The top-secret race for the jet engine

IWM curator - Robert Rumble: "This is the Gloster Meteor, the first ever jet aircraft to enter squadron service. It was the culmination of British efforts to win a top-secret race that lasted the entire Second World War - the race for speed. As soldiers fought on battlefields across the world, British and German engineers went head-to-head in a battle to build an engine that would change aerial warfare forever."

[Introduction music]

Duxford in Depth - The Jet Race. 

Robert Rumble: "Since 1914 aircraft had been used as a successful weapon of war and throughout the Second World War they used traditional piston engines. But this technology was reaching its limits. Over the course of the development of the Spitfire, the horsepower of the engine doubled from around 1,000 horsepower in the Mk1 to over 2,000 horsepower in the Mk24 like this. But the top speed only increased from around 360 to 450 mph. To develop the next generation of aircraft an entirely new engine would be required - the jet engine. Simply put, while a propeller pulls an aircraft through the air, a jet engine pushes an aircraft forward by ejecting a superheated blast or jet of air. A jet engine has far fewer moving parts than a piston engine and is much more energy efficient. Therefore, it can propel an aircraft much faster than that of a propeller. However, there was a problem. Before the Second World War, very few people even believed they would work. It would take the work of two visionary young engineers to turn the theory into reality.

On the British side was Frank Whittle, an RAF officer who'd had his first jet engine patent granted in 1932. On the German side was Hans von Ohain, a physics and maths student who had their first patent in 1934. At first, they struggled. Despite both testing their first jet engines in 1937, they found little government support for their ideas and Whittle in particular suffered from a lack of funds. But as Europe marched to war in 1939 everything changed and the race for the jet truly began. Now their work became a closely guarded secret with neither side aware of each other's early success. It was now that the Germans surged ahead. They completed the first solely jet powered flight of the Heinkel HE 178 on the 27th of August 1939, 5 days before the outbreak of war. It took the British nearly 2 years to make their first jet aircraft flight in May 1941 with the Gloster E.28/39. Both Whittle and his German competitors were satisfied with their success, however more power and more speed was needed to build a functioning jet powered warplane."

Oral History Interviewer: "How did you get to know Frank Whittle?" 

Oral History – Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown: "He was always extremely keen to come and fly the first jet aircraft which after all had his engine in it. But we had been briefed that under no circumstances was he to be allowed to fly it. You can't lose your top aircraft and your top man at the same time. We were able to stop him by, shall I say finagling around and pretending the aircraft was unserviceable. But he did indeed fly the second of the jets, the Meteor."

Robert Rumble: "An early problem with jet engine design was the compressor system. Compressors are vital because they make the air more dense and therefore more efficient. Early jet engines, known as centrifugal flow engines, had a problem that they required a wide and aerodynamically inefficient forward air intake before the air was passed through the combustion chamber. These engines have been used on both the HE 178 and Gloster E.28/39. But the German Junkers Jumo 004 engine solved these problems. Junkers designed an axial flow compressor which used a sequence of rotor blades to crush the air. Whilst this in itself was not as powerful as the centrifugal flow engine, compressing the air multiple times in stages made for a more compact and aerodynamic design. Despite the success of the ground-breaking Junkers Jumo 004 engine, Ohain continued to work on his centrifugal designs which would never be put into production. His importance in the jet race began to subside.

Eventually, it was Messerschmitt who took the lead with the development of the ME 262, built around two Junkers Jumo 004 turbojets. These were the first turbojet engines to go into mass production. Each engine produced 840kg/1,852 lbs of thrust. The ME 262 was one of the most important developments in aircraft technology of the 20th century. The ME 262 featured a number of innovations including a tricycle landing gear arrangement, with the smaller nose wheel out front rather than a tail wheel and advanced swept back wings for greater highspeed performance. Top speed was around 540 mph, about 120 mph faster than the best Allied piston engine fighters of the time. Yet the Germans wavered, it was not until towards the end of 1943 that the ME 262 program was accelerated into production. Even worse, much to the Luftwaffe's frustration, Adolf Hitler meddled in development, insisting that it was built as a dual role fighter bomber aircraft. This added serious complications to the aircraft's design and compromised its acceleration and speed."

Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown: "It was like talking about football. Nowadays you have a Premier League which is something extra right above. The only aircraft in that league was the ME 262. It was really a formidable aircraft, very fast, heavily armed, nothing could really get near it. Many ways I sit back and think it's just as well the war ended when it did."

Robert Rumble: "Meanwhile, Frank Whittle's team at the Gloster Aircraft Company were pressing ahead with the first British jet fighter; the Gloster Meteor. The Meteor was built as a slightly simpler design than the ME 262, with conventional straight wings and built purely as a fighter aircraft not yet as a fighter bomber. This more conservative design was about 150 mph slower than the ME 262 to start with, at about 450 mph speed. However, by 1946, just after the Second World War an updated Meteor beat speeds of over 600 mph. The Gloster Meteor entered service with the Royal Air Force with 161 Squadron in July 1944, beating the Germans by three months who didn't introduce the ME 262 into service until October that year. The Germans had squandered their early advantage. However, these two iconic aircraft would never meet in battle. So as to prevent the possibility of any aircraft falling into enemy hands, the Gloster Meteor was restricted to usage in British airspace. Its primary target was shooting down German V1 Doodlebug flying bombs, primitive German cruise missiles."

Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown: "Today every jet in the world almost as axial flow, whereas the British went along the centrifugal flow. At that stage in the war the centrifugal flow engine was much more reliable than the axial flow. And the German engines had a total scrap life of 25 hours which is quite ridiculous. But in the end, the axial flow is the way to go if you wish to develop the engine to its ultimate."

Robert Rumble: "This extraordinary looking fuselage currently undergoing restoration was another early German jet fighter the HE 162 the Volksjäger or 'people's fighter'. Ours is currently undergoing a full forensic restoration to help determine the aircraft's full identity. Developed by Messerschmitt's German rivals Heinkel, this was a much simpler and cheaper aircraft than the ME 262. Essentially a light fuselage with a small but powerful BMW 003 turbojet fitted on top. As the Germans were facing defeat towards the end of the Second World War, in their desperation, extraordinary yet ineffective weapon systems were developed often to the detriment of their wider war effort. The Volksjäger was one such example. First flown in spring 1945, towards the end of the war, it was intended that this simple jet fighter could be flown by air cadets and volunteers with minimal training such was the lack of qualified German air force pilots by the end of the war. However, and like the complex ME 262, the HE 162 was a very difficult aircraft to fly and proved a death trap to its inexperienced pilots. The jet aircraft was seen more as a German propaganda tool rather than a viable jet fighter."

Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown: "It was very fast, almost as fast as the ME 262. But thrown into combat virtually without any advanced flight testing at all. So, we were left with a very interesting phase at the end of the war where we knew the potential of the German aircraft was far higher than ours but we had no data. This really was a very illuminating and quite exciting time."

Robert Rumble: "The jet engine was one of the engineering marvels to emerge from the Second World War, it allowed aircraft to fly faster and climb higher than ever before. But in many ways the most important aircraft in the development of the jet engine was not a fighter or a bomber - it was an airliner. The jet engine allowed the world to open up to truly global air travel and the pioneer jet airliner was the DeHavilland Comet. This was the world's first commercial jet airliner, fitted with four DeHavilland Ghost turbojets and with sweptback wing first harking back to the German ME 262, the Comet was the culmination of wartime jet aircraft design. Designed with a comfortable pressurised cabin derived from the high altitude B-29 bomber of the Second World War, the Comet could fly faster, higher, and further than many of the older piston engined airliners.

But unfortunately, the Comet program was significantly curtailed by three disastrous air crashes during its first years in service, with tragic loss of life. The aircraft had fallen victim to the then unknown concept of metal fatigue in the aircraft fuselage, causing catastrophic mid-air failure of the aircraft. These disastrous problems were later solved, however the revolutionary Comet would never rise to be the commercial success and global airliner the British hoped it would. Commercial success would go ultimately to the Americans when US bomber manufacturer Boeing introduced the 707 airliner in 1958. This larger, cheaper, more efficient, and arguably safer aircraft in the eyes of the public would go on to change the world of global air travel."