Sir

A short life-history ... by Professor William Webb

Frank Whittle was born on June 1 1907, in the district of , the son of a foreman in a machine tool factory. Both his parents had suffered a hard upbringing, working in the mills from the ages of ten or eleven and were uneducated. They were determined that Frank would have a better start in life.

When Frank was four his father, a skilful and inventive mechanic who spent Sundays at a drawing board, gave him a toy aeroplane with a clockwork propeller and suspended it from a gas mantle. In 1912, at the age of five, he went to the local council school. When he was seven, the First World War broke out. Frank's interest in aeroplanes increased when he saw being built at the local Standard works, and was excited when an aeroplane force-landed near his home.

In 1916 the family moved to , where Frank's father had bought the Leamington Valve and Piston Ring Company, which comprised a few lathes and other tools, and a single-cylinder gas engine. With the war ongoing there was a great need for this sort of expertise and the business prospered. Frank was transferred to the local council school but in his spare time became familiar with machine tools and did piece work for his father. However, with the end of the war there came an end to the need for this kind of engineering work and the business floundered so badly that the Whittles were turned out of their home and had to move to rented accommodation.

Frank had won a scholarship to grammar school, but Frank Whittle the cost of clothing and transport was too great for his family and so he opted to stay at Leamington College instead, using the scholarship money to buy books. It was not a happy time at college. His parents struggled to afford clothing for him and so he was often singled out due to his shabby appearance. He did not find many of the subjects he was taught to be of interest and instead went to the local library where aircraft continued to be his passion. He was convinced that just from reading books he had learnt enough to fly the aircraft of the day.

At fourteen he made up his mind to join the as a boy apprentice. The entrance age for this was fifteen and his parents agreed that after his fifteenth birthday he could leave school and apply. He did extremely well in the entrance exam, and looked forward to the day that he would become a pilot. Acquiring the necessary knowledge

In January 1923 Whittle reported at RAF Halton as an aircraft apprentice. He lasted two days; only five feet tall and with a small chest measurement, he failed the medical. Six months later, after subjecting himself to an intense physical training programme supported by a special diet, he was rejected again. Undeterred, he applied using a different first name, passed the written examination again and was ordered to where he was accepted. He joined a three year course designed to teach him how to repair and maintain the planes of the day.

Once there, though, the environment was not what he had hoped. Trained like army cadets, there was strong discipline, parades and long boring hours filing away at chunks of metal. After the first year he specialised as a “rigger/fitter” – someone who worked on the metal frames of the aircraft. This involved a lot of cutting and shaping of sheet metal. Whittle frequently considered desertion but in the end stuck out the three year course. One of the joys which made the hours of boredom and frustration worthwhile to him was membership of the model aircraft society where he carefully built accurate replica planes. This was to provide him with a lucky break. The model society was of much interest to the Commanding Officer, Barton, who often took visitors there while on a tour of the base. Whittle took modelling to an extreme with a large 10ft wingspan model including a two-stroke petrol engine.

At the end of the course he was surprised to learn that he was placed sixth out of the 600 apprentices on the course and therefore in line for cadetship – allowing him to go to Cranwell College for officer and pilot training. He appeared to have narrowly missed out though, when it was announced that there would only be five cadets. Whittle went up to London with the other five and scrapped through when the leading candidate failed on medical grounds. Even so, without the strong support of the Wing Commander he would not have made it.

So, at the age of 19 in 1926, Whittle became a Leading Aircraftman at the RAF College at Cranwell. This was a dramatic change in class. As an apprentice he carried his own cutlery to the dining hall. As an officer of the RAF he sat down to formal dinners wearing a bow tie and surrounded by an array of gleaming cutlery. The course lasted two years and covered a wide range of topics including meteorology, Air Law, armaments, theory of flight and organisational behaviour. For Whittle, the highlight was flying. He showed a natural talent, landing safely after an engine failure, although he did write off an airplane after landing on a field in the fog to ascertain his position and then crashing into a tree on take-off. Luckily he was unhurt. He soon turned into rather a dare-devil pilot, being apprehended on a few occasions for excessively low- level flying and other escapades.

It was around this time he started seeing a local girl – Dorothy Lee. On a few occasions he would take a motorbike and ride from the RAF College to visit her, on one occasion resulting in a crash with a bus after some rather risky antics. Again, luckily, he escaped unhurt.

Cadets had to produce a thesis for each of the six terms that made up the two years at college. In his first year Whittle concentrated on armaments, but his fourth thesis, written in 1928 was to change the course of his life. It was entitled “Future developments in aircraft design”. In this thesis Whittle noted that aircraft could, in principle, travel faster at higher altitudes since the atmosphere was thinner and so the resistance caused to a plane was less. However, propellers worked less well at higher altitudes and so could not be used to achieve these higher speeds. Whittle noted that the turbine was one of the most efficient ways of converting fuel into power and predicted that it would eventually be possible to fit a turbine to an aircraft. At this stage his ideas were not well formed but provided the genesis for future developments.

Of the few apprentices that were accepted, only about one percent completed the course. Whittle was the exception to the rule, graduating in 1928 at the age of 21, ranked second in his class academically and an "Exceptional to Above Average" pilot. He was now a Pilot-Officer, a long way away from the apprentice who had entered the Air Force five years earlier.

Key Facts

Born: 1 June 1907, Coventry Died: 9 August 1996, Colombia, Maryland Lived: Mostly in the UK, although moved to the US in later life Education: Leamington College Parents: Moses and Sara Alice Whittle Married: Dorothy Lee, May 1930, divorced 1976, Hazel Hall 1976 Children: Two sons, Francis (1931) and Ian (1934) Employment: • RAF 1923 – 1946 in various roles, but effectively permanently seconded to 1936 onwards • BOAC 1948-1952 • Shell 1953 – 1957 • Various academic and teaching posts

Tentative first steps

Whittle’s first posting in August 1928 was to 111 Fighter Squadron, based in Hornchurch, Essex. This posting suited Whittle much better than the public-school atmosphere that had existed in the last two years. With a small number of colleagues and plenty of free time, Whittle felt at ease and able to pursue his other interests. While flying he continued to develop dare-devil manoeuvres, often based on precise calculations and practice, but terrifying to watch. Occasionally he was reprimanded for these, but this did not stop him continuing to try new ideas. This posting came to an end in September 1929 when he was sent to Wittering as a pupil on a flying instructor course.

It was at Wittering, in 1929 that he made the major leap of realising that a turbine could be operated either to provide power to a rotating shaft or to send air out of the back of the engine at speed to provide direct forwards propulsion (see box, below). This latter approach, he realised, held significantly more promise.

The turbine

A is in principle a very simple engine. It has three basic parts. A compressor at the front of the engine takes in air and compresses it, increasing its pressure. In the centre of the engine is a combustion section. Here a steady stream of fuel is ignited and burns in the flow of compressed air. Burning the fuel creates heat which causes the air to try to expand. It does so by escaping through the third part of the engine called the turbine where it causes the blades of the turbine to rotate before escaping out of the nozzle of the engine. A key element is that the turbine is linked to the compressor by a shaft, providing the power needed to compress the air from the engine itself. The compression of the air results in much more oxygen within the combustion chamber than would be the case for an engine without a compressor. This allows more fuel to be burnt and hence a larger power output for a given size – obviously an important consideration for an .

In most turbine engines, such as those used in power stations or on trains, the turbine is designed to extract as much power from the exhaust gasses as possible. The extra power not needed by the compressor is used, for example, to drive an electric generator. However, if the exhaust gases are allowed to escape at high speed from the nozzle of the jet then they produce a forward thrust on the entire engine.

Although the principle is simple, there are many practical difficulties in designing such an engine. In particular, the constant burning of fuel causes the engine to become very hot while the high pressure within the engine puts immense strain on the casing. Advances in metals able to withstand the heat and pressure were needed. The compressor blades are also problematic. They too can become very hot, but must spin at very high speed to create sufficient pressure to make the engine work well and must fit tightly within the casing to avoid pressure “leaking” around the edge. Again, the key here is advanced materials.

This approach to the use of a had actually already been envisaged and patented by Charles Guillaume in France in 1921, but Whittle and most others were unaware of this at the time. Whittle’s ideas were well received by his management and in 1929 his commanding officer arranged for him to discuss his ideas at the with W L Tweedie, a technical officer, and critically, A A Griffith of the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) at Farnborough who had been secretly working on turbines for a number of years, albeit looking at their ability to drive a rotating shaft. Indeed, Griffith had made a key breakthrough in 1926 by showing that if the blades of the turbine were shaped like aircraft wings, the efficiency with which they could compress the air was substantially improved. The meeting did not go particularly well. Whittle was subsequently informed by letter that the engine was impractical at the time because materials capable of withstanding the high temperatures required inside the engine were not available. However, the Air Force did note that “the internal combustion turbine will almost certainly be developed into a successful engine, but before this can be done the performance of both compressors and turbines will have to be greatly improved.” However, it was a kind rejection and Whittle had been given unprecedented access to senior scientists for one of relatively low standing in the Air Force.

In the meantime, Whittle had become a flying instructor, a role he took to well. He interspersed flying duties with aerobatics practice – “crazy flying” as it was then called – which he became unrivalled at, winning a national competition to fly at the Hendon Air Pageant of 1930. He also took time out to get married to Dorothy Mary Lee in Coventry in May, a few days before his 23rd birthday. The end of 1930 saw him posted to Felixstowe as a test pilot for the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment. The year had also seen him attempt to gain funding for his jet engine idea. However, with the depression in full swing none of the companies he talked to were prepared to invest the level of money they could see would be needed for the engine development. Nevertheless, the fact that they seriously considered the idea was a boost for Whittle after his rejection by the RAF.

Being a test pilot was a role Whittle enjoyed. As well as simply performing the test flights asked of him, he would work with the engineers to analyse the data and determine future test flights needed. He and his wife moved into nearby rented accommodation and in May 1931 his first son, Francis David, was born. A substantial part of his work was testing catapults used to launch sea planes from ships. This was a relatively novel and risky idea involving dramatic acceleration. Whittle distinguished himself, receiving several commendations. Being a site for testing meant that many major manufacturers visited. Whenever he could, Whittle would try to persuade them of the merits of his jet engine, but without success. Most felt that there were not materials available that could withstand sufficient heat. Whittle felt that if he moved ahead with his ideas such materials would be developed but none had the faith to believe in this.

In 1932 his four years general pilot training came to an end and he was required to specialise. There was little doubt in his mind that he should move into engineering and so in August 1932 he was posted to Henlow to attend the Officers’ Engineering Course. All entrants had to sit an entrance exam in which Whittle scored 98% - testimony to all he had learned during the last nine years. This entitled him to move to a shortened course of one year. At the end of this he obtained a distinction in every subject. There had previously been a tradition that the top students were allowed to study at Cambridge, but this had recently been discontinued. Whittle nevertheless applied and given his performance he was given special dispensation to study Mechanical Sciences at Cambridge, starting in 1934.

At the age of 27, Whittle entered Peterhouse College. The course was nominally three years but with Whittle’s previous education he was expected to complete it in two. He graduated with first class honours in 1936. His tutor then asked the Air Ministry whether he could stay on for a year to study with the aerodynamicist Sir Brian Melville Jones, and again permission was granted.

Forming his own company

The first significant steps towards realising the jet engine took place in May 1935, while Whittle was still at Cambridge. An RAF colleague, Ralph Williams and his partner J Tinling had set up a manufacturing company called General Enterprises. At the time they were building a coin-operated cigarette machine – rather a long way removed from a jet engine! They had surmised that there was a war coming and that aircraft would play a leading role, and so were keen to change their business. They were to get the commercial backing and seek a patent while Whittle worked on the engine. This suited Whittle who was suspicious that large companies would take his idea from him, leaving him with little other than a potentially length lawsuit process. The raising of finance proceeded well, partly due to the favourable impression Whittle caused to many, and partly because the idea fitted well with the general view of the times that a high power engine was an essential element of a modern war. In March 1936, Power Jets was formed, with enough finance to develop a prototype. Its backers hoped that after this stage funding from the Treasury would be forthcoming to help support the development through to production. Whittle was seconded from the Air Force to the company for five years on full pay, so cost nothing to the company – again a sign as to how well disposed the Air Force was to helping Whittle pursue his work.

Power Jets had no production facilities and so entered into an arrangement with British Thompson-Houston (BTH), a steam turbine specialist based in Leicestershire. Whittle and a few others went to live there and started their testing programme in October 1936. The first engine was ready for testing on the 12 April 1937. This was a nerve-racking moment. It was far from clear whether the engine would work, but if it did there was every chance that it would run out of control. With parts rotating at over 1,200 feet per second any failure could be catastrophic in many ways. The engine was surrounded by a steel safety screen and the powerful starter motor engaged. With the engine turning over at 2,000 rpm fuel was ignited into the main chamber. Quickly the engine picked up speed, emitting a frightening shriek, glowing red-hot and running up to 8,000 rpm. The control value for the fuel supply was turned off but it was some moments before the engine started to slow down. A test later that day was even more alarming as the engine ran up to 8,000 rpm without the fuel valve even being opened. Subsequent tests showed how fuel was leaking into the engine and a redesign followed after which the engine started to run rather more under control. However, the fuel injection method proved of great difficultly – the fuel injectors needed to work in the heat of the flames of the combustion chamber which tended to melt or deform whatever approach they tried. Things improved during April but towards the end the engine suddenly seized at speed – parts had begun to wear out under the intense strain. Without the funding to replace them, the team tried to repair and modify but with little success. By August 1937 it was clear that a redesign and rebuild was needed. Whittle, by this time had finished his post-graduate year and the Air Force posted him on “special duties”, allowing him to work full-time on the engine – again showing their commitment to him. It also waived the need for him to take an exam in order to gain promotion. But another problem was brewing – Power Jets had virtually run out of funds and nobody seemed willing to provide them with additional resources. Their existence became based on small handouts from a few companies and individuals, forcing them to live from month to month.

Late in 1937 Whittle made an important breakthrough. The escaping air from the combustion chamber passes over a turbine which then provides the power for the compressor. Efficient design of the turbine blades is important to extract minimal energy from the flow of hot gases so still leaving escaping gases to provide the forward thrust. The designers of turbine blades up until then had assumed that the gas escaping from the combustion chamber flowed directly out across the turbine but Whittle showed that in fact it followed the path of a vortex, as does water when passing down a plug hole. This radically changed the design of the turbine blades to account for the rotating motion of the air and led to a great improvement in the functioning of the engine.

With the redesign, a need to move to different premises and a lack of funds, it was not until April 1938 that the second version of the engine was ready for trials. Fuel supply problems took them about a month to resolve at which point they managed to run the engine for an hour, albeit at only 8,000

Whittle with an early engine rpm, well below the design speed of 18,000 rpm. This was brought to a halt when a rag was sucked into the engine causing minor damage. Once this was repaired the engine was run up to 13,000 rpm but after about an hour a number of the fan blades broke off and caused very serious damage to the inside of the engine. This was a major set-back – the engine could not be repaired and there did not seem to be sufficient funds to build a new one. Whittle saw this as his fault – he had designed the blade structure – and was deeply depressed about the situation.

Eventually, Whittle concluded that another major redesign was needed. He decided at this point to replace the single large combustion chamber with ten small chambers located around the outside of the engine. This, he thought, would provide a more compact and lighter engine. Further small amounts of funding, and careful reuse of components from the damaged engine gave Whittle just sufficient resources to build this engine. The engine was completed in October 1938 at which point the RAF agreed to provide some additional funding, but the terms of their agreement prevented full scale tests until all aspects of the agreement were complete. Whittle took the opportunity to do some minor testing which showed that further redesign in the new small combustion chambers was needed. Progress, though, remained slow and by February 1939 the engine still had not run above 8,000 rpm. The RAF now turned up the pressure on Whittle, demanding more results or threatening that otherwise they would terminate his special duties. The intense pressure was having an effect on Whittle who was now under almost constant treatment for ear-ache, head-aches and indigestion.

Somewhat against his better judgement, Whittle decided to allow the engine to be run up to 13,000 rpm. The engine appeared to be running well until the blades on the compressor started failing. Luckily this did not overly damage the engine but did lead to a two-month delay while a new impeller unit was designed and built. Fortunately, when tests resumed in June, the new design appeared to have made a difference The last of Whittle’s jet engines and the engine was run up to 16,000 rpm – close to its design limit of 18,000 rpm. Even more fortunate, this was witnessed by officials from the Air Ministry whose views towards the engine started to become more positive, persuading them that resource levels should be stepped up. The Ministry provided substantial funding and asked Whittle to prepare an engine ready for flight.

Whittle’s work at this time was just one strand of aero-engine development taking place in the UK. The Air Ministry was, wisely, hedging its bets, with a range of different engine developments, from evolutionary improvements in standard engines at Rolls Royce, through high performance versions of these with huge numbers of cylinders, to Whittle’s work. Power Jets were seen as unlikely to deliver because of the small size of the company, the lack of sufficient funding to get to production status and the general view that the jet engine required a number of breakthroughs. Nevertheless, as part of what might be seen today as a “balanced portfolio” it made sense to hedge bets with a “blue skies” project. As the Second World War started it was the Rolls Royce Merlin engines that won the Battle of Britain and it was unsurprising that large amounts of resource were subsequently devoted to their production and optimisation, perhaps to the detriment of other engines.

Flying the jet engine

In the summer of 1939 work started on flight engines. The Air Ministry had authorised the development of two engines in parallel to save time – W.1 would be the first to be flown while a more powerful W.2 was being developed. The W.1 had a thrust specification of 1,200lb compared to the 1,600lb of the W.2. In addition, the W. 2 was designed for air cooling rather than water cooling to avoid problems with the water in the cooling system freezing. The Air Ministry funding also allowed a number of staff to be recruited and the development process was given much impetus. However, by May 1940 the Battle of Britain was underway and the Air Ministry understandably Artist’s impression of the E28 in flight changed its view, giving priority to the production of Hurricanes and Spitfires. This removed resource from Whittle, slowing development back down again.

Whittle’s health continued to suffer. He smoked and drank more and started to suffer from boils, further ear problems and nasal congestion. One solution to the latter was a benzedrine inhaler to which Whittle, without really realising it, rapidly became addicted. This was to sow the seeds for even greater health problems that were soon to emerge. Happily, though, through many discussions with Ministers and senior officials in the Ministry and after much frustration, the promise of the jet engine was again recognised and by September 1940 funding had been restored to previous levels and development was back up to full strength.

By April 1941 things were coming together. A prototype aircraft developed by airframe manufacturer Gloster and called the E28/39 aircraft was finished along with a trial version of the W.1 engine. The first stage was taxiing trials. These went well and the next day the test pilot, , tried short flights of a few hundred meters. The trials had shown up a few minor problems which were addressed and on 15th May the E28/39 made its first flight of nearly 20 minutes. It went extremely well with the plane behaving in a very controlled manner. Ten hours of test flying was then completed, with the plane achieving a speed of 370 mph – faster than any other fighter at the time. This was slightly higher than expected, further increasing confidence in the engine. The Ministry immediately set a target production of 500 aircraft and 1,200 of the higher power W.2 engines.

Even the W.2 was not deemed powerful enough to allow a single-engine plane to carry a sensible load of fuel and armaments. Hence, work started on a twin-engine fighter aircraft known initially as the F9/40, but to become the .

Initially W.2 appeared to be just a larger version of W.1, but a whole host of problems appeared. The larger compressor was inclined to fatigue and break and the compressor occasionally caused the air speed over it to become supersonic, causing a sonic boom which tended to destroy much of the engine. The gas flow in the engine itself also tended to become unstable – known as “surging” – causing mini-explosions within the engine. Any of these failures tended to result in serious, often catastrophic, damage to the engine, necessitating a lengthy rebuild before the testing programme The Whittle Memorial at Farnborough could continue again. At the time, the techniques to analyse the complex air flow and thermal dynamics within the engine did not exist, so the team had to proceed with experimentation and guesswork. Some days the engine would work well, others, with apparently only trivial changes, it would self- destruct. This put immense strain on the team, both physically in terms of the hours they worked and emotionally in terms of the unpredictability of the engines. The stress started to show. The relationship between Power Jets and BTH deteriorated, with Whittle convinced that BTH were attempting to make their own engine. Whittle’s sense of humour appeared to depart him and those sent from the Air Ministry to liaise with him felt that he was becoming increasingly unreasonable. On 10th December 1941 he broke down and was admitted to hospital for ten days, returning to work a month later. In the end all agreed to end the links with BTH and a different manufacturing partner was sought. Rover was eventually selected because of their large scale manufacturing capabilities and because they had already geared up to become a “shadow” manufacturer of the Merlin engine should there be problems at Rolls Royce. However, this partnership rapidly entered its own problems. As Rover’s engineering staff worked with Power Jets they suggested their own changes to the engine in order to ease manufacturing difficulties but Power Jets were suspicious that these were merely to stall the development. Yet again, Whittle was concerned that Rover were trying to steal the jet engine idea for themselves. Rover was also placed in a difficult position. There was intense pressure to move to production on the W.2 engine despite the fact that many of the problems had not been ironed out. Rover was therefore trying to build in volume an engine that did not really yet work properly.

Work proceeded slowly until 1942 when another incident led to increased tension. The Whittle W.2 engine featured an “S” shaped airflow whereby the airflow from compressor to turbine doubled back on itself twice. This allowed the engine to be very short meaning that the distance between the compressor and the turbine could be reduced, allowing a short drive shaft. This solved an earlier problem of the drive shaft expanding in the heat and then rotating out of true alignment – almost invariably leading to it failing. However, the reversed air flow required a very complex arrangement of high quality metal which was very difficult to manufacture at the time. It was also thought to result in a slower air flow, reducing the power of the engine – a critical problem with the W.1 and an increasing concern with the W.2.

The Rover engineers thought they had a solution to this problem. They redesigned the combustion chamber so that there was a straight-through air flow, extended the shaft and provided an additional bearing to support the shaft in the centre. They then used a sliding coupling on the shaft so that it could expand but still remain straight. The Rover design had huge production advantages, allowing massive simplification, but Whittle was suspicious and tried to counter that it was not the time to try a different design but to perfect the existing one, which he said was badly needed by the Air Force. Internally, Power Jets was convinced it was an attempt by Rover to take the design work away from them so they could eventually head off on their own. Vociferous discussions were held with the Air Ministry and eventually the compromise was reached that production (of a sort) should continue on the W.2 engine (now in version W.2B) while Rover should be allowed to continue the development of their straight through engine (the B.26). In time, when Rolls Royce took over jet engine manufacturing from Rover, the B.26 would become the genesis of the Rolls Royce RB37. Had Power Jets been able to swallow their pride and realise that a small start-up company was not the ideal place from which to develop a jet engine, then significant time and effort might have been saved.

The stress was taking its toll on Whittle. His Benzedrine addiction had become worse leading to depression, tension and paranoia adding to the problems with his relationships with all concerned with the jet engine. On top of this, Whittle was suffering from boils, eczema and persistent inflammation in his ears. Whittle increasingly fell out with all around him, resulting in the Managing Director of Power Jets leaving in 1941, noting “there were too many difficulties between us, I was not sorry to leave Power Jets”. Whittle then suffered a nervous breakdown, being hospitalised for a month and given electric shock treatment. He was not much improved on his return to work and was seen by one official then as “virtually a nut case”. The engine development was not going well with the thrust produced from the W.2B being so small that the Meteor threatened to be out-performed by conventional planes of the day.

The end of Power Jets

In late 1942 a new face at the Air Ministry reviewed the situation. Sir Wilfred Freeman’s experience was that the company developing an engine also needed to produce it, and his proposed solution was to have Power Jets taken over by Rolls Royce, who could then be the sole party involved in the development of the jet engine. Whittle demanded that in this case he become Rolls Royce’s chief engineer but given his unstable state this was clearly not an acceptable suggestion. Instead, Rolls Royce took over the Rover plant, but Power Jets was left as an independent research entity. Rolls Royce brought a range of important experience, appointing as their Chief Engineer on the jet project. Hooker had valuable experience in supercharging the Merlin engine – a process with many parallels to the compression stage of the jet engine.

This state of affairs was not to last for long. In late 1942 was appointed Minister. His tendency was nationalisation and consolidation and he soon proposed a “National Aeronautical Establishment” to provide a wide range of testing facilities such as wind tunnels to the industry. Cripps argued that Power Jets was effectively funded by the Government and as such ought to be bought into the Governmental structure as part of the engine department at RAE Farnborough. Cripps had an investigation performed into Power Jets which quickly The Meteor concluded that the management structure was non-existent and wholly inappropriate for such a company. He started discussion with Power Jets about possible contractual terms for nationalisation, but, true to form, Whittle and his colleagues overstated the value of their enterprise and were unable to come to terms. Cripps remained convinced, however, that a national centre for excellent in gas turbine production was needed and so took the more forceful step of denying Power Jets access to any of the production and test facilities they had been using, arguing that these had been entirely paid for by public money and so it was reasonable to take them back into public ownership. At this point Whittle and his management team had no option and so in 1944 agreed to nationalisation. The two original partners received around £46,000 each for their shares, Whittle waived his financial interest since he felt that as a serving officer he should not benefit from the special duties to which he had been assigned. The acquisition cost to the government was £135,000, small compared to the £2.8m they had already sunk in the development work. Power Jets R&D Ltd, a government-owned company was established in April 1944. When combined with other government activities the new entity had substantially improved facilities including an 80,000 square foot factory, powerful wind tunnels and compression test units a number of flying test beds and two Meteors. Staffing rose to over 1,300 employees by 1945. Power Jets had become the recognised national facility for the testing and development of the gas turbine engine.

Others, however, we making strong progress outside of this facility. De Havilland had developed their own engine which was working well, and Rolls Royce had taken the Rover design and employed A A Griffith to construct the Nene, which rapidly met all its targets for power and proved highly reliable. Whittle was still under the illusion that Power Jets was the only entity that could design jet engines and he expected the rest of the industry to manufacture his engines for him, but this was clearly deluded. Others were building better engines for themselves than Whittle was able to design. Power Jets started to fall apart as key engineers left and in 1946 it was formerly converted to the National Gas Turbine Establishment. Whittle resigned. It was the end of an era.

Was Whittle mis-treated?

Biographies on Whittle tend to take extreme positions about the relationship between Whittle’s Power Jets and the Air Ministry. Some argue that the Air Ministry failed to recognise the merit of Whittle’s idea in the first place, then failed devote sufficient resources to Whittle. Further, they encumbered Power Jets with inappropriate relationships such as with Rover and failed to give Whittle complete leadership over all jet engine developments in Britain. Others argue the opposite, that given the difficulties inherent in the jet, given that the Air Ministry already had their own expert and development programme and given the need to ensure a steady supply of ever- improving engines to fighter aircraft that the Ministry had to hedge their bets.

Which is right is as much a matter of opinion as of historical fact. Certainly, had the Air Ministry got behind Whittle after their first meeting and had put all their resources at his disposal then it is likely that the jet engine might have been developed a year or two sooner and Whittle’s life made less stressful. Equally, looking at it from the point of view of the Air Ministry, the likelihood of a start-up company, run by someone who started life as an apprentice, producing a highly-complex aircraft engine before the mighty Rolls-Royce was slim.

Decisions by Government are often a matter of seeking the right point of balance. The Air Ministry continually kept British fighters ahead of German ones throughout the war. It seems likely they found an appropriate balance.

Who really invented the jet engine?

Like so many inventions, there were many working on similar ideas at similar times. One key area of competition was with Germany where Pabst von Ohain was working for and although he did manage to get a plane airborne early in the war it did not fly well and was not pursued.

Another point of note is that while Whittle was working on his design, Griffith and Constant at RAE, were pursuing a different approach. Whittle’s design used a “centrifugal” compressor where the compressed air was thrown radially outwards from the blades of the compressor unit. This was simple, requiring only a single stage of blades to achieve the pressures needed, but resulted in a relatively bulky engine. Griffith and Constant worked on an “axial” compressor which sent the air directly through the engine in a straight line. This required a more complex multi-stage set of blades to achieve the required pressures but resulted in a longer, thinner engine, better suited for the shape of fighter planes. Whittle’s simpler engine was the first to be built, but it is the axial engine that achieved widespread use once it had been perfected, and indeed is the basis for the jet engines of today.

It is clear that had Whittle not invented the jet engine others would have done so shortly afterwards – Griffith in , von Ohain in Germany and others who were working in the US. There was nothing particular about Whittle’s design that was noteworthy and as mentioned above current engines are not based on his design. Whittle’s forceful personality likely speeded the development of the jet, and this was helped massively by the war. Some have estimated that without a war it might have taken 10-20 years to put together the funding and follow a more normal development process.

After the war

Whittle had been a socialist for much of his life, but his unhappy experiences with nationalisation of Power Jets caused him to change his allegiances to the Conservative Party. He became an active member, campaigning for Dudley Williams (one of the partners who formed Power Jets) who became the conservative MP for Exeter. He also retired from the RAF, complaining of ill health, leaving with the rank of . Shortly afterwards he received £100,000 from the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors, partly in recompense for Whittle having forfeited his share in Power Jets when it was nationalised. He was made a Knight of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in that same year.

Jet engines remained his specialism for a number of years. He joined BOAC as a technical advisor on aircraft gas turbines and travelled extensively over the next few years, viewing jet engine developments in USA, Canada, Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

He left BOAC in 1952 and spent the next year working on his biography, “Jet: The Story of a Pioneer”. It was a rather embittered book in which he vented his frustration on many of the difficulties and personalities that had dominated his life during the development of the jet engine. It did, though, help embed in the public imagination Whittle as the inventor of the jet engine.

Returning to work in 1953, he accepted a position as a Mechanical Engineering Specialist in one of Shell Oil's subsidiaries. Here he developed a new type of drill that was self-powered by a turbine running on the mud pumped into the hole that was used as a lubricant during drilling. Normally a well is drilled by attaching rigid sections of pipe together and powering the cutting head by spinning the pipe but Whittle's design meant that the drill had no strong mechanical connection to the head frame, allowing for much lighter piping to be used.

Whittle left Shell in 1957 but the project was picked up in 1961 by Bristol Siddeley Engines, who set up Bristol Siddeley Whittle Tools to further develop the concept. In 1966 Rolls Royce purchased Bristol Siddeley but the financial pressures and eventual bankruptcy due to cost overruns of the RB211 project led to the slow wind-down and eventual disappearance of Whittle's "turbo-drill". The design would eventually appear only in the late 1990s, when it was combined with continuous coiled pipe to allow uninterrupted drilling at any angle. The "continuous-coil drilling" can drill straight down into a pocket of oil and then sideways through the pocket to allow the oil to flow out faster.

In 1976 Whittle emigrated to the US and the next year he accepted the position of NAVAIR Research Professor at the US Naval Academy Annapolis. Here he wrote a textbook on gas turbine thermodynamics. It was at this time that he met von Ohain, who was working at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. At first upset because he believed von Ohain had developed his engine after seeing Whittle's patent, he eventually became convinced that von Ohain's development was his own. The two became good friends and often toured the US giving talks together. The legacy

The jet engine has given us international air travel – enhancing business and enabling many of us to travel widely. Life without rapid air travel would be hard to imagine today. But, as discussed, quite how much of this is down to Whittle is debatable. Whittle was a strong advocate for the jet engine, and this single-minded pursuit probably helped influence development by others. But it is not Whittle’s jet engine that we use today, and without Whittle, the team at RAE Farnborough would have developed their jet engine in any case (as would others in Germany and the US). In so much as anyone can be credited with the jet engine, Whittle is a sensible choice, but the legacy of fast, cheap long-distance flight does not really belong to him alone.

There are many memorials and tributes to Whittle. A full scale model of the E.28/39 has been erected just outside the northern boundary of Farnborough Airfield in The Whittle Arches in Coventry Hampshire, England. A similar memorial has been erected in the middle of a roundabout outside where much of Whittle's development was carried out. In Whittle's birthplace Coventry, he is commemorated in several ways including the "Whittle Arch" statue - a large wing-like structure outside the Coventry Transport Museum and has named one its buildings after him. There are many, many other examples around the UK.

He was honoured by the Royal Academy of Engineering (ref later chapter) which established “The Sir Frank Whittle Medal” and awards it annually.

What drove the man?

Why did he become great?

Whittle was determined – very determined. From his refusal to accept that he was unfit to be an aircraft apprentice to his conviction in the jet engine despite the advice from the best scientists of the day, Whittle kept pushing forwards where almost all others would have failed. Some might call it pig-headedness, but without it the jet would have taken much longer to be developed.

Coupled to this determination was an unusual intelligence – of the sort that achieved a first class degree at Cambridge despite lacking the sort of education most on his course would have enjoyed.

Like many of our great engineers, he was helped by a commercial alliance with two individuals who took care of raising money and keeping the company afloat (just). He was also “lucky” in the advent of the war, which resulted in the Air Ministry financing Power Jets – it is unlikely that the extraordinary amounts of money needed to get to production would have been forthcoming from other sources.

In summary, though, above all else, it was his determination that made him great.

Are there any Whittle’s around today?

With the route to university so much more open today, it seems unlikely that many would have to follow Whittle’s route to the level of knowledge he needed to invent the jet. There are many skilled engineers working on novel engines – for example fuel cells for cars. There are also many ever improving jet engines at Rolls Royce and other companies. But perhaps because much of this work is done in teams, as discussed in more detail in Chapter [ref], individuals do not stand out to the same degree as Whittle.