WHITTLE’S TEAM LEAVE JET ENGINE INDUSTR

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24866, 4 May 1946, Page 6

WHITTLE’S TEAM LEAVE JET ENGINE INDUSTR

CIVIL A VIATION

[By E. COLSTON SHEPHERD.]

London, April 22.—The break-up of the engineering team which produced the first jet-propulsion aero-engine in Britain need not to be interpreted as a threat to future progress in Britain. It marks, rather, a repetition of the fate that has befallen many Those who sow- the seed in a new field seem so often to fall to reap the harvest. That is what has happened to Air Commodore Frank Whittle and the party of distinguished engineers gathered round him. Their work has virtually passed into other hands. Persuaded now that they will not have the chance to make gas turbines to their own designs they have resigned from the organisation they built up. To them this outcome of nearly 10 years’ work is a personal tragedy; but the work is still going on ana some of them will have a hand in it in other spheres. Their disappointment consists in the loss of the rights far the originators to retain a hand as a team in the advance of the new power unit. How much they owe their disappointment to Government patronage, followed by Government ownership of their company, history must decide. The truth is that under Government patronage they made the gas turbine work and got it flying quite early in the war; but their engine was redesigned by another company before it could be sent into action. There is the crux of the trouble, and no one can say yet whether, if they had bean allowed to produce as weli as develop, they would have had the courage to put a way the flfat design and start again as did the Rolls Royce Company making Use of all the knowledge which the Whittle team had accumulated.

No Personal profit ■ Of the devotion of these men there can be no doubt Air Commodore Whittle himself was not only devoted to his self-imposed task but was jinconcerned with profit making, when the State took over his company two years ago, he presented all his patent lights free to the nation. He was then an officer in Britain’s Royal Air Force. He is still an officer in-the Royal Air Force and he has made no money out of the gas turbine, although he has been working on its development since 1934. That was when his company, Power Jew, Ltd., was started. During the first four years of its existence it had not enough capital to develop rapidly. In 1938 the Government began to take an interest in it and to commission research and development work. When war came in 1939 Government support was increased; and so long as the war lasted the Government wea both the only customer and the only potential customer. The Government thus became the arbiter of what Power Jets, Ltd., should do. And the Government decided that Power Jets, Ltd., should do only research and development and that other companies, like Rolls Royce and de Havllland, should do the Production. The intention was that Government departments should give commissions of this kind to Power Jets, Ltd., and that engine firms in aircraft industry should do the same. Power Jets, in tact was to serve as general consultant for all those who were interested in bringing gas turbines to full fruition. If the intention was to give the company a monopoly in this work, it was too optimistic. To put a new engine into the hands of the lively design Staffs Of the great companies and expect them not to try to

imifrove it would have been asking bv. much. The temptation to work on basic idea was presented to others 2! side the engine designers. The mak£ of parts like pumps, burners. anS other items in the fuel system called in for production purposesin the magnificent spirit of the’-w2 days they all tried to improve on th* original. The Resignations By the time the war ended a great many companies had added somethin* to the work of the Whittle team. Th! whole product of this co-oper&thm effort had also been communicatM step by step to Britain’s ally, t£ United States. One company which produced a relatively small range of components has estimated the capital value of ideas it communicated frJ to the United States at 5.000.000 do|. lars. That piece of reverse lend-leas* has ceased since the war ended; but development work has gone on and certain other British companies hav* begun to produce gas turbine* o which differ somewhat in their concefttiaa from that bn which Power Jet* worked. The old company, now the property of the State, was. nevertta* less, still at the service of State ql/ partmenta or private firms, required fo work out problems referred to it but debarred always from turning out * finished product, no matter how brilliant the workers might conceive their ideas to be. That state of affairs, continuing into peace time, dissatisfied Air Commodore Whittle. He resigned in January last. Soon afterwards his com. pany ceased to be a company and became, instead, part of a research and development State department. Having waited just long enough to examine the prospects, most of his fellow engineers have also resigned. The research officials remain. Personal dissatisfaction is easy ta understand and sympathise with. Th* Whittle team is entitled to official recognition for having done the gtefi work and for having making a gas turbine that would fly. Still more, they deserve credit fof having given birth to a new indut* try. The making of gas turbines S aircraft is nothing less than that It is a new industry in which Britain leads the world. Popular view of success is based on the delivery of im« mense power. Britain is not behind any nation in that; but the full applies, tion of jet propulsion depends on something more. New Industry Has Flying Start Low specific weight in the turbine and relatively low specific consume tion of fuel are needed to put mi turbines at the service of commercial air transport. In those mattett’S other nation can compare with Bfhain’s success. The new industry-a launched with a flying start. It ii served by a bigger body of enthuilMtg than were gathered together in Whittle’s company, and its development is taking place in the fields of private enterprise where competition and the incentive of material reward (Within limits) can still operatic ? The misfortune of the Whittle teas was that the war compelled it t 8 spread its knowledge and admit olhit interests into the field of gas turbinea If it could have continued as a pffr vate company, free of Government control. It would have preserved its monopoly; but the cause of gas hib bines would have advanced matt slowly. Its torch has been handed 06 and new teams are carrying it altet at amazing speed.