7 Frank Whittle 7
would be able to fly at great speed and height, and he first put
forth his vision of jet propulsion in 1928, in his senior thesis
at the RAF College. The young officer’s ideas were ridiculed
by the Air Ministry as impractical, however, and attracted
support from neither the government nor private industry.
Whittle obtained his first patent for a turbo-jet engine
in 1930, and in 1936 he joined with associates to found a com-
pany called Power Jets, Ltd. He tested his first jet engine on
the ground in 1937. This event is customarily regarded as the
invention of the jet engine, but the first operational jet engine
was designed in Germany by Hans Pabst von Ohain and
powered the first jet-aircraft flight on Aug. 27, 1939. The out-
break of World War II finally spurred the British government
into supporting Whittle’s development work. A jet engine
of his invention was fitted to a specially built Gloster E.28/39
airframe, and the plane’s maiden flight took place on May 15,
- The British government took over Power Jets, Ltd., in
1944, by which time Britain’s Gloster Meteor jet aircraft were
in service with the RAF, intercepting German V-1 rockets.
Whittle retired from the RAF in 1948 with the rank of
air commodore, and that same year he was knighted. The
British government eventually atoned for their earlier neglect
by granting him a tax-free gift of £100,000. He was awarded
the Order of Merit in 1986. In 1977 he became a research
professor at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.
His book Jet: The Story of a Pioneer was published in 1953.
John MauChLy and
J. presper eCkert
respectively, (b. Aug. 30, 1907, Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.—d. Jan. 8, 1980,
Ambler, Pa.); (b. April 9, 1919, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.—d. June 3, 1995,
Bryn Mawr, Pa.)
D
uring World War II, U.S. government funding went
to a project led by John Mauchly, J. Presper Eckert,
