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Dakoda Neilson
Ms. Bennett
British Literature
12 September 2011
The History of the 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 away. 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
time wise so much so 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 jet 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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20 years were 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 to 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 (U.S Centennial of Flight Commission). 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 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 that 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(U.S Centennial of Flight Commission). 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

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combustion 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
fan 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 what is low in octane will
burn in a jet). After the compressor, it 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 (U.S Centennial of Flight Commission)) in Rostock,
Germany,Ohain built the first operational jet engine named the He S.3B (U.S Centennial of
Flight Commission). The He S.3B was the first jet engine to power an aircraft, the Heinkel He
178(U.S Centennial of Flight Commission). 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 (U.S Centennial of Flight Commission). 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 Serves). The Pioneer flew test flights until 1943, when
one of the two prototypes, went in to a spin and crashed (Encyclopedia of Science). After
this,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, rapid development of the…engine

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was not feasible” (Public Broadcasting Serves). 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 was very unsuccessful because they
were only used as ground attack aircraft and bombers.As pilots learned how to fly the fighter,
they became more successful at air combat. On April 7th, 1945 the first jet dogfight (A dogfight
is battle that is takes place in the air. They usually consist 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 this 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 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 was the first jet sold outside of their 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

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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
difference 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 and cause 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, as the only airline that operated the Comet 1 was BOAC (British Overseas Aircraft
Corporation) found out that the airframe suffered from metal fatigue and the aircraft would break
apart in flight (Siddiqi, Asif). The De Havilland Comet 1was grounded in 1952 (Siddiqi,
Asif).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.
A hundred years ago, the world never thought that the little aeroplane that few from kitty
Hawk North Carolina would be anything more than an idea. Within 50 years of that very flight
passengers were being flown across country’s at more than 400 miles an hour and that our wars
would relay mostly on flight. This was only the beginning as aircraft and the jets that powered

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them. The jet engine has a history all on its own and it changed the world by making it smaller
and making travel faster.