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Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, OM, KBE, CB, FRS, Hon FRAeS (1 June 1907 – 9 August 1996) was a British Royal Air Force (RAF) engineer officer. Sharing credit with Germany's Dr. Hans von Ohain for independently inventing the turbojet engine (though some years earlier than Dr. von Ohain), he is hailed by some as the father of jet propulsion. From
an early age Whittle demonstrated an aptitude for engineering and an
interest in flying. Determined to be a pilot, he overcame his physical
limitations to be accepted into the RAF, where his abilities earned him
a place on the officer training course at Cranwell.
He excelled in his studies and became an accomplished pilot. While
writing his thesis there he formulated the fundamental concepts that
led to the creation of the turbojet engine, taking out a patent on his
design in 1930. His performance on an officers' engineering course
earned him a place on a further course at the University of Cambridge where he graduated with a First. Without Air Ministry support, he and two retired RAF servicemen formed Power Jets Ltd to build his engine with assistance from the firm of British Thomson - Houston.
Despite limited funding, a prototype was created, which first ran in
1937. Official interest was forthcoming following this success, with
contracts being placed to develop further engines, but the continuing
stress seriously affected Whittle's health, eventually resulting in a
nervous breakdown in 1940. In 1944 when Power Jets was nationalised he
again suffered a nervous breakdown, and resigned from the board in 1946. In 1948 Whittle retired from the RAF and received a knighthood. He joined BOAC as a technical advisor before working as an engineering specialist in one of Shell Oil's subsidiaries followed by a position with Bristol Aero Engines. After emigrating to the U.S. in 1976 he accepted the position of NAVAIR Research Professor at the United States Naval Academy from 1977 – 1979. In August 1996, Whittle died of lung cancer at his home in Columbia, Maryland. Whittle was born in a terraced house in Newcombe Road, Earlsdon, Coventry, England on 1 June 1907, the eldest son of Moses Whittle and Sara Alice Garlick. When he was nine years old, the family moved to the nearby town of Royal Leamington Spa where his father, a highly inventive practical engineer and mechanic, purchased the Leamington Valve and Piston Ring Company, which comprised a few lathes and other tools and a single cylinder gas engine, on which Whittle became an expert. Whittle developed a rebellious and adventurous streak, together with an early interest in aviation. After
two years attending Milverton School, Whittle won a scholarship to a
secondary school which in due course became Leamington College, but
when his father's business faltered there was not enough money to keep
him there. He quickly developed practical engineering skills while
helping in his father's workshop, and being an enthusiastic reader
spent much of his spare time in the Leamington reference library,
reading about astronomy, engineering, turbines, and the theory of
flight. At the age of 15, determined to be a pilot, Whittle applied to join the RAF. In January 1923, having passed the RAF entrance examination, Whittle reported to RAF Halton as an aircraft apprentice. He lasted only two days: just five feet tall and with a small chest measurement, he failed the medical. He
then put himself through a vigorous training programme and special diet
devised by a physical training instructor at Halton to build up his
physique, only to fail again six months later, when he was told that he
could not be given a second chance, despite having added three inches
to his height and chest. Undeterred, he applied again under an assumed name and presented himself as a candidate at the RAF Cranwell apprentice
school instead. This time he passed the physical, and in September that
year, 364365 Boy Whittle, F started his three year training as an
aircraft mechanic at the No. 4 Apprentices Wing, No. 1 School of Technical Training. Whittle
hated the strict discipline and, convinced there was no hope of ever
becoming a pilot, at one time seriously considered deserting. However, throughout his early days as an aircraft apprentice, first at the Royal Air Force College Cranwell, and latterly at RAF Halton,
he maintained his interest in the Model Aircraft Society, where he
built replicas. The quality of these attracted the eye of his
commanding officer, who felt that Whittle was also a mathematical
genius. He was so impressed that in 1926 he recommended Whittle for
officer training at Cranwell. For Whittle, this was the chance of a lifetime, not only to enter the commissioned ranks but also because the training included flying lessons on the Avro 504. While at Cranwell he lodged in a bungalow at Dorrington.
Being an ex-apprentice amongst a majority of ex-public schoolboys, life
as an officer cadet wasn't easy for him, but he nevertheless excelled
in the courses and went solo in 1927 after only 13.5 hours instruction,
quickly progressing to the Bristol Fighter and gaining a reputation for daredevil low flying and aerobatics. A
requirement of the course was that each student had to produce a thesis
for graduation: Whittle decided to write his on potential aircraft
design developments, notably flight at high altitudes and speeds over
500 mph (800 km/h). In Future Developments in Aircraft Design he
showed that incremental improvements in existing propeller engines were
unlikely to make such flight routine. Instead he described what is
today referred to as a motorjet; a motor using a conventional piston engine to provide compressed air to a combustion chamber whose exhaust was used directly for thrust – essentially an afterburner attached
to a propeller engine. The idea was not new and had been talked about
for some time in the industry, but Whittle's aim was to demonstrate
that at increased altitudes the lower outside air pressure would
increase the design's efficiency. For long range flight, using an
Atlantic crossing mailplane as his example, the engine would spend most
of its time at high altitude and thus could outperform a conventional
powerplant. Of
the few apprentices accepted, only about one percent normally completed
the course, and Whittle graduated in 1928 at the age of 21, being commissioned as a Pilot Officer in July. He
ranked second in his class in academics, won the Andy Fellowes Memorial
Prize for Aeronautical Sciences for his thesis, and was described as an
"exceptional to above average" pilot. However, his flight logbook also showed numerous red ink warnings about showboating and overconfidence, and because of dangerous flying in an Armstrong Whitworth Siskin he was disqualified from the end of term flying contest. Whittle
continued working on the motorjet principle after his thesis work but
eventually abandoned it when further calculations showed it would weigh
as much as a conventional engine of the same thrust. Pondering the
problem he thought: "Why not substitute a turbine for the piston
engine?" Instead of using a piston engine to provide the compressed air
for the burner, a turbine could be used to extract some power from the
exhaust and drive a similar compressor to those used for superchargers. The remaining exhaust thrust would power the aircraft. On 27 August 1928 Pilot Officer Whittle joined No. 111 Squadron,
Hornchurch, flying Siskin IIIs. Continuing his reputation for low
flying and aerobatics, one public complaint almost led to his being
court martialled. Within a year he was posted to Central Flying School,
Wittering, for a flying instructor's course. He became a popular and
gifted instructor, and was selected as one of the entrants in a
competition to select a team to perform the "crazy flying" routine in
the 1930 Royal Air Force Air Display at RAF Hendon.
He destroyed two aircraft in accidents during rehearsals but remained
unscathed on both occasions. After the second incident an enraged
Flight Lieutenant Harold W. Raeburn said furiously, "Why don't you take
all my bloody aeroplanes, make a heap of them in the middle of the
aerodrome and set fire to them – it's quicker!" Whittle
showed his engine concept around the base, where it attracted the
attention of Flying Officer Pat Johnson, formerly a patent examiner.
Johnson, in turn, took the concept to the commanding officer of the
base. This set in motion a chain of events that almost led to the
engine's being produced much sooner than actually occurred. Earlier, in July 1926, A.A. Griffith published a paper on compressors and turbines, which he had been studying at the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE).
He showed that such designs up to this point had been flying "stalled",
and that by giving the compressor blades an aerofoil shaped
cross section their efficiency could be dramatically improved. The
paper went on to describe how the increased efficiency of these sorts
of compressors and turbines would allow a jet engine to be produced,
although he felt the idea was impractical, and instead suggested using
the power as a turboprop. At the time most superchargers used a centrifugal compressor, so there was limited interest in the paper. Encouraged by his Commanding Officer, in late 1929 Whittle sent his concept to the Air Ministry to
see if it would be of any interest to them. With little knowledge of
the topic they turned to the only other person who had written on the
subject and passed the paper on to Griffith. Griffith appears to have
been convinced that Whittle's "simple" design could never achieve the
sorts of efficiencies needed for a practical engine. After pointing out
an error in one of Whittle's calculations, he went on to comment that
the centrifugal design would be too large for aircraft use and that
using the jet directly for power would be rather inefficient. The RAF
returned his comment to Whittle, referring to the design as being
"impracticable". Pat
Johnson remained convinced of the validity of the idea, and had Whittle
patent the idea in January 1930. Since the RAF was not interested in
the concept they did not declare it secret, meaning that Whittle was
able to retain the rights to the idea, which would have otherwise been
their property. Johnson arranged a meeting with British Thomson - Houston (BTH),
whose chief turbine engineer seemed to agree with the basic idea.
However, BTH did not want to spend the ₤60,000 it would cost to develop
it, and this potential brush with early success went no further. In January 1930, Whittle was promoted to Flying Officer. In
Coventry, on 24 May 1930, Whittle married his fiancée, Dorothy
Mary Lee, with whom he would later have two sons, David and Ian. Then, in 1931, he was posted to the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment at Felixstowe as
an armament officer and test pilot of seaplanes, where he continued to
publicize his idea. This posting came as a surprise for he had never
previously flown a seaplane, but he nevertheless increased his
reputation as a pilot by flying some 20 different types of floatplanes,
flying boats, and amphibians. Every
officer with a permanent commission was expected to take a specialist
course, and as a result Whittle attended the Officers’ Engineering
Course at RAF Henlow, Bedfordshire in
1932. He obtained an aggregate of 98% in all subjects in his exams,
completing the course in 18 months instead of the more normal
two years. His
performance in the course was so exceptional, that in 1934 he was
permitted to take a two-year engineering course as a member of Peterhouse, a college of Cambridge University, graduating in 1936 with a First in the Mechanical Sciences Tripos. In February 1934, he had been promoted to the rank of Flight Lieutenant. Still
at Cambridge, Whittle could ill afford the £5 renewal fee for his
jet engine patent when it became due in January 1935, and because the
Air Ministry refused to pay it the patent was allowed to lapse. Shortly
after, in May, he received mail from Rolf Dudley-Williams,
who had been with him at Cranwell in the 1920s and Felixstowe in 1930.
Williams arranged a meeting with Whittle, himself, and another
now retired RAF serviceman, James Collingwood Tinling.
The two proposed a partnership that allowed them to act on Whittle's
behalf to gather public financing so that development could go ahead. The
agreement soon bore fruit, and in September 1935 the pair introduced
Whittle to two investment bankers at O.T. Falk & Partners, Sir Maurice Bonham - Carter and Lancelot Law Whyte. The
firm had an interest in developing speculative projects that
conventional banks would not touch. Whyte was impressed by the
28-year-old Whittle and his design when they met on 11 September 1935: Falk & Partners financed an independent engineering review that was favourable, and with that the jet engine was finally on its way to becoming a reality. On 27 January 1936, the principals signed the "Four Party Agreement", creating "Power Jets Ltd."
The parties were O.T. Falk, the Air Ministry, Whittle and, together,
Williams and Tinling. Falk was represented on the board of Power Jets
by Whyte as Chairman, and Bonham - Carter as a director. Whittle,
Williams and Tinling retained a 49% share of the company in exchange
for Falk and Partners putting in £2,000 with the option of a
further £18,000 within 18 months. As
Whittle was still a full-time RAF officer and currently at Cambridge,
he was given the title "Honorary Chief Engineer and Technical
Consultant". Needing special permission to work outside the RAF, he was
placed on the Special Duty List and allowed to work on the design as
long as it was for no more than six hours a week. The
Air Ministry still saw no value in the effort, and having no production
facilities of its own, Power Jets entered into an agreement with steam
turbine specialists British Thomson - Houston to build an experimental
engine facility at a BTH factory in Rugby, Warwickshire. Work progressed quickly, and by the end of the year the prototype detail
design was finalised and parts for it were well on their way to being completed, all within the original £2,000 budget. Earlier, in January when the company formed, Henry Tizard, the rector of Imperial College London and chairman of the Aeronautical Research Committee (ARC),
had prompted the Air Ministry's Director of Scientific Research to ask
for a write-up of the design. The report was once again passed on to
Griffith for comment, which was not received back until March 1937 by
which point Whittle's design was well along. Griffith had already
started construction of his own turbine engine design, and, perhaps to
avoid tainting his own efforts, he returned a somewhat more positive
review. However, he remained highly critical of some features, notably
the use of jet thrust. The Engine Sub-Committee of ARC studied
Griffith's report, and decided to fund his effort instead. Given
this astonishing display of official uninterest, Falk and Partners gave
notice that they could not provide funding beyond £5,000. Nevertheless the team pressed ahead, and the W.U. (Whittle Unit) engine ran
successfully on 12 April 1937. Tizard pronounced it "streets ahead" of
any other advanced engine he had seen, and managed to interest the Air Ministry enough to fund development with a contract for £5,000 to develop a flyable version. However, it was a year before the funds were made available, greatly delaying development. In
July, when Whittle's stay at Cambridge was over, he was released to
work full-time on the engine. On July 8 Falk gave the company an
emergency loan of £250, and on the 15th they agreed to find
£4,000 to £14,000 in additional funding. The money never
arrived, and, entering into default, Falk's shares were returned to
Williams, Tinling and Whittle on November 1. Nevertheless, Falk
arranged another loan of £3,000, and work continued. Whittle was promoted to Squadron Leader in December. Testing
continued with the W.U., which showed an alarming tendency to race out
of control. Because of the dangerous nature of the work being carried
out, development was largely moved from Rugby to BTH's lightly used
Ladywood foundry at nearby Lutterworth in Leicestershire in
1938 where there was a successful run of the W.U. in March that year.
BTH had decided to put in £2,500 of their own in January, and in
March 1938 the Air Ministry funds finally arrived. This proved to be a
mixed blessing – the company was now subject to the Official Secrets Act, which made it extremely difficult to gather more private equity. These delays and the lack of funding slowed the project. In Germany, Hans von Ohain had
started work on a prototype in 1935, and had by this point passed the
prototype stage and was building the first flyable design, the Heinkel HeS 3.
There is little reason to believe that Whittle's efforts would not have
been at the same level or more advanced had the Air Ministry taken a
greater interest in the design. When war broke out in September 1939, Power Jets had a payroll of only 10 and Griffith's operations at the RAE and Metropolitan - Vickers were similarly small. The stress of the continual on-again-off-again development and problems with the engine took a serious toll on Whittle. He suffered from stress related ailments such as eczema and
heart palpitations, while his weight dropped to nine stone
(126 lb / 57 kg). In order to keep to his 16-hour workdays,
he sniffed Benzedrine during
the day and then took tranquillizers and sleeping pills at night to
offset the effects and allow him to sleep. Over this period he became
irritable and developed an "explosive" temper. By
June 1939 Power Jets could barely afford to keep the lights on when yet
another visit was made by Air Ministry personnel. This time Whittle was
able to run the W.U. at high power for 20 minutes without any
difficulty. One of the members of the team was the Director of
Scientific Research, David Randall Pye,
who walked out of the demonstration utterly convinced of the importance
of the project. The Ministry agreed to buy the W.U. and then loan it
back to them, injecting cash, and placed an order for a flyable version
of the engine. Whittle
had already studied the problem of turning the massive W.U. into a
flyable design, and with the new contract work started in earnest on
the "Whittle Supercharger Type W.1".
It featured a reverse flow design; compressed air from the outer rim of
the compressor was fed into the burners and ignited, then piped back
towards the front of the engine, reversing again, then finally into the
turbine area. This design allowed the flame cans to be folded in
length, reducing the length of the engine, and the length of the drive
shaft connecting the compressor and turbine, thus reducing weight. In January 1940, the Ministry placed a contract with the Gloster Aircraft Company for a simple aircraft specifically to flight test the W.1, the Gloster E.28/39. They also placed a second engine contract, this time for a larger design that developed into the otherwise similar W.2. In February work started on a third design, the W.1A, which was the
size of the W.1 but used the W.2's mechanical layout. The W.1A allowed
them to flight test the W.2's basic mechanical design in the E.28/39.
Power Jets also spent some time in May 1940 drawing up the W.2Y, a
similar design with a "straight through" airflow that resulted in a
longer engine and (more critically) driveshaft but having a somewhat
simpler layout. To reduce the weight of the driveshaft as much as
possible, the W.2Y used a large cylindrical shaft almost as large as
the turbine disc, "necked down" at either end where it connected to the
turbine and compressor. In
April the Air Ministry issued contracts for W.2 production lines with a
capacity of up to 3,000 engines a month in 1942, asking BTH, Vauxhall and the Rover Company to join. However, the contract was eventually taken up by Rover only. In June, Whittle received a promotion to Wing Commander. Meanwhile
work continued with the W.U., which eventually went through nine
rebuilds in an attempt to solve the combustion problems that caused the
engines to race and surge. On 9 October the W.U. ran once again, this
time equipped with Lubbock ("Shell" type) atomizing burners which
solved the racing problems, but surging continued. By
this point it was clear that Gloster's first airframe would be ready
long before Rover could deliver an engine. Unwilling to wait, Whittle
cobbled together an engine from spare parts, creating the W.1X ("X"
standing for experimental) which ran for the first time on 14 December
1940. On 10 December Whittle suffered a nervous breakdown, and left
work for a month. This
engine powered the E.28/39 for taxi testing on 7 April 1941 near the
factory in Gloucester, where it took to the air for two or three short
hops of several hundred yards at about six feet from the ground. The definitive W.1 of 850 lbf (3.8 kN)
thrust ran on 12 April 1941, and on 15 May the W.1-powered E.28/39 took
off from Cranwell at 7:40 pm, flying for 17 minutes and reaching a
maximum speed of around 340 mph (545 km/h). At the end of the
flight, Pat Johnson, who had encouraged Whittle for so long said to
him, "Frank, it flies." Whittle replied, "Well, that's what it was
bloody well designed to do, wasn't it?" Within
days the aircraft was reaching 370 mph (600 km/h) at
25,000 feet (7,600 m), exceeding the performance of the
contemporary Spitfires. Success of the design was now evident; the first example of what was a
purely experimental and entirely new engine design was already
outperforming one of the best piston engines in the world, an engine
that had five years of development and production behind it, and
decades of basic engineering. Nearly every engine company in Britain
then started their own crash efforts to catch up with Power Jets. In 1941 Rover set up a new laboratory for Whittle's team along with a production line at their unused Barnoldswick factory,
but by late 1941 it was obvious that the arrangement between Power Jets
and Rover was not working. Whittle was frustrated by Rover's inability
to deliver production quality parts, as well as with their attitude of
engineering superiority, and became increasingly outspoken about the
problems. Rover decided to set up secretly a parallel effort with their
own engineers at Waterloo Mill, Clitheroe. Here Adrian Lombard started work developing the W.2B into their own production quality design,
dispensing with Whittle's "reverse flow" burners and developing a
longer but simpler "straight through" engine instead. This was
encouraged by the Air Ministry, who gave Whittle's design the name
B.23, and Rover's became the B.26. Work
on all of the designs continued over the winter of 1941 – 42. The first
W.1A was completed soon after, and on 2 March 1942 the second E.28/39
reached 430 mph (690 km/h) at 15,000 feet (4,600 m)
on this engine. The next month work on an improved W.2B started under
the new name, W2/500. In April Whittle learned of Rover's parallel
effort, creating discontentment and causing a major crisis in the
programme. Work continued, however, and in September the first W2/500
ran for the first time, generating its full design thrust of
1,750 lbf (7.8 kN) the same day. Work started on a further
improvement, the W2/700. Earlier, in 1940, Whittle had met with Stanley Hooker of Rolls-Royce, who in turn introduced Whittle to Rolls-Royce board member, Ernest Hives at
a subsequent meeting. Hooker led the supercharger division at
Rolls-Royce, which was naturally suited to jet engine work. Hives
agreed to supply key parts to help the project and it was Rolls-Royce
engineers who helped solve surging problems experienced in the early
engines. In early 1942 Whittle contracted Rolls-Royce for six engines,
known as the WR.1, identical to the existing W.1. The problems between Rover and Power Jets became a "public secret" and late in 1942 Spencer Wilks of Rover met with Hives and Hooker at the Swan and Royal pub, in Clitheroe, near the Barnoldswick factory. They decided to trade the jet factory at Barnoldswick for Rolls-Royce's tank engine factory
in Nottingham, sealing the deal with a handshake. The official handover
took place on 1 January 1943, although the W.2B contract had already
been signed over in December. Rolls-Royce closed Rover's secret
parallel plant at Clitheroe soon after, however, they continued the development of the W.2B/26 that had begun there. Testing
and production ramp-up was immediately accelerated. In December 1942
Rover had tested the W.2B for a total of 37 hours, but within the
next month Rolls-Royce tested it for 390 hours. The W.2B passed
its first 100-hour test at full performance of 1,600 lbf
(7.1 kN) on 7 May 1943. The prototype Meteor airframe
was already complete and took to the air on 12 June 1943. Production
versions of the engine started rolling off the line in October, first
known as the W.2B/23, then the RB.23 (for Rolls-Barnoldswick) and
eventually became known as the Rolls-Royce Welland.
Barnoldswick was too small for full scale production and turned back
into a pure research facility under Hooker's direction, while a new
factory was set up in Newcastle-under-Lyme. The W.2B/26, as the Rolls-Royce Derwent, opened the new line and soon replaced the Welland, allowing the production lines at Barnoldswick to shut down in late 1944. Despite lengthy delays in their own program, the Luftwaffe beat
the British efforts into the air by nine months. A lack of cobalt for
high temperature steel alloys meant the German designs were always at
risk of overheating and damaging their turbines. The low grade alloy
production versions of the Junkers Jumo 004, designed by Dr. Anselm Franz,
would typically last only 10 – 25 hours (longer with an
experienced pilot) before burning out, and sometimes exploded on their
first
startup. Whittle's designs were primitive, though more reliable because
of the availability of better materials by comparison. The equivalent
British engine would run for 150 hours between overhauls and had
twice the power-to-weight ratio and half the specific fuel consumption.
By the end of the war every major engine company in Britain was working
on jet designs based on the Whittle pattern, or licensed outright.
Nevertheless, German axial flow designs were influential on designs
after 1945. With the W.2 design proceeding smoothly, Whittle was sent to Boston, Massachusetts, in mid-1942 to help the General Electric jet programme. GE, the primary supplier of turbochargers in the U.S., was well suited to starting jet production quickly. A combination of the W.2B design and a simple airframe from Bell Aircraft flew in autumn of 1942 as the Bell XP-59A Airacomet. Whittle's developments at Power Jets continued, the W.2/700 later being fitted with an afterburner ("reheat" in British terminology), as well as experimental water injection to
cool the engine and allow higher power settings without melting the
turbine. Whittle also turned his attention to the axial flow
(straight through) engine type as championed by Griffith, designing the
L.R.1. Other developments included the use of fans to provide greater
mass flow, either at the front of the engine as in a modern turbofan or at the rear, which is much less common but somewhat simpler. Whittle's
work had caused a minor revolution within the British engine
manufacturing industry, and even before the E.28/39 flew most companies had set up their own research efforts. In 1939, Metropolitan - Vickers set up a project to develop an axial flow design as a turboprop but later re-engineered the design as a pure jet known as the Metrovick F.2.
Rolls-Royce had already copied the W.1 to produce the low-rated WR.1
but later stopped work on this project after taking over Rover's
efforts. In 1941, de Havilland started a jet fighter project, the
Spider Crab — later called Vampire — along with their own engine to power it; Frank Halford's Goblin (Halford H.1). Armstrong Siddeley also developed an axial flow design, the ASX but reversed Vickers' thinking and later modified it into a turboprop instead, the Python. During a demonstration of the E.28/39 to Winston Churchill in April 1943, Whittle proposed to Stafford Cripps,
Minister of Aircraft Production, that all jet development be
nationalised. He pointed out that the company had been funded by
private investors who helped develop the engine successfully, only to
see production contracts go to other companies. Nationalisation was the
only way to repay those debts and ensure a fair deal for everyone, and
he was willing to surrender his shares in Power Jets to make this
happen. In October, Cripps told Whittle that he decided a better
solution would be to nationalise Power Jets only. Whittle
believed that he had triggered this decision, but Cripps had already
been considering how best to maintain a successful jet programme and
act responsibly regarding the state's substantial financial investment,
while at the same time wanting to establish a research centre that
could utilise Power Jets' talents, and had come to the conclusion that
national interests demanded the setting up of a Government owned
establishment. On December 1 Cripps advised Power Jets' directors that the Treasury would not pay more than £100,000 for the company. In January 1944 Whittle was awarded the CBE in the New Year Honours. By this time he was a Group Captain, having been promoted from Wing Commander in July 1943. Later
that month after further negotiations the Ministry made another offer
of £135,500 for Power Jets, which was reluctantly accepted after
the Ministry refused arbitration on the matter. Since Whittle had
already offered to surrender his shares he would receive nothing at
all, while Williams and Tinling each received almost £46,800 for
their stock, and investors of cash or services had a threefold return
on their original investment. Whittle
met with Cripps to object personally to the nationalisation efforts and
how they were being handled, but to no avail. The final terms were
agreed on 28 March, and Power Jets officially became Power Jets
(Research and Development) Ltd, with Roxbee Cox as Chairman, Constant
of RAE Head of Engineering Division, and Whittle as Chief Technical
Advisor. On 5 April 1944, the Ministry sent Whittle an award of only
£10,000 for his shares. From
the end of March, Whittle spent six months in hospital recovering from
nervous exhaustion, and resigned from Power Jets (R and D) Ltd in
January 1946. In July the company was merged with the gas turbine
division of RAE to form the National Gas Turbine Establishment (NGTE) at Farnborough, and 16 Power Jets engineers, following Whittle's example, also resigned. Long a socialist, Whittle's experiences with nationalisation changed his mind and he later campaigned for the Conservative Party (especially for his friend Dudley Williams, who was Managing Director of Power Jets and became the Conservative Member of Parliament for Exeter). In
1946 Whittle accepted a post as Technical Advisor on Engine Design and
Production to Controller of Supplies (Air); was made Commander, the U.S. Legion of Merit; and was awarded the Order of the Bath (CB) in 1947. During May 1948 Whittle received an ex-gratia award
of £100,000 from the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors in
recognition of his work on the jet engine, and two months later he was
made a Knight of the Order of the British Empire (KBE). During
a lecture tour in the U.S. he again broke down and retired from the RAF
on medical grounds on 26 August 1948, leaving with the rank of Air Commodore. He joined BOAC as
a technical advisor on aircraft gas turbines and travelled extensively
over the next few years, viewing jet engine developments in the United
States, Canada, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. He left BOAC in 1952
and spent the next year working on a biography, Jet: The Story of a Pioneer. He was awarded the Royal Society of Arts' Albert Medal that year. Returning to work in 1953, he accepted a position as a Mechanical Engineering Specialist in one of Shell Oil's subsidiaries, where he developed a new type of self-powered drill, driven
by a turbine running on the lubricating mud that is pumped into the
borehole 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 removed the need for a strong mechanical
connection between the drill and the head frame, allowing for much
lighter piping to be used. He gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 1954 on The Story of Petroleum. Whittle left Shell in 1957 to work for Bristol Aero Engines who picked up the project in 1961, setting
up "Bristol Siddeley Whittle Tools" to further develop the concept. In
1966 Rolls-Royce purchased Bristol Siddeley, but the financial
pressures and eventual bankruptcy because of 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 a continuous coiled pipe to allow
uninterrupted drilling at any angle. "Continuous coil drilling" has the
ability to drill straight down into a pocket of oil and then sideways
through the pocket to allow the oil to flow out faster. Whittle received the Tony Jannus Award in 1969 for his distinguished contributions to commercial aviation. In
1976, his marriage to Dorothy was dissolved and he married American
Hazel S Hall ("Tommie"). He emigrated to the U.S. and the next year
accepted the position of NAVAIR Research Professor at the United States Naval Academy (Annapolis, Maryland). His research concentrated on the boundary layer before his professorship became part time from 1978 to 1979. The part time post enabled him to write a textbook entitled Gas turbine aero-thermodynamics: with special reference to aircraft propulsion, published in 1981. Having first met Hans von Ohain in 1966, Whittle again met him at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in
1978 while von Ohain was working there as the Aero Propulsion
Laboratory's Chief Scientist. Initially upset because he believed von
Ohain's engine had been developed after seeing Whittle's patent, he
eventually became convinced that von Ohain's work was, in fact,
independent. The two became good friends and often toured the U.S. giving talks together. In 1986 Whittle was appointed a member of the Order of Merit (Commonwealth). He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, and of the Royal Aeronautical Society, and in 1991 he and von Ohain were awarded the Charles Stark Draper Prize for their work on turbojet engines. Whittle died of lung cancer on 9 August 1996, at his home in Columbia, Maryland. He was cremated in America and his ashes were flown to England where they were placed in a memorial in a church in Cranwell. Von
Ohain stated that if the RAF had taken Whittle's design seriously when
it was first submitted, there would have been no World War II. Hitler
considered air superiority to be paramount and Germany would have been
at a severe disadvantage without any similar aircraft. |