Changing the way we travel

Frank Whittle was born in Coventry in 1907, the son of a mechanic. His first attempts to join the RAF failed due to lack of height but he was accepted as an apprentice on his 3rd attempt in 1923. He qualified as a pilot 1928 and by 1929 was presenting ideas for a jet engine to the Air Ministry.

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With war in Europe likely the government had second thoughts about Whittle’s jet engine. In 1937, using newly available alloys that were strong and light, he produced the first viable jet engine to be successfully tested in a laboratory.

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Frank Whittle's design appeared to solve the problem that had baffled inventors for some years - how do you create a chamber strong enough to house an engine that would create a lot of heat and vast directed thrust? Many combustion chambers had simply been too weak to cope and had exploded under the strain.

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Whittle’s engine had ten combustion chambers rather than having just one large chamber which would produce a volatile and potentially uncontrollable reaction, his engine effectively divided up the combustion created into the ten chambers but still did not decrease the power of the engines.

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Now the Jet Engine had to be put onto an aircraft and tested with all the respective safety measures taken - as with all new planes.

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In 1941, a new jet fighter-prototype the Gloster E.28/39 flew. Its successor, the Gloster Meteor, entered service with the RAF in 1944. However, the first jet plane to fly was the Heinkel He 178 which first flew on August 24th 1939 - just days before World War Two started.

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When the war finished, it seemed a logical move to apply this new invention to passenger planes. Journeys became quicker and more powerful jet engines allowed passenger planes to get bigger so that more people could be carried on them.

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The first proper jet engined passenger airliner is considered to be the De Haviland Comet. This came into operation in a blaze of publicity, although within two year, it was withdrawn from service after a series of tragic accidents which killed many. This, however, was not due to its jet engines but to a fault in its fuselage which lead to the aircraft breaking up in flight.

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Boeing then took over the lead in jet-powered airliners. The Boeing 707 entered service in 1958. It was safe and allowed people to travel distances at speeds that would had been impossible just 10 years earlier. Whittle’s invention has transformed the world.

The Whittle W.2/700 engine flew in the Gloster E.28/39,

the first British aircraft to fly with a turbojet engine.

A Pratt & Whitney F100 turbofan engine in the

Testing Tunnel

The Gloster E.28/39

Photo: IWM/UK Government/Wikimedia • Believed to be in the Public Domain (Crown Copyright expired)