Frank Whittle

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Frank Whittle (1943)

Sir Frank Whittle KBE , FRSA (born June 1, 1907 in Coventry , † August 9, 1996 in Columbia , Maryland ) was an English pilot, inventor and businessman. His greatest achievement was the invention of the jet engine , which he developed independently of it at the same time as Hans von Ohain .

Life

Whittle was born in Earlsdon , Coventry . After graduating from college, he joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) in 1923 . In 1926 he began his pilot training at the RAF Aviation School at RAF Cranwell , Lincolnshire . In 1928 he finished his training as the second best of his class. This year he wrote a report in the college journal about "The future version of an aircraft engine". He suggested an engine that sucks in air, heats it up and lets it out through a nozzle at high speed.

Around 1930 he acquired patents for his jet engine, which, however, found no interest from the responsible authorities. Whittle then continued his technical training, first in 1932 in an engineering course for officers at the RAF in Henlow , Bedfordshire and from 1934 at Peterhouse College at Cambridge University , where he graduated with honors in 1936.

As early as 1935 two former RAF officers, Rolf Dudley-Williams and JC Tinling, who knew Whittle's patent, contacted him. They asked him to resume work on his jet engine. To this end, the company Power Jets Ltd. was founded in 1936. founded, which began its work in a workshop of British Thomson-Houston (BTH) in Rugby , Warwickshire . The first test runs were held in April 1937, around the same time that Ohain's demonstration engine was running at Heinkel in Rostock-Marienehe . The engine was difficult to control and was destroyed several times during the test runs. In spite of everything, the Air Ministry became aware of this project and funded it with £ 6,000. The test bench was then moved to an old factory building in nearby Lutterworth . Finally, in March 1938, a completely satisfactory test run was carried out. The rule problems were overcome. After the outbreak of World War II, the Ministry of Aviation ordered the construction of a jet-powered airplane, with Whittles company to supply the engine and Gloster to supply the airframe .

Work progressed quickly and on May 15, 1941 at 7:40 a.m. local time, the Gloster E.28 / 39 experimental aircraft took off from Cranwell Airport . This was, 1½ years after the first worldwide flight of a jet aircraft with the German He 178 , the first flight of a British jet engine. The machine was powered by a Whittle Supercharger Type W.1 with 3.8 kN thrust. This engine was already using kerosene as fuel. During the 17-minute test flight of the RAF test pilot Gerry Sayer, the machine reached a top speed of 545 km / h. With the improved W.2 engine with 7.6 kN thrust, speeds of up to 724 km / h were later achieved with this aircraft. Convinced of the tests, the Ministry of Aviation ordered a twin-engine fighter from BTH, the later Gloster Meteor . Whittle went to the United States in 1942 to help General Electric develop their own jet engine. The Bell P-59 Airacomet, which had its maiden flight in autumn 1942 , emerged from this program . Whittle then returned to England to work for Rolls-Royce . He headed the design and development of the engines. Whittle's company was nationalized and called itself Power Jets from then on.

Whittle retired from the RAF in 1948 with the rank of Air Commodore and later became a consultant at BOAC . Finally he emigrated to the USA in 1976, where he took a professorship at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis.

Frank Whittle married Dorothy Lee in May 1939. Whittle had two sons with her. He divorced in 1976 and shortly thereafter married Hazel Hall. He had a deep friendship with Hans von Ohain from the 1960s until his death.

Honors

Whittle memorial in Farnborough with a replica of a Gloster E.28 / 39 , the first British jet aircraft

literature

  • Jet: The Story of a Pioneer . Frederick Muller, London 1953.
  • Gas Turbine Aero-Thermodynamics: With Special Reference to Aircraft Propulsion . Pergamon Press, 1981, ISBN 0-08-026719-X (hardcover) and ISBN 0-08-026718-1 (paperback).
  • David S. Brooks: Vikings at Waterloo. The time work on the Whittle Jet Engine by the Rover Company. Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust, Derby 1997, ISBN 1-872922-08-2 .
  • John Golley, Frank Whittle, Bill Gunston: Whittle. The true story. Airlife Publ., Shrewsbury 1987, ISBN 0-906393-82-5 .
  • Stanley Hooker: Not much of an engineer. An autobiography. Airlife Publ., Shrewsbury 2002, ISBN 1-85310-285-7 .
  • Glyn Jones: The jet pioneers. The birth of jet-powered flight. Methuen, London 1989, ISBN 0-413-50400-X .
  • GBR Feilden: Whittle, Sir Frank (1907-1996). In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, London 2004 ( online , accessed June 7, 2005).

Web links

Commons : Frank Whittle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Wagner, The world's first jet aircraft , Bernard & Graefe Verlag Koblenz, p. 215
  2. ↑ Arte report triumphant advance of the jet jet ( Memento from July 27, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Whittle, Frank
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English pilot, inventor and businessman
DATE OF BIRTH June 1, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Coventry
DATE OF DEATH August 9, 1996
Place of death Columbia , Maryland