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Home , Bell Aircraft, Frank Whittle, Gloster Meteor, Heavy bomber, Jet aircraft, Jet trainer

A 21-year-old RAF pilot and a German graduate student got the whole thing going 70 years ago.

The Jet Generations Photo by Russ Rogers via Warren Thompson

By Bruce D. Callander

N the last months of World War II, was losing the war but was still able self. Within a decade, the propel- Allied were jumped by to inflict damage. ler-driven fighters of the major pow- German interceptors that had no These desperation weapons ar- ers would become virtually obso- propellers but could outrun any rived too late to have any substan- lete, their successors powered by conventional fighter. In the Pa- tial impact on the outcome of the “reaction .” cific, the Japanese sent piloted war, but they foreshadowed a post- At the time of the Wright brothers’ Iglide against ships and air- war transformation in military tech- first flight in 1903, a relatively light craft, their suicide dives boosted by nology as dramatic in its way as the internal combustion was avail- or engines. The Axis invention of the flying machine it- able. For the next three decades, pis-

A four-ship of F-80 fighters. The Shooting Star was the nation’s first combat jet fighter.

68 Magazine / October 2002 AIR FORCE Magazine / October 2002 68 A 21-year-old RAF pilot and a German graduate student got the whole thing going 70 years ago.

The Jet Generations Photo by Russ Rogers via Warren Thompson

By Bruce D. Callander

N the last months of World War II, was losing the war but was still able self. Within a decade, the propel- Allied bombers were jumped by to inflict damage. ler-driven fighters of the major pow- German interceptors that had no These desperation weapons ar- ers would become virtually obso- propellers but could outrun any rived too late to have any substan- lete, their successors powered by conventional fighter. In the Pa- tial impact on the outcome of the “reaction engines.” cific, the Japanese sent piloted war, but they foreshadowed a post- At the time of the Wright brothers’ Iglide bombs against ships and air- war transformation in military tech- first flight in 1903, a relatively light craft, their suicide dives boosted by nology as dramatic in its way as the internal combustion engine was avail- rocket or turbojet engines. The Axis invention of the flying machine it- able. For the next three decades, pis-

A four-ship of F-80 fighters. The Shooting Star was the nation’s first combat jet fighter.

68 AIR FORCE Magazine / October 2002 AIR FORCE Magazine / October 2002 68 new technology. It was March 1943 before the prototype made its first flight. Sixteen of the fighters eventually were delivered to the RAF. The first saw combat in August 1944, when their pilots downed two V-1 over south- ern . By then, already was fielding its jet fighters in numbers. In early 1940, the German Air Min- istry had given two compa- nies— and Messerschmitt— contracts to produce test aircraft. Heinkel took an early lead; unfortu- nately its was plagued by engine failures. Although Messer- schmitt got a slow start, the Me-262 made its first flight in July 1942 and won the competition. stands next to the engine he designed, designated Whittle W1X, Development problems and the on display in the jet gallery at the National Air and Space Museum in Washing- demands of the war delayed the ton, D.C. project, but in late 1943, Germany approved the 262 for mass produc- ton engines turned propellers that In the 1930s, two men in different tion. More than 1,400 were built; pushed or pulled aircraft through the countries tackled the problem. however, fewer than one-fourth sky, and the search for other power Frank Whittle, in pilot training at reached combat. Many were grounded sources was largely forgotten. the College from for lack of fuel and qualified pilots Improved designs and more pow- 1926 through 1928, wrote his final or were destroyed by Allied bombs. erful engines increased performance, thesis on the principle of jet propul- but it was apparent as early as the sion. Two years later, in 1930, he Bizarre Proposals 1920s that -driven aircraft applied for a patent on a reaction Late in the war, the Germans be- would be limited, particularly in the engine for aircraft. The came more desperate and the pro- speeds they could attain. showed little interest, but in 1934, posals more bizarre. Several manned The solution, many designers the RAF sent Whittle to Cambridge rocket projects were launched, in- agreed, was some form of reaction University for an engineering de- cluding one for a fighter able to take engine. There were several possi- gree. There, he was encouraged to off vertically. Another designer sug- bilities but all had limitations. Rocket continue his work, and before he gested a manned flying . It was power, already effective in unmanned graduated in June 1936, Whittle and an outgrowth of the V-2 rocket pro- weapons, burned fuel quickly and some friends formed a company to gram and was to be designed to reach promised only limited range. The produce a test model. the US, where the pilot would eject “ram” principle was almost as simple, Meanwhile, Hans von Ohain was and, with luck, become a prisoner of relying on air rushing into the en- working on his Ph.D. in physics and war. Most such ideas never got be- gine, where it would mix with fuel aerodynamics in Germany when he yond the thinking stages. and be ignited to produce a rush of conceived a similar engine. He de- One that did progress was the hot gases. However, before the ram- veloped his idea, built a working “Volksjaeger” (People’s Fighter). jet would kick in, the airplane had to model, and in 1934, applied for his The Reich War Ministry invited bids be in motion. patent. on a cheap, stripped-down jet that Two years later von Ohain was could be built with noncritical mate- Dawn of the Turbojet working for the Heinkel Works, rials and by unskilled labor. Heinkel The third, and most promising, where he developed a turbojet that won the job and by January 1945 option was the turbojet, able to draw the firm installed in a specially de- was producing the He-162. air in, compress it, mix it with fuel, signed He-178. It flew for the first Critically short of experienced and ignite it in one continuous op- time in August 1939, five days be- pilots, Air Minister Hermann Goering eration. The expelled gases would fore Germany invaded and proposed to train members of the both propel the aircraft and run a touched off World War II. Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) in glid- turbine, which turned the compres- That same year, the British Air ers, transition them to the jet fight- sor blades. Steam turbines already Ministry gave Whittle’s company a ers, and send them into combat. Like were used in ships and had been contract to develop a flight engine the , the young pilots would tried in early automobiles. The prob- and picked the Gloster Aircraft Co. be expendable. lem was to make one strong enough to build an airplane to use it. Fortunately for the Hitler Youth, to stand up to the heat and vibration However, Britain was straining to the war ended before they could take they would encounter in a fuel-burn- produce conventional defense air- on what would have been suicide ing engine. craft, so it was slow to exploit the missions for most. In , how-

70 AIR FORCE Magazine / October 2002 ever, thousands of minimally trained pilots were dispatched with no hope of survival. Most kamikaze pilots flew conventional aircraft loaded with explosives, while some versions of the Yokosuka Cherry Blossom piloted glide bomb had jet engines. The Axis powers also experi- mented with rocket-. One of the most promising was the Me-163 interceptor, which actually made it into combat. Called the Komet, it could reach speeds of al- most 600 mph; it carried fuel for only about 10 minutes of powered flight and had a tendency to explode. The Japanese copied the airplane for their Mitsubishi Shusui, but its en- gine failed on its initial and the project was abandoned. Late in the war, Germany grew desperate to turn the tide against the Allies. A Slow Start in the US One proposal was the He-162 Salamander, a flimsy lightweight built The did not field a jet partially out of plywood and intended to be expendable. in combat during the war—not for lack of trying. Three months before The second US entry, the prototype the Navy. Neither airplane flew un- Pearl Harbor, Lt. Gen. H.H. “Hap” of Lockheed’s P-80, designed around til after the war. Arnold, Chief of the Army Air Forces, a engine, was completed If Germany had been able to send asked Lawrence Bell to work on a within 143 days and flown at Muroc hundreds of Me-262s into combat fighter using a WhittleÐtype engine. on Jan. 8, 1944. It went through sev- when it was losing the war and strug- By the following spring, Bell Air- eral evaluations including a change to gling to produce anything, why had craft had designed a single-seat air- GE engines, and by 1944, the AAF the Americans been so far behind? plane powered by two built had ordered several thousand produc- For one thing, the two countries by under British li- tion models. A few P-80s made it to had different priorities. What the US cense. The first XP-59 was shipped Europe but too late to see combat. needed, particularly early in the war, to Muroc Army Air Base in Califor- Other companies were also in the was fighters able to escort bombers nia, where it flew on Oct. 1, 1942. running. Republic developed the P-84 on long missions. With drop tanks, Called the Airacomet, it offered little Thunderjet, planned as a successor some P-51s had a range of up to advantage over conventional fight- to its P-47. North American was 2,000 miles, well beyond that of any ers, and the few that were produced working on the P-86 Sabre, an AAF proposed jet fighter. By the time the served mainly as test beds or trainers. version of a jet it was developing for Me-262 emerged, however, the Al- lies had shifted the war to Germany, which then needed to produce last- ditch, home-defense weapons. The US also was absorbed in quan- tity production, in improving the air- craft already in hand, and in training skilled aircrews. After the initial shock of meeting the German Me- 262 in combat, Allied crews and fighter pilots found they could destroy many of them even with con- ventional aircraft.

To the Victors Germany’s highly touted secret weapons did not change the outcome of the war; however, its new tech- nologies helped shape the future forces of the victors. As the fighting wound down, Al- lied forces moved in to recover what Progress in US development during the early was a closely was left of the enemy hardware and to held secret. At Muroc AAB, Calif., employees fitted a mock pick the brains of the men who had propeller to the XP-59 to confound curiosity seekers. designed it. A US technical intelli-

AIR FORCE Magazine / October 2002 71 gence team went to southern Ger- many to an airfield with surviving Me-262s and flew them out for study. Shortly after the war, von Ohain, who had developed Germany’s first turbojet, came to WrightÐPatterson AFB, , eventually becoming chief scientist of the Aero Propul- sion Laboratory there.

The Soviets also captured German Photo by John Harris via Warren Thompson jet aircraft in various stages of devel- opment. Although they had yet to develop an effective engine, they were able to buy a Rolls-Royce Nene from the and copy it. With these assets in hand, Mos- cow called for an interceptor able to reach Mach .9 and stay aloft for more than an hour. Veteran designers Ar- tem I. Mikoyan and Mikhail I. Gure- vich answered with what became the The Whittle engine was installed on the Gloster Meteor, the first Royal Air MiG-15, which entered service in Force jet aircraft. Sixteen Meteors were delivered to RAF late in World War II. 1949. It had some characteristics of The first saw combat in August 1944. the German jets but was a major improvement over them. year’s delay—increasing its perfor- tenance problems plagued the F-80s, One of the most important lessons mance dramatically. Republic later and some units replaced them with the winners learned from the losers, adopted the swept-wing approach for older F-51 Mustangs. The problems however, did not involve engine ex- its F-84F. The Soviets already had were worked out, however, and the pertise but aircraft design. The most incorporated it in their MiG-15. Shooting Stars returned in force. successful German airplanes, includ- On Nov. 8, 1950, 1st Lt. Russell J. ing the Me-262, had swept wings The First Jet Fighter War Brown was flying an F-80 when he while all the early Allied designs No opposing jet forces met during shot down a MiG-15. Brown’s vic- called for straight wings. When re- World War II, but five years later, tory was a rare one. The MiG usually search data showed the speed advan- invaded won against the straight-wing F-80s. tages of the German airplanes, the and set the stage for the first encoun- The arrival of the F-86 Sabre in Allied designers took notice. ter of unconventional aircraft. USAF Korea in late 1950 evened the odds. North American was among the units flying with Lockheed Shoot- North American’s decision to delay first to capitalize on the informa- ing Stars (designated F-80) were the production to accommodate swept tion. They redesigned the P-86 with first to engage. wings had paid off. The Sabres went swept wings—which cost the firm a Initially, parts shortages and main- into service almost immediately, and on Dec. 17, pilots of the 4th FighterÐ Interceptor Wing destroyed several MiGs in quick succession. Both airplanes had advantages. The MiG could fly higher and reach higher speeds at those altitudes. The F-86 was faster at lower levels and stood up better to high-speed maneuvers. By the end of the war, the Sabres claimed a 10-to-one kill rate. Since the airplanes were about evenly

Photo by Frank Harrison via Warren Thompson matched, officials credited the supe- rior training and experience of US pilots for much of their success. The F-80, in a two-seat trainer version dubbed T-33, became the standard jet trainer for generations of new pilots. Lockheed produced more than 5,600 T-33s.

Early Jet Bombers In 1953, a North Korean pilot defected with a swept-wing MiG-15, here seen at The evolution of jet bombers— Eglin AFB, Fla., where it underwent USAF testing. A USAF pilot flying an F-80 slower than that of the fighters— shot down a MiG-15 in 1950 in a rare victory for the straight-wing F-80. also began early in World War II.

72 AIR FORCE Magazine / October 2002 Work on the most successful one, the German Arado 234, began in 1940. As with the Me-262, develop- ment was slowed by want of a suit- able engine. The first version had twin turbojets and was used largely for reconnaissance. A later C model had four engines and was intended as a high-speed bomber. It flew in September 1944 but only a few en- tered service before the war ended. Germany had a more radical bomber in the works that never got beyond the test stage. The first prototype of the Ju-287, which used the of an He-177 and parts from other airplanes, had forward-swept wings. This V-1 model flew several times in 1944. It had four turbojet engines and, like the Arado, used rockets to assist takeoff. The medium-range B-47—the world’s first swept-wing bomber—was developed A second version was nearly ready about the same time as the long-range B-52. The design of the six-engine B-47 when the Allies overran the con- was so advanced that some called it futuristic. struction site. That German bomber was completed by the Soviets and suffered many development prob- including substituting USÐbuilt en- tested in 1947. A third model with lems and was reduced to a test pro- gines and adding rotating bomb bay six engines never got beyond the gram. After the war, however, the doors. The B-57 went into service in design stage. It was intended to fly firm fitted the wing with jets. This 1954. Too late for the , it at more than 500 mph and carry some project also fizzled out, although the flew long enough to see action in 8,800 pounds of bombs. concept reappeared eventually in the Vietnam. (Britain also sold the Can- American wartime efforts in the development of USAF’s B-2 stealth berra to other countries, including jet bomber field were more lim- bomber. , which used them against ited. By the time reaction-engine North America’s B-45 Tornado, RAF aircraft during the 1982 Falk- technology reached the practical the US’s first operational jet bomber, lands War.) stage, the US already was produc- was more successful. Its conventional America’s first heavy jet bomber ing conventional bombers able to fuselage and wings were like those evolved more slowly. In 1943, Army reach any point in Europe, and the of the firm’s durable B-25, but wing- Air Forces asked builders to think B-29 was putting Pacific targets mounted engines gave it almost twice about a long-range bomber using the within range. the speed. Three prototypes were new turbojet technology. Boeing pro- However, US manufacturers were ordered in 1945 and the first flew in posed a straight-wing model similar looking for ways to introduce the 1947. Production models deployed to the B-29 but, after studying Ger- new technology into existing designs. overseas suffered a variety of me- man research, opted for a swept- In 1943, Douglas had proposed a chanical problems and had a short wing airplane with six engines. radical with twin en- career. When AAF called for an even big- gines powering contrarotating pro- By the Korean War, the Air Force ger long-range jet, Boeing again en- pellers in the tail. Dubbed the “Mix- still was looking for an effective tered the race with an eight-engine master,” it flew with conventional medium jet bomber to replace its giant in the same general configura- engines the next year. The war ended aging B-26s. The B-45 lacked ma- tion. In parallel developments, the before the airplane could go into neuverability at low altitudes. When firm developed the medium-range production. By then, Douglas was other US contenders also fell short, B-47, which first flew in 1947, and working on another version—the XB- USAF turned to the British Canberra, the long-range B-52, first flown in 43 with turbojets for power. It flew a twin-engine airplane conceived by 1952. in May 1946; however, the Air Force English Electric in the last months Later generations of bombers and decided to go instead for a four- of World War II and which was then fighters followed. Today’s warplanes engine bomber. in production. The British firm can outrace the speed of sound, skim Northrop’s plan for a flying wing couldn’t supply both the RAF and the treetops, reach altitudes un- followed a similar route. Proposed USAF, so it licensed the Martin Co. dreamed of in World War II, and in 1941 as a long-range, propeller- in the US to build it as the B-57. make themselves virtually invisible driven , the XB-35 Martin made a number of changes, to enemy defenses. Still, even these owe their existence in large part to Bruce D. Callander is a contributing editor of Air Force Magazine. He served technology conceived more than half tours of active duty during World War II and the Korean War and was editor of a century ago by a 21-year-old RAF Air Force Times from 1972 to 1986. His most recent story for Air Force Maga- pilot and a slightly older German zine, “Stabilizing the Force,” appeared in the August 2002 issue. graduate student. ■

AIR FORCE Magazine / October 2002 73