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The contributions of Power Jets Ltd to jet propulsion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2016

G. B. R. Feilden
G. B. R. Feilden*
Affiliation:
Feilden Associates, Painswick, Gloucestershire
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Extract

The development of jet propulsion and the aircraft gas turbine in Britain has two main lines. One began in 1926 when Dr A.A. Griffith, then of the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE), proposed the use of a gas turbine as an aircraft power plant. This line of development led to the Metropolitan-Vickers F2 jet engine and its derivatives. Our story began two years later in 1928 when Frank Whittle was a cadet at Cranwell. Each term, the cadets were required to write a thesis and in his fourth and final term Whittle chose as his subject “Future Developments in Aircraft Design”. He concluded that for very high speeds combined with long range, it would be necessary to fly at very great heights where low air density would greatly reduce resistance in proportion to speed. He was thinking in terms of speeds of 500 mph at heights where the, air density was less than one quarter of its sea level value.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Aeronautical Journal , Volume 97 , Issue 962 , February 1993 , pp. 62 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Aeronautical Society 1993 

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Footnotes

p1

Editors note: Whittle's first published note on his jet propulsion ideas, a letter in the March 1931 issue of The Aeronautical Journal, was reproduced in the May 1991 Aerospace.

References

1. SirWhittle, Frank Jet — The Story of a Pioneer, Frederick Muller, London, 1953.Google Scholar
2. British Patent 347,206 Improvements relating to the Propulsion of Aircraft and other Vehicles, April 1931.Google Scholar
3. Bramson, M.L. Report on the Whittle System of Aircraft Propulsion (Theoretical stage) — October 1935, Aeronaut J, February 1970, 74, pp 128–133.Google Scholar
4. Wood, D. Project Cancelled, Jane's Publishing, London, 1975.Google Scholar
5. SirWhittle, Frank Early history of the jet engine, Rolls-Royce Magazine, 12 April 1987.Google Scholar
6. SirWhittle, Frank Gas Turbine Aero-Thermodynamics, with special reference to aircraft propulsion, Pergammon Press, Oxford, 1981.Google Scholar