittle wrote his college thesis describing the Turbo Jet
and Whittle thesis would revolutionize the twentieth century (Public Broadcasting Service).
During the time of Frank Whittle, there was a man named Hans von Ohain. Ohain was
born in Dessau, Germany in 1911(Heppenheimer, T A.). Ohain graduated with a doctorate in
Physics from the University of Göttingen in 1935. In 1933, while Ohain was in college, he
developed his own theory of jet propulsion and was completely unaware of Whittle’s work in
Great Britain(Bellis). That same year, Ohain patented his idea of a continuous cycle combustion

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engine andin 1934 his concept of a jet engine (Bellis). This was only four years after Frank
Whittle patented his jet engine concept in 1930 (Public Broadcasting Serves). Whittle’s and
Ohain’stheories were based on an idea that can be defined as continuous combustion. A jet, in its
simplest form, (known as a Turbo Jet) works by pulling in air in through an intake with a large
fan. The air is then pushed through a stage of the engine called the compressor, which mixes the
air with jet fuel (the standard is Jet-A, but almost any fuel that is low in octane will burn in a jet).
After exiting the compressor, the fuel air mixture is combusted in the third stage of the engine
called the combustor. As the expanded gas leaves the aft of the engine, it turns another fan,
which is connected to the first fan, which pulls in more air. The exhaust leaves the engine at a
high rate of speed, forming a jet of air (NASA).
In 1937, under the HeinkelFlugzeugwerke(Heinkel Aircraft Works, founded by Ernst
Heinkel in 1922, is credited with the achievements of having the fastest airliner in 1933 and for
building and flying the first jet aircraft (“Heinkel Aircraft Works”). In Rostock, Germany,Ohain
built the first operational jet engine named the He S.3B (“Hans von Ohain”). The He S.3B was
the first jet engine to power an aircraft, the Heinkel He 178(“Heinkel Aircraft Works”). Then in
1941,continuing work in Heinkel Aircraft Works, Ohain built the first fighter jet called the He
280. It had a top speed of 578 miles an hour, which at that time was unheard of (“Heinkel
Aircraft Works”). Soon after the first flight of He 280 in 1941, Whittle was able to fly his
prototype engine, the W.1 in a plane called the Gloster Pioneer (Public Broadcasting Service).
The Pioneer flew test flights until 1943, when one of the two prototypes went in to a spin and
crashed (Encyclopedia of Science). After the crash,Frank Whittle’s project was then packed up
and sent to General Electric in the United States because “industry [was] under attack in the
midst of WWII and, rapid development of the…engine was not feasible” (Public Broadcasting

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Service). Fortunately, Germany suffered the same fate on industry. By this time in the war, the
Americans and British were bombing Germany “round-the-clock.”Because of the bombing of
Germany,the development of a production jet fighter was brought to a crawl(Anne Frank Guide).
Despite all odds in 1944, Germany flew the first jets into combat, the Messerschmitt Me 262.
The Me 262 at first werevery unsuccessful because they were only used as ground attack aircraft
and bombers.As pilots learned how to fly the fighter, they became more successful in air combat.
On April 7, 1945, the first jet dogfight (dogfight is battle that is takes place in the air,usually
consisting of two or more aircraft with one from opposing sides) took place in the skies over
Germany. The outcome of the dogfight was in the favor of the American P-51 Mustang flown by
Richard Candelaria. However, the battle did prove that was only the beginning of the jet age
("The P-51 Mustang").
The jet age began after the fall of Nazi Germany when the Russians and Americans
divided Germany up amongst the allied powers. One of the first objectivesfor the allies was
looking for Germanscientists to help with their own military and technological needs. The
Russians, British and Americans all had great interest in jet engine technology.These three
countries used ideas from the Me 262 to design their own jets. The United States had developed
the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star. It was designed in 1943 and first flown in 1947. The Shooting
Star is built around Whittle’s original design, the W.1. The engine was redesigned by Allison
(Now a subsidiary of General Motors, an engineering company that mainly built Transmissions
but helped the wartime effort to make Piston and Jet engines (Allison).) and renamed the J33-A-
23 (NASM). The P-80 Shooting Star was the premier fighter jet in the United States Air Force
inventory until the Koran War, when for the first time; there were “jet on jet” dogfights with the
Russians’ premier fighter jet, the MIG-15 (The Aviation History On-live Museum). The MIG-15

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was the first jet sold outside of its manufacturing country and was sold to North Korea by both
the Chinese and Russians. The MIG 15 was faster than the P-80, but the P-80 was more agile and
had better armament then the MIG (Mikoyan-Gurevich MIG-15 (Ji-2) FAGOT B.). The first jet
battle took place between these two aircraft on November 10, 1950, in the skies over North
Korea. Lieutenant Russell Brown, piloting a P-80 Shooting Star, destroyed a North Korean MiG-
15 (The Aviation History On-live Museum).
The Korean War changed the way the United States built fighters, but the British had
other ideas. In 1949, the world’s first Jet Airliner flew in Great Brittan, the De Havilland Comet
1; the Comet 1 had 36 seats and had a top speed of 480 miles an hour. It used the same Turbo Jet
engines that were used on the P-80 (The Allison J33) but was modified to run on a new fuel, Jet-
A (Siddiqi, Asif). Before the Comet jets were using kerosene and diesel; both fuels are almost
chemically the same but both diesel and kerosene did not burn clean and carbon would build on
the fan blades, causing engine failure (EPI). (A problem that the P-80 suffered from greatly. (The
Aviation History On-live Museum)). The Comet 1 relied on this fuel because of its
safety;sadly,the only airline that operated the Comet 1, was BOAC (now British Airways)
(British Overseas Aircraft Corporation) found out that the airframe suffered from metal fatigue
and the aircraft would break apart in flight (Siddiqi). The De Havilland Comet 1was grounded in
1952 (Siddiqi). This would be the start of passage jet, from this point in history to the present
there would not be another- advance in propeller aircraft technology.
On May 14, 1954, Boeing rolled out their first jet airliner, the Model 367-80 also known
as the Dash 80 (Boeing). The Dash 80 was the 2nd generation of Jet Airliners and a year later in
August, Alvin M. “Tex” Johnson, was flying the 367 over the Seafair hydroplane races where the
International Air Transport Association was having a conference (Johnson). Boeing, in a ploy to

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get the airlines interested in the Dash 80, were going to fly over the races with the jet. “Tex”
Johnson on the way to the fly over decided to roll the aircraft in to whatis known asa “Barrel
Roll,” as he later states “The barrel roll is a positive G maneuver and was safe” (Johnson). He
did it because it would prove to the airlines that the 2nd generation of jetliners would not be as
fragile at the Comet. The Dash 80, is now known as the 707 or the KC-135, and are still being
used to this day as a cargo and aerial refueling aircraft; on some models still using the original
Pratt & Whitney JT3 turbojet.
The 707 would be the last successful Turbo Jet powered aircraft; the 707 was replaced by
more efficient and more powerful Turbo Fans and Fan Jets, which powered today’s modern
aircraft. The Turbo Jet engines history is important because it shows us how far we have come
over the past one hundred years and it all started with a man name Frank Whittle born in a small
town in England. The Turbo Jet Change the way we wage our wars and how we travel vast
distances all over the world making the world seem a lot smaller than it really is.

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